Chapter 4 - Give and Take

The courier arrived on time. Gage tipped him enough to make him forget where he'd been. Setting the package on the table, Gage made his routine business calls. That side of his life was predictable and boring, exactly as it should be. He used the computer to transfer his personal funds to various international banks and made sure all his automatic payments were set up properly. He could barely tolerate the banality of normal life. At least the to do list got shorter.

Karol would have been so proud. Gage clenched his teeth at the unbidden thought. With his brother dead, it had been left to him to take care of everything. He hated it. The phone rang, distracting him from the only pain to which he would admit. The name on the i.d. brought it crashing back. He answered, as he always did.

"Hey, kitten."

"Hey yourself." Katya's phone voice was bubbly, no matter the hour. She kept normal hours, which helped. "I called last night but you weren't around. Your voice sounds rough. Hot date?"

"You know better than to ask me about such things," he growled. There was no menace to it. She snorted.

"I called to find out how things are going. We've been missing each other's calls. What's new?"

A girl, little older than you, drug addled and naked, is upstairs in my bed and I'm trying to decide if I should kill her or not.

He froze, hoping desperately he had only thought that. Katya neither laughed nor screamed, so he must not have spoken aloud. It occurred to him that going without sleep was not as easy as it once had been.

"Not much. I am a boring old man," he said.

"Right. First of all, forty is hardly old. And I hate to break it to you, but you don't seem boring, either. My friends are all dying to meet my uncle, the rich world-traveler. They've seen your picture and deemed you officially hot. Honestly, I think they're cracked, but they don't know you like I do."

"You should tell them I spend my days in warehouses and with accountants. It should shatter their illusions." He could not remember the last time he had been face to face with an accountant.

"I'll give it a try and let you know if it works. If it doesn't, you're going to have to beat them off with a stick when you come up for parent's weekend. The accent alone will make them crazy for you."

"Then they must not know any other Serbian men. We are dogs, all of us." He could have used harsher words, but not to her.

"I doubt they could even find Serbia on a map, or that it would matter. It's the fact that you have an accent at all they find exciting. And all men are dogs."

"Smart girl. If you learned nothing else from me, at least I know you have learned that."

"So I was wondering," she began.

He cut her short. "I put money in your account this morning."

"Oh, that's cold. That was NOT what I was wondering. I had plenty left. But thanks. You never know when I might want to run off to Rio to party," she teased.

His mind instantly went to the many things that could go wrong in Rio, but he kept them to himself.

"Rio is full of drunken tourists," he said instead, "and your course load is too heavy for running off anywhere. Which is why I don't want you working this semester."

"Aww, see you do pay attention! It's sweet." Katya was the only person who had ever called him sweet. Good to know the ruse worked.

"Of course I do." Not paying attention is deadly. He brushed the thought away. "What do you need, kitten?"

"I wanted to know if I could come over next weekend. My roommate's boyfriend is coming up, and I'm not so much with the voyeurism thing. They can't seem to keep it to the bedroom – or wait until I'm asleep." All of her things were in his house, but she had never called it home.

He went very still for a moment, until a believable story could click into place. Lack of sleep made it harder to think, so he gave up.

"Next weekend is bad. I have some business deals to work through. Things are a little tense right now. I might have to go out of town." So far, truth had proven effective, even if it wasn't the truth she thought she heard.

"I could always go to Rio." She laughed.

"I could always cut you off," he threatened.

"You won't, though. You love me."

"Yes I do. Instead of Rio, you should check yourself into a nice hotel with a spa package. Get some studying done in luxury for a change. It will be my treat since I can't be here for you." He hoped she would take the offer. He didn't spoil her often.

"Wow. The full parental guilt package, huh? You don't have to do that. It's not like I can't study in the library or close my door and put on headphones at night."

"Indulge in my compensation for being a lousy uncle instead. It is not likely you will get such an offer again soon."

"You are not a lousy uncle. But if it makes you feel better, I will happily get a massage and pedicure on your dime. I'll leave it up to you to figure out how to write it off as a business expense. Shall I call you with the number and room when I check in?"

"Always. I always want to know where you are. And if there is any problem at all, call my pager." He knew he sounded paranoid. She had told him so plenty of times.

"Thank you, uncle Charlie. My grades will be better for the break, I'm sure."

"When you figure out how to get better than a 4.0, let me know. I am sure I could market that."

"I don't know if I'll make 4.0 this semester. It's not guaranteed, no matter how much I study."

"You aren't having trouble this semester, are you?" They both knew what he meant, but she brushed it off.

"That's my cue to hang up. I am fine. I am always fine. You should trust that by now." It was an old routine.

"I know." What he didn't know is how she could be fine. Her parents were dead, and the only living family she had was an uncle she barely knew.

"I love you," she said and hung up before he could respond.

"I know," he said anyway, and hung up the phone.

Deira woke up sore. And naked. In a strange room with very little furniture. She shook her head and promptly suppressed the urge to throw up on the carpet. This is not good. Looking around slowly, she found clothes laid out neatly on an armchair. Using the bedpost to steady herself, she stood and contemplated her chances of getting dressed without getting sick. Since she refused to leave the room unclothed, she clenched her jaw against the agony of movement. Mornings were never good, but this one had been ordered fresh from hell.

Pieces of the previous night began slotting into place as she dressed. It helped to be distracted. It's dangerous to be distracted. Things had not gone at all well, and she had a feeling this was only the beginning of something she would regret for a long time. She laughed, though it came out too low.

It had never occurred to her she might regret killing to avenge her sister. That ought to have seemed more wrong than it did. That ought to have been the worst thing she could think of, but it wasn't. The worst things she could think of were getting down the stairs and having to talk to Gage.

She caught her breath at the bottom of the stairs. One down. She wiped away a stray tear and tried desperately to move normally as she entered the kitchen. The smell of slightly burnt coffee almost undid her tenuous control. The kitchen was blindingly bright. What wasn't pure white was polished grey in shades from gunmetal to chrome. It hadn't seemed so bright the night before.

"You made it through the night." He had his back to her. If he had been anyone else, she would have thought him a fool.

"Yes. Thank you. For last night." She made it to the table and lowered herself into a chair.

"It will not happen again."

"Which part?" She shouldn't have spoken. He turned to her with flat eyes.

"Any of it."

"Ah, that part. Good to know. Does that mean I walk out of here and handle this on my own, then? That would suit me."

"Sure. If you can make it to the door. Go ahead. You can have a head start."

She glared at him. He put a cup of tea in front of her.

"Thank you for the clothes." There was no harm in trying to start the conversation again.

"You're welcome. I told you I keep my promises. I will even call you a taxi when you are ready to go."

"And when will that be?" She might as well acknowledge the power structure. Ignoring it hadn't done her any good so far.

"After you have had at least one cup of tea and some conversation." He sat down across from her.

"Oh, goody. Our conversations have been so interesting." Apparently, the power structure was insufficient to keep her from being sarcastic. She discarded the idea she could change that.

"At least you remember them. That is more than I had expected."

The routine he laid out for the next two weeks seemed perfectly normal. Well, if normal had had any meaning. The busy couple, getting together a few times – dining in, of course. She needed to give her two weeks notice, negotiate an end to her lease, and pay off all of her bills.

Breaking a lease would have been a pain if she'd had one, but she wasn't going to bring it up.

"Sounds lovely. How am I supposed to accomplish this? Rob a bank? Hardly seems low profile."

"Your great-uncle recently passed away and left you a little money. I will have it wired into your account from a firm in Florida. Clean out your cards. We will cancel them later." This was routine for him, creating fictional relatives, erasing the traces of a real life.

"Okay, so you add that to my tab, right? I need to know what I'm going to owe you so I can figure out if I'm going to spend the rest of my life paying it off."

"You will." His smile was genuine. She found that deeply disturbing.

"So I become unemployed and homeless with no credit. How, exactly, am I supposed to live?"

"You will pretend to move in here. We will have a big argument and you will go away for a while to sort out your feelings about me." He had to be fairly clear on how she felt about him and was obviously indifferent.

"I don't like it." One badly chosen hiding place and the whole thing had spun out of control. Well, her control anyway.

"You do not have to like it. You have to do it." Considering the alternative, he was right.

"And where will I go when I take off to clear my head?" She sipped the tea.

"I have arranged for a place near where you will be training. I contacted someone who can refine some of your skills and give you a good idea of what to expect if you insist on moving forward with this. I suppose it is too much to hope your experience last night changed your mind?" The question was absurd. He couldn't be that much of an optimist.

"Way too much to hope," she answered. "This isn't some lark for me. My sister is dead, and I'm the only one who's willing to do anything about it."

"Is doing this going to make her less dead?"

"No. But it might let me sleep at night." She shrugged, finishing the tea. It was another one of those herbal things, but it didn't taste too bad.

"You think you get to sleep better after you kill people?"

"I have no idea. I haven't really slept since I killed the first guy." And maybe the second. "I don't count passing out in a drug-induced stupor, so don't go there, okay? It was a metaphor, anyway."

"Ah. For a moment, I worried about your intelligence. There is some chance you could be enough of a sociopath that killing people would not bother you, but I doubt it. If you are lucky, you will learn to deal with the nightmares."

"Did you?" The moment she said it, she knew she shouldn't have. He raised one eyebrow.

"I have had a lot of time to work on it."

The first time he had killed someone, he had been twelve years old. He'd lost track by the time he was fifteen. Of course, he had also been drunk or stoned a lot of the time, which may have made it easier to sleep. He could not really remember and did not want to.

"There is a reason I prefer to kill at a distance. Fewer nightmares." There were many good reasons to kill at a distance, but that one was paramount.

"I want to kill them close up. I want to watch them suffer. I want to see them die. I'll deal with the consequences later. And if that makes me crazy, then fine. I've got good reason to be crazy, and I might as well embrace it because it isn't going away on its own." She stared at her hands, unwilling to look at him.

"Most people try therapy," he drawled.

"I had enough of it when I was a kid. It obviously didn't take."

It had not worked for him, either. Psychiatrists were either horrified by what he had told them or thought he lied about the details. Often both. They obviously had not read his file carefully before taking him on. Social workers had been more understanding. Therapy had not been a total waste of time. He had discovered there are some things people don't actually want to hear about, no matter what they claim.

"You might reconsider it when this is over because your desire for blood is a little disturbing in someone so young." Not so young – not really.

"Don't you enjoy killing people?"

"Not especially. I simply happen to be very good at it, and it does not bother me much. I have known people who like killing. I try to avoid them. If I can't avoid them, I do my best to kill them. People who like to kill are dangerous and very bad for business." He looked at her pointedly.

"So you're saying it's in my best interest to get therapy when this is all over."

"Not a bad idea."