Behind Closed Doors

Chapter 7

The patron saint of humiliated lovers must have been watching over her. A cab from the airport was discharging its passengers outside the lobby as she tore through the lobby. She made her getaway before Seth could follow her downstairs and reduce her to a state of hysteria.

She was teetering on the verge of it now, using every trick she knew to stave it off. The grizzled old cabbie could tell. He kept glancing back in his rearview mirror, his eyes troubled behind his thick glasses.

“You all right, miss?”

“I'm fine, thanks.”

Her lips felt numb as they formed that terribly familiar phrase. She almost laughed, but choked it off. Laughter opened the floodgates. Then the tears would come, and then she would definitely lose it.

I'm fine, thanks. She'd been saying that for seventeen years while she was dying inside. She was not fine. She was worse than she'd ever been, which was saying a great deal. And this time it was all her fault.

What did she expect? She'd overcompensated, like always, and leaped into bed with a man without even having dinner with him, or even exchanging basic personal data. She didn't know where he grew up or what college he had attended, or even his phone number. She'd done a slutty thing. She had to deal with the consequences.

But she was so contracted with pain, she could barely breathe.

Think pirate queen, she reminded herself.

Like hell. The pirate queen would be sophisticated enough to use a man for sex without letting all her barriers crumble, even when her body was flying apart with pleasure. She would have had the presence of mind to say something besides that blunt, inelegant “fuck you.” Something that would've pierced him to the heart, or to the bone at least She doubted that the bastard had a heart

The storm was about to burst She bore down and counted the seconds it would take to reach someplace private to fall apart, an old trick from her school days. Eight, seven, as she paid the cabbie and bolted up the steps to her house. Six, five, and it was taking too many tries to get the key into the lock, the way her fingers shook. Four, the key finally entered and turned. Three, she shoved open the door. Two—

“Good evening, Raine “

She shrieked, and leaped back out the door.

Victor Lazar was lounging in the foyer, sipping a glass of whiskey. “I hope you’ll excuse me for helping myself to the bar. I'm familiar with the house, you see. I stocked the bar myself some months ago” he said.

“I see. It's, uh, fine,” she whispered.

Hah. There it was again. Miss Nicey Nice, terrified of offending anyone even if they were stepping on her face, was just fine.

Victor gave her an encouraging smile and gestured for her to come in. She took a step inside. She was poised to flee, adrenaline pumping, her brain churning out any number of probable reasons that he might be here, uninvited, in her foyer. None of them were good.

Dear God, don't let him come on to me, she thought wildly. Not that. No way. That was too much to ask. She would run, screaming; and if the dream came back, she would just beat her head against the wall of her padded cell until it extinguished itself in a bloody haze.

Anger at his presumption rose slowly up, like a bubble from the shadowy depths. She forced herself to stand up straighter.

“You don't appear to drink, judging from the state of the bar,” he observed, delicately rattling the ice in his glass.

“Very little,” she said stiffly.

“Or eat, either, if your refrigerator is any indication ,” he said in a gentle, chiding voice. “You must keep up your strength, Raine. You have no need to diet. On the contrary.”

“You looked in my refrigerator?” She was startled at her own loud, incredulous tone.

He looked slightly injured. “I needed ice for my drink” he explained, draining his glass. He set it down on the telephone table. “Please, take a moment to collect yourself, Raine.” He made a courtly gesture towards the bedroom, and smiled. “I can wait.”

For what? she wondered frantically. She caught a glance at herself in the mirror behind him, and stifled a gasp. Her hair was a wild, tangled halo, her lips red and puffy Her blouse was crumpled, several buttons missing, cuffs hanging sloppily open, one side tucked in, one side out. Her eyes blazed out of dark, smudged sockets.

She let her breath out slowly. So what if she looked like a madwoman. She'd been to hell and back today. This was her home, and she would not be dismissed in it like a servant. She fished in the pocket of her jacket for the hair sticks and wound her hair into a knot, stabbing the sticks through it. She took her glasses out of her purse and deliberately put them on. “What do you want, Mr. Lazar?”

If he was angered by her small act of defiance, he did not show it His mouth twitched. “Did you enjoy your afternoon with Mr. Mackey?”

Heat rushed into her face. “I don't want to discuss—”

“I should have suggested Sans Souci for dinner, but it slipped my mind,” he said silkily. “Did you go to the art museum? Or the market?”

“No “ she forced out.

“So you took him directly to bed.”

Raine backed towards the door. “Mr. Lazar—”

“To be truthful, I didn't mean for you to take my suggestion to entertain Mr. Mackey quite so personally.”

Raine's jaw dropped. “Are you implying that I—”

“Don't be tedious,” he snapped. “We're both adults. And I'm certain Mackey enjoyed your interpretation of my instructions far more than a tour of the Space Needle, or a ride on the Monorail.”

Raine stared at his smug face. “You set me up,” she whispered.

He frowned. “Oh, please. Whatever happened between you and Mackey is your business, Raine. And entirely your responsibility.”

She flinched at the truth in his words. No one had ordered her to throw herself at Seth Mackey today, and with such enthusiasm that he had mistaken her for a professional sex worker.

The thought was so ludicrous that she started to giggle. She swallowed back the convulsions in her throat with a strangled cough.

“Are you all right, my dear? Shall I get you a glass of cognac?”

“No, thank you, I'm fine.” Oh, there it was again. The pirate queen would not say “I'm fine” while being forced to walk the plank.

Victor crossed his leg over his knee and swung his foot in front of him. “Forgive me if I startled you. I came here for a reason.” She stiffened. “And that would be?”

“I am interested in your opinion of Seth Mackey. He is a relative unknown, and personally, I find him rather opaque. I am entrusting him with an extremely sensitive project, you see. I thought perhaps that your, ah, unique point of view might yield some other insights.”

Raine tried to swallow, but her throat was too dry “No,” she croaked. “No insights. Not a one.”

He tapped a long, slim cigarette out of a silver case. “None?”

She shook her head so emphatically that the makeshift knot of hair bobbed and slid down to the nape of her neck. She pulled out the sticks. The bun unraveled down her back. “None,” she repeated.

Victor's eyes flicked down, observing her white-knuckled hand He lit his cigarette. “You should be more observant, my dear.”

“Should I?” Her fingers tightened around the stick until the faceted crystal beads dug painfully into her palm.

He blew out a long, thin, stream of smoke, his eyes pale, glittering slits. “The poet William Meredith once said... 'the worst that could be said of any man was that he did not pay attention.'“

An image of her dreamy, inattentive father superimposed itself upon Victor's face. A buried ember of old anger began to glow inside her. “I can think of worse things that could be said,” she said flatly.

Victor's eyes flashed. He tapped his cigarette into the heavy crystal ashtray on the telephone table. “Can you?”

Raine struggled to keep her face composed.

He stared straight into her eyes for what seemed like forever. “I expect you to exert yourself a bit more on the next occasion.”

His offhand tone fanned the ember inside her into a white-hot glow. “Are you ordering me to have sex with Seth Mackey, spy on him, and report back to you?” she demanded.

Distaste flitted across Victor's face. “I detest crass overstatement.”

“I have not even begun the crass overstatements,” she hissed. “You listen carefully, Mr. Lazar. One, there will be no other occasion, because I do not want to see Seth Mackey ever again. And two, I would never spy on a person I was intimate with. Never.”

Victor took a final draw on his cigarette and crushed it out briskly. “I love the conviction with which young people use the word 'never.'“

Her fists clenched at his patronizing tone. “It's very late. I'm afraid I have to ask you to leave. Right now.”

Her voice broke, spoiling the effect. She held her breath, half hoping he would fire her. She would be off the hook—at least until the tombstone dream started burning holes in her sanity again.

But this time, when it did, she would be out of ideas.

Victor stood up and pulled his overcoat out of the closet.

It had worked. He was leaving. Giddy triumph emboldened her. She decided to push her luck. “And Mr. Lazar?”

“Yes?” He paused, eyebrows raised.

“I would appreciate it if you would not make yourself at home in my private space. I want to be the only person in possession of a house key.” She held out her hand.

His eyes glittered with fierce amusement “Let me give you some advice, Raine. Don't waste your time and energy clinging to an illusion of control. You'll only exhaust yourself.”

She kept her hand out. “It's my illusion, and I'm clinging to it.”

Victor chuckled. He pulled a key out of the pocket of his overcoat and held it out on the palm of his hand.

She plucked it off his palm with the tips of her fingers, and yelped as his fingers snapped around her hand, like a sprung trap.

Dream memories of Victor's heavy arm squeezing the air out of her lungs thundered through her mind. She pulled on her throbbing hand, trying not to panic. Out of nowhere, Seth's voice echoed in her mind. It's all about power in the end, angel And if you don't know that by now, it's time you learned. She seized onto those harsh words as if they would save her life. Maybe Seth was right. Those were the rules of this nightmare world. She had to master them. Until she did, all she could do was command her own small, frightened self as well as she was able. The roaring in her ears subsided, and her vision cleared. Her trapped hand still hurt, but it was bearable.

She looked into his eyes without blinking. “Good night, Victor.”

To her surprise, he let her go, and nodded at her with what looked almost like approval. “Excellent,” he said softly. “Good night, Raine.”

The door thudded shut behind him, and she lunged for the door, slamming in the deadbolt. She slid down against the ornately carved mahogany door until she was crumpled on the floor and gave way to deep, wrenching sobs. Seventeen years of saying no-really-I'm-fine until it was automatic, and it took a day like today to show her how foolish and vain all her efforts had been.

Don't cling to an illusion of control, Victor had said. It's all about power in the end, angel. Their mocking voices echoed in her head as the pitiless reality bore down on her. She had no power, no control, no illusions. She was over her head in wild white water and sinking fast. She controlled nothing; not her mind, her heart, her dreams, not even her own body. Seth had demonstrated that to her this afternoon, ruthlessly, over and over again.

Her sobs quieted to a numb silence. She pressed her face against her knees, and began to pray; she wasn't sure to whom. She wasn't at all positive there was a God, but she definitely believed in the opposing forces of good and evil. She might not have power, or control, or even a plan, but she was here in search of the truth, for her father's sake.

She was here for love. That had to count for something. In any case, it was all she had, and she was clinging to it with all ten fingernails.

The security on Lazar's town house was considerably tighter since Seth and the McCloud brothers had burgled it four months before. The increased security wasn't much of a challenge, though, considering how he and his team had rigged the data retrieval. It was almost too easy.

Seth thought about that first burglary raid as he slid through the bushes like a shadow, far out of range of the infrared motion detectors. He shouldn't have been thinking at all; he should be in the zone of pure focus, but anything was better than thinking about Raine.

He'd been surprised at how smoothly the four of them had worked together to coordinate the electronic assault upon Victor Lazar; the planting of the vidcams, phone transmitters, laser gulpers, and wall resonator mikes, all while staging a simulated burglary. They'd worked like swift, silent parts of the same machine, no ego in the way, thoughts running on the same groove. Quick learners, too, even though they weren't trained gearheads like him. A good team. They saved their annoying personality quirks for their leisure time.

He fumbled in the darkness as he set the microwave frequency he needed to activate the resonant bug in Lazar's office. He tuned the receiver for the return broadcast, cursed behind his teeth when he got it wrong, and entered it again. He was going to have to hurry to finish inside the time frame he had set himself. He hated hurrying.

He'd run through the routine, visualizing every move in advance, but he needn't have bothered. His concentration was blasted to shards. A nighttime data sweep was a sneaky, ninja-type job that usually chilled him, but it wasn't working tonight. His brainwaves weren't smoothing into undulating alpha curves; they were as jagged as the teeth of a broken pocket comb. Every muscle in his body was rigid; his head and neck and balls all ached, and every time he started to calm down another phalanx of sexual images would roll over him, leaving him breathless and flattened.

He had plenty of tactile data on Raine Cameron now, but the joke was on him—he couldn't control the data flow. It came at him in a torrent; her scent, her velvet softness, her smile. This was hell on earth. Worse than before he'd slept with her. Exponentially worse.

The video had done it to him. He'd been on edge already after Raine stormed out of the hotel room; then he got home, logged on and saw Lazar waiting in her house, sipping his drink in nicking real-time. All his instincts screamed at him to get the hell over there and protect her. Then cyborg man had risen up and taken control. That kind of behavior would get him killed prematurely, leaving Jesse unavenged Besides, what did she have to fear from her own pimp? Fantasy time was over. Time to wake up and face reality.

So he'd clenched his teeth, planted his ass and waited for her to get home. One thing was for sure. If he had to watch Lazar fuck her, then it was a damn good thing he had nothing in his stomach.

The conversation that took place, from 9:35 to 9:47, had astonished him. Raine Cameron was exactly what she appeared to be: a bewildered, overworked new secretary in a big import export firm.

So why the provocative setup? Why was she ensconced in the ex-mistress's love nest? Why had she fallen into bed with him, as if she knew that it was expected of her? It didn't add up. Nothing added up.

He'd monitored Lazar's Mercedes to the marina, satisfied himself that the boat was bound for Stone Island, and replayed that twelve minutes of footage until it looped endlessly in his mind. He paced around, kicking the cheap furniture, punching the walls.

He had to do something, or he would go nuts. Something sneaky and challenging, preferably dangerous. A data retrieval sweep was pretty tame, but what the hell, it was better than stealing hubcaps.

This was asinine. He had more important things to worry about. So he'd nailed a beautiful woman, hurt her feelings, and then pissed her off. Whatever. That sequence of events was normal for him.

But this was Raine, his red-hot fairy-tale princess.

His ugly final words to her echoed in his mind as he slipped through the bushes and alleys. She'd opened him up and he hadn't expected it. He couldn't afford to be naked and vulnerable in front of one of Lazarus women. His instinct had been to shove her away, as fast and as hard as he could.

He headed back to Oak Terrace and set the audio data to run through the processors. It was going to take the voice recognition filters a while to sift through the massive data load of frequencies that the gulpers had gathered and polish up any matches it found with the frequencies of Lazar's or Novak's voices. He and the McClouds had planted virtually undetectable carrier current transmitters in Lazar's town house phones, neatly circumnavigating the problem of the digitally encrypted phone lines, but he hadn't yet pulled off the same trick for Stone Island. Phone calls from that location were still an unknown quantity, representing a gaping hole in his surveillance coverage. Which bothered the hell out of him.

Oh, God. He couldn't sit around in that cramped, suffocating place and watch data crunching. He had to get out into the wide, glittering night. He felt dangerous and wired. Two head-banging, mind-blowing orgasms should've chilled him out, but he was more wound up than ever. He bolted for the Chevy and set off, speeding through the streets, mind racing. Incoherent and out of control, streaming with data, images and feelings, fire and smoke.

Connor McCloud's words echoed through his mind when he saw the exit that would take him to Templeton Street. “They get that look you've got on your face, then they fuck up, then they die badly.” Seth didn't slow down until he parked half a block from her house. He wondered if the events of this afternoon, plus whatever idiocy he might yet perpetrate tonight, qualified as an official fuck-up.

He slid down on the seat until his face was in full shadow, stared up at her house, and concluded that it did. Look at him, lurking in the dark like a stalker. At least at this hour, nobody was likely to notice him and call the cops. That would be the crowning indignity.

From this vantage point, he could cover both front and back entrances plus monitor the lights in the living room, bedroom and bathroom. From this distance, thanks to Kearn's evil genius, he could just flip on the receiver he'd built into the Chevy's dash and watch every move she made on his laptop, without even the benefit of a phone line.

Better yet, he could disable her alarm, pick all three locks, and walk right in. It made him furious, how vulnerable she was. Which made no sense, since her lack of defenses was entirely to his advantage. Nothing made sense tonight.

The hypothetical scene played in his mind. She would be furious at first, but he would plead and grovel until she softened up. He knew exactly how to turn her on. Having once gotten through her barriers, he knew the way now like he was born to it. He knew how to get under her guard just as he knew how to disable her alarm and pick her locks. He had great instincts when it came to sex. They had never failed him—at least not while he was actively engaged in it

Afterwards, of course, was another story. But he wouldn't worry about that now. One step at a time, for God's sake.

First the words and the charm. Then the kissing and cuddling, until Raine calmed down and started to cling to him, sweet and trusting. He would pet her and nuzzle her until she started to secretly wonder if he were ever going to do anything more. And when he felt the subtle signs of that restless energy building inside her, that was his cue.

Then he would lay her out on the bed or couch or carpet, whatever was closest, and pleasure her with his mouth until she had forgotten why she was mad at him. Until she was writhing, slick, wide open. Begging him. Delicious. Easy. Like taking candy from a baby. He had the means, he had the power, but when he reached for the door handle, something strange happened. He just... stopped.

He had no choice. The control tower in his head had been taken over in a surprise coup. An unfamiliar command team was running everything. Strange thoughts took form in his mind, bewildering him. Just because he could pick her locks didn't mean necessarily that he should. After today, the least he could do was guard her house, ensure her one night of genuine safety. He even felt too inhibited to just flick on the receiver, power up the X-Ray Specs program and watch her, the way he'd been watching her for weeks. It felt all wrong tonight She'd given him everything she had to give, and he'd taken it all and paid her back with... oh, shit. Whatever. He felt bad, he was sorry. Enough already.

It was stupid. A pointless tribute that she would never appreciate. She would never know what it cost him to leave his magic tricks in the bag and just sit there in the dark, helpless and inert.

It was bizarre. He had never been chivalrous in his entire life. That was Jesse's department.

Even a fleeting thought of his young brother was a mistake. He was helpless to push away unwanted thoughts tonight They raced through his mind, tumbling over each other, maddened by their unaccustomed liberty.

Memory triggered memory. Even minor ones made his gut cramp. Jesse's dirt-colored hair that stuck straight up in a case of perpetual bed head. His green eyes, shining like the headlights of a car. His hundred-mile-an-hour intelligence, his zingy one-liners. His extravagant affection for the whole world, even when it kicked him in the teeth.

Seth's heart had already been heavily armored by the time his mother DeAnne hooked up with one of her ex-boyfriends, Mitch Cahill, and moved the guy into their apartment. Then DeAnne compounded her mistake by getting the bright idea that now that there was a father figure around, she could go collect Seth's little five-year-old half-brother from where he'd been living with her mother in San Diego. Seth had only seen the snot-nosed, motormouth little kid a couple of times since he was born. A couple of times had been more than enough for him.

Seth had hated Mitch on sight, and sullenly resented the bug-eyed, scrawny kid who followed his eleven-year-old brother around, getting in the way of business, and in general annoying the shit out of him. But Jesse was like a fly that kept landing on his nose. He couldn't be chased away. Seth still remembered the horrified alarm he'd felt on the day when he realized that Jesse loved him. Not because he was lovable, because he wasn't; he'd been out-and-out mean to the clueless little geek. Not because he deserved to be loved, because he didn't. Seth went out of his way to be obnoxious to everyone.

No, Jesse had loved him because Jesse desperately needed to love someone. It was just the way he was made. He'd loved DeAnne, too. He'd even loved Mitch, his brutal, worthless, stinking-piece-of-offal excuse for a father. Managing to love Mitch was a fucking miracle.

Jesse had needed to love like he needed to breathe, and Seth had just happened to be in the line of fire. After a while, in spite of himself, he started to feel protective and proprietary about the little guy. He would kick the shit out of anybody who messed with him, shoplift clothes and shoes for him when his stuff wore out, make sure he got something to eat when Mitch and DeAnne were too stoned to feed him. Little things like that, but they took on their own momentum, and before he knew it, Jesse was all his. His headache, his responsibility. Nobody else around the place was sober enough to give a rat's ass about the kid.

His bond with Jesse was not an official one. The liaison between DeAnne Mackey and Mitch Cahill had been a common-law marriage that figured on no public registry.

DeAnne stoutly claimed that Jesse was Mitch's son, and she had nagged until Mitch changed Jesse’s last name to Cahill. Seth remembered those arguments all too clearly. “But I'm not going to give my name to that other thieving, smart-mouthed punk of yours, so don't even bother asking.”

Hah. As if he had wanted it. Asshole.

After her death, Seth had dodged the help of those public agencies supposedly dedicated to his welfare, but he still hung around the neighborhood, to keep an eye on Jesse and protect him from Mitch.

It hadn't been easy. Jesse had been hard to protect He loved stupidly, indiscriminately. He forgave friends after they'd stabbed him in the back, he lent money to thieves and crackheads, he fell in love and got stomped on more times than Seth could count, but he just kept on flinging his heart into harm's way with a reckless courage that had never failed to stupefy his brother.

He hadn't thought of their bond as love, because in those days, the word love did not figure in his working vocabulary. He'd thought of it more as a monumental pain in the ass, having to look after that feckless little jerk. But in the moments in which Seth allowed himself to consider such things—mercifully few, and usually only when he was drunk off his ass—he knew why he'd hung around. He, like Jesse, needed at least one person to love. A hard, controlling sort of love, but it was the best he had to give. The best he had ever given.

Jesse should never have gone into law enforcement. He was too trusting, too tender-hearted. He should've become a pediatric nurse, a goddamn kindergarten teacher. Seth had tried so hard to protect him from the world, but the world was big and sneaky and treacherous, and Jesse had been dead-set on saving it from the bad guys.

If Jesse were here, he would tell him to stop jerking off and cut the pity party. And seeing him parked in the dark outside a woman's house like a lovesick teenager would have made Jesse laugh his head off. Seth could see him in his mind's eye, cackling and pointing his finger. Hah. It's your turn now, bro, and about fucking time, too. Let's see you act all superior now, sucker.

Seth's eyes stung, and he scrubbed at them with the back of his hands as he stared up at her bathroom window. He wondered if she were crying again. He'd refrained from watching that part of the show. All twenty-two minutes and twenty-six seconds of it.

Maybe she was taking a bath. He could imagine her stretched out in the tub, her lush curves dripping and gleaming as she sudsed herself up. In a hundred and ten seconds he could be inside with her.

Helping her bathe.

His hand drifted over onto the door handle. He clutched it until his knuckles ached and slowly let it go. The guys up in the control tower in his head were armed, dangerous, and not to be fucked with. It was martial law up there, the moralistic bastards.

He slumped down lower. His head pounded, and his gut gnawed. He should have grabbed something to eat. He'd been too keyed up before the meeting, too sex-crazed while Raine had been in his grasp, too upset afterwards. The coffee and doughnuts he'd eaten that morning were a million years ago for a six foot tall, two-hundred-and ten-pound guy with a raging metabolism.

He should have bought the woman lunch before falling on her like a starving wolf, but he'd been so jacked up and frantic. Afraid she would change her mind and slip away from him somehow. He hauled his laptop out, feeling sullen and chastened. No excuse for not getting some work done while he sat there in the dark. He wondered if a violent attack of conscience was a condition that passed relatively quickly, like heartburn, or whether it was a chronic type of thing. Like acne.

In any case, there were limits to his new scruples. Martial law or no martial law, if Raine walked out that door, she was fair game.

If she walked out that door, she was his.