Skin Game Part 8

"Appreciate it," Monroe said, and Reyes heard the smile in his voice. "I'll be in touch, patron patron ." ."

They had history, Monroe and him. He never asked anyone else for help.

Shortly thereafter, he disconnected and lay back in the dark, staring at the ceiling. Outside, he could hear the hum of the fluorescent light in the hallway. Reyes wondered what Kyra was doing on the other side of the wall. Was she a cold-shower sort of woman?

And then he didn't have to wonder; he knew.

Listening to her m.u.f.fled thumps and moans, he discovered she was a self-sufficient type. It sounded like she was tearing up the bed without him. With her, his plans never seemed to work as antic.i.p.ated.

Ah, Jesus.

He recognized the throaty cry she made as she came, but her movements didn't show any signs of slowing. Reyes would give a kidney to kick a hole in the wall and have her, and say to h.e.l.l with his job, to h.e.l.l with his reputation. He burned with wanting her.

It was going to be a long night.

CHAPTER 10.

" We've had a good run," Kyra said.

She counted the money a second time and then pushed Rey's cut across the bed toward him. Ordinarily, she wouldn't share mattress s.p.a.ce with him, even under the most innocuous of circ.u.mstances, but this room didn't even offer the usual cafe table and rickety chairs. They had to split the take somewhere.

He'd been the perfect partner ever since they shared that scorching kiss. She had no idea what to make of his withdrawal, but maybe he'd decided not to tempt the chemistry that crackled between them. That was no doubt the prudent course.

They'd pa.s.sed from Texas into New Mexico. Back in Louisiana, she'd realized she wanted to escape the heat, so they were wending their way north slowly. Kyra had heard Colorado was nice, and she couldn't remember ever wintering anywhere cold. That would be the last place anyone looked for her, the next best thing to Canada.

As an added bonus, Kyra had a friend who would be taking a job soon in North Dakota, and she hoped Mia would be able to tell her what to do with her stash. She couldn't get out of the country on her own, but she trusted Mia Sauter more than anyone else in the world. When she first fled Vegas, she'd known she needed to kill some time, as Mia was working a contract overseas. She'd tossed her cell phone a few days back, not wanting to take the chance Serrano could track her somehow, even though it was a cheap, prepaid device.

Just stay one step ahead, that's all. Just a little longer.

Frankly, she'd thought Serrano would have had her killed before she got out of town, but she'd had to take the risk. The b.a.s.t.a.r.d couldn't be allowed to kill her father and pay nothing for it. Men like him, men with money and power, thought they could do whatever the h.e.l.l they wanted without consequence. It had been a stroke of luck that he hadn't seen the tape for twenty-four hours, giving her a priceless head start.

She'd been running ever since.

"If I'd known there was such good money in this, I'd have looked for an apprenticeship years ago," Rey said lazily.

A small quirk of conscience p.r.i.c.ked her. She really should warn him that it wouldn't go this smoothly-and the money wouldn't flow as well-if he didn't have her help. But that would open the door to things she had no intention of sharing. Worse, it might sound like she was trying to convince him to stay with her indefinitely.

"It beats honest work," she agreed.

"Can we take a night off?"

Kyra glanced at him in surprise. She could certainly afford to, but she didn't want to tap into her stash until they got to North Dakota, and she had some idea what to do with the money. Flashing large amounts of cash would get her noticed-and Serrano would have goons on her in no time. It was definitely best that she live and work as she always had. And there was the fun factor as well. Fact was, Kyra liked liked what she did. what she did.

"Sure," she said, trying to hide her disappointment. It was natural he'd want a break. "Knock yourself out."

She took in the dingy motel room, which was like a thousand others she'd stayed in: tiny, cramped, a polyester, floral bedspread in garish hues, lackl.u.s.ter prints affixed to the wall, and furniture so cheap that it made pasteboard look luxurious. Rooms like this always seemed to hold a faint musty odor, as well, and she'd learned not to peer behind the headboards or beneath end tables for fear of what she might find. This place didn't even have a coffeemaker, so no ramen for dinner.

Before she spent those six months with Gerard Serrano, letting him lavish her with expensive things and posh surroundings, she never would've thought twice about a place like this. The b.a.s.t.a.r.d's spoiled this for me, too, The b.a.s.t.a.r.d's spoiled this for me, too, she thought with a scowl. Though she still enjoyed life on the road, she missed fine jewelry and a Jacuzzi tub to soak away her sorrows. Money might not be able to buy happiness, but it made misery more bearable. she thought with a scowl. Though she still enjoyed life on the road, she missed fine jewelry and a Jacuzzi tub to soak away her sorrows. Money might not be able to buy happiness, but it made misery more bearable.

Kyra remembered how Rey had walked more than a mile, carrying heavy groceries, just to feed her. n.o.body had ever done anything like that for her. Until he did it, she hadn't even known she'd like it. And now, d.a.m.n him, she found herself searching for hidden meanings in his small kindnesses. He didn't look like the considerate sort; he looked more like he cut women's throats and left them for dead. But she'd learned people weren't always what they seemed. Her father had called himself a professional student of human nature-and she'd taken her lessons from him for many years before he died.

"What's wrong?" If the question caught her off-guard, the gesture certainly did. Rey reached over, ignoring the pile of bills between them, his fingers cupping her chin.

She started to recoil, but there was only a faint, thready echo. It felt oddly as if her ability had short-circuited somehow.

"Nothing," she said quickly. How humiliating. If he realized she had a minor thing-okay, a major s.e.xual obsession-for him, she'd wither up and die. Kyra made herself smile. "See? Totally cool."

"You think I want to go out in search of s.n.a.t.c.h." Statement, not a question.

She tried to make a joke of it. "Wasn't that a Larry Flynt show?"

He sighed then. "I obviously phrased the question wrong, if that's what you extrapolated from it. I asked if we we could take the night off. Together. You and me." could take the night off. Together. You and me."

His words. .h.i.t her like a closed fist in the temple, and she felt dizzy, breathless. "I don't understand. I have no idea what you want from me."

"You know exactly what I want."

"You already had had it," she protested. "d.a.m.n, Rey. I'm not Chinese food . . . men don't come back in two hours, hungry for more." it," she protested. "d.a.m.n, Rey. I'm not Chinese food . . . men don't come back in two hours, hungry for more."

His actions made no sense and didn't follow the rules by which she'd lived. In her experience, one warm body was much like another, interchangeable. Sometimes the skill levels varied, but with enough imagination almost anyone could serve the purpose. h.e.l.l, given her lifestyle, she often worked in that capacity alone.

He shook his head, darkly intent. "You're out of your mind if you think anybody else will do. I could f.u.c.k a hundred women, and still go to sleep with this ache in my gut. It has to be you."

In that moment, she wanted more than anything to crawl across the bed toward him and give him everything. Feelings she'd never dreamed or imagined surged through her, but s.e.x with him wasn't simple anymore. Though it galled her to admit it, Rey scared her because he possessed the potential to matter.

"So what is it you're offering?"

And the man surprised her again. "A drive into the mountains. We spend so much time with the dregs that sometimes I start to want something clean and pure."

Kyra only considered for a moment. "That sounds great."

She snagged her share of the money, aligned the bills, and then she slid them into her wallet. After shouldering her bag, she glanced at him, oddly uncertain. If there were rules for this kind of thing, she didn't understand them. She'd never been out on a true date. In some respects she was as inexperienced as an Amish girl.

They locked the door behind them as they left using the a.n.a.log metal key, and she took a cursory look across the parking lot. No signs of pursuit, but there was always a chance. Kyra found the Marquis right away.

In contrast to the darkening sky, it gleamed pale blue like the sky at the highest alt.i.tudes, all delicacy. It cost a mint to fill the thing up these days, but she'd never considered selling it. Everything she loved had somehow become bound up in the metal.

"I grew up here," he said, gazing out over the shared balcony that ran the length of the motel.

He'd requested a second-floor room because he didn't trust people. At least here on the corner, they would hear someone coming up the stairs; there would be some warning before disaster struck. Rey had tried to insist that they should share a room-that he didn't like the feel of this place, but Kyra had stayed in enough fleabags to know this one was much like any other, no better, no worse.

"Here, as in Taos? Or here, as in New Mexico?"

"New Mexico," he answered. "Not far from here, actually."

"Did you stay in one place?"

A flicker of something pa.s.sed across his dark, sharp face. "More or less."

"That must have been . . ." She trailed off, not knowing what to call an experience that differed so vastly from her own.

Part of her wanted to say boring; another part thought comforting might apply.

CHAPTER 11.

As a kid, she'd thought her life was one big adventure. Most days, she still thought so. Dismissing profundity, Kyra stepped away from the flimsy, rusted railing and headed for the stairs. His tread followed immediately, giving her the ridiculous impression that he had her back-that she could rely on him.

"It was what it was," he said, as they reached the car. The look she'd noticed upstairs had winnowed down to something fierce and quiet and sad, like a t.i.tanium needle lodged deep.

Before she could rethink the impulse, she went to the pa.s.senger side and tossed him the keys. She told herself the offer didn't serve to cheer him up or ameliorate emotional baggage she wasn't equipped to deal with. Rey caught the jingle of metal, blessed with her genuine lucky rabbit's foot, looking astonished.

She muttered, "It just makes sense. You know where we're going and all."

"You're letting me drive?" As if he needed to hear it. "Your Marquis?"

"Yeah," she said softly. "Be gentle with her."

"As much as I know how to be." Rey laid his long fingers atop the roof, and she felt it on her skin. "Let's go."

Reyes knew he'd lost all perspective. For a man who had been accused, more than once, of lacking a heart, it was disastrous. The woman had given him the keys to her car, for G.o.d's sake, not the crown jewels. But as he drove, he couldn't help feel . . . something.

He didn't know what it was, exactly, because he'd never known anything quite like it before. Whatever it was, it made him keep stealing glances at her from his peripheral vision, just watching the way the wind blew her hair.

It wasn't too much farther now. The Marquis, being a st.u.r.dy car, would make it to the lookout point if he took care with it. And he intended to. Reyes felt strange and unsteady, as if masquerading as himself had weakened him in unantic.i.p.ated ways. He hadn't known how dangerous it would be, how thin the line between candor and truth.

The silence lasted until he parked the car. There was nothing but open s.p.a.ce and mountains for miles around, topped by a black canopy littered with stars glimmering like crushed ice. You couldn't find a sky like this over any city in the world.

"It's so peaceful," she said.

In the old days, if he'd ever brought a girl up here, if he'd ever had a car, he would've first lain with her on the hood and pointed out the constellations. At one point he'd wanted to be an astronomer. If that gambit went well, he'd have attempted to talk her into his backseat. He'd dreamed of that scenario more than once, wishing on stars he climbed to see. But neither cars, nor girls comprised a significant portion of his past, at least not until he was well out of his teens.

"You think Myrna would support us?" He tilted his head toward the hood.

Kyra smiled. "Are you kidding? This is a car built for love. Of course she will."

To his surprise, she dug into his pocket for the keys, and then went to the trunk. When she returned, she had an old quilt, the sort of thing that people packed in their emergency kits, along with bottled water, kitty litter for traction, and granola bars. Someone, probably the father she'd allegedly killed for his cut of the money, had cared enough to teach her to be prepared.

He no longer wanted to believe she'd done it, even though it complicated his life immeasurably. If he balked at this job, he would forfeit a pristine reputation. And Monroe wasn't making matters any easier. The last public record he could find for Kyra Marie Beckwith came from a free-clinic vaccination. She couldn't have been more than eight years old, either.

Oddly enough, it was run by the same corporation that administered the free medical program in the Wyoming town where he'd grown up. Reyes remembered that because he'd spent hours sitting with one of his father's women, waiting his turn amid crying children. He'd learned early on that crying didn't do any good.

The woman didn't have bank records, didn't have credit cards, so there was nothing to track. All he had to go on came from Serrano, who wanted the woman dead. But Kyra didn't seem like the kind who would turn on her flesh and blood. The few things she'd said about her father seemed to indicate fondness, and he had a pretty good built-in lie detector.

Could he stake everything he'd built on a feeling? Reyes had no ready answer for that. For now he could only steel himself and stay with her.

She spread the quilt over the hood and climbed up carefully, her back propped against the windshield. Kyra brought her knees up as if to ward off a chill, but he could read her body language. For some reason, she felt uncertain and exposed.

Not waiting for an invitation, he slid up beside her, leaving enough s.p.a.ce between them that she shouldn't feel crowded. But he'd read her wrong. Instead of inching away, she eased closer, as if she wanted to be in his arms. Or maybe he was projecting because he wanted her there. The movement carried her scent to him, more coconut. Reyes couldn't tell if it was body lotion or shampoo, but it made him think of slick, bare skin, every time he breathed her in.

"I used to hike up here when I was a kid," he told her quietly.

Self-preservation said he shouldn't share any more of himself with her-it was f.u.c.king dangerous-but his infallible instincts told him that the only way he'd win her trust was by giving of himself. He could get the job done this way, no doubt, but Reyes wondered what the cost would be.

"You must've lived in the middle of nowhere then." Her gaze swept the landscape, for what he didn't know, and was afraid to ask, for fear of what she might see. More clearly than he wanted, he could picture the way her eyes gleamed during the day, shining like sunlight through honey.

"Not as much as you might think. It was a ten-mile trek. I'd usually stay overnight if the weather was good."

"How old were you?" she demanded, visibly outraged. "Didn't anyone worry about you?"

G.o.d, he didn't want to answer. It gave her too much. But with her, it had to be a give-and-take, and she was too canny to be fooled by creative fiction.

"Thirteen. And not really. Not so much."

She reached for him then, compa.s.sion outweighing the caution he saw in the lines of her body. Her fingers touched his. "My dad left me alone at night sometimes. When he was looking for a game. I'd lock the door, put on the chain, and try to sleep."

Reyes remembered how, when he'd first caught up with her, she'd been sleeping in a pool of yellow light, a small isle against the dark. That was why she still slept with the lamp on. He knew it as surely as if she'd said it, and he knew a quiet burst of rage for the man who'd used her as an accomplice, not cared for her as a father was supposed to. If she'd killed him like Serrano claimed, then maybe he had it coming.

She saw something in his face, something that alarmed her. He couldn't even guess at what. And she hastened to add, "We had a secret knock for when he came home. A pa.s.sword. I was never in any real danger."

Unless there was a fire. Or someone came in through the window. He didn't say that aloud. Every little girl wanted to believe her daddy loved her, no matter how untrue, or how much of a son of a b.i.t.c.h the man might've been. He found himself glad that that old b.a.s.t.a.r.d Beckwith lay six feet down. He didn't say that aloud. Every little girl wanted to believe her daddy loved her, no matter how untrue, or how much of a son of a b.i.t.c.h the man might've been. He found himself glad that that old b.a.s.t.a.r.d Beckwith lay six feet down.

Instead of replying to that, he threaded his fingers through hers. Her flesh felt hot, and she had soft skin. It was a silly little intimacy that shouldn't have moved him, and yet it meant everything that she'd sit with him, hand in hand, beneath the sky of his boyhood.

"That's Lyra," he said, changing the subject. Reyes lifted their joined hands and traced the outline of the harp. "Do you see it?"

She narrowed her eyes. "I think so."

"And there's Sagittarius, the Archer." He continued to sky paint, finding each star in the constellation for her.

"Did you learn this in school?" she asked, eventually.

"Some. Most of it I got from books on my own."

Kyra kept her eyes fixed on the heavens. "I never went."

That startled the h.e.l.l out of him. "To school?"