David Kent - The Triangle Conspiracy

The houses were generally in poor repair, with peeling paint and sagging foundations. Rent houses, Sean thought. He felt sorry for the people who had to rent places like these just to have a roof over their heads.

Halfway down the block, he found a perfect target, an old pea-green Chevy Monte Carlo. Its back end was parked on the gravel driveway in front of a sad white frame house, and its front end was angled onto the thin grass of the front yard. Both front tires were gone, the proverbial concrete blocks propped under the wheels.

But it had a current Oklahoma license plate. Sean stopped one house down and withdrew a screwdriver from the Jeep’s glove compartment. He got out and moved quickly down the sidewalk, stepping around a broken tricycle and an empty Smirnoff vodka bottle.

It took him less than half a minute to get the Monte Carlo’s plate off. He’d noticed, while driving around this city, that Oklahoma did not require a front license plate, only the rear. That made his job much easier.

He had the plate under his arm and was halfway back to the Jeep when he heard a screen door slam.

“Hey!” a woman shouted.

He didn’t look back, but lengthened his stride back to the Jeep. He slid behind the wheel and started the Cherokee in one smooth motion. From the porch of the house, the woman yelled again.

“Alto!” Stop!

She was young, Hispanic, and tired-looking, with a baby on her hip. She reminded him eerily of the woman back in Sasabe who had glared at him as her little boy darted across the road in front of him.

“Alto!”

He gunned the Cherokee down the street, made a quick turn, and was out of sight. In a few minutes he was back on the interstate, heading west toward El Reno. Toward Daryn.

Forty-five minutes later, Sean exited Interstate 40 and pulled into the parking lot of the Super 8 Motel in El Reno. He circled to the back of the motel, away from the highway, and put the stolen Oklahoma plate on the Cherokee. He tucked his own Arizona plates under the rear seat, then drove around to the front again.

As he got out of the Jeep, with two bags of hastily purchased clothes and supplies in his arms, he looked up at Room 213. He saw a shadowy face in the window, and then the curtains fell back into place.

“Here I am,” he said as he entered the room a moment later. “I bought you some clothes. I sort of guessed at the sizes. Plus some water and sandwich stuff. Kat?”

He realized the room was very dark, none of the lights on, the thick curtains completely covering the window.

“Kat? It’s me, Michael. Are you here?”

I know she’s here. I saw the curtains move. She was watching for me.

“I’m here, Michael,” she said.

Sean’s eyes slowly adjusted to the darkness. Kat’s form took shape in the chair on the far side of the bed, sitting very still.

“Are you all right?” Sean asked.

“Yes. I’m glad you’re back. I was beginning to wonder.”

She’d been just sitting there, in a dark room, no TV on, no radio on, nothing to read…just waiting for him. Sean blinked into the darkness. She was a woman of extremes, he thought, contrasting the unbridled lust she brought to her lovemaking with the incredible stillness of being able to sit in a room for hours, simply waiting. Sean shuddered, and it wasn’t just because he wanted a drink.

“Why don’t you turn on a light?” he said.

“I had a migraine. When I get one of those, it’s better in the dark.”

Sounds like having a bad hangover, Sean thought, but said nothing as he dropped the bags on the floor.

“Did you get the help?”

“What?” Sean said.

“The person who was going to help you. Did it work out?”

Sean sighed. “No. But look, I’ll stay with you and help you keep safe. I bought some food.”

“What about your business?”

Sean cocked his head. “What?”

“Your woodworking business. What will you do about it?”

Sean stuffed his hands in his pockets, suddenly thankful for the dark, that Kat couldn’t see his hands trembling. “I set my own hours. I work for myself, so I can do that. Might get behind on a couple of custom orders, but I’ll get caught up eventually.”

“Good. I hoped you’d want to stay with me, Michael.”

Sean nodded.

“You saved my life,” Daryn said.

“You don’t have to…”

Daryn reached over and flicked on the bedside lamp. It took a moment for Sean to focus in on her face, like watching an old television set warm up before the picture fully settled on the screen. In the harsh lamplight, her forehead was lined. It was quite striking on such a young, beautiful face.

“Migraines can really be painful,” Sean said. “I have a friend who gets them.”

Daryn nodded. “Very painful. But I feel better now. The dark and the quiet helped, and now you’re back. I was worried that you wouldn’t come back. You have your own life…I’m just an escort.”

Sean said nothing. She was leading the conversation, trying to take it somewhere, and he couldn’t tell where yet. He’d learned by now that whether it was in sex or in conversation, it was better to let her lead and see where she was going before committing.

She opened her dark eyes wide and looked straight at him. Into him. Deep into him.

Jesus, Sean thought. He’d stared down drug dealers and arms smugglers and child stealers and professional assassins, people with no regard whatsoever for human life, and he’d never seen a gaze as sharp as the one Daryn McDermott was giving him now. Sean was never one to look away, but he finally dropped his eyes from hers. He couldn’t take that gaze any longer.

“You do want to stay with me?” Daryn said, and her voice was very soft. “Michael,” she added, saying the name as if it were the amen at the end of a prayer.

Sean rubbed the back of his neck. He felt a growing heat there, and in some unfathomable way he felt powerless to control, he felt himself becoming rapidly aroused.

“Yes, Kat,” he whispered. “I do.”

A smile touched her face for a moment; then she stood and came toward him, stepping out of her clothes as she moved. Naked, she put her arms around him and held him very tightly.

“Take me, Michael,” she said. “Please, I want you to take me now.”

He looked down at her. This woman was so strange, he thought. She was equal parts power and yearning, strength and vulnerability, all in the same moment.

He kissed her, and both their mouths opened in hunger. Their tongues met. Sean felt as if his body was one giant nerve ending, and that Daryn knew how to tap into every part of it. Her mouth, her hands, her body…she was everywhere.

She was so petite that he could pick her up in his arms and she felt no heavier than a child. He turned around and sat her on the edge of the bed. She opened her legs for him, and within moments Sean had found her center.

Over the next two hours, Sean spent himself three times, something he’d never done before. Daryn drained him, physically and emotionally, until he felt he could scarcely move. They lay spooned together on the bed, the torn and tangled sheets surrounding them, the scent of their lust all around.

“Michael,” Daryn said softly.

Stroking her back very gently, Sean stirred a bit from his stupor. “Hmm?”

“If you really want to stay with me, I know a place we can go.”

“Oh?”

“Do you remember last night, when we talked about my ideas? The social and political changes I want to see?”

Sean blinked, becoming more alert. “Yes.”

“What did you think of what I said?”

Sean let out a long, slow breath. Tread carefully. Tread very, very carefully. “Your ideas are…”