Behind Closed Doors

Chapter 19

Riggs swerved on the dark road, correcting just in time. It was bad tonight. Ever since Jesse Cahill's death, his ulcers had been flaring up to the point of burning agony. Medication didn't do much good, mixed with bourbon, but he needed booze to take the edge off the knowledge that he was an unredeemable piece of shit Survival lay only in keeping that knowledge from Barbara and the girls for as long as he possibly could.

He thought of this morning; how she'd pressured him to see a therapist with her. “You have to face your feelings, Eddie,” she said, with that goddamn look, that anxious, furrowed-brow look that made him so crazy with rage and shame, he wanted to smack it right off her face. He hadn't sunk that low, not yet, but it was a near thing.

The girl was a lot like Alix, in spite of the clumsy clothes, the glasses and the scraped-back hair. Alix's billowing mane had always been perfectly coiffed; Alix had worn clothes that would have cost him a month's salary for a single outfit. He'd never had a woman like her, a drop-dead, blaze-of-glory woman. Barbara was lovely, but she was a good girl. Too good for him. He'd met her in college, and had been attracted to her ladylike manners. Barbara was an obvious choice for a wife, the perfect mother for his two girls.

But when he met Alix, something had detonated inside him, blowing everything he thought he was to pieces. A man could die happy fucking a woman like Alix. She was feral in bed, a bitch in heat. A couple of lines of coke snorted off her perfect tits, and they'd gone at it for hours, doing things he'd only heard of but never dreamed of trying. Things he could never imagine with his sweet, quiet Barbara.

He'd held himself together during that hallucination of a summer back in '85 by keeping his two worlds separate. Even Haley had never gotten a clue, thank God, since he himself had been the one infiltrating Lazar’s operation, not Bill. Barbara had inhabited one segment of reality, safe and sane and sensible with her cardigan sweaters and her smooth dark bobbed hair, all meatloaf and babies and breakfast cereal. Alix had ruled another segment. Naked, wide open, burning for him.

He'd had a pretty good life once, before that bitch had spread her legs and welcomed him into the gates of hell. Victor’s hooks had sunk into him so insidiously that he’d barely noticed them. Riggs was so far out of it that when the order came down, when he found out how deep in shit he was, he'd wanted to kill that worthless, whining bastard Peter Lazar. He wanted him the hell out of the way so he could have Alix, really have her, all for himself....

Riggs cringed, thinking about how gullible he had been. The world had exploded in his face, and when he sifted through the rubble, he was left with the knowledge that he was not one of the good guys, like Barbara believed. Maybe he never had been. Maybe he had been a piece of shit all along. Victor's creature, belly-down in the mud.

There had been long periods, years sometimes, when Victor hadn't called on him, and he'd begun to fancy himself a normal person again. But the call inevitably came. If Victor Lazar should ever find himself in trouble with the law, those videos would be mailed to his family and to the local media. Details of certain deposits to offshore accounts would be made public. The circumstances of Peter Lazar's death would be recounted to one and all. The same thing would happen if Victor were to die in a suspicious manner. If Riggs was to maintain some semblance of a life, no matter how fictitious, Victor had to stay healthy and happy. Cahill and McCloud had acted on their own. Goddamn mavericks, both of them. They had almost ruined everything.

His eyes fell on the monitor that lay in the passenger’s seat If only he'd drowned the little bitch along with her father. She'd seen him today, and if she hadn't recognized him yet, she soon would Those bright eyes had witnessed his transformation from a man into a crawling thing. He wanted to close those eyes. Forever.

He saw the sign and swerved A roadhouse. He stumbled into the dark interior and ordered a shot of bourbon and a glass of milk. It was as much as he dared allow himself, in his current state. He could drive after a single shot, if the pain in his stomach didn't make him pass out. He popped a handful of antacids and chased them down with milk, a trick that had ceased to work about eight months ago, but he kept it up out of force of habit. He thought about how it would be, to pass out and run into a tree. It didn't seem so terrible. Just the crunch of breaking glass, the shriek of bent metal, and then, darkness. Then nothing.

He left the money on the bar and lurched out. The puddles in the parking lot rippled in the chilly wind. He got into the Taurus and sat with his eyes shut and his hand pressed hard against his corroded gut.

His mind darted around, like a rat in a maze. But there was no way out, and presently his mind slowed. Just an exhausted defeated old rat, that was him.

He fumbled the key into the ignition. Heard the squeak of leather against leather. Felt the icy barrel of a gun, pressed against his neck.

“Don't move,” someone hissed.

The passenger door opened. A man picked up the small monitor that lay on the passenger seat and got in. A wave of frigid air accompanied him, as if the door to a meat locker had suddenly swung open.

The man gave him a pleasant smile. “Good evening, Mr.

Riggs.”

He wondered if it were actually possible for things to get worse for him than they already were. “Who the fuck are you?”

The man studied the monitor, playing with it. “We've never been introduced, but we're linked by fate. May I call you Edward?”

“If it's money you want, I don't have—”

“I enjoyed myself carrying out Jesse Cahill's execution, Edward” the man said. “I should thank you for the sport, as well.”

His blood froze, and his bowels loosened. “Novak,” he whispered.

The other man's smile widened strangely and carved deep shadows into his young-old face. His eyes glowed, phosphorescent in the gloom.

Riggs fought for control of his basic bodily functions. “What do you want from me?”

“Several things, actually,” Novak said. “You can begin by telling me everything you know about Raine Cameron.”

He was so cold his body was vibrating. “I don't know about—”

“Shut up.” Novak's voice cracked like a pistol shot, and the gun barrel pressed painfully into Riggs's cervical vertebrae. “Sixteen years of licking Victor Lazar's hand, isn't that enough for you?”

Riggs’s mouth sagged open, but no sound came out.

“Here is your chance, my friend,” Novak said “Your chance to put it to him right up the ass. Make him pay for making you crawl.”

He saw Barbara's face in his mind. The anxious line between his wife's brows was etched so deep now that nothing would ever smooth it away.

“I don't work for Victor Lazar,” he forced out, through numb lips.

Novak's eyeteeth glinted like fangs in the roadhouse sign's bloody light. “Of course you don't,” he agreed. “Now you work for me.”

Riggs let out the breath in his lungs and shook his head. “No,” he said. “Go ahead. Pull the trigger. Make my day. Go on, do it.”

Novak regarded him thoughtfully, and then made a gesture to the man behind him, who had been silent in the backseat. The pistol was removed. “Very well,” he said briskly. “Let us put matters in a different light”

“You can't control me. I don't give a shit anymore. I won't do it.”

Novak held up his hand, fluttered it impatiently. “If the prospect of punishing Victor and saving your own miserable life is not sufficiently motivating, then let me tell you this. You may not be aware of the company your daughter Erin is keeping.”

Riggs had thought it impossible to feel more afraid. What an idiot. Fear was an abyss that had no bottom, and he was falling. Down, down.

“Remember Erin's ski trip? To Crystal Mountain, up on Mt. Rainier? With her girlfriends... Marika, and Bella, and Sasha.”

“Yes,” he replied. His voice was reduced to a rasping thread.

“Erin met a young man yesterday, while drinking hot chocolate by the fireplace. A dashing fellow, with a romantic foreign accent and long blond hair. Georg was the name he gave her.”

“No,” he croaked.

“The young lady is surprisingly resistant, to her credit, and yours, if I may say so. But Georg is confident in his powers of seduction. He will eventually make it into her bedroom. He will take her to bed. And you, my friend, will be the key to the quality of that experience for her”

“You can't”

“Oh, but I have. You decide, Edward. It could be just a bittersweet memory of new love found and then, inexplicably, lost... or with one short call on my cell phone, it could become something else entirely. Something that a loving father should do absolutely everything in his power to spare his innocent child.”

Riggs closed his eyes. He saw Erin, in the wading pool. Helping him rake the leaves. Curled up in the window seat with her journal. Sweet, quiet Erin, who always tried so hard to please, to be good.

“By all means, take your time,” Novak said softly. “Think about it. There's no rush. Georg is very aroused by Erin's maidenly reluctance. She is a beautiful girl. This is his favorite kind of assignment.”

“Don't you dare touch my girl.” His words were flat and hollow, followed by Novak's soft chuckle. “Oh, God,” he whispered. As if God gave a damn about him, after what he had done, after what he had become.

“One phone call.” Novak's faintly accented voice burned like corrosive acid against Riggs's nerves.

The bloody red roadhouse light wavered in his watering eyes. “If I cooperate with you, this man won't touch Erin?”

Novak laughed. “Oh, I can't promise you that. I'm afraid that depends upon Erin herself. Georg is very attractive, very persuasive. What I can promise is that if you cooperate, she will have nothing to complain about. Georg is a skilled professional. No matter which way you decide, he will carry out his duties with enthusiasm.”

“Promise me he won't touch her, and I'll do it” Riggs hated himself for the hoarse, pleading tone of his voice.

“Don't be foolish. Erin must take her chances with sex and love, like every other woman. And if you are considering calling the Cave, be aware. My men are watching Crystal Mountain very carefully. I have spared no expense in my

planning. The slightest wrong move, an intercepted phone call, and poor Erin's fate will be sealed in a heartbeat. And I have not yet even begun to devise something special for your other daughter, little Cindy. And there is your wife to think of, too.” He sighed, shook his head. “An infinity of details.”

“No,” he repeated stupidly.

Novak patted his shoulder. He was too numb, too cold, to even flinch away. It was almost as if he were dead already.

“Come now, Edward. Let's move ahead. Raine Cameron. Out with it. Tell me everything, my friend. Everything.”

“Not your friend,” he mumbled.

“Eh? What was that you said?”

He took a deep breath. “I'm not your friend,” he said more clearly.

Novak gave him an approving smile, as if he were a dull child that had just gotten a difficult math problem right. “That is absolutely correct, Edward,” he said. “You are not my friend. You are my slave.”

Jesse was standing on the boat, wearing Seth's black leather jacket. He knew it was his jacket became it was far too big for Jesse. The shoulders drooped off Jesse's narrow shoulders, the sleeves hung down all the way to his fingertips.

He was very pale, freckles standing out sharply against his skin, his green eyes somber. “Be careful,” he said. “The circle is getting smaller.”

In the dream, Seth understood perfectly what that meant. “How small? “ he asked.

Jesse held up his hand, thumb and forefinger touching in a circle. Then he was a child again, dwindled down to the size of the five-year-old he had been when he came to live with them. The jacket now hung down past his knees. “Very small,” he repeated, and the water behind him glittered as a bolt of sunlight pierced the clouds. Something was dangling from Jesse's little-boy fingers, flashing green and blue fire. Raine's grandmother's necklace.

Seth slid into waking consciousness, fixing the details of the dream in his mind as he registered the luxurious sheets he was tangled in, the flower-petal softness of Raine cuddled in his arms. She stirred, trying not to wake him, and he feigned sleep as she dropped a kiss on his shoulder. She slid out of his arms. The door to the adjoining bath opened. The toilet flushed. The shower began to hiss.

He had resisted sleep to the very end, but Raine had been as fierce and demanding as he was; and after hours of wild lovemaking, sleep had finally claimed him. He stretched, enjoying the remarkable comfort of the huge bed until the bathroom door opened, then the armoire. He heard a gasp, and opened his eyes.

Raine was standing in front of the closet, wearing nothing but a towel. Her wet hair hung all the way down to her perfect ass, and he was relieved to see that the curls were back in full force. He tried to see what had alarmed her, but all he saw was plastic-wrapped clothes.

“What's the problem?” he asked.

She smiled over her shoulder at him, but her eyes were anxious. “Those bastards took my glasses! And my clothes are gone, too! I left my suit here, and my shoes, but now there's just... this other stuff.”

“So? Those glasses were pretty weird anyhow, sweetheart. You've got the contacts you wore last night, right? No problem. Pick something out of the stuff that's there “ he suggested. “I'm sure it's all for you.”

She rifled through the clothes. “Lord. I can't take these. Armani, Gianfranco Ferre, Nannini, Prada... there's a fortune in this closet”

“Does that surprise you?”

She scowled at him. “I don't like being shoved around, Seth! I want my cheap blue suit back. I paid for it, and it's mine.”

The movement had caused the towel to slip, catching on the top of her nipples. His morning erection throbbed urgently, as if he hadn't spent the night having the hottest, most prolonged sex of his whole life. He threw the covers off mid lunged for her. She backed away, but there was no place to run, and he was all over her, dizzy with the fragrance of soap and shampoo and Raine. Honey and violets. Good enough to eat.

“I'm too nervous to make love again, Seth,” she whispered.

He stared over her shoulder into the mirror at the graceful curve of her back and cupped her round, rosy buttocks in both his hands. “Don't be nervous,” he urged. “It doesn't matter what you wear. You always look gorgeous. I like you best stark naked anyway.”

Her arms stole around his waist, and she nuzzled his chest tentatively. “I can't go out there stark naked.”

He tossed her down onto the rumpled bed. “Sweetheart, your outfit is the least of your worries this morning.”

She took his words more seriously than he had meant her to, and her face clouded with real fear. “You're absolutely right,” she said. “Seth, I'm not sure if I can—about the—”

He kissed her hard and put his mouth to her ear. “Not one word.”

Her mouth trembled. She closed her eyes, and two crystal bright tears squeezed out between her lashes, flashing down her face. “But—”

He covered her mouth with his hand and kissed the tears away, trying to communicate without words that it was a done deal, no going back, no longer negotiable. She stared into his eyes. Her breath came in short, panting gasps, trapped beneath his weight.

It seemed as natural as breathing to push her legs apart and start petting her. She moved against his fingers, getting slick and wet for him almost instantly, and he eased me head of his cock inside her, kissing her as she tried to speak again. He thrust his tongue into her mouth, muffling the cry she made as he forged into her. The almost scalding heat of her body shocked him. He hadn't put on a condom.

But it was so good Amazing. Just a few strokes, careful and controlled. He wouldn't come inside her, just enjoy some unprotected bliss for a few delirious moments. She loved it, too. He could feel her soft body quiver beneath him. But the intensity of his bare flesh inside hers was driving him out of his head. His thrusts grew harder, deeper.

She was trying to speak again. He kissed her words away, didn't want to hear them, wanted to stay in the spell. But she was shoving him, pushing his face away. “Please, don't,” she said.

Seth stared down at her, horrified at the tears trembling in her eyes. He could have sworn she'd liked it. “What?” he demanded.

“Don't use sex to control me.” Her voice shook with anger.

He was dumbfounded. He studied her for a long moment. “I didn’t know I was doing that,” he said. “I just wanted you.”

“You're good at manipulating. You use whatever weapon comes to hand. But don't use sex against me.”

He was shivering, even though he still felt as hard and hot as a brand inside her. He withdrew from her clinging heat, flopping onto his back and staring up at the ceiling. All his past relationship fiascos paraded through his mind. The air felt cold and inhospitable on his dick, which lay, wet and disconsolate against his belly. He tried to think of something to say, some way to convince her that it was different than she thought No words came to him.

“I'm sorry,” he said finally, just to say something. Anything.

Raine pulled herself up onto her knees and looked down at him silently. She laid her hand on his chest. “Thank you,” she said quietly.

“For what?” His voice sounded gruff and ungracious, but there was nothing he could do about it.

“That was a very nice apology,” she said. “I liked that there were no ifs, ands or buts attached to it. It was very simple and effective.”

“Oh.” He squinted, bewildered. “I'm, uh, glad you liked For the first time, he'd gotten something like this right, but not by intelligence, or sensitivity, or technique. Just by pure, dumb luck.

The thought was not a comforting one.

“So you're, uh, not mad at me anymore?” he asked cautiously.

Raine smothered a laugh with her hands, and shook her head. She leaned over, and placed her hands on either side of his head, gazing into his eyes with searching tenderness. Her hair hung around them like a perfumed tent and her breasts dangled like lush, ripe fruit above him. All he wanted was to seize them, stroke them. She leaned down, dropped a kiss on his lips, a light, brushing touch.

He thought that was his cue to pull her closer, but he got it wrong again. She stiffened, pulling back with a nervous murmur.

He let his arms drop and opened his hands. Afraid to speak, afraid to breathe. No threat, he fried to say with his body, with his eyes. No moves, no agenda, your call He couldn't bear to feel her flinch away from him again, so evidently frightened.

She gave him a tremulous, uncertain smile, and he let out a sigh of relief, which turned into a gasp when her hand slid down and seized his cock. “Lie still,” she whispered.

She twisted her hair into a loose spiral behind her neck and seized him in both hands, stroking and pulling with a bold caress that made him gasp and jerk up onto his elbows. A drop of moisture formed on the end of it. She bent down and licked it off.

“God,” he muttered. “What is this, Raine? Are you trying to prove something? Trying to get back at me?”

“No,” she whispered. “I want to give you pleasure.”

The warm brush of her bream against his cock as she spoke was the sweetest caress he'd ever felt, until she put her mouth to him. It was so wet and soft, deliciously tender. Her eager tongue darted and swirled, under, over and all around. Oh, God, he was in for it.

She had lost all her awkwardness. She cupped his ass with one hand, pulling him even closer to her luscious, suckling mouth, and the other cradled his balls, rolling them tenderly around in her fingers. She licked around and over the head of his cock, then up and down the whole length of him until he was slippery and wet; and then accompanied her mouth with her hand, gripping and sliding as she took him in. Her hot mouth clutched and pulled, tongue swirling lazily as if she were savoring something very good to eat, then sucking him into another long, gliding caress.

He'd gotten plenty of blow jobs in his time, and he'd thoroughly enjoyed every one of them, but this was different. This was so tender and intimate, it was almost agonizing.

He couldn't afford to feel so vulnerable. Not in Lazar's house. He slid his fingers into the cascading tresses on either side of her face and stopped her.

She lifted her head. “You don't like it?”

The irony almost made him smile. He tried to speak, but his vocal cords wouldn't connect. He took a deep breath and tried again. “It's incredible. But I'm wide open. I can't take it. We've got to get away from here. Try this wild, sexy stuff once we get to someplace safe.”

Her eyes were soft with perfect understanding. She reached across him and seized a foil packet from the bedstand. She knelt beside him and smoothed the condom over his cock with tender, careful strokes. Still, he waited, afraid to make another wrong move. She seized his hands, lifting them up and pressing them against her breasts. “You can touch me now,” she said shyly. “I've calmed down.”

He touched her as carefully as if she were made of fragile glass. He couldn't afford to mess up again. Raine had to make all the moves this time.

She lay down alongside him and tugged his body on top of hers. “Let's go back to our tropical paradise, Seth “ she whispered.

He poised himself above her so that the whole surface of his body was in light, kissing contact with hers. He let her do it all. She was the one who opened up and adjusted herself, she was the one who reached down and guided his penis into her body. He even waited until she grabbed his ass and pulled him in before he took the plunge.

They wound their arms around each other. At first it was slow and careful and tender, men it melted like a spring flood and rushed them over an endless fall, united body and soul. He finally understood the futility of trying to batter his way towards the fusion that he craved.

They clung to each other for a long time, until Raine began to disentangle herself. She sat up and perched on the edge of the bed. “There's a ship on the horizon “ she said.

“Huh?”

She looked back over her shoulder. “One morning the pirate queen and her sailor stud are making love on the beach. They look up, and there's a full-rigged ship on the horizon. Their idyll is over. You can't run away from the world forever. Sooner or later it always catches up.”

He sat up, chilled by a sudden feeling that something precious was slipping away from him.

She got up. “I need another shower.”

“I'll shower with you.” He reached out for her.

She dodged his hand. "No, you will not.”

They got ready in absolute silence. She chose some stuff from the armoire, which of course looked great on her. Everything did.

They were dressed and ready. There was no putting it off any longer. Seth took the kit out of his bag and fished out the transmitter. She took it, turning it over in her hands. She started to speak, but he put his finger over her lips, and shook his head.

Raine's lips pinched into a quivering line. She slipped the tiny transmitter into her pants pocket.

He shrugged on his jacket, suddenly thinking of his dream.

The circle is getting smaller. He didn't know what it meant, but he could feel it happening. Like fingers tightening around his neck.