The SUV sped through the dark, first bumping over the desert, then gliding along the highway. The other SUV swung into position behind them. Rae saw Dieter glance in the rearview mirror, watching it, and then his shoulders relaxed.
In the back seat, Rae wrapped her torn-up arms around Wulf, clinging to him, even though pulling away would be the smarter thing to do. Her arms and back were bleeding. His jacket wicked away the blood, and the soft lining stuck to her skin.
Wulf held her around her shoulders and pressed her face to his shoulder. The SUV jostled them, but his arms never relaxed, even for a moment.
Dieter pulled over on a dark corner, and Hans hopped out of the SUV to drive Wulf’s Porsche, abandoned in a cotton field. Friedhelm emerged from the other SUV and took the shotgun seat. They convoyed into downtown Pirtleville, such as it was.
Downtown Pirtleville consisted of one claustrophobic block. Cheever’s Department Store, a pharmacy, a post office, and the Marsden Hotel walled in the street. As it was well past six o’clock, all the shop windows were dark. Streetlights dropped yellow pools on the rutted asphalt.
The Marsden Hotel was a grand dame relic of bygone days when rich people came to the Southwest to cure their allergies, asthma, or tuberculosis. Legend had it that the chip in the third step of the four-story marble staircase was from when Pancho Villa rode his horse up the staircase on Ambrose Bierce’s dare. The bullet hole high up one of the enormous marble columns was attributed to the nineteen-twenties gunfight that erupted in the lobby when the hotel manager insisted that a rancher’s Mexican wife use the “colored” bathroom, thus ending segregation in that part of the state.
Rae had been inside the Marsden only for the wedding receptions of the better Pirtleville families.
They entered through the back doors from the parking lot but still had to climb the four marble flights of stairs. The lobby showed signs of disrepair that Rae hadn’t noticed the last time she was here. A faint trail of grime stained the marble floor from the front door to the reception desk. The carpets were worn threadbare in spots, unlike the lobby of that plush hotel in downtown Phoenix where The Devilhouse party had been held.
Something must be wrong. Probably the economy. During the wedding receptions, the floor had gleamed, she was sure, though the lobby had only been lit by candlelight. She tightened Wulf’s suit jacket around herself. The fabric in back was stiff with dried blood.
Wulf’s security detail closed around them. Wulf steered her elbow as they climbed the stairs.
The whole lobby staff must be staring at her shredded clothes and scratched legs sticking out of Wulf’s suit jacket, and tomorrow, they would gossip that Reagan Stone had stayed in a man’s room to everyone in Pirtleville.
Not that it mattered now.
Rae held her head high and allowed Wulf to guide her.
“Gentlemen,” Wulf said, dismissing them, as he unlocked his room door with an antique key.
Rae walked into the hotel room ahead of him. The hotel bed was covered in a cheap, fiesta-style bedspread. The prints on the walls were Southwestern cliché posters of bug-eyed, black-haired children and legless horses that clashed with the bedspread. The room looked like it was trying to be authentic and real and welcoming and loving, but it was all fake.
Her legs wobbled, but she stood as straight as she could. Outside the door, Dieter and Hans peered at the ceiling as Wulf pressed the door closed.
To her horror, Rae’s legs crumpled, and she collapsed in a ball on the floor.
Wulf was beside her. “I should have known that only willpower was holding you up.”
“I’m fine.” She tried, but she couldn’t stand. Every time she tried, her legs went out again.
“Are you hurt?” The worry in his voice chastised her for her wussiness.
“No. I just can’t seem to stand up.” Even her voice shook.
“Come on, then.” He picked her up in his arms, bouncing her a little at the top to readjust.
She laid her head on his shoulder. “No. You’ll hurt yourself.”
“You didn’t protest when I carried you to the SUV.”
A tremor drilled through her. “I wasn’t thinking straight.”
In the bathroom, he set her down on the edge of the tub. She gripped the rail on the wall and held herself up because the beige walls wavered. A mildew stain on the ceiling floated like a dirty cloud. “I don’t have any clothes.”
“We will get you some clothes.” He unbuttoned and stripped off his shirt and white tee shirt underneath, revealing his muscular chest and the deep black Japanese tattoo on his shoulder. He was so easy with her seeing it, a far cry from when he had hollered out his safe word in The Devilhouse just a few weeks ago.
He was beautiful, she noticed, even though she was muzzy. Not just handsome. Not only good-looking. His face was all strong cheekbones and jawline. Muscles rippled from his broad shoulders down his sides and abdomen to his tight waist. Fine, golden man-hair glistened on his chest. Every time she had seen his body before, desire had clouded her mind. She hadn’t looked at him.
Now, so exhausted, hurting, she could see him. He looked like a different species than all the other men she’d seen in her life.
Wulf said, “I’ll have Hans go out and buy whatever you want. He has wonderful taste.”
Burly, stoic Hans fretting over women’s clothes seemed ridiculous. “Really?”
Wulf glanced down at her, his blue eyes just visible from behind golden eyelashes. “Not at all, but he can read labels for size.”
“I just want to go home.” She wrapped her arms around herself. She was still wearing Wulf’s jacket, but she was so cold.
He dipped one eyebrow in consternation. “I can rouse Hans and Dieter, but the city is hours away.”
She rested her head against the frigid tile wall. “We don’t have to drive back. I’m fine. I don’t even know why I said that.”
Because being around him was more painful than all her scratches and her throbbing skull.
“It has been a rather difficult day, ja?”
It sounded so weird when he said something in his posh British accent, rah-thuh, and then slipped in a German word. Sometimes her brain didn’t wrap around it properly.
He ran warm water in the tub behind her, then helped her remove her arms from his dirty, crushed jacket. The back of the collar was stiff with dried blood.
She said, “I’m sorry. I think I ruined your suit.”
“I don’t care about the suit.” He unbuttoned what was left of her blouse and eased it off. The fabric stuck to the dried blood on her back and arms and peeled off scabs. She tried not to wince.
When he had removed all Rae’s clothes and her battered body was naked, he helped her sit in the hot water and began sponging her clean with a washcloth.
She kept trying to figleaf her breasts and sex with her hands, embarrassed. “You don’t have to do this,” she said. “I can manage.”
His fingers were gentle as he washed her hair around the sore goose egg on her head. “It’s all right to allow someone to help you.”
Rae could hardly breathe, she was so tired. Her legs and back hurt. “I thought you didn’t like submissive women.”
“This isn’t a sex game, Rae.” His fingers under her chin turned her face up to his, and concern filled his blue eyes. He smoothed her wet hair back. “Let me help you.”
The soap stung her scratches and cuts, but cleanliness felt better than grit on her sore skin.
“You won’t disfellowship me?” She had meant it to sound flippant, but her voice sounded sad.
“No,” he said. “Never.”
Rae settled back in the tub, unsure what to say.
He wasn’t casting her out. Wulf was leaving. Her heart thumped hard, drumming her temples and the goose egg lump on the left side of her head.
He squeezed clean water from a wash cloth above her shoulder, rinsing away the soap and revealing long red scratches. “It looks like someone whipped you with a particularly cruel cat o’nine tails.”
“Flogged,” she said. “Right?”
“Yes.” He rinsed her other shoulder, revealing abrasions from the sharp granite boulder, and she saw his pale eyebrows dip just a fraction, a micro-expression of unease. She had read about micro-expressions in a counseling class, that when you could catch them, they would tell you what someone was really feeling.
Hysteria plucked at her, and she could have fallen apart into a soggy mess of tears and snot, but the calm way that Wulf bathed her, edging around her scrapes and cuts, which seemed all over her body, soothed her. She kept a tremulous hold of her wits. His tender touch almost made her believe that he cared.
But he was leaving.
His hands spoke of kindness and caring. Even when he washed her breasts, even when he ran his hands up her thighs, it felt like caring, not like he was copping a feel.
Finally, he must have thought she was clean enough, because he helped her stand, and she managed to hold her trembling legs under herself while he wrapped a towel around her and lifted her again.
She insisted, “I can walk. I’m fine,” but her voice was breathy with exhaustion. Her whole body still felt cold, even after the hot bath.
This must be what shock felt like.
“Of course you’re fine.” He carried her into the bedroom. She wrapped her arms around his neck and buried her face there. He smelled like man-musk, but she could still smell spiced tea and smoky gunpowder. His bare chest felt like satin on her shoulder.
She had thought that she could enjoy these last two weeks if that’s all he could give her, but she couldn’t. Her heart was already breaking.
He laid her on the bed, and the softness gave way under her. The muscles in her back and legs unknotted. A week ago, she would have allowed herself to reach for him and draw him down to her, but she pulled up the sheet to cover herself instead.
Wulf blinked, and his lips parted just a moment, another micro-expression. She wished she could read them, read him, but her brain seemed blurry.
Several suitcases sat on the bureau, lids open. Wulf rummaged through one and returned with a black tee shirt. She struggled up to sitting, clutching the sheet over her breasts. He handed the soft shirt to her. “You can sleep in this, if you like.”
“Thanks.” As she shook it out, she caught a glimpse of lettering and three musicians on the front. “The Police?”
“I apologize that it’s an older shirt, but it’s the longest one I have with me, if you’re comfortable with it.”
“No. I mean yes. I mean, I appreciate it. And I like them. I like Sting, anyway. He lives in a castle,” she blathered.
Yeah, this was shock.
“It’s more of a manor house,” Wulf said.
“Have you seen it?”
He shrugged. “Architectural Digest, if I recall correctly.”
Surprise drew Rae’s eyebrows together. “You read a lot of house magazines, do you?”
His smile drew up one side of his mouth. “It was in an airport.”
That first night in the limo, Georgie and Lizzy had told Rae everything that they knew about Wulf, The Dom of The Devilhouse, which wasn’t much, but they had concluded that he liked live music, but no one knew what kind of music he actually liked.
Now, they were talking about music.
Despite the fuzziness in her head, or probably because of it, Rae decided that she should pry a little more.
After all, it didn’t matter.
“Have you been to a Police concert?”
“A few,” he said, an affirmative though a little vague. “Are you hungry?”
“I don’t even know.” She slipped the tee shirt over her head while she was under the sheet, hiding from him even though he had just washed her naked body. The cotton smelled sunny like laundry detergent, not like that cinnamon tea scent that had lingered in Wulf’s coat and on his neck. “Have you seen a Sting concert?”
“A few.” He tapped his cell phone, then said, “Hans, could you find us some sandwiches? Use all necessary bribery.” His eyebrows rose, and he smiled. “Have you? Your efficiency is unparalleled.” He hung up the phone. “Are turkey sandwiches all right?”
“Perfect.” She let the sheet drop to her waist, now that she was decent.
The door rattled with a knock, and Wulf carelessly opened the door.
A tray pushed the door open a little more, and Rae heard a short harangue in German, to which Wulf laughed and said something back.
“What was that?” she asked as he returned with the food and set it beside her on the bed. Sandwiches, at least five, were stacked on one plate, and another plate was heaped with fruit. Bottles of water stood around the plates.
“Operational security lecture. He’s right, though.” Wulf grabbed half a sandwich from the stack and stood. He walked toward the bathroom. “I am revolting. I shall shower and return. Please eat.”
She didn’t think he smelled bad at all, and she didn’t want him to leave her alone, but she folded her hands in her lap and stared at the stack of sandwiches.
Rae didn’t know if she could eat, but he had already closed the bathroom door.
The sandwiches smelled like hot bread and roasted meat, and she wondered just how much bribery had been necessary to rouse the hotel staff at nine o’clock on a Saturday night. Probably a lot. Rae chewed one, and then she wondered how much more bribery it had taken to get these really good sandwiches anywhere in Pirtleville, ever.
She sucked down two sandwiches and a banana and two bottles of water.
Wulf came back after his shower, still bare-chested and with only a white towel wrapped around his waist. His skin looked golden, contrasted against the white towel like that, and she realized that he was lightly tanned. She had always thought of him as pale, but he wasn’t.
Cold air poked her back and legs, and she tightened the sheet around herself. Hotel rooms were always cold, and this one was really cold, and she was so cold that she was shaking. She blurted, “So how many concerts have you been to?”
“Concerts? All of them?” His eyes darted down, glancing at her wearing his shirt, but his unreadable gaze returned to her eyes. He took another sandwich. “Including clubs with live bands?”
“Yep.”
“And classical music? Symphonies?” He bit into the sandwich.
“Sure.”
He looked around like he was calculating while he chewed and swallowed. “Hundreds.” He sipped water. “No, thousands. Between two and three thousand, I would estimate.”
There were only three hundred sixty-five days in a year, which meant there were less than four thousand days in a decade. “Good Lord. Don’t you do anything else?”
“I’ve been attended fewer performances the last few years.”
“That’s still a whole lot of concerts. All of them in Switzerland?”
“Almost none in Helvetica. Only Montreux. My staff hates it, but I go every year.”
Mon-troh. Rae admitted, “I don’t know what a Montreux is.”
“A town that holds a music festival in early July, near Lake Geneva. I should take you, sometime.” He blinked and pulled his lower lip in, biting it.
Even though Rae’s head was buzzy from all the crazy, she knew what that lip-sucking poker tell meant, but so she let his mistake about their future pass. She held her breath in her sore chest, waiting for him to spill something important.
“When I lived in London,” he said, and his speech slowed to a crawl but his British accent stiffened. “I went out every night, for at least a few hours, sometimes two or three venues per night.” He paused. “Drove my security detail to distraction, I’m afraid.”
And he paused again, so she waited.
“I was invisible for the first time in my life.” The relief in his voice was obvious.
“I call bullshit. You’re the least invisible person I know. When you clear your throat, the whole Devilhouse turns around and looks at you.”
He paused, then sat on the edge of the bed, slanting the mattress toward him. All Rae had to do was slide downhill into his arms, but she didn’t.
“Here, I’m The Dom of The Devilhouse.” His wry smile and head tilt mocked himself. “Everyone sees the sex god. In Europe, everyone has seen that picture you found, many times.” He drew a deep breath, and his voice became a little drier with sarcasm. “Wherever I go, the mood becomes morose in deference to my eternal pain and grief. The newspapers call me The Survivor Twin in typical Teutonic morbid fascination.”
His glance flicked downward, a little more serious. “In Helvetica, however, people become defensive when they notice me. It seems that the entire country is vigilant to throw themselves before a bullet should the occasion arise, because on that day, they adopted me. I stayed in Switzerland, in Rolle. I didn’t retreat to live behind walls with tutors. That’s why I took out Swiss citizenship and served the national service requirement in the Swiss Guards. I took up arms for them in return.”
Holy cow, that was a lot to digest. Rae would have to suss out all the connections sometime she wasn’t chattering with cold. Maybe she could pry all she wanted to and then blame existential shock later, though there would be no later, so she said, “I thought you were born in Switzerland.”
“I said I am Swiss. I hold a British passport, too.”
“So you were born in England?”
“No.” And there he stopped. His smooth lip didn’t go into his mouth, so he wasn’t even contemplating going farther down that path yet.
She prompted, “But England is in Europe. Didn’t they stare at you there, too?”
He shrugged. “England is technically in Europe. In England, they have the Royal Family to gawk at, plus the footballers and the fashion models. Other notables pale by comparison. After the first week, I faded away. I was so pale that I was transparent.” He blinked, then ran a hand through his light blond hair. “So to speak.”
“Right.” His knee nudged her bare thigh. Only the sheet separated their skin from each other.
He said, “So I went to clubs and to concerts. I still attend the Glastonbury music festival and the theatre festival in Edinburgh and sit in the crowd.”
“I thought you went to England for graduate school.” Between work and studying and classes, she hardly had time to breathe.
He shrugged. “I studied economics. It didn’t tax me.” He closed his eyes and turned his head to the side. “I must be in an odd frame of mind.”
“I like it when you’re funny.” Yep, she could blame it on shock.
He smiled at her. “I should never take you to London. Everyone assures me I am very British when I’m there. I don’t think I managed a joke the whole time. I still can’t use those emoticons while texting.”
Every time he referenced the future—a future that she wouldn’t be a part of because he was leaving—her chest hurt.
Maybe he was shocky, too. He had just shot two men.
Wulf cocked his head to the side, and Rae thought he was going to draw his lip into his mouth but he said, “Did you ever read the captions under those photos of Constantin and me?”
“Constantin?”
Wulf kept his eyes on her and nodded, barely.
Naming the dead child seemed to make even that shocking horror yet more real. “When I saw the pics, I could see that the child in them was you, and I dropped my phone on the floor. I hit the home button because I couldn’t see straight. I didn’t even know your brother’s name.”
“Why couldn’t you see straight?” Wulf’s deep voice was perfectly even. There was no sharp edge to it, not angry, not suspicious, not interrogating. Rae thought that he might be in very British mode right now.
“It killed me that anything so terrible happened to anyone, and especially to you.”
She reached out, and he took her hand.
Later, she could blame it on shock. “What didn’t I see? Are you a rock star or something? Am I supposed to know who you are?”
She watched his sapphire eyes, waiting for a micro-expression she could read.
Instead, he wrapped his arms around her and kissed her, so softly, barely brushing his lips over hers. His muscled body radiated heat, and Rae was so cold.
His lips moved against hers. “No. You shouldn’t know who I am at all.”
She melted in his arms and clung to him, kissing him back. He smelled like clean man, all testosterone and musk. His body was so warm that he burned her chilled skin.
One last time.
One last night before Wulf left for somewhere else in the world, where everyone else knew who he was, and she never saw him again.