The silence was thick. Scout mumbled something about men with big guns and small dicks and Perez reddened.
Jack extracted them from the tense situation and they went outside. Nearly midnight and still warm, but the humid breeze off the Rio Grande felt good.
“Want to fly me out to San Diego?” he asked Scout.
“Naw, I have a date with Rina and the boys Wednesday morning.”
“I’ll be back by then.”
“Maybe, maybe not, but I don’t want to miss taking the boys to their first Major League ball game. Just take care of Carrie, okay?”
Jack had never named any of the planes he flew, though Carrie the Caravan was Scout’s pride and joy. To Jack, planes were simply transpo.
“Of course. Let me give you a ride home.”
Ethan-he’d dumped his first name in favor of his middle when he returned to the United States-didn’t think it had been a good idea to snatch Price’s dog tag, and he definitely didn’t think it had been smart to mail it to the FBI, but he kept his mouth shut. He didn’t want to upset Karin. He didn’t want her to leave him. She’d saved his life and he needed her.
Far back in his mind, Ethan knew she needed him as well-she wanted him to teach her all the tricks of his trade, his unusual aptitude for acupuncture. But that was certainly a modest exchange. He couldn’t have done any of this without her, and he’d be grateful for the rest of his life. The life he owed her.
“You okay?” she asked as he drove south.
“Fine, love.” He glanced in the rearview mirror. Clear.
“What are you thinking?”
“I don’t want you to get in trouble,” he said. “What if they trace the dog tags back to you? I can’t lose you.” His bottom lip trembled and he bit it hard enough to draw blood. He barely felt the puncture.
She leaned over and wiped the blood from his lip with her index finger. Out of the corner of his eye he watched her put her finger with his bright red blood into her mouth, then sucked her finger with her eyes closed, a half-smile on her lips.
He swallowed thickly and squirmed in his seat.
“They won’t trace it to me, or you, or anyone. It’s a game, Ethan. They’ll be chasing their tails. I wish I could watch.” She laughed, as if she were amused.
They’d gone out of their way to mail the package from Reno-not only far from their next destination, but it would point the police in the wrong direction. Because so far her plans had worked exactly as she’d promised, Ethan believed her. And he loved her.
They’d left Sacramento at three that morning, dumped the van, picked up another vehicle, hit Reno, then turned down Highway 395 and drove through the Owens Valley. The bleakness of the desert made him want to drive the truck off the edge of the next cliff. A few cars, a few trucks, and nothing. Highway 58 wasn’t much better, and now I-40 cutting through the Mojave Desert as the sun set low behind them made him want to scream and jab a needle in the eye of the bitch riding next to him.
Ethan hated sitting in the car for hours doing nothing. At least she let him drive. He’d have blown his brains out if he had to sit in the passenger seat for fifteen hours.
He’d almost killed himself many times. Karin had stopped him. He hated her for it. Loved her for it. It depended on what memory came back and where it hurt.
“You’re brooding,” she said.
“It wasn’t the same this time.”
“Price was a worthless bum.”
“I’m sorry I got carried away. I just wanted to try something different.”
“It worked beautifully,” she cooed.
“But he
She put her hand between his legs-close, but not quite touching him where he wanted.
“You didn’t make a mistake. You tried something new and he had a heart attack. Maybe he had a weak heart, maybe he was a drug addict, we don’t know. But think of what you discovered! When we’re done with everyone on the list, we should explore the possibilities of serious damage.”
“Nothing’s permanent.” Except memories.
“You don’t know that. Look at what happened to Price.”
“Like you said, he could have been a druggie or had high blood pressure or something.”
Ethan had been a guinea pig. Punctured and pained to perfect the techniques of his captors. He would be better than them. They hadn’t killed him-maybe they couldn’t with the tools they’d chosen-but they had made him want to die. Wouldn’t it be something if Ethan could slide in a couple of well-placed needles and cause a heart to stop? Had he done that with Price? Had he come up with something new? Better?
“I need to practice,” he said.
“You’ll have time. But first, we finish with the plan.”
She touched him there now; he was hard. “Just a couple hours and we can take care of this.”
He squirmed. He wanted her to suck him so hard it hurt. But he would wait.
They drove mostly in silence, though she was tormenting him with touches and kisses and whispers that kept him in a constant state of agitation. They arrived in Flagstaff as the sun disappeared. Here they would change cars again, rest, and tomorrow night take out another of the men who had destroyed Ethan: Frank Cardenas.
He shivered with anticipation. She thought it was about sex. Sure, sex had something to do with it. But more, he wanted to please her. To show her what he’d learned. He knew she enjoyed watching him poke the restrained men. He always asked if she wanted him to continue, and she always said yes. Keep it going as long as possible, until they pushed their victim to the breaking point.
The cabin they’d shared for the last six months was in the mountains above Flagstaff. He parked and got out, stretched, feeling free. The cabin was a large, spacious three-room A-frame with a loft. While he didn’t like being confined, it was okay as long as he could see out the windows.
Ethan turned to her, putting their bags inside the cabin. “Do you want-” he began, but her face had changed somehow …
“What?” he asked her.
“I’m excited about tomorrow.” She took his hands and put them on her breasts.
“You like watching me work.” It pleased him. He didn’t smile much, but now his lips turned up with a rare grin.
She nodded and licked her lips. He cleared his throat and squeezed her breasts again, rubbing her nipples hard with his thumbs. Karin was pretty, older than him, but that was okay. She dyed her hair so often he didn’t remember her natural color-maybe blond-but he liked it now, a reddish brown, long, making her look younger and sweet.
“It was fun, wasn’t it?”
She nodded again as he pushed her against the wall.
“I’m glad I figured out how to stop him from screaming,” he whispered.
“It was a neat trick. I didn’t know you could hit a point and stop the vocal cords from working.”
“It doesn’t work like that. But to scream, you need air.” He touched her neck, his finger trailing down her chest, across her nipples.
“But,” he continued, “if the pain is so unbearable you can’t draw in a deep breath, you can scarcely breathe, you can’t scream.”
“It helped,” she whispered. “We were practically in the open.”
That had excited her, too, that they’d been bold and almost reckless.
He leaned over and bit her ear, then sucked her lobe. He slid his scarred palm underneath her shirt, down the
