Surviving Ice (Burying Water, #4)(78)

“Half-asleep and naked,” she points out.

Just the thought of Ivy naked stirs my blood. Yesterday at the house, having to stop partway through was torture for me. By the looks she cast my way all afternoon, I left her just as frustrated. And then I fell asleep the moment we got here.

I reach under the bedsheet to find nothing but her warm flesh beneath. She rolls onto her back, letting the sheet fall away.

To entice me, I’m sure.

It works.



Ivy peers up at me through hazy, satisfied eyes. “I still can’t believe you slept that long. You must have been a shitty SEAL.”

“The worst.” I place a kiss on her forehead, and another one on the tip of her nose. “I’m going to duck out now.”

“Now? It’s five in the morning.”

“Do me a favor and stay put. I’ll call you.” When she doesn’t agree, I press. “I mean it, Ivy.”

“Fine,” she grumbles, rolling away from me, curling into her sheet.



The doorbell makes a low buzzing sound when I press the button. I wait, and a few minutes later I hear the footfalls coming from the other side. Whoever it is, they walk on their heels.

The door to the small pink house flies open and a disheveled woman appears, midway through pulling a short pink silk robe over her rumpled boxers and a white tank top—no bra, her small tits sagging in different directions. A waft of incense floats out the door with her movements.

I guess eight-thirty in the morning is a little early to be paying house calls. “Hi, is Dylan around?” I ask.

She looks me up and down, tucking her yellow-blond hair behind an ear and then folding her arms self-consciously over her chest. “Who are you?”

“My name’s John. I was in Afghanistan with him.” I know enough about the Marine Corps to get by. I just hope she doesn’t know enough to ask too many questions.

“How’d you get this address?” she asks, her eyes pinched with suspicion.

This must be the cheating girlfriend that Dylan was talking about in the video. She’s not particularly friendly, but that could just be the situation. Either way, she may have useful information about her ex. “Dylan gave it to me awhile back. Told me to stop by when I was in town again. I tried emailing him but never got an answer, so I figured I’d just surprise him.” I have no idea how long Royce was living here, but thanks to Bentley’s recon, I do know that he wasn’t living here when he died.

“I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but Dylan was shot and killed a couple weeks ago.” Her voice wobbles. Bad breakup or not, she’s obviously upset by it.

I slide my glasses off because that’s the appropriate thing to do, though I’d rather keep my eyes hidden. “Seriously?” Luckily I can pull off a compelling cool, shocked reaction very easily. “What happened?”

She gives me the basic rundown—nothing that anyone who read the newspaper article wouldn’t know about.

“Man, I’m just so . . . this is crazy.”

“I know, right?” She swallows, blinks back the glossiness in her eyes. “I mean . . . we actually broke up a few weeks before that and then this happens. Shocking, isn’t it?”

“Yeah. I hadn’t talked to him in at least five months. Maybe longer. He was still over in Kabul with Alliance.”

“Oh.” She sneers. “Those *s. They didn’t even send flowers to his funeral. I know he wasn’t working for them anymore, but—”

“He wasn’t?”

She shakes her head. “They fired him.”

“They fired him? He’s earned a damn Medal of Honor! Why the hell would they do that?”

She shrugs. “Dylan changed a lot after he started working for those guys. You know how he was.” She waves a hand my way. “He used to laugh and clown around. He was so happy and helpful. Just a genuinely good guy. But after he went back with them . . . he wasn’t the same guy anymore. He was angry. He started doing drugs. Something there changed him.”

I wish she had told me something different. That he was an abusive drunk, that he had always been a dick. Something that might suggest he was no better than Mario when it came to those poor girls, that he deserved the bullet.

“This is awful news.”

“I know. I’m sorry to be the one to break it to you.”

I pause. “I’d love to go see his mother and offer her my condolences. Would you happen to have her address?”

She studies my face—I twitch against the urge to reach up and touch my jaw; I shaved the beard off this morning, and it feels strange to be clean shaven after so many years under shadow. But if I’m going to be showing my face around San Francisco, digging for information, I need to make a small effort to camouflage my usual self.

A small smile touches her pale lips. She’s pretty enough, in a boring, average way. Not an exotic Ivy way. “Sure. Hold on a sec.” She disappears, leaving the door open a crack. I could slip in there now, end her life and stroll out, no one the wiser. It never ceases to amaze me how easily people trust strangers, how many simple mistakes they make that allow the wrong person into their homes, into their lives. Even Ivy, as street smart and suspicious as she is, has allowed me into her bed.

That’s not to say she’s oblivious, that she isn’t quietly wondering about me.