turned back, his eyes full of reluctant sympathy. “Look at it this way. The sooner we wrap this thing up, the sooner you can settle down and have ten kids with her.”
“Fuck off, McCloud.” The words popped out, an automatic reflex.
For the first time, he wondered why he reacted like that.
Connor nodded as if Seth had said good-bye, or later, dude, or have a nice night. “Take it easy,” he said. “Keep in touch.”
Seth turned back to his preparations, but the image Connor had put in his head quivered like a freshly shot arrow in a wooden post.
He had never contemplated fathering a child. He was a textbook example of a guy who would make a rotten father. He was rude and crude and arrogant, he had a mean streak ten miles long, his moral development was questionable, to put it mildly, and he lacked basic social skills. Other than crusty, irascible old man Hank, he had no models for fatherhood Except for Mitch, of course. That said it all.
As for the things he was good at, well, the list was short and telling. Spying. Stealing. Fighting. Sex. Kicking ass. Making money.
Not the best skills for a babbling baby to learn at its daddy's knee.
He'd grown up fully aware that his life bore no resemblance to what he saw on TV sitcoms and commercials for life insurance and breakfast cereal. Cynical little bastard that he was, it hadn't taken long for him to start suspecting that TV's perfect normal world didn't really exist anyway. He was comfortable with his own dark, gothic underworld. He knew its rules, its pitfalls. He didn't pine after fairy tales of marriage and family and cozy domestic bliss.
Oh, he kept it together, more or less. He was registered to vote, he had served his country in the armed forces, he paid his taxes, they had his picture down at the DMV But his public persona was a means to an end. Hank and Jesse had been his points of reference, ambassadors to the world of normal. Without them, he was lost in space. So far off the grid, he didn't even appear on the screen.
He'd gotten so good at shoving thoughts and feelings away. Now look at him. Fantasizing about Raine, pregnant. Holding his baby in her arms. The feelings that image provoked were so strong, they terrified him. Fear, for how unspeakably vulnerable that would make him. Anger, because anger always followed on the heels of fear. Anger of the ugly, gut-wrenching, teeth-gnashing variety.
Anger and fear were a hell of a recipe for fatherhood Better if he stuck to kicking ass and making money. He'd inflict less damage on the world that way. He forced himself to concentrate. What was he doing? Gathering the hardware to take to Templeton Street. Right Revenge and ruin. Now there was something he could wrap his mind around. There he was on solid ground. Stick to what you know, the experts said. He threw his bag into the Chevy and drove through the streets, trying not to think about Raine or Jesse.
He needed to think about ruin and revenge. Cold, careful and methodical. Novak wanted Raine. Seth wanted Novak. The formula was simple. She was bait Once he'd killed Novak, he would be free to take out Lazar, and that would be the end of the matter, unless some tight-ass tried to prosecute him for it. In which case he would fade discreetly out of sight and live the rest of what would pass for his life outside the bounds of respectable society. The prospect held few terrors for him. He'd spent half of his life there anyway. The rules weren't all that different. He had several alternate identities already set up and waiting for him: passports, credit histories, the lot. He had money socked away in out of the way places, and when it ran out, no problem. There was plenty of lucrative work in the underworld for a man of his skills.
But he couldn't take a woman with him there. At least not a certain type of woman. Keeping a woman was definitely an on-the-grid proposition. Women liked family reunions, Christmas cards. Babies.
It occurred to him that he hadn't been such a terrible brother to Jesse. Maybe he wasn't the type to remember birthdays, but he'd always been there when the chips were down, ready to kick ass.
God. What was he thinking? A guy didn't qualify for domestic bliss because he could kick ass. Any thug on the street could kick ass.
No, there was some other, far more mysterious set of credentials.
The conclusion he came to as he parked in front of Raine's house was that the mysterious list of credentials probably did not include spying on a woman, or bugging her apartment, or planting transmitters in her stuff, or deliberately not telling her that she was the chosen prey of a sadistic arch-villain. It probably centered more on tedious, inconvenient crap like following rules, respecting boundaries, telling the truth like a good little Boy Scout.
Too bad. The truth was too dangerous to tell. So much for his newfound moral scruples and his attack of conscience. He smiled grimly as he inserted the pick gun into her lock. He was cured. Hallelujah-He stole into the dark house and wandered through it. She had left no visible trace of herself in the place, just a bright, humming awareness of her presence. Her refrigerator was empty, cupboards bare. It was the first time he had been inside since she'd been living mere. He smelled her everywhere—whispers of her soap, her lotion, her own sweet, ineffable smell. He sank to his knees by her bed and buried his face in her pillow, aroused to the point of pain.
He logged onto his computer and deactivated all the wall sensors and vidcams in the house's interior. He needed total privacy for what was going to happen in that room tonight. No witnesses, no records.
The smart thing to do now would be to go out and sit in his car until she got home, and then ring the doorbell. Ding-dong, lah-di-dah. Good evening, don't you look lovely tonight. Mr. Civilized, faking social skills. Another lie, on top of all his other deceptions.
Fuck it. Why pretend? She was on to him, anyway. She knew what kind of man he was, ever since he'd taken her to bed. And he liked it that she knew. Twisted and dangerous though that was, he liked it that at least one person on earth had a clue who he was inside.
He settled into the chair and pulled up the vehicle beacon display. The Stone Island boat was finally heading towards Severin Bay. He pulled up the ferry schedule, calculated the length of a ferry ride, then the cab ride. Then he was going to find exactly what part she was playing in this game. He'd never fucked information out of a woman either, but hey, like Connor said—there was a first time for everything.
Chapter 12
Maybe she could keep down chicken soup, if she was lucky, and some stale crackers.
Raine leaned back against the seat of the cab, exhausted. Her body was beginning to protest going so long without food, but a mental inventory of her larder was not inspiring. She didn't have the energy to contemplate shopping, or cooking, or a restaurant. Even the idea of sorting through a pile of take-out menus seemed too much to face.
She had to nurture herself better. She couldn't run on nerves alone. Each day was getting crazier than the last. The loony bin and the padded cell lay at the end of that road.
She wandered through the house once she got home, throwing off her coat and kicking off her shoes as she went. She didn't even bother to flip on the lights. The brief attack of hunger was already passing, and now she felt too tired to eat. She headed for the bedroom. First a shower, to warm her up, then her floppy fleece pajamas, and then—
“Where
She leaped back from the door, cowering against the wall of the corridor. Her heart thudded against her ribs. The eerie blue glow of a laptop screen seeped through the bedroom door.
Seth, of course. Who else. She reached in the door and flipped on the hanging lamp.
The wingback chair he was slouched in looked too fussy and small for his long body. He was all in black like the cat burglar that he was; black jeans, a black sweatshirt, his thick scrub brush of black hair sticking every which way, like he'd been running his hands through it all day. His eyes were shadowed with exhaustion, but they blazed at her with unnerving intensity.
She shook so violently she had to clutch the doorjamb to stay upright. “You scared me practically to death!”
He made a few keystrokes and snapped the laptop shut. He slid it into the bag and glared at her. Not
