Death Angel
"Did he hurt you?" Rafael finally asked, his voice quiet, the tone deadly and underlaid with something unlike anything she’d ever heard from him before.
She didn’t take the time to analyze it, just went with her instincts. "He didn’t touch me. I was upset and he got-He said I wasn’t worth the trouble, and left." She gave a short, bitter laugh. "I guess you still owe him the hundred thou. Sorry ’bout that." Rafael was Latino; knowing the assassin had had sex with her would lessen her value in his eyes, maybe even so much he wouldn’t try to keep her. She wasn’t ready to go, not yet, so she had to make him think nothing had happened.
"He didn’t touch you?" Rafael’s tone now held pure shock.
"That makes the two of you, huh? He didn’t want me, either." She hadn’t meant to say that, the bitterness was too sharp and violent, but the words burst out of her. She regretted giving him even that much of a window onto her true feelings, though the emotion was genuine and that would carry some weight.
Once was enough.
Well, damn him to hell and back, once was more than enough for her. She knew now what he’d been doing: playing some kind of game with Rafael, one so subtle Rafael didn’t have a fucking clue he was even supposed to have been on the field. It was a game of sexual one-upmanship, and the assassin had won, giving her such an overdose of pleasure that she’d lost her mind and actually begged him to take her with him. She’d been fucked straight into stupidity, and she still didn’t have her brains back or she’d be able to stop this stupid crying.
Anguish washed over her again, still fresh and powerful, and she buried her face against her drawn-up knees as she wept.
Rafael hovered beside her, as if he couldn’t decide what to do. Nothing in their relationship had prepared him for this; Drea had always been accommodating, smiling, shallow and ornamental. He’d never seen her upset, or even annoyed. She would be willing to take bets that he thought she was interested in nothing except shopping and getting her hair and nails done, but then, she’d gone to extraordinary lengths to make him think that.
Finally he said, "I’ll get you some water," and disappeared inside.
Water! As if a drink of water was going to comfort her. She was upset, not thirsty. Still, the gesture said something, because Rafael didn’t fetch anything for anyone; it was always the other way around, with others catering to him.
He was gone far longer than simply getting a glass of water would take, and she knew he was looking through the penthouse, searching for signs that she’d lied to him. Mentally she ran through everything she’d done, wondering if she’d overlooked anything.
He stepped back out onto the balcony and crouched beside her once more. "Here," he said. "Drink some water."
The tears had subsided enough that she thought she could talk, so Drea lifted her head and wiped her face before reaching for the glass and taking an obligatory sip. "I was going to pack," she said wretchedly, her throat so clogged she was barely intelligible. "But I don’t have a-anywhere to go. I’ll start looking for a place, if you’ll let me s-stay here for a couple of days."
"You don’t have to go," he said, putting his hand on her shoulder again. "I don’t want you to go."
"You don’t want me," she said, shaking her head and finally daring to look at him, or at least look in his direction; her vision was so blurred with tears he was just an undefined shape. Her voice wobbled, but she swallowed hard and managed to keep going. "You g-gave me to him. You could have just told me to go, you didn’t have to do that. Maybe I should have seen you were getting tired of me but I guess I hoped so much you might love me that I-" She interrupted herself, shaking her head. "Never mind."
"I don’t want you to go," Rafael insisted. "I would never have-Look, he had me over a barrel and he knew it." He looked around, as if assessing their vulnerability to electronic eavesdropping, and said impatiently, "Let’s go inside, we can’t talk out here."
Drea let him pull her to her feet and usher her inside, his hand resting possessively on her waist. Triumph roared through her, pushing the tears away, at least for now. Yes! She’d bought herself the time she needed to put her plan into action. She just had to hide her true feelings from him a little while longer, but she had so much practice at that it wouldn’t be a strain.
Rafael would pay, and pay big.
"WHAT DO YOU make of that?" Xavier Jackson asked in astonishment, blinking at what the parabolic microphone had just picked up. The sound quality wasn’t great, because of the wind, the distance, and other factors, but the computer program could filter out a lot of the interference.
"I think we need to find out who the mystery man is," replied Cotton, "if he’s important enough to make Salinas share his girlfriend. He hasn’t left the building yet?"
"If he has, we missed him. But then, we haven’t seen him entering the building, either. Ever."
"Then he either has a tunnel, or he’s in disguise."
"I don’t rule out the tunnel," Jackson said wryly. There were all sorts of abandoned tunnels under the city. None of their city blueprints showed a tunnel there, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t one. It was something to check out, even though he’d go with the assumption the man had disguised himself somehow. He’d go back over all the surveillance video and compare every person who’d left with the video he had of the man on the balcony. "I wonder why the girlfriend’s trying to convince Salinas nothing happened between her and the guy, when Salinas evidently gave her to him?"
"Who knows?" Cotton sighed, rubbing his hand over his head in frustration. "That shot the hell out of using this to get to her, though, because even if Salinas found out they did do the nasty, he issued the invitation. Damn it all to hell."