He stood, still holding her hand, and motioned with his head toward a cut stone path winding down to the beach. She nodded, and they started toward it and then she stopped. Acacia turned and faced Alex, as she often had over the last five days, and during the weeks since the end of California Voodoo. She looked as if she might be about to say something: 'Thank you,' perhaps, or 'I've changed,' or
… maybe something else. Alex couldn't guess. Apparently Acacia couldn't, either; she just broke eye contact and led Tony to the stairs and down to the beach, where they would walk together, talking, until long after dark.
'What do you think?' Millicent asked finally.
'I think that they'll be together as long as Acacia is frightened.'
'Of Bishop?'
He nodded.
'Should she be?'
'He's a pretty scaly guy,' he said, trying to be light about it. Despite the attempt, his mood darkened. He stretched his right hand out, examining the fingers. 'I still have trouble typing. Swimming today, my ribs felt full of broken china.'
'I'll bet you're glad you put breakaway glass on the patio.' She grinned. She could see that he was still locked in that memory-not a pleasant place to be. 'How long will it take to heal, Alex? Not your body. I mean inside. Where you feel beaten.'
'Millicent, you know I threw that fight.'
She sipped. 'Uh-huh.'
'I used Sun-tzu against him. 'It is inferior to destroy an army it is better to capture it.' We'll end up with the entire Ecuador connection.'
Millicent said nothing. He was annoyed with himself for rushing to fill the silence with more words.
'Mill, I planned it all. Between Vail and Lopez and Tony, we knew that he would have multiple copies. He went mountain climbing before the final assault. The bastard put one in my own apartment! By the time we found it, Tony and the tech boys had already cracked the cipher on the disk he left in the reactor. We put in our own version of the data. He had to come for it-MIMIC was all sewn up.'
'And?' She was watching him. She was listening to his words but paying attention to his expression. His ears burned.
'Anyone who tries to use the ScanNet data gets mousetrapped. After that, nobody will trust Bishop. Even if he recovers a genuine copy of the data, who'd buy it? They've lost everything. With any luck, they'll kill him.' The word 'kill' was spoken too flatly, with too much control, and Millicent knew.
'It hurts you, doesn't it?'
'Millie, for Christ sakes…'
'Naaah.' Her voice tautened. 'Bishop scared you, Alex. He was too smart, too fast, too strong. You had your little schoolboy turn at him, and he drop-kicked you through a plate-glass window-'
'I wore a cup-'
'Shut up!' Her intensity was shocking. She had turned away from him. Alex reached out and turned her face. A tear had formed in her right eye and she tried to blink it away. 'You listen to me, Alex. It's time you learned what everybody else knows.'
Alex felt a great void open within him, and he stood, face a mask. 'I'm not sure I want to hear this.'
Millicent locked glares with him, and before her sudden, unaccountable fierceness, he had no defence.
And he sat down.
'Bishop,' Millicent said, 'is the perfect loner. Trusts no one. Uses everyone, and everything. Life is a game, and the only rule is to win. And there's some part of you that envies him that, that total freedom. What you've never considered is the cost.'
'What cost?' he muttered.
'Love. Friends.' She took his hand. 'Family. Alex, you could have been Nigel Bishop. All you'd need is to live in constant fear. To see the whole world as a battleground. He beat you in the battles and you beat him in the war because you're stronger than he is.'
He looked at her quizzically. 'Stronger?'
'Why can't you see it? Don't you know how much courage it takes to care? To let other human beings in? Bishop is what he is because he has no options. You had me, and Tony, and Harmony, and even Vail, dammit. You had family. We care about each other. And together, we took him apart. Why do you think that you have to do it all yourself?'
'Because…' The next thought was stuck within him. Unspeakably anachronistic. And too damned real.
Millicent's eyes softened. 'Because that's what a 'man' does?' He couldn't look at her. 'Well, you're not a man. Look at me! You're not a unit-you're a human being. A 'man' is just part of what you are. Don't throw the rest away, like Bishop has, Alex. Don't throw the people who love you away. Let us in.'
He still didn't, couldn't, face her. Alex felt as if that void within him had suddenly widened. As if he were tumbling now, uncontrolled and uncontrollable.
A cold breeze blew in from under the dying sun, and he began to shake. 'I need a blanket,' he said lamely.
'Alex?' Her voice was low, almost a whisper. 'I watched you hurt yourself with Sharon, and with Acacia, and I think sometimes that you only open yourself when you know it won't work.'
The sun was lower now, and the orange of the clouds had deepened. More of them had clustered there, obscuring what little light remained in the day. 'Seems like that,' he said finally, almost to himself.
'Maybe I've done the same thing. And maybe that's why we've managed to avoid each other. I just wanted to say it's over, Alex. I can't sit back and watch anymore. I can't be your friend anymore-'
'Oop. Hello? Millie-'
'Not if you don't trust me enough to know that we're family! That if things don't work out between us we'll still be family. But if we never even try, it's a waste of your life, and mine, and I'm afraid that you'll go right out and find someone else to use you, Alex. Someone to make you close up even tighter.' She rested her hand on his. 'I won't hurt you, Alex,' she said. 'I'm your friend.'
'Millicent-'
'I'm not finished,' she said, but the anger and pain were gone. In its place was a mischievous grin, and eyes that sparkled with challenge. 'I've thought about this for a long time. And what I've decided is that I love you, and I intend to seduce you. Tonight, in that four-poster bed upstairs. I'm going to lock the door, and stuff a washcloth in your mouth to muffle your cries for mercy. Do you understand me?'
'Why-'
'Am I saying this? Because if I wait for you to say it, we'll both be talking through liquid nitrogen!'
Alex's head spun. She looked so small and fierce and determined. And beautiful. And afraid of what he might say, or do, next.
Shit.
'So, mister… what do you say?'
Alex Griffin sat up and wrapped his big arms around his knees and buried his face there, peeping out between them at the sunset. The clouds had cleared, and the sun was almost down. It was only a partial disk now, but it shone as brightly as it could, even at the end of the day. It painted the sea in copper, and the beach in gold, and for a moment the air seemed not so frigid, the day not so near the night.
Alex stood up. He took her face between his hands and kissed her long enough and hard enough that when he pulled back they were both a little dizzy.
'Well, it's certainly worth a try.'
'And if it doesn't work?'
He kissed her again, tasting salt and tequila. 'We'll still be family.'
The pink tip of her tongue darted out and wet the end of his nose. 'Damned straight!' Millicent giggled and jumped off the couch. He grabbed for her. Shrieking, she eluded him and dashed barefoot across the grass to the house.
Alex watched that tired old sun disappear and downed the last of his drink in one swallow. Fair's fair. Give her a head start, he thought. The end of a day meant the beginning of a night.
