Skin Game

CHAPTER 5

Kyra had crossed the state line into Texas awhile back.

Now she just needed to decide where she was going to stop and how long she’d stay. She’d been running ever since she left Vegas, having the uneasy feeling if she lingered in one place too long, they’d catch up with her. She had to assume Serrano had people looking for her. God, if only she could’ve seen the look on his face.

Laughter overwhelmed her, almost drowning out the sound of the wind rushing through the car. If she had any sense, she’d be making arrangements to get out of the country, but she had no idea how to smuggle a large sum of money past customs. Unfortunately, the kind of people who might help her seemed equally likely to kill her and take the cash.

Plus, she didn’t want to go anywhere she couldn’t drive. She just wasn’t leaving the Marquis, so that limited her choices. Canada might be an option, if she could get across the border with the money, but they’d tightened security lately, and she didn’t want to wind up in jail. The same went for Mexico, and she’d have a language barrier to overcome there. No, Canada looked like the best option. She just needed to wait for Mia to get back—and stay free until she did.

She tapped her fingers against the steering wheel, gazing out over the plains. No help for it. Her shoulders were burning, and her ass was sore. She needed to rest, maybe take a couple days off and have a little fun. In every town, there were always idiots who could use some separation from their money. Sure, people would say she had no reason to work anymore, but that would be like telling a composer to stop writing music, just because he’d earned enough doing it. Some things you did for love.

Making a split-second decision, she yanked the car to the right, taking the exit. She followed the sign pointing toward Mount Silver. It looked to be no more than a tiny dot, several miles off the highway, but they’d have a cheap motel at the very least. Places like this always did. In the morning, she’d take a look around and consider her options.

Sure enough, she found a place on the outskirts of town called the Sleep E-Z. It was a concrete block U-shaped building that looked as if it had been last updated in 1957, and a series of motion-detecting lights flickered to life as she parked beside the office, illuminating an unholy collection of lawn gnomes. After climbing out of her car, Kyra stretched to pop the kinks out of her shoulders and back.

There was no restaurant attached to the property, but she had some ramen noodles in the trunk. With any luck, there would be a coffeemaker in the room. When she got to the office door, she found it locked, but there was a bell for after-hours service. It took almost five minutes, but eventually a man wearing low-slung tan pants and a dingy wifebeater came shuffling out through a curtained area in the back. He surveyed her suspiciously through the door and Kyra raised both hands to show she wasn’t armed.

“I need a room,” she said through the safety glass. “Do you have any vacancies?”

That was a ridiculous question. There were only two other cars in the lot, and one of them probably belonged to him. Still, it didn’t hurt to be polite, not when he looked so grumpy about being woken up.

“Yeah,” he grunted. “Just a sec.”

She heard the sound of about ten locks being disengaged. What the hell did he expect to happen out here in the middle of nowhere? But maybe this was a high-crime route, based on factors she didn’t know about.

With a smile, she stepped into the office, which smelled of burned coffee and stale sweat. The manager or owner—whatever he was—didn’t speak as he set out the guest registry. The nicer hotels would demand a credit card and a picture ID, which is why she generally wound up in places like this. She wrote Cassie Marvel, one of her favorite aliases in the line below the last guest, whose scrawl was illegible.

“Forty-five bucks. Cash,” the guy told her, as if he suspected she might try to pay in food stamps or bingo tickets.

Kyra laid out the money in small, crumpled bills. That seemed to relieve his mind somewhat and he plunked an old-fashioned metal key down on the counter. “You’re in 117. No parties, no unregistered guests. Basic cable is free. Check-out is at noon. You’re not out of there at 12:01, you pay for another night.”

“Got it.” She nodded and snagged the key. “Thanks.”

She left the building and hopped back in the Marquis, pulling it around the building to the corner of the U nearest her room. The exterior lights seemed too few and far between. The dark was more profound out here, broken only by the stream of her headlights. Once she turned them off, she couldn’t see, and that made her uneasy.

For a moment, she sat listening to the engine tick over. Then she told herself she was being stupid. Nobody knew where she was. Hell, she couldn’t even pinpoint the town without half an hour and a map.

Before getting out, she locked the other doors, and then clicked the lock button on the driver’s side. Then she grabbed the keys and her bag from the backseat. Try as she might, Kyra couldn’t dispel the foreboding as she slid out of the car. Her fevered imagination conjured footsteps crunching across the parking lot, even though she didn’t see anyone. Her heart was pounding like a jackhammer by the time she got in the door.

For a long moment, she leaned up against it, eyes closed. It was a thin barrier between her and imagined danger, but it helped a little. She turned and engaged both the bolt and the chain. It was a wholly irrational response to the dark, but she’d been afraid of it ever since she was a kid.

Normal people grew out of it, but normal people didn’t deal with a dad who’d left her on her own more nights than she could tally. He meant well, and most times, he did come home with breakfast money from whatever game he’d gotten into. Kyra understood what kind of man he was, not the sort who could work a day job, and she’d loved him fiercely. But she’d always gone to sleep with the lights on. The worst time she could remember was a bad storm in Pensacola, when the power went off. She’d been nine.

Thunder rumbled in the distance. Ah. That probably explained her nerves. Lightning in the air always made her nervous.

“Looks like I got off the road just in time,” she said aloud.

A tired driver coupled with a fierce Texas thunderstorm didn’t make a good match. She took stock of what forty-five dollars had bought her. The room was shabby but fairly clean, if you didn’t look too long at anything. She was thankful to find a coffeemaker in the tiny bathroom, so she could heat water for soup. First Kyra checked it for telltale signs it had been used for cooking meth, but it was dusty, not rusty looking. Next she filled the pot and poured it in the top, checked and then rinsed the filter area, and flicked the machine on. It immediately began to hiss.

As she laid out some clothes for the next morning, rain began to spatter on the roof. Kyra couldn’t help but repress a shiver. In her life, rain never signified anything good. It rarely rained in Vegas, but it had been pouring on the August night when she found him discarded in an alley off the Strip like yesterday’s garbage.

Her hands shook as she opened the carton of noodles. She didn’t want to remember that night. It would only give her nightmares. There was nothing more she could do. She’d avenged him the only way she could, and it hadn’t given her any peace. His wet, battered face still rose up to the surface of her dreams like a corpse floating free of its weights in a night-dark river.

“Who did this?” she’d whispered.

“Serrano,” he’d gasped. “But listen to me, baby. Stay away from him. Promise me—” But he wasn’t able to force a promise out of her.

He died.

She remembered with crystalline clarity how she felt, kneeling in the rain, which contrasted to the heat of the night. All around her, neon had flashed with maddening regularity. If she closed her eyes she could visualize everything about the moment.

With effort, she forced the memories away. She needed to eat something or she’d get sick. Since her weird ability sparked to life, she’d had a crazily high metabolism, as if what she did cost a certain amount in terms of energy. That made sense, actually, not that Kyra had asked any doctors about it. She hadn’t seen one in years.

She got the coffeepot and poured the water into her ramen noodles. What a glamorous life she led. Everything would look better in the morning. It always did.

It was almost 3:00 A.M. when Reyes pulled into the motel parking lot. He found the Marquis right away, verifying that he was still on target. He wouldn’t have been surprised, actually, to learn she’d found the thing and planted it on another car.

That would have complicated matters significantly, as it would mean she’d made him, and he wouldn’t be able to coax the information he needed out of her. He’d have to gear up to pain and coercion immediately.

The tracking device simplified his job; now he had to work out why she’d add him to her routine of her own volition. He’d forced his way in once, and she’d ditched him, even after the smoking-hot sex. He thought that was probably the norm for her. In fact, Reyes doubted she’d given him a second thought since driving away.

Another man might’ve been flattened by that. For him, it just presented a challenge, a problem he needed to think his way around. She’d proven more capable than he expected, not just a pretty little gold digger. Foster had warned him she had hidden depths and was dangerous as the day was long. She’d apparently killed her own father to cut him out of the score; Reyes had visited the grave himself.

Maybe he should have thought twice about sleeping with the evil little bitch, but he’d thought that was a way to reach her. Women who couldn’t be manipulated emotionally could sometimes be bound with sex. The way she walked away proved she wasn’t one of them. It was quite the fucking problem, considering he needed information before he finished the job.

At the moment, however, he needed a room for the night. It was a break she didn’t know the car he was driving. There would be nothing to tip her off when she woke up in the morning.

The failed gambit would make things more difficult. If he’d known how slippery she would prove to be, he would have planned his first approach a little more carefully. But there was no changing the facts now. He’d have to find a way that didn’t set off all her alarm bells. That might prove tricky.

First, he needed sleep.

Reyes rented a room from the surly proprietor and headed to it, intending to crash for the night. It amused him to let himself into the room right next door to hers. When the manager turned his back, he’d checked the record behind the counter: Cassie Marvel. He added it to her list of known aliases, along with Rachel Justice and Lisa Baker. He admired that she didn’t stick with one set of initials. People often made that mistake unconsciously, their egos imprinting their true selves on whatever persona they adopted.

As he passed her room, he noticed through the filmy curtain that her light was still on. Reyes was surprised to find himself curious as to why she’d be up so late. She must be exhausted.

It had been a long day of driving, even for him. He knew it was unwise to linger where she might catch a glimpse of him, but with the light reflecting off the inside of the glass, he wouldn’t be more than a dark figure to her. So he permitted himself a glimpse through the gap in the curtains, and was startled to see her curled on her side, fully dressed, facing the door. A pang spiked through him; Kyra Beckwith slept like a child afraid of the dark.

He walked on. His shoes made no sound as he slipped into his room, forcing away the oddly vulnerable impression she’d left. There was probably a weapon hidden beneath her pillow. He’d been briefed about how dangerous she could be, but he still hadn’t sorted out why her hand-to-hand combat style so closely mimicked his own. Reyes also couldn’t explain the bizarre drain when she touched him.

Things seemed to be back to normal now. He tested that theory with a few advanced katas. They came to him naturally, so whatever she’d done to him, he had gotten over it.

Before he slept, Reyes rearranged the room a little. He slid the end table beneath the window, so anyone coming in that way would knock over the lamp. He hated motel rooms on the ground floor—getting into them was like shooting fish in a barrel—but he had to stay close to his quarry. Then he pushed the desk a little too close to the door, so if anyone tried to kick it open, it would rebound back, giving him time to ready himself for the fight. It was a primitive alarm system, but it would do. You didn’t get to be his age in this particular field without perfecting precaution to a fine art.

Reyes fell asleep with his gun next to him.

In the morning, the pavement was still wet from the storm he’d driven through to find her. He took a shower and then ate a protein bar, considering his options. When she left, he didn’t follow her immediately, merely kept an eye on her signal. No further than it went, he’d guess she was looking for breakfast in this two-bit town.

If she ran true to form, she’d be looking for a place to run her next con. That made little sense, based on the amount she’d gotten from Serrano, but she didn’t seem to be touching her principal. From what Reyes could tell, she was living off what she made along the way, not the cash from the casino. That told him she must have stashed it somewhere for the time being. But where? And why?

He collected his things and stopped by the office to check out. There was a young woman, maybe the guy’s daughter, working the desk today. She couldn’t have been more than nineteen, bottle blond and corn-fed. The boys probably loved her.

She blushed as she took the key from him, letting her fingers brush his. “Too bad you can’t stay another night.”

He smiled faintly. “Well, you never know. I might be back.”

Depending on what his quarry decided to do.

The clerk took that as a compliment and giggled slightly, gazing up at him through heavily mascaraed lashes. Every inch of her face had been covered with some kind of cosmetic, trying to cover up a slight complexion problem. In the morning light, he saw the bumps on her chin raying outward toward her jaw like a Braille map of awkward teenage hormones.

“I’ll leave the light on for you,” she joked.

He got the reference, vaguely remembering some motel chain that used that as a slogan. Well, why not make use of her? The kid’s in the mood to talk, unlike her old man, and you might get some useful info. Reyes leaned on the counter, offering a slow smile that told her he thought she was the finest thing in all of Texas. Like most of his smiles, that one was a lying bastard, but it served the purpose. She softened visibly, leaning in. He almost regretted how easy it was.

“Are there any decent bars in this town?” he asked.

“The Blue Rock,” she answered at once. But she sagged with disappointment. “But I can’t . . . uh, my dad doesn’t like me hanging around in there,” she finished, chewing the color off her bottom lip.

As if I didn’t know you aren’t old enough to drink. She assumed the question came as a precursor to an offer of a date, and he left her that illusion.

“Well, I wouldn’t want to cause trouble for you,” he said gently. “Do they have a pool table there? Darts? Maybe a poker game in back?”

She shrugged, likely sensing she wouldn’t be getting a free dinner or felt up in his car. “Yeah, to the first two, not sure on the last thing. Take care, mister.”

Reyes pushed away from the counter. Being polite entertained him because in the back of his mind, he carried the knowledge that for the right reasons, he would have put a bullet through her brain. In his opinion, some scumbags needed killing, and he could earn a good living doing exactly that.

He strolled over to his rental car, thoughtful. Ten would get him twenty that Kyra Beckwith would check out the Blue Rock before she left town. She went about it like a compulsion, as if she didn’t know any other way to live. It would have been harder to track her if people didn’t remember her little swindles here and there, but she wouldn’t think of foregoing them.

If he was wrong about her, he could try again in the next town . . . and again . . . until their paths crossed naturally. He wasn’t sure how he would parlay an opening into a permanent opportunity at her side, but he thought well on his feet, always had. Reyes rubbed his hands together, full of anticipation that came in the form of a low, almost sexual hunger deep in his belly. He wanted another chance against her.

With some effort, he drove away the images of her clawing him like a cat. He still bore her marks on his skin. There was no way he could continue to think about that and stay professional, so he pushed the images aside with consummate control.

It’s almost time for round two, and this time, you won’t come out on top.