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But although they had moved around the huge room in a kind of hyperkinetic dance, Dread shouting questions at her as he made himself coffee and banged in and out of the shower, her timing was bad: at that moment he seemed completely uninterested in her, at least sexually, sharing the joy of her success and his own upbeat mood, but only as her collaborator.
He had been pleased, though, and that was certainly something. For the first time since she had come to Sydney she had made her value unmistakable. He had told her as he stood with his black hair lank and gleaming from the shower, his robe carelessly open down to his tight stomach muscles, that Dulcie's work would give him the last tools he needed for his big strike.
She paused, absently contemplating the scatter of small plastic parts now lying on the discount-store rug beside The bed. What was his big strike, anyway? He seemed to have gained control of his employer's VR network, which was certainly impressive, and might even be in and of itself enough to make him wealthy, although it was hard to imagine quite how that would work. Would he continue the Grail Project, selling the prospect of immortality to wealthy people, but with himself taking the tolls instead of Felix Jongleur? Or, more likely, was he pla
Dulcie took the tube from the curling iron and screwed it into the case of the travel clock, working slowly through the unfamiliar design. She almost hadn't brought a gun with her—the dreams about Cartagena were still strong—but the ingrained habits of a professional woman, especially in her particular profession, were hard to shake. The gun she had used on the gearhead in Colombia had never left that country, of course: Dread had volunteered to dispose of it for her, but she had read and watched enough thrillers to know she wasn't going to give anyone incriminating evidence against herself. She had disassembled it, wiped it as forensically clean as she could with nail-polish remover, and dropped the pieces in a dozen different trash cans across downtown Cartagena.
So you wouldn't trust him not to blackmail you with a murder weapon, but you'd sleep with him? Interesting selection process, Anwin.
It was so hard to figure out how she felt. He was mercurial, of course, never the same from moment to moment, but wasn't that what she wanted? She had discovered a long time ago that advertising copywriters from Long Island and stockbrokers thrilled to be under warranty on their first armored Benz didn't make her heart go pitty-pat.
Face it, Anwin. You do like bad boys.
And even more, she liked knowing that she herself was at least as wicked, just more discreet. But when you moved out to the fringe neighborhoods of sex, more than the scenery changed. You got . . . well, a weirder selection.
Jesus, Dulcie, so you have a fling with him and it doesn't work out. So you go back to New York and spend a couple of days drinking and watching netsoaps and feeling sorry for yourself—worse things could happen. Do you really think he's long-term material anyway?
She had to admit that she couldn't imagine herself living in the same city with the guy for any stretch of time, let alone picking out curtains together. But was that so bad? He excited her. She thought about him all the time, alternating between fascination and, occasionally, something much stronger and more dangerous than irritation or dislike, something closer to hatred and fear.
So what? He's what you want—a bad one. He's just badder than most, and that scares you. But you can't walk the high wire and still use a net or there's no point in the high wire at all, is there? So his social skills are a little alien. The guy's an international criminal. At least he isn't boring.
Her hands had been moving reflexively, but it didn't matter: despite the differences from model to model, once you'd put together a few of these plastic stealth guns you could pretty much do it in your sleep. She got up off her knees and sat on the bed, shaking ceramic bullets out of a vitamin bottle and slotting them into the magazine. Click, click, click . . . like little babies, octuplets, being packed into a shared cradle. Babies, guns, virtual worlds, old men pretending to be Egyptian gods—her brain, she reflected, was definitely scrambled.
You need a vacation, Anwin. A long one.
She considered for a moment, then walked back to the main room of the loft. The loud argument outside was over; a peek through the window showed the alley was empty. She put the gun in the middle shelf of the coffee cabinet, under some napkins.
Or maybe I need something exciting to happen. Something big.
Christabel stood holding the glass in one hand. Her other hand was on the faucet but she didn't dare turn it on, even though she was so thirsty she was about to cry. She was angry at herself for being thirsty, angry at herself for getting out of bed to get a drink of water. Now she had to stand like a scared mouse in the dark bathroom and hear her mother and father having an argument in the next room.
". . . It's gone far enough, Mike. I can't make you come back with me, but I'm certainly not going to stay here with Christabel, put her in danger, while all this is going on. We'll be perfectly safe at my mother's."
"Jesus H. Christ, Kay!" Daddy's voice was so loud and full of hurt that Christabel almost dropped the glass to smash on the hard bathroom floor. "Haven't you been paying attention to what's going on here?"
"I certainly have. And anyone with an inch of sense would know it's no place for a little girl. Mike, you let someone point a gun at her! At our daughter!"
For a long moment no one said anything. Christabel, who had been about to set the glass down so her arm would stop aching, stayed just where she was, like she was in a terrible game of Freeze Tag.
Her daddy's voice, when it came, was quiet and scary. She had never heard him sound mad in quite that way before—it made her want to run away. "That's about the worst thing you've ever said to me, you know? Do you think I haven't had nightmares about that every night? I didn't take her in to meet Ramsey. You let her go off to find a bathroom by herself. What was I supposed to do?"
"I'm sorry. It was an unfair thing to say." Her mommy was still mad, too. "But I'm terrified, Mike. I'm . . . there isn't even a word for how I feel. I just want to take my little girl and get out of here, and I'm going to. I'm taking the boy, too. Just because he's poor doesn't mean he's any less of a child and doesn't deserve protecting."
"Kaylene, will you listen to me? If I thought there was anywhere safer for you to be, I'd be the first one to send you both there—for God's sake, you have to believe that! But I'm only here right now because Yacoubian thought he could get away with using some of the ordinary base perso
"This is supposed to make me feel better?"
"No! But however much of Sellars' story is true, I can tell you this—the way they took me, that whole thing the general was up to, it stank. There was nothing regulation about that at all—it was a kidnapping. Ron and Ramsey saved my life, just by being there."
"So?"
"So what if these people come looking for me again? Without bothering with the appearances of military law, this time—at night, maybe, disguised as burglars. Don't you think my wife's mother's place is somewhere they might look? And if I'm not there, don't you think that they might figure you and Christabel would make useful hostages? These aren't Boy Scouts. What's your mom going to do, sic the cat on them? Call that goddamn mobile home park committee she's always sending after the kids on skim-boards?"