Barry Eisler - Killing Rain aka One Last Kill

“It’s more of an answer than what you just told me.”

“I told you I don’t know. I’m sorry if that wasn’t the answer you were looking for.”

“I’m looking for the truth.”

“You know who I am.”

“That’s what I’m asking you.”

She laughed. “Look, I’m like a married woman, okay? With a family I always have to return to.”

I didn’t respond. After a moment she said, “So stop pretending you don’t know all this.”

That sounded dangerously close to a rationalization, one with which I’m all too familiar: He knew what he was getting into. If he hadn’t been in the game, they wouldn’t have wanted him dead .

Of all the potential angles, the possible gambits, it seemed to me that the truth would be what she was least prepared for. The closer I got to it, the more it was putting her off her game.

“You’re here only for personal reasons?” I asked her.

She shifted a fraction on the couch. “Yes.”

“Look in my eyes when you say that.”

She did. A long beat went by.

“I’m here only for personal reasons,” she said again.

No. I knew her, from the time we’d spent together in Rio. If what she just said were true, my suspicions would have provoked her instantly. But now she was trying to manage her behavior in the presence of fatigue, conflicting emotions, and alcohol, and under pressure from my questions, and the unaccustomed effort was showing.

I looked at her silently. She returned my gaze. A long time went by-ten seconds, maybe fifteen. I could see some color coming into her cheeks, her nostrils flaring slightly with each exhalation.

All at once she looked away. I saw her shoulders rising and falling with her breathing. “Goddamn you,” she said, her voice just above a whisper. “Goddamn you.”

She glanced around the room, her head moving in quick, efficient jerks, here and there and back again.

She got up and started pacing, slowly at first, then more rapidly, her head nodding as though internally confirming something, trying to accept it. She looked everywhere but at me.

“I have to get out of here,” she said, more to herself than to me. She walked over to one of the dressers, pulled open a drawer, and started shoving things into her bag.

“Delilah,” I said.

She didn’t answer, or even pause. She pulled open a second drawer and stuffed its contents into the bag, too.

I stood up. “Delilah,” I said again.

She threw the bag over her shoulder and headed toward the door.

“Wait,” I said, and moved in front of her.

She tried to go left around me. I stayed with her. She went right. That didn’t work either. She moved left again, more quickly. No go.

She had become almost oblivious to my presence. Something had gotten in her way, she had been blindly trying to go around it. But her lack of progress forced her to change her focus, and all at once she saw that the obstacle was me. Her eyes narrowed and her ears seemed to settle back against her head. In my peripheral vision I took in a shift in her weight, a slight rotation of her hips. Then her right elbow was blurring in toward my temple.

I retracted my head and shrugged my left shoulder, bringing my left hand up alongside my face as I did so. Her elbow glanced off the top of my head. Her left was already coming in from the other side. I covered up, dropped through my knees, and deflected it the same way.

She shifted back and shot a left palm heel straight for my nose. I weaved off-line and parried with my right. Other side-same drill.

She took two more quick shots, hooks to the head. I avoided the worst of both. She grabbed my arm and tried to drag me to the side, frustration and anger eroding her tactics.

If there’s one thing my body learned in twenty-five years of judo at the Kodokan in Tokyo, it’s grounding. She might as well have been trying to move one of the room’s thick teak posts.

She made a sound, half rage, half desperation. She stepped back and whipped the bag around at my head. I dissipated some of the blow’s force by flowing with it, and absorbed the rest by covering up with my shoulder, bicep, and forearm. She reloaded and swung again. Again I flowed and absorbed.

She started swearing something in Hebrew and hammering at me with the bag, with no obvious goal now other than to vent her fury. I let her pound on me, taking most of the impact along my arms and shoulders. She was in shape, and it took longer than I would have liked for her to tire. But eventually the power of the blows lessened, the interval between them lengthened. She stood, the bag hanging at her side, her breath heaving in and out. I lowered my arms and looked at her.

She glanced around the room. I realized she was looking for a better weapon of convenience than the bag. I tensed to grab her before she could pick up something heavy and blunt, or something sharp.

She must have sensed that I was on to her. Or she didn’t see anything that looked likely to do the job. Regardless, she stopped scoping the room and looked in my eyes. Her pupils were huge and black-dilated by adrenaline.

Her panting punctuated her words. “Get. The fuck. Out. Of my way.”

“Not until you tell me what’s going on.”

She sucked wind for a moment, then said, “Fuck you.”

I looked at her. “This is going to be a long night.”

“What do you want?” she asked.

“I want…” I started to say.

But it had only been a feint. She dropped her right shoulder and charged into me, trying to knock me off balance. The move surprised me and might have worked, but I caught her shoulders with both hands and used her body as a momentary brace. She reared up under me, looking for a head butt, and connected with my chin. My teeth slammed together, narrowly missing my tongue.

Enough. I grabbed her by the biceps and shoved her against the wall.

“Tell me what’s going on,” I said.

She dropped the bag and tried for an uppercut to my gut. I took hold of her wrists and slammed her arms up against the wall on either side of her head. Our faces were inches apart.

I felt her knee coming up and pressed my body against hers to stop it. She twisted right, then left. My cheek was pressed against hers and her smell, that perfume I liked, now mixed with sweat and fear and rage, got inside me and wrought some weird alchemy. I dropped my face to her neck, feeling first as though I was just going to brace it there, but then I was kissing her instead. I heard her say, “No, no,” but she wasn’t fighting me anymore, or at least not the same way.

Keeping her arms and body pinned to the wall, I brought my face around to kiss her on the mouth. She twisted her head away. I let go of her wrists and took her face in my hands. She tried to push me away for a second, but then she was kissing me back, almost attacking me with her mouth. I ran my hands down around her breasts and squeezed her waist, her ass. I realized I was kissing her as hard as she was me.

I reached up and tried to undo one of the buttons on her blouse but my hands were shaking and I couldn’t do it. Fuck it . I slipped the fingers of both hands into the gap between the buttons and pulled hard to the sides. The buttons all popped free. The bra beneath was lace, with a front snap. I could feel her nipples, hard, through the fabric. I struggled to get the snap undone. Fabric tore. The bra opened up and her breasts were in my hands. Her skin was smooth and hot and damp from exertion.

Kissing me so hard I was forced to step back from the wall, she reached up and tore my shirt open the same way I had done hers. Then she reached down for my belt buckle. No , I thought. You first . I yanked her blouse and bra down to her wrists and spun her around so that she was facing the wall. We started to struggle again. I took her left arm in a wristlock and bent it behind her back. I held it high, almost to her shoulder blades, with my left hand, and shoved her up against the wall. I reached under her skirt with my right. She was wet through her panties. I pushed her skirt up, pinned the fabric against her ass with my hip, and tore her panties away. She snapped her head back and caught me on the cheek with a rear head butt. I saw stars. I pushed against her harder and pressed the side of my face against hers so that she was pinned entirely to the wall. I reached down and began to touch her. She closed her eyes and groaned. I moved my fingers inside her and her body shook.