Robert Crane - Soulless

“I see. What do you do for work?”

He smiled. “Recruiting.”

I laughed, light, and I had no idea why. “That was vague.”

There was a glimmer in his eyes. “I have a mystique to keep up, too, you know.”

“Fair enough.” I put my empty whiskey down and watched as the bartender slid by and snaked it, replacing it with another. I started to protest but he had a wide grin on his fat face and nodded at James as he headed back to the other end of the bar where someone waited with a hand raised in the air. I looked at the new drink and felt a certain pressure in my chest at the realization that this could not end well. “I can’t drink this,” I said to James and watched him half-smile.

“Why not?”

“I’m a lightweight.” I said it with the air of someone making a confession. “And I have to work tomorrow morning, which means I kind of need to call it quits for tonight if I’m going to be at all able to think or drive tomorrow.”

“Acetaminophen and ibuprofen are your friends,” he said. “And lots of water.”

“I think moderation might also be a swell idea.”

“Much less fun.” His hand moved, very casually, across the bar and came to rest on my own. I could feel the gentle weight of it through the glove, the very slight warmth, and it caused me to redden, a heat rising in my cheeks that might not have been noticeable had I not been drinking. He watched my reaction. “Is that too much, too fast?”

“What?” I had been in a little bit of a daze, staring at his hand on mine. “No. Not really.”

“No?” He picked up my hand and cradled it in his, rubbing it. “Not this either?”

It felt strangely good, even through the glove. “No. That’s fine.” His eyes were on mine, staring, with a warmth that I found compelling, drawn to, and I couldn’t quite explain it. I found myself leaning closer to him.

He leaned in and kissed me. It was sudden, and caught me by surprise. My eyes widened when he did it, but it felt so good, the pressure, the warmth of his hand as it touched my cheek, and rested there, his lips on mine. I kissed him back, the haze in my mind so agreeable, and I felt his tongue part my lips and swirl. I let him hold my face in his hands and he kept them there, pressing his lips on mine so firmly—

I opened my eyes in shock and with the realization that I couldn’t, wasn’t able to—

I pulled away, broke from him with sudden violence, standing so abruptly I knocked over both my stool and my drink, trying to get backward, away from him, him who didn’t know what I was—

He looked at me with vague amusement. “So that was the line, huh?”

“What?” I looked around to see everyone in the bar staring at me, and turned back to him, still sitting on his stool, the same little smile crooking his lips. “No, it’s fine, I just…can’t…” I let out a breath in frustration. “Are you okay?”

His eyebrows arched upward. “I’m fine. Are you?”

“Yes. I’m fine. I’m sorry.” I cocked my head and tried to give him my most regretful expression. “Thank you for the drinks, James. You’re a really nice guy – and a fantastic kisser, by the way – but I have to go.”

He stood and tossed some bills on the bar. “Why don’t I walk you out?”

He took a step toward me but I held a gloved hand out and rested it on his chest. I let it linger there; damn, it was firm. “I don’t think that’s a good idea, for a lot of reasons.”

He seemed to be suppressing his grin, but nodded. “Fair enough.” He reached into the pocket of his pants and came back with a business card. “If you’re ever in Minneapolis, give me a call.”

I straightened my blazer and nodded, feeling the holster against my ribs. “I’ll keep that in mind.” I nodded toward his stool. “You might want to sit down for a few minutes.” He gave me a quizzical look. “Just a suggestion. Nice to meet you, James.”

I walked from the bar and tried really, really hard not to look at him as I pushed my way out the door. It didn’t work, and he gave me a sizzling smile that made me want to go back to him, and kiss him until his eyes rolled back in his head and his face melted off. I shook my head in disgust at that thought and walked out into the parking lot. It felt like I was being weak when I thought it, weak and casual and flippant, endangering James’s life so I could feel…something. I was lucky that the eternity that it felt like he kissed me was less than I thought it was, or he would have made a hell of a scene pitching over in the bar.

The parking lot lurched as I was about halfway across it. I stopped, regained my balance, and kept going. Once I reached the elevator after passing through the hotel lobby, I leaned against the wall and felt my head spin. Those Whiskey Sours weren’t so bad.

When the elevator door dinged I opened my eyes to find the doors still closed. I heard another ding and stared, waiting for them to open. On the third ring I realized it wasn’t the elevator: it was my phone, and I scrambled to grab it out of my pocket. I thrust it up to my ear after hitting the talk button, not even looking at the caller ID. “Hello?”

The elevator dinged, the door opened, and I heard Kat’s voice on the other end of the line as well as in person. She stood in the hall and turned her head in surprise when she saw me stagger out of the elevator. “Get packed.” She pulled her phone away from her ear and I got a good look at her face, which was still drawn, but now more serious, her blond locks twisted and mussed around her. “Ariadne called. There was another robbery.”

I dropped the cell phone back in my pocket and my hand went out to the wall automatically to support me. “Where?”

“Red Wing, Minnesota.” She started to hold out a hand to help me but I waved her off. “It’s north of here, a little over an hour, on the Wisconsin state line. We need to move now.” A little hint of a smile peeked at me, understated, on her tanned and pretty face. “If we hurry, we might be able to catch up with them.”

A few minutes later our SUV was back on the highway, doing about a hundred miles an hour, barreling north on the interstate with the siren blazing. Kat was at the wheel and I was in the passenger seat. Scott was passed out in the back seat, his head against the window. We hit a bump and he didn’t stir. I rolled my window down and let the warm night air blow in my face.

“How are you holding up?” Kat didn’t take her eyes off the road. I could tell she was tense, white-knuckling the wheel. I would have been too. Scott had learned to drive years ago. Kat and I had learned in the last six months, with Parks as our instructor, in an intensive driving course that the Directorate gave us to teach us how to drive both offensively and defensively. Now I could run a car off the road at eighty miles an hour easier than I could parallel park.

“My world is in motion,” I said, as I swallowed heavily. I didn’t quite feel sick, but I certainly felt the first strains of it. “I could do with a little less of that.”

A tight smile made its way onto her face and a few of her teeth peeked out from between her lips. “At least I didn’t take the back roads route the GPS suggested. All those twists and turns…”

“Bleh.” I shook my head. “Drinking is bad for you. Also, I think I came close to kissing a guy to death in the bar.”

“What?” Her head snapped over to look at me.

“He’s fine.” My eyes pointed straight ahead, and I was trying to watch the road in order to avoid getting motion sickness. “I mean, he seemed fine, so we must not have kissed for very long.”

“Um, wow.” Her eyes were not on the road, which became obvious a moment later when she had to swerve after the tires started bumping on the strips at the edge of the highway. “Sorry. Wait, so what happened? I mean, aren’t you and Zack…”