Cursing under her breath, she knew she couldn't just leave him. "You know you could have a blood clot. You hit pretty hard."
"I'll be fine." He settled deeper into the blanket, and long lashes veiled his blue eyes, giving her some relief. "Go get your catch. I'm not going to a hospital, so it doesn't matter where we are or how long it takes us to get back to the harbor."
Rikki studied his face. He could take the boat while she was down searching for the nets, but it seemed silly not to just kill her and throw her overboard. She was very tempted to try to recover her catch. She couldn't afford the loss of the urchins or her gear. Selfish or not, it was how she made a living and the farm needed cash coming in.
"Take the keys with you if you're worried," he said, without opening his eyes.
"I can rig a motor," she said, "so I'm guessing you can as well."
He opened his eyes and looked straight into hers with that penetrating stare that shook her. Ocean blue, his eyes held no real emotion. None. Flat and as cold as the deepest sea. Yet they were brilliant, like two sapphires mesmerizing her. She shook herself. Or like a cobra. He was her catch, fair and square, no matter how difficult he was to handle. She'd been the one to pull him out of the sea--and that made him hers.
"Do whatever you feel comfortable doing, but truthfully, I'll need you to get me out of here. I don't have a clue where I am or which direction I would go to get back to the harbor."
She studied his face. He wasn't exactly lying, but he wasn't telling the truth. He had no doubt that he would find his way to shore--and neither did she. He was a resourceful man.
"Drink some more water. This won't take long," she said, making up her mind. She was going to take him at his word. If the boat started up, she might be able to "dance" the water right over the top of him and spill him right back into the sea.
Lev watched as she poured hot engine water inside her wet suit top and then stripped off her sweatshirt and pulled on her vest with a diver's immodesty. He couldn't help but think she didn't notice him as a man, more like a catch she'd pulled from the sea. A part of him was a little disgruntled over that, while another part wanted to smile. She was very focused once she decided on a course of action. She reached for her gear, hurriedly shrugging into her bailout tank.
He watched her get ready to dive through narrow, brooding eyes. He wanted to move, to put his hand in the water and feel the response to her when she went in, but he couldn't summon the energy. Instead, he watched her go in. Watched the water reach for her. Welcome her, as if it enveloped her and held her.
He held his breath as she disappeared beneath the shimmering surface. She looked peaceful, like part of the sea itself, not awkward like some divers he'd observed over the years. And the water poured over and around her, caressing her body . . .
He pulled himself up short. What the hell was he thinking? He was losing it. The continual rocking of the boat made him feel slightly nauseated, which he would have found mildly alarming if his brain wasn't quite so fuzzy. As it was, his queasiness was just another discomfort among so many. Mostly the cold bothered him. Even his insides were cold. Pain he could manage. He'd lived with pain as a child every damn day. He could walk on glass and keep going. But the cold . . .
He couldn't stop shivering. With her off the boat, he could relax, just for a few minutes--try to get oriented. Try to remember what the hell had happened to him and who wanted him dead this time. Survival mattered. He had a strong sense of self-preservation, and this unique woman with her solitary lifestyle could be his best chance. He needed to have a plan.
The sound of the water lapping at the boat was soothing. The Honda ran lightly in the background as it fed her air. Occasionally there was the cry of a gull overhead. He didn't look up. It was too much effort. This woman went from rage to calm in seconds. She was controlled. Had good instincts. She could see lies better than most. She had incredible eyes. His body jerked. Where the hell had that come from? Women were tools. That was what this one was. A tool. To be used. Like anything else handy.
He leaned his head back until he could rest a little more comfortably. Just this once, he wanted to disappear. Be someone else. Anyone. He wanted to be like all those people running around living their lives. What the hell was normal? He didn't even know. He solved problems. He killed people. He moved in and out of the shadows and never emerged into sunlight. That was his life and he'd always lived it without question. And why could he remember that when he didn't know which of the names or faces in his mind were really his? What the hell difference did it make that she had incredible eyes? And a very generous mouth.
He wiped his face and looked down at the amount of blood on his hand. Head wounds tended to bleed pretty badly. He should stitch it up, but he was too tired. His arms felt like lead. It was easier resting beneath the light high-tech silver survival blanket and thinking about--her. What was it about her that appealed to him? He'd slept with many beautiful women. Seduced them. Used them. Took the information essential to what he was working on, and then in some cases disposed of them if it was needed.
He wasn't capable of emotion. Emotion got in the way, and by the time he was twelve, he'd learned not to let himself feel anything for anyone. There were moments of weakness and this was one of those moments. It would pass. He was tired, hungry, cold, and had no idea what the hell had happened to him. His mind simply blanked when he tried to remember what he'd been working on. Who he'd been after. Who was after him.
His life was a game of cat and mouse. Survival was always the prize. If he didn't know what the hell was going on, he was already down. He needed the woman. She was a tool for survival. His wanting to stay with her had nothing to do with her eyes or mouth. Or her fiery temper. Her absolute passion. What would it be like to feel passion? To have someone with those eyes look at him and no one else? Look at him for no other reason than because she thought he was hers?
He pressed his fingertips to his temples and applied pressure. He must be really weak and sick to be thinking like this. There was no belonging. No home. No hers. There couldn't be for someone like him. He was a machine. He wasn't human. He'd lost his humanity nearly forty years earlier in a school where children were taught to kill. To serve. To be robots--no more than puppets. He frowned. What in the hell was going through his mind? One didn't question service, or who or what they were--but, he'd been programmed from his childhood. There was no deprogrammer for someone like him. Only a bullet in the head at the end of the day. Odd that he could remember details of his past yet not the why of it or what the hell had happened to him.
He'd tracked a preacher once, one who liked boys and often visited Thailand. His appetites were insatiable. Right before Lev had shot him, the man had told Lev that he had no soul. At the time he hadn't even thought about it. Why now? Why was he suddenly contemplating the truth of that? The woman had looked at him with her large, heavily lashed eyes, dark as midnight. Suspicious. But she'd looked at him. Into him. She saw him. And for one moment, while she'd looked at him--he had seen himself.
His heart thudded, and for the first time since he'd been a child, fear gripped him hard. She'd seen inside of him. No one could see him. He'd built a fortress, strong and powerful, surrounding that one small broken piece inside of him that he'd never been able to harden. She'd seen it--he was certain she had. His fist hit the side of the boat, hard. He had to kill her. He had no choice. She couldn't live, not if she knew he was vulnerable.
He forced air through his lungs. It would be easy. Cut her air line. Leave her down there. Take the boat and sink it somewhere. She'd vanish in the ocean like so many fishermen did. It was the smart thing to do--the logical thing. He didn't move. Not one muscle. He just crouched there, waiting for her to come back. Waiting to see her eyes again. And that was just about the stupidest thing he'd ever done in his life.
He thought he might have been unconscious for a short while. The boat creaked and rocked, and the motion would have been soothing if it hadn't been for
the nausea and the ever-present headache. His skull felt like it was about to explode. He was thirsty, but it was too much effort to lift the water to his mouth.
He sat there and tried to piece together his life. It came to him in images, jagged pictures, all violent. Scraps of boyhood memories haunted him with blood and pain. Bullets slammed into his body, piercing flesh and bone, shattering his insides. He felt the blade of a knife, stabbing at him over and over, cutting deep. Something pounded the soles of his feet. Pain engulfed his body. He accepted it. He could stand while in pain. Fight while in pain. Perform while in pain. He could withhold information, lock it away in a part of his mind even he couldn't access.
Discipline. The word repeated itself over and over in his head. He murmured it like a talisman to hold on to. Discipline.
"Yes," a voice agreed softly. "Discipline is important."
The voice was soft. Feminine. Too young. He shook his head to clear it. So many of them died and he couldn't stop it. Like a flood.
"Shh," he cautioned. "Don't make a sound, no matter how much it hurts. You can live with the pain. They'll just hurt you more if you make a sound."
"I won't. Don't worry. I won't make any noise."
A cool hand touched his forehead and he caught the wrist, pinning it down. His eyes flying open. He didn't like anyone touching him. The face in front of him wavered--he couldn't center on it. He tightened his grip, not understanding what was happening to him. It was difficult to see, but eventually, through all the haze, he made out a pair of heavily fringed eyes looking back at him. His world narrowed to that intense gaze. Black as night, so black the eyes were nearly purple. Liquid, like the sea on a stormy night. A man could drown there if he let himself. His breath hissed out. "Sex is a tool. Nothing more."
"It's all right. It's going to be all right."
He shook his head. "I can't save you if you won't listen to me."
"It's all right. I'll get you out of this."
Her choice of words puzzled him. He was the one to get her out. But he'd failed. He'd failed them all. How could she know what needed to be done when he didn't know? She didn't try to fight his hold on her, rather she stayed very still, almost as if she knew any movement might set off his instincts--and none of his instincts were good.
Discipline mattered. Pushing the shattering pain away, he forced his brain to function. His thumb stroked back and forth over the inside of her palm. She'd removed her mittens and he was touching bare skin. The center of her palm drew his attention until he pressed the pads of his fingers there, tracing two small circles over and over, as if he could etch them into her skin.
"They're missing," he muttered, his eyebrows drawing together in a frown. "The symbols. They should be right here."
"You've got a concussion," she explained. "You need to be in a hospital."
He closed his fingers around her hand, holding tightly. "They'll kill me. If you take me there, they'll find me and they'll kill me."
"Don't worry. I'm not going to let anyone kill you."
He had no way of telling her he was her enemy. He couldn't form the words. And that told him he really wasn't thinking clearly at all. Everyone was either his enemy or a tool. There were no friends in his business. He just needed a safe place to rest, to figure out what was going on.
"I'll take you somewhere safe."
Her voice was soft. Melodious. A fantasy. He knew a hallucination when he was in one. There were no beautiful eyes promising him a sanctuary, looking at him as if they saw inside of him and past every shield, stripping him down until he was vulnerable. If someone really saw him, they'd kill him and throw his body overboard, not fight to save him--and if they didn't manage his death, he'd have to kill them to protect that vulnerable part of himself.
"You're in danger." He tried to warn her. If she was real and she was looking at him like that, then for once in his life, he had to take the job personally. Just this once. For those eyes.
What the hell? Was she stripping off her clothes? Her wet suit? No one actually hung up their wet suit, did they? She used a bucket of fresh water to rinse off the salt water and wiped herself down without embarrassment, as if he wasn't really there watching the towel glide over her body before she pulled up her jeans and half buttoned a shirt. There were scars on her legs and feet; he was certain of it. He'd mapped out her body in his head. He was mesmerized by the shape of her, the look of her soft skin. So thin but still complete.
All the while she'd dressed, her movements were quick and efficient--there were no flirty moves or hints of seduction, almost as if she thought herself alone, although those black, black eyes bored right through him. She had no adornments, no piercings, not even in her ears, but she did have a tattoo flowing down one hip. Tears? Water droplets? She'd kept it away from him and that only intrigued him more. He had a mad desire to lick those shimmering drops from her skin. The deck beneath him vibrated. The boat rocked more.
"Stay away from the nets. Those spines aren't poisonous, but they can puncture you and break off in your skin. I had surgery after one went through my hand. They'll go through a car tire and cause flats. When I close my eyes at night, sometimes I see them everywhere and I can't get away from them, like they're hunting me. They can be bad news. I've got them away from you, but don't move around."
He wanted to laugh at the warning. He should be afraid of sea urchins? That really was laughable. He was so far into the hallucination, it was insane. Sea urchins? Spines? Where the hell was he? A theme park? He felt along his thigh and found the reassuring presence of his knife. A pro would have searched him and found multiple weapons. She hadn't touched him, other than to pound on his chest and get his heart working again.
What was real? What was in his mind? His skull squeezed down on his brain and little explosions went off so that he grabbed his head and just held it. The boat threw him around a little, as if they were speeding through the water, but she left him alone. He needed that space to gather his defenses and come up with a plan of action. Every movement of the boat was agony, but he was used to pain and it steadied him. He used it to concentrate, to bring his splintered mind back under his control.
First thing, assess his situation. Basically he was fucked. He had multiple identities, but he had no idea which ones were safe to use or which was real. He couldn't remember how to get access to money or weapons. He wasn't certain what he had with him. He knew he was in danger, but from whom or what, he had no idea. He was in enemy territory, but there was no clue as to how he'd gotten there or what his mission was. He had no idea who he was supposed to report to. If his head wasn't hurting so damned bad, he'd smash it against the wall out of sheer frustration.
He could only glimpse pieces of his past. Fragments of violence, of running, of danger. He didn't have a family. Nothing soft in his life. Nothing vulnerable. He had no friends. No one he trusted. What the hell kind of life did he live anyway?
"Nothing makes sense," he murmured aloud. "She doesn't make sense."
3
"I have to get you to my truck and then come back and take the catch to the processing dock. Someone will have seen me coming in, so we have to hurry."
The woman bent over him, trying to slip an arm around his back. Lev slapped her arm away and looked her steadily in the eye, wanting her to know he meant business. "If this is a trap, I'll kill you."
"I know, tough guy," she responded.
There was something wrong with her answer--with her voice--with that steady gaze. She didn't fear him. Everyone feared him. They looked at him and saw the killer. She reached for him again and he blocked her arm. Exasperation crossed her face. Not anger or fear, but the exasperation one might feel toward an unruly child. She rubbed her forearm.
"Listen to me, Lev." She pronounced his name wrong, but he liked the way it rolled off her tongue. "We're about to have company. I'm trying to get your sorry ass into the truck and out of sight before that happens. Cooperate with me, or stay here and let whoever is hunting you
shoot you."
He stared into those black, black eyes. Soft and liquid and stunningly beautiful. Where the hell had she come from? She was like a sea nymph, rising out of the ocean to drag him from a watery grave. He shook his head at the pure nonsense. He didn't read fairy tales and he sure as hell didn't believe in them. She sure as hell didn't talk like the princesses in the books either.
He nodded his head but waved her to his left side, leaving his right hand free. He was ambidextrous--he could kill with equal precision from either side--but he was weak and he wasn't taking chances. She wrapped her arm around him and surprisingly, considering how thin she was, the woman was strong.
His legs were pure rubber, but he forced them to move. One foot in front of the other. He could hear her breathing with the effort of taking his considerable weight. She barely came up to his shoulder. It made him feel like less than a man, leaning on her that way. He hated it, hated the idea of being so helpless that he had no choice. He muttered under his breath.
"Are you swearing at me in Russian?" She looked up at him as she helped position him near the dock. "Put your hands on the gunwale and for God's sake, don't fall in. I'll get off and help you onto the dock."
He thought he'd been swearing silently, not out loud. That only served to remind him he was very far gone. He wasn't grounded enough in reality to trust himself. He gripped the gunwale, allowing his gaze to sweep the harbor. It was surprisingly empty. He knew immediately that he hadn't been here before. He remembered places, like maps laid out in his head. He could actually "see" grid marks, and once he'd been somewhere, the map was indelibly printed in his mind. Of course, he couldn't trust his mind right now. He wasn't even absolutely certain who he was--which of those numerous identities was really his--or what he was supposed to be doing.
The woman stepped easily onto the dock and reached for him. There was determination on her face, and God help him . . . compassion. What the hell was he? A lost puppy? He kept his head down, although he didn't see anyone close or paying attention. She walked him to an older model truck kept, like her boat, in great condition. He'd bet if he raised the hood, the engine would be gleaming and polished.