Ava Gray - Skin Game

“I need a room,” she said through the safety glass. “Do you have any vacancies?”

That was a ridiculous question. There were only two other cars in the lot, and one of them probably belonged to him. Still, it didn’t hurt to be polite, not when he looked so grumpy about being woken up.

“Yeah,” he grunted. “Just a sec.”

She heard the sound of about ten locks being disengaged. What the hell did he expect to happen out here in the middle of nowhere? But maybe this was a high-crime route, based on factors she didn’t know about.

With a smile, she stepped into the office, which smelled of burned coffee and stale sweat. The manager or owner—whatever he was—didn’t speak as he set out the guest registry. The nicer hotels would demand a credit card and a picture ID, which is why she generally wound up in places like this. She wrote Cassie Marvel, one of her favorite aliases in the line below the last guest, whose scrawl was illegible.

“Forty-five bucks. Cash,” the guy told her, as if he suspected she might try to pay in food stamps or bingo tickets.

Kyra laid out the money in small, crumpled bills. That seemed to relieve his mind somewhat and he plunked an old-fashioned metal key down on the counter. “You’re in 117. No parties, no unregistered guests. Basic cable is free. Check-out is at noon. You’re not out of there at 12:01, you pay for another night.”

“Got it.” She nodded and snagged the key. “Thanks.”

She left the building and hopped back in the Marquis, pulling it around the building to the corner of the U nearest her room. The exterior lights seemed too few and far between. The dark was more profound out here, broken only by the stream of her headlights. Once she turned them off, she couldn’t see, and that made her uneasy.

For a moment, she sat listening to the engine tick over. Then she told herself she was being stupid. Nobody knew where she was. Hell, she couldn’t even pinpoint the town without half an hour and a map.

Before getting out, she locked the other doors, and then clicked the lock button on the driver’s side. Then she grabbed the keys and her bag from the backseat. Try as she might, Kyra couldn’t dispel the foreboding as she slid out of the car. Her fevered imagination conjured footsteps crunching across the parking lot, even though she didn’t see anyone. Her heart was pounding like a jackhammer by the time she got in the door.

For a long moment, she leaned up against it, eyes closed. It was a thin barrier between her and imagined danger, but it helped a little. She turned and engaged both the bolt and the chain. It was a wholly irrational response to the dark, but she’d been afraid of it ever since she was a kid.

Normal people grew out of it, but normal people didn’t deal with a dad who’d left her on her own more nights than she could tally. He meant well, and most times, he did come home with breakfast money from whatever game he’d gotten into. Kyra understood what kind of man he was, not the sort who could work a day job, and she’d loved him fiercely. But she’d always gone to sleep with the lights on. The worst time she could remember was a bad storm in Pensacola, when the power went off. She’d been nine.

Thunder rumbled in the distance. Ah. That probably explained her nerves. Lightning in the air always made her nervous.

“Looks like I got off the road just in time,” she said aloud.

A tired driver coupled with a fierce Texas thunderstorm didn’t make a good match. She took stock of what forty-five dollars had bought her. The room was shabby but fairly clean, if you didn’t look too long at anything. She was thankful to find a coffeemaker in the tiny bathroom, so she could heat water for soup. First Kyra checked it for telltale signs it had been used for cooking meth, but it was dusty, not rusty looking. Next she filled the pot and poured it in the top, checked and then rinsed the filter area, and flicked the machine on. It immediately began to hiss.

As she laid out some clothes for the next morning, rain began to spatter on the roof. Kyra couldn’t help but repress a shiver. In her life, rain never signified anything good. It rarely rained in Vegas, but it had been pouring on the August night when she found him discarded in an alley off the Strip like yesterday’s garbage.

Her hands shook as she opened the carton of noodles. She didn’t want to remember that night. It would only give her nightmares. There was nothing more she could do. She’d avenged him the only way she could, and it hadn’t given her any peace. His wet, battered face still rose up to the surface of her dreams like a corpse floating free of its weights in a night-dark river.

“Who did this?” she’d whispered.

“Serrano,” he’d gasped. “But listen to me, baby. Stay away from him. Promise me—” But he wasn’t able to force a promise out of her.

He died.

She remembered with crystalline clarity how she felt, kneeling in the rain, which contrasted to the heat of the night. All around her, neon had flashed with maddening regularity. If she closed her eyes she could visualize everything about the moment.

With effort, she forced the memories away. She needed to eat something or she’d get sick. Since her weird ability sparked to life, she’d had a crazily high metabolism, as if what she did cost a certain amount in terms of energy. That made sense, actually, not that Kyra had asked any doctors about it. She hadn’t seen one in years.

She got the coffeepot and poured the water into her ramen noodles. What a glamorous life she led. Everything would look better in the morning. It always did.

It was almost 3:00 A.M. when Reyes pulled into the motel parking lot. He found the Marquis right away, verifying that he was still on target. He wouldn’t have been surprised, actually, to learn she’d found the thing and planted it on another car.

That would have complicated matters significantly, as it would mean she’d made him, and he wouldn’t be able to coax the information he needed out of her. He’d have to gear up to pain and coercion immediately.

The tracking device simplified his job; now he had to work out why she’d add him to her routine of her own volition. He’d forced his way in once, and she’d ditched him, even after the smoking-hot sex. He thought that was probably the norm for her. In fact, Reyes doubted she’d given him a second thought since driving away.

Another man might’ve been flattened by that. For him, it just presented a challenge, a problem he needed to think his way around. She’d proven more capable than he expected, not just a pretty little gold digger. Foster had warned him she had hidden depths and was dangerous as the day was long. She’d apparently killed her own father to cut him out of the score; Reyes had visited the grave himself.

Maybe he should have thought twice about sleeping with the evil little bitch, but he’d thought that was a way to reach her. Women who couldn’t be manipulated emotionally could sometimes be bound with sex. The way she walked away proved she wasn’t one of them. It was quite the fucking problem, considering he needed information before he finished the job.

At the moment, however, he needed a room for the night. It was a break she didn’t know the car he was driving. There would be nothing to tip her off when she woke up in the morning.

The failed gambit would make things more difficult. If he’d known how slippery she would prove to be, he would have planned his first approach a little more carefully. But there was no changing the facts now. He’d have to find a way that didn’t set off all her alarm bells. That might prove tricky.

First, he needed sleep.

Reyes rented a room from the surly proprietor and headed to it, intending to crash for the night. It amused him to let himself into the room right next door to hers. When the manager turned his back, he’d checked the record behind the counter: Cassie Marvel. He added it to her list of known aliases, along with Rachel Justice and Lisa Baker. He admired that she didn’t stick with one set of initials. People often made that mistake unconsciously, their egos imprinting their true selves on whatever persona they adopted.