Barry Eisler - Killing Rain aka One Last Kill

I looked around wildly. To our left-the dresser. I shoved her over to it. There was a stack of travel magazines on top. I swept them to the floor with my free hand. Then I bent her over the dresser, bearing down on her arm and pinning her upper torso. She struggled but the wrist hold was too tight. I stepped to her side, opened my belt, and undid my button and zipper.

I stepped on the cuff of my left pants leg with my right foot and dropped my pants, stepping clear of them with my left leg as soon as they hit the floor. No way was I going to deal with her with a pair of trousers pooled around my ankles. I repeated the procedure with my right leg, then slipped off my boxers. My erection was straining upward like spring-loaded cement.

I stepped between her legs and pushed up the skirt. Her breathing was more like gasping now, and so, I realized, was mine.

Still pressing her down with the wristlock, I started touching her again. I don’t know what I was waiting for. Maybe I wanted to torture her a little, to torture both of us.

“Do it,” I heard her gasp. “Do it, or I’ll kill you.”

My heart was hammering so hard I heard it thudding in my skull. My fingers and toes were tingling. I kicked her feet farther apart, wiped some of her wetness onto myself, and entered her in one smooth motion.

She gasped so loudly I felt the sound of it run back up into me, like a feedback screech through a microphone. I started driving into her, my hips sliding up and forward, my gut and ass clenching and releasing with each profound stroke.

I looked down at her. The side of her face was pressed against the dresser, her eyes squeezed shut, her mouth open and panting, in pain or ecstasy or both I didn’t know. Her cheek was streaked with tears. I kept going. I didn’t slow down at all.

A minute went by, maybe two. I forgot who she was, who I was, why we were there. There was only the room, the heat, a singularity generating a rhythm as old as oceans.

I heard a deep groan and realized it came from me. Or maybe it was hers. She opened her eyes and looked back at me, pleading for something. I let go of her wrist and took hold of her hips. She gripped the edges of the dresser and moved up onto her toes, raising her ass higher. Her lips were moving but if there were words I couldn’t hear them. Her legs were trembling. I felt her start to come and it took me over the edge. I dug my fingers more deeply into her hips. The pounding in my chest and in my head seemed to fuse together with everything else, my legs, my balls, my gut, her body beneath and before me, everything. Through it all I could hear her swearing in Hebrew again, could feel her coming in waves under me and all around me and myself coming with her.

Finally it subsided. I eased down on top of her, supporting some of my weight with my arms. We stayed that way, our breathing abating, our sweat drying, coming back to ourselves.

After a while, I eased myself up and stepped to the side. I touched her shoulder.

She pushed herself up off the dresser and looked at me. Neither of us said anything.

“You okay?” I asked, after a moment.

“Yeah,” she said. “I’m okay.”

“You want to talk?”

“No, I want to get out of here.”

“Is that going to help?”

“No.”

“Then maybe we should talk.”

There was a pause. She looked down at what was left of her blouse and bra, then let them slide off her arms to the floor. She stepped out of her skirt.

“Tell me one thing, okay?” she asked.

“Yeah.”

“Tell me that you haven’t done that before. Without a condom, I mean.”

I thought of Naomi, and, even more, of Midori. “Not in a few years.”

She nodded. “Good. Although at this point AIDS or whatever ought to be the least of my worries.”

“Tell me what’s going on.”

She walked over to the shower and took a robe off the peg next to it. She pulled it on. I walked over and did the same. We moved over to the bed and sat on it.

“Those men you killed in Manila,” she said, looking at her hands. Her voice was slightly husky. “Two of them were CIA officers.”

I looked at her. I saw that she was being straight with me.

“Shit,” I said.

She didn’t respond. After a moment I said, “How bad is it?”

“My people are afraid the Agency will find you and you’ll talk. They don’t want to take that chance.”

“So they sent you.”

She shrugged. “What would you have done?”

“You came here to set me up?”

“I thought I did. Now I’m not sure.”

“That’s not quite what I was hoping to hear.”

“It’s the truth.”

“Couldn’t pull the trigger yourself?”

“What I do is hard enough.”

We were silent for a minute while I digested the news. I said, “What’s next?”

She brushed away a few strands of hair that were clinging to her face. “I’m supposed to call my contact, let him know when and where you’ll be vulnerable.”

“What are you going to tell him?”

She looked up at the ceiling and said, “I have absolutely no idea.”

“What changed your mind?” I asked, and thought, Maybe you haven’t, though. Maybe this is just the best set-up you’ve ever pulled off .

I’d have to keep testing for that. I didn’t think the way her body had responded could possibly have been acting. But maybe there were a bunch of dead men out there who had all convinced themselves of the same thing. And maybe I would be a fool to assume that the body would always follow the mind. Or vice versa.

There was a long silence. Then she said, “You’ve been lucky so far. I don’t know anyone who’s been luckier for longer. But nobody’s bulletproof. I can’t keep bailing you out.”

“Bailing me out?”

“I warned you about that guy in your room in Macau.”

“I didn’t need your warning.”

“No? You took it.”

I let it go. “And this time?”

She looked at me. “Enough, all right? You know why. I don’t want to be responsible for your death. You fucked up in Manila and I don’t know if you’re going to survive it. I just don’t want to be the one who kills you. Or helps make it happen.”

“I wouldn’t want to put you out.”

She glared at me. “Stop being a child. You caused this situation, and now I’m caught in it, too.”

I paused and took a breath. I needed to think. There had to be a way out of this.

“What did they tell you happened in Manila?” I asked.

“Only what you told them. That you tried to hit Lavi in a restroom but his son came in and got in the way. Then the bodyguard and the other two guys burst in and Lavi and the boy got away.”

“Yeah, that’s about right.”

“Why don’t you give me your perspective, with details?”

I told her, leaving Dox out of it.

When I was finished, she said, “That tracks with everything my people told me. At least they were being straight.”

“Do they know what Manny was doing with Agency operators?”

“If they do, they didn’t tell me. Other than to say that Lavi is a known CIA asset.”

Something was nagging me, jostling for my attention. I parsed the facts, tried to identify the assumptions. Then I realized.

“How do your people know those men were CIA?” I asked.

She shrugged. “I don’t know. I didn’t ask.”

I thought for a moment, then said, “From what your people told me, Manny is a world-class bad guy. Not the kind of person the Agency can acknowledge is on the payroll. In fact, even post nine-eleven, employing a character like Manny is highly illegal. If it got out, there would be a lot of embarrassment. The people involved would probably have to take a fall.”

“I don’t understand.”