Blood and Fire (McClouds & Friends #8)(50)

She rubbed her eyes. “Hey.”

He gave her a smile that would bend metal with its sheer charm load. “Water’s hot in the shower tank. You like steak?”

“Wow.” Her stomach rumbled. She hadn’t been able to afford anything with that much protein in it since D-day, and rarely enough before that, either. The rich scent made her dizzy. “Where did all this food come from?”

“Aaro got some groceries for us, in Bingen. I call it ten minutes to sit-down. Can you shower in that time?”

“I’ll try.” She got to her feet, took the battered terrycloth bathrobe he offered her, and closeted herself in the miniscule bathroom.

The shower was heaven. She stayed under until it turned tepid, then chilly, then glacial. It took that much scrubbing to get the makeup off. But afterward, the face in the mirror was her own. Not Mata Hari. Or the mascara-smeared hell-hag.

When she came out, the table was set for two and loaded with fragrant, steaming food. “Sit,” he said.

She was intensely conscious of her nudity under the damp terrycloth. “Shouldn’t I dress?”

“The room’s warm. And the food’s hot. And it’s just me.”

True enough. She sat down and dug in. The steak was pan seared, pink and juicy and melting, and heaped with caramelized onions. He’d done cheesy buttered noodles, some sort of long pasta with frilly edges, dripping and rich. A heap of peppery coleslaw. Slices of hothouse tomatoes. Crisp, warty sour pickles. Fresh sourdough bread to sop up drippings. Mmm. He kept refilling her plate. She kept eating.

“I’d offer you a beer, but it’s not a great idea,” he said. “It would take the starch out of you for the hike. So it’s water, for now.”

“That’s OK,” she said. “I don’t drink.”

“Oh?” He buttered a hunk of his bread. “Not ever, or not now?”

“Not ever.” She looked down, wishing she hadn’t said anything.

“Any reason for that?”

“Does there have to be?”

His shrug was elaborately casual. “You’re the one who was flapping it in front of my face.”

She sighed. It was relevant, she supposed, in a painful, oblique sort of way, so whatever. “My dad was an alcoholic, and a junkie.”

He took it in, his face impassive. “This would be the father who—”

“Yes. The father who was murdered six weeks ago, by those guys who attacked us, I assume. Or whatever organization hired them.”

“Ah.” He got up, rummaged on the shelves. He found a plastic box and knelt in front of her, pushing the robe open over her knees.

She shrank away. “What the hell are you doing?”

“Disinfecting the scrapes on your legs. While I do that, you talk.”

“I’ll do it myself! Just give me the stuff! I can take care of it!”

“Shhh.” He batted her hands away. “Let me.”

Lily stared down at the top of his dark head and fished around for a starting point. “Well, my name is Lily Parr, not Torrance,” she began. “I guess I’ll start when my dad fell apart. I was ten. Which would have made it 1993.”

His eyes flicked up when she mentioned the year that his mother had died. “Fell apart how?”

She clenched her teeth as he swabbed with the alcohol-soaked wad of cotton. “Like I said, he started drinking heavily. Then he started in on the opiates. Heroin, mostly, I think, although one white powder looks pretty much like another to me. Ouch, goddamnit, that hurts!”

“Hold still.” He leaned in with the tweezers. “There’s grit in here.”

She hissed and cursed as he tortured her with tweezers. He was unmoved, intent upon his task. “What work did he do?” he asked.

“He was a fertility specialist,” she said. “A researcher, in IVF technology. He got early retirement not long after his breakdown. He was barely fifty, but he got a pension. A good one, but not generous enough to fund a drug habit. I started swiping the checks before he saw them. I paid the bills so they wouldn’t turn off the lights, the gas. So we could eat. Not that he was that interested in food anymore.”

He nodded, frowning in concentration as he taped gauze over her knees. His eyes flicked up, waiting while she struggled for words.

It sounded so sad, and flat, when she laid the facts out. Howard’s string of suicide attempts. The decision to commit him to an institution. The search for the perfect clinic that would keep him alive. And then, that last, awful visit. Howard’s cryptic warning, and his message, about Magda Ranieri and her son. The mysterious thing that needed to be locked, whatever it might be. Miriam’s interruption.

Then the call from Dr. Stark, and Howard’s so-called suicide. And the guys waiting outside Nina’s apartment with knives. And that was it.

It wasn’t enough for him. She could feel that in the air. Strongly.

“I tried to research you, while I was on the run,” she told him. “I tried to find out more about the nurse, Miriam Vargas, too, but she seemed to check out. At least, I found records of her going to nursing school in Baltimore. I tried to find out more about Magda, but I got nowhere with that. Just statistics, the newspaper articles, he obit. The only next step was to talk to you. So, um. I made my way here.”