Spectre of Intention Read online

  “You okay?”

  “Yeah. You?”

  He just made a snort of derision in reply. I turned as he let me go to return to his workout. I stood looking at Jessie who still stood where I’d left him in the middle of the aerobics floor. His emotions hadn’t settled yet. I caught anger, frustration, sadness, even a thread of jealousy.

  I pulled my gaze away, walked off the wooden floor. I grabbed my workpad where it stuck out from my bag. As I passed Paula, her tendrils of fearful discomfort coalesced into a thick guilt in the pit of my stomach. I gave her arm a squeeze and returned to my treadmill.

  I didn’t have the muscle to upright the stair stepper, so why even bother trying.

  I hit the resume button and turned my attention to the package tracking window on my workpad. Those damn cameras had made it as far as Ecuador. I would post a query, but I’d bet a month’s wages that $50,000 worth of cameras had been garnished from our shipment as a customs “gratuity.”

  I opened my mouth to tell Gerard. Stabbing pains shot through my chest; my throat constricted.

  Just had to do it. Just had to pop off and erase any illusion that I could somehow, someway protect myself from Mak and Stephan. Just had to shatter the delusion that I wasn’t utterly vulnerable no matter what I knew or did. Just had to.

  I stepped off the belt and froze, lips pressed together.

  Carefully, Kaitlin shut down the machine. Trying not to hurry, she walked over to her bag and slung it over her shoulder. Without looking around at the awkward silence I’d created, she crossed the aerobics floor and pushed through the heavy door.

  I’d be damned if I was going to let them see me cry.

  I had the airwall open and the boxes rearranged before they made it back. I considered my duty done. I made my escape.

  In the hospitality section of the ship, I followed the signs to a food court. To my surprise, the seating area was not empty, but held about twenty-five other people, maybe more. Some were obviously staff—families with kids, some obviously investors—suits with too perfect grooming, but the rest were contractors like me. I felt very underdressed in my gym clothes.

  It didn’t help that the pack of teenagers ahead of me in line for the sandwich shop kept stealing glances for the full ten minutes of my wait. Nothing more intimidating than a pack of moody, hormonal teenagers. Especially when you don’t have to guess where their thoughts are ricocheting.

  But no sign of Stephan or his little band of thieves.

  And I felt like a thief by the time I got back to my room, hunkering down over my sandwich behind locked doors. I felt restless and furtive, stupid for running out on everyone. I knew the smartest move was to stay put, work through a concrete plan on how to extricate Stephan and Mak from my life. I knew that. But Ashley prowled in my brain, back and forth, back and forth, making it so hard to concentrate. I perched on the edge of the couch and picked at the lettuce that had fallen from my sandwich onto the smeared and tattered wrapper.

  I heard Kaitlin’s sole command.

  Commit.

  I jumped to my feet. Wading up the wrapper, I walked to the bathroom and stuffed it in the garbage can. I pulled a cami and shorts from the pile hanging out of my suitcase. Shower, brush teeth, change into pajamas—all definite markers of staying in. At the threshold of the bathroom I glanced back at my wall pad, pretended I wasn’t wishing for a message from Cam, pretended I wasn’t wondering why I hadn’t heard from him all day. Promised not to call him—not yet, not tonight.

  Commit.

  Settled back in the abundant pillows of my bed—where I could see both the doors with the slightest turn of my head—I began to research what I had missed in the last five years. In hiding, I had cut every tie to the street punks who had been my world. Now I had to reconstruct the web that had led them back to me.

  Stephan Chen.

  Through the licenses I’d secured for Pioneer’s Port, I had access to databases most security firms could only dream of getting their hands on. The International Criminal Information Center was probably too big time for a local like Stephan, but it had been five years. And here he was poised on the cusp of something international in scope—even if it was just international trespassing. Maybe it wasn’t the first time he’d tried something like this.

  My heart drummed against my sternum, making it hard to breathe as I entered his name into the search form. Gripping the sides of the workpad, I waited for the bits and bytes to cross two oceans and a couple continents to some undisclosed location in Europe.

  Results: 4 matches.

  “Okay, here it goes.”

  I clicked on the results and read through the macro-level particulars. I laughed at my reaction. Of course not. Three Stephan Chens born in the 1900s and one very dead nineteen-year-old. I reached up to close the window, then hesitated over a birth date: January 13, 1991.

  1991.

  I clicked on it.

  I skimmed. Taiwanese drug trafficker. Taipei to Seattle. Presumed dead in skirmish with U.S. Coast Guard, February 25, 2031.

  His dad. Could that be his dad?

  Quickly I copied the data over to a local file.

  Bang. Bang. Bang.

  My workpad flew off my lap and landed facedown at the foot of my bed. Quickly, I scrambled after it and closed down everything I was working on. I dropped the pad on my nightstand and peered through the peephole. Why did I always feel like I was asking to be shot through the eye every time I did that?

  Gerard looked back at me with one eyebrow raised.

  Wonderful.

  I slipped Kaitlin on like the robe I wished I had and opened the door. Gerard looked me up and down.

  “Not bad, but I liked the towel better. Here, catch!” He tossed me a pole—no a curtain rod—forcing me to release the door to catch it. Then he proceeded to barge in, carrying a trendy metal chair, identical to the ones I’d seen in the food court.

  “What are you—”

  “Figured after you tried to murder me with that girly workout machine, you owed me one. So, I’m here to collect a pole dance. Better make it good.” He swung the chair around, dropped his ass into it.

  I just stared. His intentions didn’t have any of that greasy sickly feeling to them, so I simply stood and waited. And considered taking the pole to the side of his head. Then I felt that first little shift to serious.

  I sighed, dropped the pole across the bed.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Yeah, well, next time you have a point to prove, don’t use me to do it. I didn’t like that. It was nasty. Gave me the creeps. Especially with all this going on.” He gestured to my two apparently useless doors.

  Then the seriousness switched back off again and he jumped to his feet. “Damn, the Bride of Frankenstein actually apologized. This is a day for the record books!”

  “Bride of Frankenstein?”

  Gerard laughed. “That’s what I call you when I really want to piss Jessie off. Works every time.”

  “Bride of Frankenstein.”

  “Or Build-It-Yourself Barbie.”

  “Gerard, you are a jackass. Consider the apology retracted.”

  He just grinned and hauled the curtain rod off the bed. “So, Dr. Frankenstein found out we’re out a bajillion dollars worth of video equipment, so he sent me here to secure the room the old fashioned way.”

  He crossed over to the balcony window. Holding the rod up to the recessed section of the window, he measured, then marked it off. Gerard planted his giant boot in the middle of my coffee table, balanced the rod across his knee, and used a laser saw to destroy Port property. When he was finished, he dropped the shortened rod into the sliding glass door’s track.

  But the vandalism was not yet complete.

  Back on the other side of the room he applied the laser saw to the rounded back of the metal chair, cutting out a divot that precisely matched the neck of the cabin’s door handle. Then he sawed off the sliders on the chair’s feet, leaving the sharp metal edges exposed.<
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  “You get the idea here?” he asked, gesturing to the remains of the chair.

  “Yeah, just shove it up under the door handle.”

  “There we go.”

  He collapsed the laser saw and returned it to the holster on his belt.

  I looked from the door handle to the dead bolt to the sliding bolt and my stomach begin to quiver. As much as Gerard annoyed me, I almost didn’t want him to leave.

  “How did he get in, Gerard?”

  Gerard folded his arms over his chest and followed my gaze.

  “My best guess is through the balcony window. Be easier and faster than dealing with all this hardware.”

  I pictured Stephan in the dark dangling nine stories over the open ocean. I shook my head. “Insane.”

  “You’re cutting into my beer time, Osgood.” He held up remaining stub of the curtain rod. “Unless you’ve changed your mind about the show?”

  “Out.”

  I held the door open for him. As he passed by, he gave my cami a little tug.

  “How ’bout something with a little more lace next time?”

  “Goodnight, Gerard.”

  And I shut the door in his grinning face.

  Bang. Bang. Bang.

  And I opened it again.

  “What?”

  Gerard dug into his pocket and pulled out a wrap-around bracelet.

  “Forgot this. Your ‘Oh, Jessie, please save me. Oh, Jessie, please.’”

  I grabbed the “oh shit” button bracelet out of his hand, used it to point down the hall in the direction of the elevators.

  “Beer, Gerard. Goodbye, Gerard.”

  “Don’t forget the lace, Osgood.”

  I slammed the door in his face.

  Jackass.

  But even Ashley couldn’t work up the enthusiasm to hate him.

  10:02 p.m.

  I realized I’d been staring at variations of that number for the past fifteen minutes. With a resigned sigh, I shut down my research. I felt fairly confident that I had tracked down Stephan’s family. Dead parents and a sister with a birth certificate and only a couple of years of elementary school to her name—then nothing. That sounded right. Through the haze of distant memory and present exhaustion I thought I remembered a white-hot hatred of his father, a tearing sadness for his mother. The sister was a more guarded memory of his, less specifically mentioned than inferred.

  I reached out and laid my workpad on the nightstand. After a few minutes of coaxing, I managed to get myself up off the bed to reassure myself with Gerard’s makeshift security system. I laughed at the sawed-off chair and wondered exactly how much trouble that was going to get me into—because I knew Gerard would never take responsibility for it.

  Just to prove I was that brave, I turned my back to the door and wandered into the bathroom for some water. I stared at myself in the mirror.

  So, I had Stephan digitally ID’ed. So far that hadn’t done me any good. It was like I’d told Jessie. Stephan was a very, very careful thief. Coming here after me, that just didn’t fit. Unless he had a very legitimate-looking cover. But if getting him on falsifying employment records was going to be my tactic, I was going to have to be patient. I didn’t have access to the port’s employment records yet. And that could be weeks.

  The thought sent a tiny tremor running through my gut. Inside my brain, Ashley resumed her relentless pacing like a caged animal that was quickly losing its mind.

  Shit.

  I wasn’t going to be able to sleep.

  I filled my cup with tap water and walked back out to sleeping area.

  “Where do you think you are going?”

  “Oh, god!”

  The water glass shot from my hand and shattered on the chair still wedged securely under the door handle.

  In the amber lamp light, Stephan stood gazing speculatively into my suitcase. Slowly, he drew a lavender and purple silk scarf free from the interlocked hangers and suit jackets. Playing the silk between his fingers, he turned to me.

  “You know there’s not another ship due out for four days. Did you forget to mark your escape routes, Ashley? Have you forgotten everything I taught you?”

  He cocked his head to the side, slid me a slow smile. My stomach clenched. Ashley slipped a little from my hold as she sang to that smile. God, he was beautiful. Even more beautiful than that morning when he’d first coaxed me from the train my second year of college.

  Stupid, naïve, fool.

  “How the hell did you get in here?” I whispered.

  “Were you going to run away from me?” He started circling, putting himself between me and the door. “I always thought you ran because of that girl. Did I have it wrong?”

  He was getting closer now. I skirted away toward the closet. Jessie’s button! I glanced to the night stand.

  “You looking for this?” Stephan held up the bracelet, then slipped it back in his pocket. “I think we’ll leave them out of this little conversation for now.”

  He took a step toward me.

  I had nowhere to step back to. I lost my breath for a second when my back hit the closet.

  “I waited five years for you to come back, Ash.” His mind gently brushed mine, a tender touch.

  “Don’t.”

  He lost his careful grip on his thoughts, his emotions. No one can hide it from me completely, not for long. Some of it slipped free, some of it coalesced between us as a dream of him, reaching out, cupping my face.

  “Stephan.”

  He was in.

  I swayed with it, with the warmth, with the peaceful completeness of it as Stephan refilled that empty part of me, drained away the fear and the anger. Somewhere, somehow, I knew I should fight it. Kaitlin’s echoing warning, fading away. But it felt so good. Ashley unfurled within me, drinking in the safety, the certainty that poured from Stephan into me. She was loved. Completely. She could finally be free.

  Then the strength of his real arm came around my waist, the heat of his real fingers tunneled into my hair.

  “I took care of you; I protected you; I loved you.” His lips traced over my cheek. “This is what we were together, Ashley. Neither of us will ever find this with anyone else. How could you leave? How could you leave me?”

  I looked into his eyes, saw the pain, the desperation there. He brushed his lips like a whisper over mine, then sank into me. Ashley rose to meet him, a reunion of souls. And as Ashley drifted in bliss, Kaitlin stepped forward.

  Stupid, naïve, fool.

  I found just enough control to turn my head away.

  “Don’t, please.”

  Stephan stumbled with me past the closet, clutched my head as he forced me to look at him.

  “Why did you leave, Ashley? Tell me why you left me.”

  We landed against the wall, his body pressed into mine. His hands left my face, wrapped around my ribs, just below my breasts. With each stroke up and down my body his thumbs reached higher.

  “Why, Ashley?”

  “I didn’t…want…”

  “Want what, Ashley?”

  “I didn’t want to die.”

  His hands stilled, cupped along the sides of my breasts. He pulled his face away to look into my eyes.

  “I would never, ever hurt you, Ashley. You know that.”

  His left hand closed over my breast, his right hand pulled me hard into him. Ashley gasped. Kaitlin screamed.

  Tears touched my cheeks. Frantically, Kaitlin tore at the fog in my mind. I couldn’t let him do this. I couldn’t let him do this to me again!

  I twisted my head away from him, but he simply lowered teeth, lips, and tongue to the neck I’d exposed. I got my hands between us and shoved. All my effort simply pushed me harder back against the wall.

  I could feel him reclaiming that tiny tract of clarity Kaitlin had won as he slid the straps of my cami from my shoulders.

  No, please! I’d tried so hard, fought so hard. I couldn’t survive this again!

  “Let me go.” A pathetic
whimper. “Please, let me go! LET ME GO! LET ME GO! LET ME GO!”

  In a blind frenzy I struck out at him, the frenzy growing wilder as Kaitlin felt his hold falter.

  “Ashley, stop. Stop! I’m not going to hurt you, Ashley. Calm down. What’s wrong?”

  “Don’t touch me. Don’t touch me.” I wrenched away from the wall, but he had my arm and that fucking circle lever move didn’t work on thief hands either.

  “Get your hands off me!” I screamed and threw my full body weight into yanking against his hold.

  He released me.

  I fell back, hit the edge of the bed. Immediately, I scrambled backwards. I hit the headboard and pulled my limbs against me. I froze there, shaking so hard the bed rattled in its frame. Stephan stood unmoving at the end of the bed, arms limp at his sides.

  Finally, he spoke.

  “You left because of me. You are…you are terrified of me.”

  The soul-deep hurt that came over that usually cocky face unlocked years of rage.

  “You destroyed me! You turned me into someone I hated! You fed me drugs and alcohol like they were fucking candy! You dragged me into people’s homes while you ripped off the things they’d worked so hard for. You made me help you…help you make them fear being in their own goddamn homes! I couldn’t look in the fucking mirror it made me so sick to see what you’d made me into. Sick! So, don’t fucking tell me you didn’t hurt me. There wasn’t any part of me left by the time you fucking got done with me!”

  Stephan stared at me in shock.

  “Ashley,” he whispered.

  The words, held so long secret, were gone. With a wordless scream, I collapsed in on myself. I felt the cries and sobs as they ripped through my throat. I felt the incredible pain as it ripped through my body. I gripped my knees to my forehead and rocked, fighting through that pain for the short, sharp breaths I caught. If the pain could just take me apart, take me away. I couldn’t take this killing fear anymore.

  I felt cold fingers press against my shoulder.

  I screamed and jerked away.

  “Shh, Ashley. Ashley.”

  Tentatively, he reached out with his mind. This time it was his intention that brushed against my shoulder.