Do or Die Reluctant Heroes

It was late December, and the abundance of Christmas lights and decorations added an unnecessary garishness to Vienna’s elegant beauty. The sparkle and natural glitter of the freshly fallen snow on the rooftops should’ve been enough.

Aaron had met his brother here once before, during the summer, and although he now missed being able to stroll through the cobblestone streets in the warmth of the evening, the city was still pedestrian-friendly. With his collar up and his scarf around his neck, he was ready for anything.

Well, almost anything.

“Aaron. Hi. Yeah. It’s me. Shel?” The strapping young man said his own name as if he were the one who was uncertain about it as Aaron stood, frozen in place, and stared.

It had been nearly four years since he’d last seen Sheldon Dellarosa. Three years, ten months, and twenty-nine days, to be precise.

This version of Shelly was taller, broader—nearly four years older. The boy had become a man.

He was wearing a military uniform beneath his overcoat. Like Aaron, Shelly was now a Marine. Unlike Aaron, Shel was an officer. A first lieutenant.

Aaron didn’t know whether to salute—or to shit or maybe even go blind.

“Crap, I knew this was a mistake,” Sheldon said. “But when I saw you leaving your hotel, I thought … why wait. Except I should have, because here we are now, standing in the street, in the snow, and it’s awkward, and you’re probably going somewhere.…”

“To get dinner,” Aaron said. “Sir. I’m going to get dinner. Ian—he’s my brother. I was supposed to meet him, but he’s been delayed.”

“I know Ian’s your brother,” Shel said. “Did you really think I would forget that?”

“I really have no idea, sir,” Aaron said.

“Stop calling me that.”

“You’re supposed to say At ease, Sergeant, and even then, I’m supposed to call you sir.”

“You’re still mad at me,” Sheldon realized. “Really mad. About that email. Oh my God.” He started to laugh.

“You think it’s funny? F*ck you, sir!” Aaron turned and walked away, heading back to the hotel because his appetite had just vanished.

But Shelly followed him. “No, wait, I don’t think it’s funny. I think it’s … Ah, God, Aaron, the worst thing would’ve been if I’d spent all this time searching for you, and you didn’t even remember me. And if you’re still this mad, then maybe you’re also not over me, maybe …”

Aaron stopped and spun back around, and Sheldon nearly crashed into him. “I’m over you, douchebag,” he said, his voice low. “I was over you in a heartbeat when I found out just what a coward you are—”

“It was good, wasn’t it,” Shel said, standing his ground, chin up in that manner that was still so familiar, “what I wrote in that email? It had to be good. It had to be convincing. If you tried to get in touch with me—at all—you were dead. Berto told me if I talked to you again, if you so much as called or tried to come see me—he’d tell my father, who would kill you. And he meant it. If my wanting to keep you from dying makes me a coward? I’m a coward. You’re right.”

Aaron couldn’t listen to this. Sheldon’s words were everything he’d hoped and prayed that he would hear throughout that first year of boot camp, of training, of going to war. He’d even left his high school email account active—it was still there, hanging in cyberspace. The same one that Sheldon had used, time and again. He’d checked it just yesterday, but it still held only spam in its inbox. If Sheldon truly had searched for him? He hadn’t tried very hard.

Aaron now did the only thing he could do. He turned and walked away.

But Sheldon followed, again hustling to keep up. “Can you please at least give me three minutes. Just three minutes—”

“I thought we both just agreed that you’re a coward,” Aaron said. “I’m not sure what else you can say—or do—in three minutes—”

“I didn’t email you,” Sheldon spoke over him, “because Berto hacked your account—double?adoublen@?zoomail.?net. I knew if I tried to contact you there, he’d know. And I couldn’t risk him coming after you, just to spite me.”

Aaron blew past the entrance to the hotel. He didn’t turn in, he just kept going, waiting until they were past the uniformed doormen to turn to Shel to say, “So I’m just supposed to believe that one of the smartest people I know took four f*cking years—”

“Yes!” Sheldon shouted over him. “It took me four f*cking years!”

Sheldon, who rarely raised his voice, and who had, in all the time Aaron had known him, never dropped the f-bomb, was shaking with anger. Or maybe it wasn’t anger. Maybe it was the agony that remained in the aftermath of a shattered heart. Despite years of hiding from it, of pretending that the wounds had finally healed, Aaron still felt it, too.

“You let me down, too, you know,” Sheldon said, his voice a whisper now, as his eyes filled with tears. Still, he held Aaron’s gaze as he kept going. “I went up to Cambridge even though my father wouldn’t let me accept that scholarship to MIT. He wanted me to go to school in Tampa, and Berto turned the screws, so that’s where I went. On paper, anyway. They dropped me off at my dorm and I pretended to unpack, but as soon as they left, I took the bus to Boston.” He exhaled hard. “Because I hoped you’d be there, waiting for me. I hoped you’d realized that I sent that email under duress. You know, I hung out on campus for a month, Air. I slept in shelters when I could, and on the street when I couldn’t. Even though I knew you weren’t there when I didn’t find you that first day. I gave you a month, in case I was wrong.”

Dear God. After getting that email, Aaron had given Shel all of ten minutes.

“I knew you’d join the Marines,” Shel said. “So I joined, too. By then, my father and Berto were actively looking for me. But once I signed up, there was nothing they could do about it. They couldn’t touch me. From that aspect, it was great. I was finally safe. And I thought once I was in, it would be easy to hack into the computers and find you and … Well, I was wrong about that. But once I did finally find you, I kept getting screwed because our leave didn’t line up. Until now. So, yeah, it took me this long. But I never gave up.”

And there they stood, just looking at each other.

“I’m not sure what you want,” Aaron finally said. “An apology, or am I supposed to just, I don’t know, fall into your arms?”

“I guess I was hoping we could start with dinner,” Sheldon said. “Although your falling into my arms was always part of the fantasy. Unless you’re seeing someone—”

“I’m not,” Aaron said. “I was. For a while, but I broke it off. Because he wasn’t you.”

Shelly didn’t try to hide his hope from his eyes. He just let it show, let it shine out from inside of him, the same way he’d done all those years ago, when they were both still kids.

And then there wasn’t anything left to do but fall into his arms. Except they were standing there, on the sidewalk of a busy city street. Still, Aaron reached for Shel, and Shel all but leapt at him, and God, it was better than any fantasy he could have imagined.


Aaron tried to make their embrace as manly as possible, aware of the passersby eyeing them curiously, even as he felt the glacier inside of him begin to melt as Shelly breathed his name. “Aaron, I’m so sorry.”

Aaron lifted his head to look into Shel’s eyes. “I’m sorry, too.”

This entire surreal experience had been one surprise coming on top of another, and Aaron could barely catch his breath. Especially when Shelly smiled. It was that same mix of hot and sweet that Aaron had adored. “I forgive you,” Shel whispered, and then iced the WTF-cake by kissing Aaron. Right there. On the mouth. In the middle of freaking Vienna.

When Shel pulled back, he was out of breath but he was grinning. He didn’t look around; he clearly didn’t give a shit if anyone had seen them. “It’s been a long time, and I know we’ve both changed—how could we not’ve,” he said as he straightened his coat and cover, as if kissing a fellow Marine were something he did every day. “I mean, yeah, it’s freezing, and you still aren’t wearing gloves, but … You’re different, I know it, and I am, too. But I think you’re going to like me. I like me—much better now. And I want to get to know you. So come on, Sergeant Dunn, let’s go have dinner, and do this right.”

“Sir, yes, sir,” Aaron said as he followed Sheldon.

Who looked at him out of the corner of his eye. “Well, okay,” Shel said. “So that’s gonna be hot.”

Aaron laughed as he tucked his hands into his coat pockets. He would’ve liked to hold Shelly’s hand, but really, just walking beside him was more than he’d thought he’d ever have again. “Yes, it is,” he agreed.

And after three years, ten months, and twenty-nine days of being frozen and barely breathing, Aaron’s heart started beating and his life began again.

* * *

The Dutchman lived in a spacious rental house on a large, flat, fenced-in plot of land in a development that had been built on the site of a former grapefruit grove. Most of the trees were still in rows, which shouldn’t have been visually appealing, yet somehow oddly was. Or maybe anything would have looked outrageously beautiful to Phoebe, after surviving both an attack by a kill squad and a high-speed car chase.

The fear that she’d felt when realizing that Ian had been shot had been replaced by relief that was nearly as immobilizing. When she’d finally gotten a look at his wound and saw that he wasn’t going to bleed to death, the wave of thankfulness that swept over her had been extreme.

But now they were met in the Dutchman’s garage by a small army of bodyguards who were not happy at all about the bullet holes in Vanderzee’s car—or the fact that their employer had been in danger. Still, he waved them off and led the way inside.

Phoebe followed on shaky legs as the Dutchman took them into the enormous, pristine house. As they trooped into the kitchen, he spoke in another language—Farsi?—to a pair of female housekeepers who worked it, hard, to avoid eye contact even as they leapt into action. One of the women raced ahead, through the house and up a flight of stairs to what their host called his guest suite.

As Phoebe followed, Vanderzee led her and Ian into a private sitting room with a bedroom beyond it.

Like the open and airy first floor, the rooms were decorated in 1990s groovy-Florida-grandma. Heavy on the aquas and pinks, with an overabundance of whimsical dolphin statues. Phoebe let herself love them all, completely, with just the faintest dash of irony. And why shouldn’t there be space in her new-and-improved not-dead life for an albino dolphin who winked while tail-walking on an end table?

The silent housekeeper carried a pile of fluffy white towels in with her, slipping through the door into the bedroom, heading for the attached bathroom.

“There’s a first-aid kit under the sink,” the Dutchman told them, “and robes in the closet.”

Phoebe turned to look at him, realizing that although they’d just survived a life-threatening situation together, everything had happened so quickly that she would not have been able to pick him out of a police lineup.

“How about some rags or older towels?” Ian asked, smiling his thanks at the woman as he went through the bedroom so he could look into the bathroom. Phoebe heard the familiar screech of metal on metal as he pushed back a shower curtain. “I’m afraid I’m going to make a mess.”

“Don’t worry about that,” the Dutchman said, dismissing the housekeeper with a nod.

Georg Vanderzee was not quite as tall as Ian, and far less broad. In fact, his build was very similar to Ian’s brother Aaron’s. Without Ian standing immediately nearby to compare, Phoebe would’ve thought of them both as muscular—and they were. Just not as. This man’s hair followed the not-as rule, too. Like Ian’s, it was thick and wavy—just not as. The Dutchman had glimmers of red in his brown, and it looked as if he’d added highlights, to make him appear even more fair. He might’ve been handsome, with his straight nose, strong chin, beautiful olive-toned skin, and exotically colored green-brown-gold eyes. But there was something about the set of his mouth or maybe it was the oddly chilly distance or flat disconnect in those eyes that made him look … off.

“Your making a mess is the least of my concern,” he continued.

Or maybe the man was fine—just not as fine as Ian—and Phoebe’s imagination was running rampant since she knew Ian not only didn’t like Vanderzee, but hadn’t wanted to give the FBI any details of their previous encounter. And that made her suspect that Ian hadn’t wanted to recall awful memories of how he’d been forced to watch as the Dutchman tortured puppies.

Or worse.

Vanderzee now turned to Phoebe and smiled. Nope, he was not fine. He was definitely creepy. “I’m counting on you to let me know if your husband needs additional medical care.”

Her husband. Ian had returned from the bathroom, and she glanced over to meet his gaze just long enough to confirm that, yes, he was still pissed about that little detail. “I trust him when he says he’s all right,” she said.

“I’m glad to hear that, since trust is paramount in any lasting relationship.” She’d heard the Dutchman speaking a variety of languages while driving their getaway car. But his English was close to perfect, with just a hint of northern Europe—Germany or perhaps Holland—in his faintly British vowels. That should have been sexy, but instead, coming from him it was, again, creepy. “I’ll let you get cleaned up,” he said. “Make yourself at home.”

Still, when Phoebe said, “Thank you so much, for everything,” she was sincere. Whoever this man was, whatever he’d done in the past, however oily his smile and odd his eyes, today he’d helped her get Ian away from four men who’d wanted, badly, to kill him. And for that she was grateful.

He smiled again as he bowed, very slightly—yikes—and closed the door behind him.

Phoebe turned to find that Ian had moved. He was now standing right beside her. “If I hadn’t seen him in direct sunlight, I might be thinking vampire,” she said.

Ian spoke over her, completely ignoring her attempt to break the awkwardness with a Buffy joke. “Why don’t you get into the shower first?” He pulled her with him into the bedroom, where the decor was less dolphins and more palm trees and—double yikes—decidedly sinister monkeys.


“I’m not sure I need a shower,” she said. The dolphins returned in the bathroom, which was surprisingly small and old-fashioned, considering the rest of the house. A single sink with a small bead-board cabinet, full mirror covering the wall above it, a medicine cabinet sticking awkwardly out above a toilet with a fuzzy cover on the lid, a tub with a bedolphined shower curtain, more dolphins on the walls. “I think the blood is only on my sweatshirt—”

He cut her off again. “It’s also in your hair.”

“Really?” Phoebe leaned forward to look at herself in the mirror, but of course she couldn’t see the back of her head. What she could see was Ian using the very same mirror to get a look at the wound on his shoulder. “I’m not much of a paramedic,” she said, and he met her eyes. The look he gave her was so intense, her voice trailed off. “But if you tell me what to do, I can try to bandage …”

Phoebe knew, just from the way he was looking at her, that he was trying to communicate telepathically. But what was he telling her? That Vanderzee was a vampire? No, that was almost as absurd as the idea that this generically decorated rental house was somehow bugged or—

Really?

She looked at Ian harder, narrowing her eyes in a silent question.

“Why don’t you take a shower,” he said again, quietly, his eyes never leaving hers. “Mrs. Dunn.”

That was what he was telling her, wasn’t it? By calling her that while the Dutchman wasn’t around to overhear them …?

Of course, maybe she was now completely paranoid, and there was no hidden message in the way Ian was looking at her. Maybe she smelled bad, and that was sheer annoyance on his face and nothing more—Phoebe knew that she’d royally pissed him off by promising to stay in the van and then showing up inside Henrietta’s. And then she’d put the cherry on top of the bullshit pie that she’d baked, by telling the Dutchman that she was Ian’s wife.…

But in case there were cameras and microphones or whatever, she chose her words carefully. “I know you’re mad at me, but there really was no other option—”

Ian kissed her.

Phoebe didn’t see it coming. It must’ve happened when she blinked, because one second he was staring at her in the mirror, and the very next, his mouth was covering hers, keeping her from saying anything more. He pulled her tightly against him, his arms around her so that she couldn’t get away. Not that she was fighting him. On the contrary.

This had to be proof that Ian thought there were cameras and mics in here.

And she wanted to make it look good.

Yeah, that was why she’d wrapped her arms around his neck and was kissing him back as if her very life depended on it. That was why she angled her head to let him kiss her more deeply, why she moaned when his hand slid down her back to her butt so he could press her body against the very solid length of him.

And … okay. Who, really, was she fooling here? Herself? Ian knew damn well that she was hot for him. She’d given him all the proof he’d needed when she’d kissed him the way she’d kissed him, beneath that dock.

As Phoebe kept kissing him now, she heard the door close and she felt him gently maneuver her toward it—it was cool and hard against her back. Only then did he stop. He lifted his head to say, “Don’t talk, don’t move.” His mouth was still so close to hers she could feel his breath, feel his lips against hers.

He raised an eyebrow, just a fraction of an inch, and Phoebe realized he was waiting for some kind of acknowledgment, so she nodded.

Only then did he push himself away from her, but he watched her closely—as if he didn’t quite believe she wasn’t going to blurt something out and give them away. Eyes still on her, he leaned past the shower curtain and turned on the water into the tub, then adjusted the dial so the shower sputtered to life.

The sound of rushing water filled the room as Ian came back to her. “We’ll let it heat up,” he said, and then he kissed her again. Lightly this time, his hands in her hair, on either side of her head as he kissed not just her mouth but her face, her chin, her cheeks, her neck …

He’d kissed her that same way back in the hall outside of Henrietta’s private party room, she realized. His hands warm against her face, almost chastely, with space between their bodies. And there’d been no cameras there, no reason to playact. So maybe this wasn’t a game …

“Oh, God, Ian,” Phoebe heard herself say, as he kissed her throat, her jawline, her ear …

“Camera and mic in the frame of the picture across from the sink,” he breathed, and that was that. No more maybes.

He kissed her on the mouth again as she mentally kicked herself and called herself names. Fool. Loser. Even as she kissed him back.

For the sake of the camera.

Although, really? Had she really thought, at any point, that there was anything even remotely real about anything this man did or said to her?

Yes.

But that was on her, for being na?ve and pathetic.

Ian kissed his way around to her other ear so that he could say, “But that’s the only one in here, so we can talk in the shower.”

Her eyes opened at that.

Of course they could talk in the shower, with the water running to obscure their words, and the curtain hiding them from the camera.

But …

Ian straightened up, and in doing so, unzipped her sweatshirt. He looked at her body, at her breasts beneath her T-shirt, and the heat in his eyes was enough to boil the next two weeks of her very hot and sweaty dreams.

Phoebe looked from the picture in question—a frame of orange, pink, and aqua shells surrounding a frolicking dolphin, captured midleap—to the mirror over the sink, to the tub, with the shower running and the curtain that would provide privacy.

Privacy, that is, from the cameras, but not from Ian.

He was already taking off his T-shirt and kicking off his boots. His back was to her—although that was just an illusion. All he had to do to see every inch of that little bathroom was to lift his head and look into the mirror.

Still, she stepped out of her flip-flops and let her sweatshirt drop onto the floor. She pushed off her jeans, yanked her T-shirt over her head, and she hightailed it up and over the edge of the tub and into the shower, pulling that curtain closed behind her with a screech.

It was probably a mistake to get her underwear wet—she’d recently gone too many consecutive hours without any at all—but no way was she going to have a naked conversation with Ian Dunn, so she just stepped under the showerhead and let herself get soaked. She’d kept her glasses on, too, so she carefully kept the water from running down her face as she rinsed the back of her head—but there wasn’t even the faintest hint of blood as it washed down the drain. Obviously there had been none in her hair to start with. Which, okay, bright-siding it, was actually a good thing, because ew.

The water got too hot, so she turned to adjust the temperature as she stepped back out of the spray—and bumped into Ian, who had joined her behind the curtain while her back was turned.

He was solid and … solid. Very, very solid. She’d felt his erection during their embrace, and okay, since he was human and subject to the laws of biology, it was probably not a reasonable belief that he could have somehow made it vanish, but, whoa.

He’d also brought a wrapped condom in with him. He must’ve found it in the medicine cabinet, and he dropped it, a little red square, into the soap dish that was built into the tile wall.


“Whoa,” she said, aloud this time, turning to face him, determined to keep her eyes aimed above his neck. Of course she couldn’t. There was no woman alive who could have, and whoa.

“Sorry,” he said, his voice a whisper, but he didn’t sound very sorry at all. “You seriously keep your glasses on in the shower?”

“Not usually, no,” she whispered back. They were starting to steam up, so she took them off and put them up on the windowsill, next to a row of shampoos and body washes. He got blurrier, but not blurry enough. “And I’m sorry, but I’m not having sex with you.”

“No,” Ian said. “I’m not having sex with you.”

“I get that I’m supposed to be insulted when you say that,” she said, “that there’s an implication there that you don’t want to have sex with me, and that’s fine—”

“That’s not even close to what I said.”

“—And yet, you come in here, spouting Mount Kilimanjaro, tossing condoms around like Mardi Gras beads—”

“One condom,” he said, laughing his disbelief. “And while I appreciate the compliment, this”—he motioned to his package—“is adrenaline. That, plus the way you were kissing me—”

“Excuse me. You were kissing me.”

“Jesus,” he said. “Yes. That, plus the way I was kissing you—because you told Georg f*cking Vanderzee that you’re my wife, and now we’re stuck with that cover, so what the hell am I supposed to do? Not kiss my smoking hot wife after I nearly get her killed?”

“Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding,” Phoebe said. “Sorry, you had me up to smoking hot wife, but then you pinned the bullshit meter.”

“Are you really going to stand there, pretending that you’re not completely aware that Vanderzee is into you?” Ian countered. “A little too into you. I was staking my claim. And, FYI? If we’re going to start keeping track of pinned meters, you broke the one for hyperbole, with Mount Kilimanjaro and the Mardi Gras beads.”

“Yes,” Phoebe said tartly. “Let’s get back to talking about the size of your penis. It’s not like we don’t have anything else to discuss. Like, maybe the best way for me to distract Vanderzee, while you wander through the house—making sure there are no clues or to-do lists saying things like Transport kidnapped children to Wichita for safety.”

Ian shook his head. “Even if that wasn’t ridiculous, I’m not leaving you alone with him.”

“You say that like you’d be locking me into a cage with a ravenous lion,” she countered. “I’m talking about me going down into the kitchen a few minutes before you do. About taking advantage of our being here to—”

“No.”

And there they stood, with water pounding down on her shoulders and steam filling the air between them.

“Look,” she said. “I know you’re angry that I got out of the van when I promised I wouldn’t. You’re angry that I’m here. I get it. And I’m sorry, but there really was no other option. Davio Dellarosa sent those men to that club to kill you, and I was not going to let that happen. And I also was not going to let Yashi go in there and force us to scrub this mission. So long, kidnapped kids? Good luck to you and your rocket-scientist mother? Nuh-uh. And yes, it was unfortunate that Vanderzee saw us in the hallway—”

“No, it was actually good that that happened. If you’d gone down those stairs, you would’ve bumped into the gunmen going out the back door. And if they’d recognized you, which they would’ve … I’m sure Davio gave them your picture. It would’ve been bad. Way worse than this.” He exhaled hard. “I’ve been flashing hot and cold, just thinking about that … I really need to get you out of here. As quickly as possible.”

“Well, telling him that I’m newly pregnant won’t fly,” Phoebe said. “Too bad, it’s a classic excuse. Oh, I’m so tired, what with all the morning sickness.…”

Ian looked down at the condom he’d brought into the shower. “Shit.”

“I’m right about that being a visual aid,” Phoebe sought to clarify, “to explain why we’re in here for so long …?”

“Yup,” Ian said. “And you’re right, too, that it kills pregnancy as an excuse for me to wrap you in gauze and stash you someplace safe.”

“Unless you were running on automatic pilot and forgot?”

Ian shook his head. “Wouldn’t happen.”

“But not impossible.”

“Yes,” he said. “Impossible.”

“Maybe I just told you. Surprise! It’s a girl!”

“That’s pretty half-assed,” he said, “considering you were just running down fire escapes and through parking lots.”

“Pregnant women still have legs and feet,” Phoebe argued, but he was shaking his head.

“It’s too much of a stretch, especially considering cultural differences. In K-stan, women don’t run, even when they’re not pregnant. I don’t want him forced to think too much, because we’ve already got this weirdness to explain.” And yes, he’d gestured toward her, when he’d said this weirdness.

She must’ve looked outraged, because he added, “Who wears their underwear into the shower?”

“I do, obviously,” she said. “Because … it’s sexy and it turns you on?”

“You ever hear that expression, the devil’s in the details?” Ian asked her. “Well, it applies, in a different way when you’re undercover. We have to make this look real, down to the tiniest details, or the Dutchman is going to do the math and either throw us out or kill us. The devil cannot be in our details. So, no. You were right. We can’t tell him you’re pregnant, and need to rush you home to spend the next six months on bedrest. Not after I bring a condom with me—into a shower into which you’ve worn your underwear. It’s too much.”

“Maybe it’s edible underwear,” Phoebe suggested.

Ian just looked at her.

“Okay, then … Maybe I’m not an idiot,” she tried, “and I’m well aware of the kind of man I’m married to—danger being your middle name and all that. And therefore I’m cognizant of the company you keep. Maybe—no, definitely. I know that the Dutchman has surveillance cameras all over this place, and I’m unwilling to parade around naked in front of him for the duration. In fact, I’ll say as much after we turn off the water.”

Ian was nodding now. “That actually works.”

“And why, really, do we have to have something like bedrest as a reason to want to leave?” she asked. “This is his house, we’re guests. After we use his laundry room to wash and dry our clothes—maybe you could borrow a T-shirt because that blood’s gonna stain.… Anyway, as soon as we’re no longer wandering around looking like you’ve just been shot, we can leave. And then it’s just So long, thanks again for not leaving us to die. You can make plans to meet him later.” She lowered her voice in a bad imitation of him. “Don’t want to talk business in front of the little woman.”

“I’ve never used the phrase the little woman in my entire life,” Ian told her.


“Well, thank God for that, at least,” Phoebe said. “So is that our plan? May I please get out of here?” The close quarters, full frontal nudity, and steam were making her light-headed. “Unless you want me to help you wash your shoulder?”

“Nah, I got it,” he said. “But we’re not done. I need you to understand that Vanderzee is a sociopath whose only allegiance is to himself. He cares nothing for other people, and even less for women and children.” The intensity with which he was looking at her was similar to that look he’d shot her, in the mirror. And again, she knew he wanted her to read his mind.

“What did he do to you?” she asked, and he shook his head.

“Not to me,” he said. “To one of his wives. He’s got dozens. And this one, he … he shot her in the head. It was … I was standing right there and …”

I couldn’t stop him. Or maybe I didn’t stop him. Ian didn’t say the words, but Phoebe didn’t have to be telepathic to know what he was thinking. If they’d had their clothes on, she would’ve reached for him. Instead, she stood there, awkwardly, with the water pounding down on her back, not sure what to say.

“Lookit, I don’t want to give you too many details, because I need you to be able to smile at this douchebag,” Ian continued. “But you need to know he’s unforgiving and cruel. Jesus, what else can I tell you? He’s socially conservative, so don’t bring up Aaron, okay? He’s not religious, but he follows K-stan’s strict religious laws—if those laws serve him. He’s superstitious—possibly even slightly OCD about it and … I don’t want you alone with him.”

Phoebe nodded. “Understood.”

“Just a few more things,” Ian told her. “First, I know from intel that the feds’ve already tapped into Vanderzee’s surveillance system here.”

“Oh, good,” she said. “That means they got to see me in my underwear, too.”

“That means we can communicate with them,” he corrected her. “Two, let me do most of the talking. With Vanderzee. Follow my lead. We’re still newlyweds and you’re really into me, okay?”

Phoebe nodded again, not daring to speak.

“Last thing. You can’t go out there with your underwear still on. You can grab a towel, wrap it around yourself in here, but …”

He was right. Keeping her wet underwear on after having shower sex with her new husband was beyond quirky and camera-shy and well into Something weird is going on here. “Will you at least turn around?”

“I’ll close my eyes. Here, trade places with me,” Ian said, and they maneuvered around so that he was under the water’s stream, his hands on her waist to keep her steady. He flinched as the water hit his wound. “Ow. Actually, there is one more thing.”

Phoebe turned back toward him, ready to help if he needed it.

“Don’t look so serious when you go out there. Try to look like a woman who’s orgasmed three or four times.”

She laughed her surprise. “Three or four …?”

“We’ve been in here for a really long time,” Ian pointed out. “Don’t explode the myth that I’ve worked so hard to build. No, no, no—what you’re doing there is a little too incredulous. Think dreamier. Like you’ve just found God.”

“This is me, being incredulous about what you’re telling me,” Phoebe said, pointing to her face. “Do I really need to audition my dreamy, just-had-three-orgasms-and-found-God smile for you?”

“Four,” he said. “I’m pretty sure it was four. Because I’m that good. And yeah. I’d like to see it.”

“Tough luck,” she said. “Close your eyes.” She didn’t wait to see if he complied, she just turned her back on him, slipped out of her soaking underwear, then grabbed a towel from a rack on the wall, and wrapped it around herself as she stepped out of the tub.

* * *

The devil was in the details.

Yeah, that was why Ian had put the condom on as he stood there in the shower, letting the warm water cascade down on his head and his back. He’d put it on so that he’d have something to wrap in toilet paper and leave in the bathroom waste can. And since it had to be used …

Details.

He was also doing this so that he’d leave the shower sporting the equivalent of that dreamy look he’d recommended Phoebe wear upon exiting.

Just thinking about her made him smile, but then he started thinking about the way she’d melted against him when he’d kissed her. About that sound she’d made, low in her throat as he’d—

“Ian?”

He opened his eyes and froze, because shit, he was close, but she’d pushed open the bathroom door.

“Yeah?” he managed, and his voice was only marginally higher than normal. “I’m still, um, washing out this wound?”

“Oh,” she said. “Okay. But I left my glasses in there.”

She had. They were on the tile-covered sill of a translucent glass-brick window. There they sat, with the earpieces extended, drops of water dotting both the lenses and the thick, dark, quirky frames.

“I’ll bring ’em out when I’m done,” he told her.

“Okay,” Phoebe said. “Thanks.” But she didn’t leave and close the door behind her, so he waited, just listening … “Are you sure you’re … okay? You don’t need help?”

She had no idea.

Or … maybe she did. She was, after all, a very smart woman.

“Nope,” he said, which wasn’t quite a lie. He would’ve loved her help. He desperately wanted her help. But he didn’t need it. Not here or now. Realistically, not ever—an oddly depressing thought. “I got this.”

“All right.” The door finally closed with a click, and he was alone.

And acutely aware of it.

It was doubly weird, since being alone was something he should have cherished and enjoyed—particularly after all those months in prison. But right now it seemed to sit on him with a heaviness that had to be connected to his fatigue.

He was tired. Maybe that was it. Tiredness often felt a lot like sadness and longing and … Ian pushed it all away. Boxed it up. Proceeded with this step of this part of this, his current plan.

And the words to that famous old poem by Lord Tennyson popped into his head, paraphrased and altered. His not to wonder why … His but to do, or die …

He had to laugh. If Phoebe knew he was thinking that, while he was doing this, she would think it was pretty funny, too.

Ian found himself looking at her glasses again. They were so uniquely Phoebe—it was almost as if she’d left a vital part of herself behind. It was almost as if she were watching him.

God, he wished she was watching him, wished she was touching him, stroking, kissing, and then, yes, opening herself to him, welcoming him, clinging to him.…

He could imagine her eyes behind those lenses, lit up with humor, her lips quirking upward, too. He could imagine her sighing and breathing his name as she moved with him.…

He came in a hot rush that left him breathing hard, weak-kneed, and a little light-headed. Shit.

He took off the condom and tossed it onto the far edge of the back of the tub—exactly as he would’ve done, if he’d used the damn thing with Phoebe. He washed himself, and finally turned off the water.


He pulled back the shower curtain, dried off, cleaned up—got everything organized that needed to go into the wastebasket. He wrapped his towel around his hips, then took Phoebe’s glasses down from the windowsill and wiped them clean for her.

He opened the bathroom door to find her sitting on the edge of the bed, wearing a white bathrobe, her towel wrapped like a turban around her long hair.

She stood up, came toward him. “Thanks,” she said as she took her glasses, put them on. “It was probably best that the evil monkey decor was out of focus or I might’ve had to huddle in the corner in a fetal position. Can you imagine trying to sleep in here?”

Evil monkeys? Ian looked around a room that was decorated in rich shades of green and gold. He saw too many palm trees, and then monkeys. Whoa. He had to laugh. There were a lot of them. “I think they’re probably mischievous and not necessarily evil.”

“One man’s mischief is another man’s evil,” Phoebe told him solemnly. “I’m going to put the clothes that need washing into the laundry, then I’ll help you bandage that.”

“It’s not bad,” he said, craning his neck to attempt to see the back of his shoulder. It was still oozing, but just a little.

“Only because you moved the way you did, when you did,” she came back. “If it had hit you straight on …”

Ian kissed her, because—cameras. It was, without a doubt what he would have done if she’d looked at him like that, with those eyes and that impossibly kissable mouth, had they really been married.

He meant to make it light. Patronizing. There, there, dear. Instead, he found himself lingering over her lips, kissing her again and again, longer, deeper, sweeter. He made himself stop and step back from her. “Don’t go there,” he said, although he wasn’t quite sure exactly who he was talking to—Phoebe, or himself.

“Where I really want to go,” she told him, “is home.”

It was the perfect thing for her to say with Vanderzee or his minions listening in. She had the exact right amount of emotion trembling in her voice. It would fit their story, perfectly, when they declined their host’s kind offer to let them spend the night so that they’d be extra safe from the men who’d tried to kill Ian. Sorry, man, but my wife really wants to go home.…

It was more than enough.

But then Phoebe stepped toward Ian, put her arms around his neck and her mouth up to his ear. She spoke in a stage whisper, but without the shower running, it was loud enough to be picked up by the listening mics—she knew that as well as he did: “So I can screw you sideways, without worrying about all these cameras and microphones.”

And thus she’d also explained the underwear-into-the-shower detail.

Of course, at the same time, she’d managed to blow his mind—she was that convincing. As no doubt was his own disbelieving laughter, and the way he shook his head as he watched her go into the bathroom to gather up the clothing that needed to be washed.

It was right then, in that instant, that Ian knew the truth.

He was already screwed.

Completely and utterly and upside down and sideways.

He didn’t just want her words to be reality rather than cover. He didn’t just wish that she’d meant what she’d just said.

He needed for it to be so.

And the devil was, indeed, in that particular detail.

* * *

Yashi had hidden the damaged van back behind a shopping center in an upscale part of town. The stores and restaurants out here were all those of national chains, and the place had a flavorless, Stepford Wives vibe to it that Martell found unsettling.

They could’ve been in Ohio.

No, strike that. The rats by the Dumpster were Florida rats—big and ugly and defiant—and out for a stroll, just before dusk.

Deb slowly rolled van two past both Dumpsters and rats. “Where are you? I’m back behind the steak house, but …”

“Keep coming.” Yashi’s voice was being broadcast over their sound system. “I’m way in the back.”

Martell saw the other van at the same moment that Deb did. It was closer to what looked like a long-abandoned construction site than the steak house’s Dumpster.

“Wow,” Deb said.

Martell worded it differently: “Holy shit.”

While they’d been stuck in traffic, they’d heard Davio Dellarosa’s hitmen arrive at Henrietta’s. They’d listened as Dunn and Phoebe survived the attack by escaping in the Dutchman’s car. They’d sat, stone still, seething with frustration and impatience, impotent to help in any way as they’d witnessed, via audio, Yashi’s efforts to keep the gunmen from following. They’d heard the sound of metal on metal as he pushed the shooters’ car off the road, even as he narrated in his usual deadpan: “Hit ’em. Hit ’em again. They’re out of commission. I’m out of here.”

He’d gone on to report that the van he was driving was, in his words, “limping,” and that he was going to go to ground, i.e., hide somewhere safe. He’d told Deb to give him a ring when they were moving again.

But they’d gotten back in touch to pass along info when Francine reported the news that Dunn and Phoebe had arrived safely at the Dutchman’s rental house. And because Vanderzee had outfitted the place with high-tech surveillance, and because the FBI had already tapped into that plethora of cameras and microphones, Francie and da boise back at the safe house were monitoring them successfully.

So far, so good, Francine had reported. Apparently Mr. and Mrs. Dunn—an obvious cover—were getting along swimmingly well with the alleged kidnapper. So, high-fives all around for putting that part of Dunn’s plan in motion.

Assuming, of course, that Dunn finally had a plan and wasn’t still just freestyling it. That Martell would believe only when Dunn told him the details.

After the news sharing, Deb and Martell had gone back to residing in their pathetic level of traffic hell. Martell had tried to lighten Deb’s dark mood with a little flirtation, but when she’d shut him down for the sixth or seventh time, he’d given up.

But things had finally started moving, at which point Deb called Yashi back and … here they now were.

Rolling up on a van that looked like it’d been in a head-on with an 18-wheeler.

“Airbags should’ve gone off,” Martell mused. “With little bursts of confetti and horns and signs saying Congratulations, you’ve totaled your vehicle. He must’ve disabled them.”

Deb nodded. “It would’ve been a bummer to paralyze a car carrying four gunmen, and then not be able to drive away.”

Yashi stuck his head out of the cargo area of the near-demolished van. “Hey.”

“Seriously?” Martell asked Deb. “We pull up to see this … this … deathtrap, and he says Hey?”

She backed up alongside of the other van and parked. “We need to move quickly. We have to transfer any equipment or parts that we can. Everything else gets sanitized.” She jumped out, walked past Yashi, and got to work.

And okay. If they were sleeping together—and Martell was 99.999 percent certain that they were sleeping together—they deserved to win some kind of co-worker Emmy or Oscar for successfully hiding that fact.

In fact, Martell was the one who had to ask, “Dude. Are you really okay?”

“Seat belts,” Yashi told him. “They work. Plus I was driving, so I knew when to hold on. Help me with this, will you?”


Martell climbed up into the back of what had been van one and helped move the main computer screen. While Yashi was waiting for them to break free of that traffic, he’d apparently used the time to unfasten all of the bolts that held the surveillance equipment in place.

Working together, the three of them quickly got everything moved into the other van—including a few chunks of the engine, the license plates, and even a little piece of the windshield that had held the tag info.

Through it all, Deb and Yashi exchanged maybe five sentences, total. Including, “Jules call?” “No, he call you?” “Nope.”

That might’ve been their code for “You really scared me back there.” “Yeah, it was intense. I can’t wait to have hot screaming beast-sex with you.” “Me too, baby, me too.”

But probably not.

It was finally time to wipe that sucker down. Martell tried to help, but he was getting in the way, so he eventually just stood back and watched. It was obvious that Yashi and Deb had done this type of extensive fingerprint removal before. No point in slowing down their dance.

But he was curious. “Why not just burn it?” he asked.

“Bad for the environment,” Yashi said as they climbed back into surviving van number two—which they probably should now call van one. Or maybe just van.

“Plus, fires don’t always do what you want them to,” Deb pointed out, as she started the engine, and began the journey back past the Dumpsters. Her annoyance was heavy in her voice. “A lot like assignments. And people.”

“And the weather,” Martell added. “And life in general. You know, I have a nephew. Ten years old. In chemo for cancer. It’s not going well.”

Deb looked at him, and her heart was in her eyes. “I didn’t know,” she said softly. “I’m so sorry.”

And now he felt like a dick. “I didn’t say that to make you feel less-than. Like, my bad shit’s worse than yours, so whatever it is that you’re feeling isn’t valid or important. It’s just that we’re all just kind of here, spinning madly in this chaos. And I see you trying really hard to be puppetmaster, but there are just too many variables that you cannot control. I mean, Ian Dunn? Come on.”

“Work the serenity prayer,” Yashi said from the back. “Getting mad never helps.”

“He never gets mad,” Deb told Martell. “Makes me batshit crazy.”

“That’s not true,” Yashi said. “I get mad. I just don’t let it interfere.”

“You want me to drive?” Martell asked Deb. “Because you definitely don’t want to get pulled over for driving while batshit crazy.”

She laughed at that. But then she surprised him. “Yeah,” she said as she pulled to the side of the parking lot. “Why don’t you drive? It’s been a long few months and … I’d appreciate it.”