The Chaos Kind (John Rain #11)(65)
She was too tired to spar with him. And what he’d said was too true. “Maybe.”
He smiled. “Tell you what. You want to make it up to me? I mean your difficultness and all that.”
“Maybe,” she said again.
“Lie down on the bed with me. And touch my face the way you do.”
“Yeah, we both know where that leads.”
“Past performance is no guarantee of future results.”
“But also hope springs eternal.”
He laughed. “Fair enough.”
She tried to think of what to say. What came out was “It’s okay. I want to, too.”
He looked at her, his expression so open it almost hurt. “You mean, touch my face?”
She shook her head. “Everything.”
“Well, everything could cover a lot of ground. I didn’t bring a Wonder Woman outfit or a golden lasso, but there might be a place open around here even at this hour.”
She laughed again. She’d never known anyone who made her laugh the way he did. She loved it, even though it also always made her sad.
“I just don’t know what it means,” she said.
“What what means?”
“Us . . . being together.”
“I don’t know, either.”
“Yeah, but what do you want it to mean?”
“Why don’t you let me worry about that?”
“I feel like I’m . . . I don’t know. Leading you on.”
“Please refer to my previous sentence.”
She laughed again, but she felt like he was deflecting. “You don’t feel that way?”
“No.”
“I know I . . . vacillate.”
“That’s fair.”
“It feels unfair.”
“You’ve never been unfair with me.”
She looked at him. “Why don’t you ever get frustrated with me?”
“I do. All the time. I just don’t show it.”
“What? Why not?”
“Because that wouldn’t be fair to you.”
“But see? Then I’m the one who’s being unfair.”
He shook his head. “No, you’re not. You’re just trying to figure things out. And who could blame you for that?”
“You really don’t?”
“No.”
“But what if I never do? Figure things out.”
“If you’re asking if I’m ready to quit you, the answer is no. Especially not immediately following your offer to do everything with me right here and now in the Silver Cloud Inn honeymoon suite.”
She laughed. Then she leaned in and kissed him. And for that moment, it really was lovely. Like a wave gently hitting the beach. Without any undertow at all.
After a moment, he broke the kiss. He looked at her and said, “I’ve been thinking.”
“Yeah?”
“You know, I don’t always have to be so gentle. I mean, you tend to bring that out in me, but we could try it the way it was that first time, at Saeng Chan Beach.”
She felt embarrassed talking about it. “I think . . . it might feel artificial.”
“What if I provoked you?”
She was surprised to find the thought excited her. “What if you did?”
“See, I’m doing it already. Putty in my hands.”
That excited her more. “Bullshit.”
She didn’t remember what he said next. It was eclipsed by what came after.
chapter
forty-eight
RAIN
Rain trained the Glock’s sights on center mass. “Keep your hands where I can see them,” he said. The tone was neither loud nor belligerent. Just an if/then equation: the if being failure to comply, the then being death an instant later.
The guy was so plainly surprised that for a moment he just stared at Rain, his mouth agape.
“Hands up,” Rain said, moving slowly in, his tone still deadly calm. “Palms forward. Fingers splayed. Anything else and you’re dead right there.”
The guy raised his hands. “What the hell is this?” he said. Loudly. Loudly enough to alert a partner.
Rain didn’t answer. The only reason he hadn’t dropped the guy yet was the hope that he could get close enough to crush his skull silently with the gun butt, rather than alerting whoever else might be around with gunfire.
Rain hugged the wall to his left and kept moving forward. If the guy was righthanded, which was statistically likely, this way he’d have a harder time deploying a weapon for an accurate shot. He flash-checked his right flank and kept the Glock sights on center mass.
The guy was ten feet away now. Point-blank.
Rain raised the gunsights to the guy’s face. “Make another sound,” he said softly, “and you’re done.”
But the guy must have reasoned that if Rain was concerned about sound in general, he’d be concerned about gunfire specifically. Maybe so concerned that he was bluffing. In an even louder voice, the guy called out, “Who are you? Why—”
He didn’t get to finish the question. Or even to learn that the bluff he’d meant to call was—oops—not a bluff at all. Rain pressed the trigger. The corridor echoed with a giant BAM! and a small hole appeared in the guy’s forehead. An expression of perfect, vacuous astonishment rippled across his face. He shuddered as though from an electric shock, fell back into the door behind him, and slid bonelessly to the floor.