Chapter 9 - Vested Interest

Deira said nothing on the ride to the warehouse. Her quiet anger both surprised and troubled him.. He had expected her to be glad to be leaving, or at least relieved. He was usually better at reading people.

"I am going by the apartment to make sure everything is ready for tomorrow," he said as she got out of the truck.

"Okay." She grabbed her bag from the back seat.

"I will pick you up at the usual time."

"Okay." She still had not looked at him.

"I thought perhaps you might like to go out to dinner tonight, to celebrate your freedom," he offered.

"If you think it's safe." There was none of her usual sarcasm.

"They cannot be everywhere. And it might be best to have something different to look at, if we are going to eat in silence, don't you think?"

"Whatever you want." She shrugged.

He waited until she stepped away from the truck.

"Take out your anger on Nicky. She likes a challenge."

"I have enough to go around." She shouldered her bag and headed towards the building. He waited until she had gone in before driving away.

The apartment was not far from the warehouse. She would be able to get there on her own. Maybe she would run. The thought made him smile. He opened the hatch of the truck, took out two bags and went to prepare her new home.

The first floor was vacant and would remain so for the foreseeable future. Metal shutters covered the windows of the empty store. He did not plan on telling her he had bought the building. It had been cheap, and he could sell it easily enough when the job was over. He had already replaced the entry doors and had a security system installed. There had been none at her old place.

The apartment was on the second floor. It was small, but clean and well laid-out. The door opened into a large room, with the kitchen area open to a dining nook and the living room. He put his bags on the kitchen counter and opened the windows to get rid of the lingering smell of fresh paint.

The living room looked out over the street. The kitchen window in the kitchen overlooked the small back yard which was surrounded by a privacy fence. The motion detector would trigger an obnoxiously bright light. The perimeter was as secure as he could make it. It would be up to her to be paranoid enough to watch it. He got out his tools and set to work on the inside of the apartment.

The carpet pried up easily. He laid fine copper wire along the edge and tacked it back down, making sure he did not nick the wire. He removed the baseboard, drilled a hole and slid the wire though another hole, then connected it to a tiny microphone on the underside of the windowsill. A small hole drilled in the floor allowed him to feed the wire into the first floor apartment and connect it to a transmitter. He could access it remotely if he had to, but all sound from the room would be recorded. He would have to synch it with the video manually, but he had been unable to find a camera capable of recording sound accurately enough to be useful. I t had been hard enough to get a wireless video camera with a wide enough angle to cover the whole room yet small enough to go undetected.

He hoped she would never figure out that he had her under surveillance. He doubted she would believe he had done it to ensure her safety, especially since it was not entirely true. If Cavuto's men breached the perimeter, at the very least he would need to be able to identify them. If they made it into the main room, she was already dead – or worse. He did not want to witness anything worse. With luck, he would not have to. He had not bugged the bedroom. She deserved some privacy.

He powered everything up and set up the computer in the first floor apartment. It would only record when triggered by movement in the room, so he ran several trials from different locations. The video relay to his laptop had a slight delay, but it would have to do. He checked his watch. There would be enough time to run an errand before picking up Deira. He hoped her mood had improved.

"Do we have to go out to dinner?" Deira asked, getting into the truck.

"I thought you would want to get out of the house."

"I look and feel like hell. I don't think I'm up to going out in public and pretending every inch of me doesn't hurt."

"We can pick up something on the way back to the house." Don't call it home.

"I want to soak in a tub and go to bed." She leaned her head against the window.

"What have you eaten today?" he asked.

She thought for a moment. "Nothing."

"No offense, princess, but you are prickly enough when well fed. I do not relish spending an evening with you hungry, hurt, and angry. And since I cannot do much about two of those, I will at least make sure you eat. You should not train on an empty stomach."

"Since you already pointed out how cranky I am, could you dispense with the lecture? Especially since you aren't exactly the poster boy for calm most of the time."

"I had a reputation for being calm. Perhaps being 'dead' changed me." He wondered if it was true.

"Or maybe I bring out the worst in you," she muttered.

"Not the worst. That comes when the job begins. Then I will be very calm." Or we will both be dead.

"I would think that's when you would be at your best."

"They are the same."

The rest of the ride was spent in silence.

They ate Chinese food out of cartons, not saying much. He ran a bath for her, adding a solution to help her muscles relax. He left a cup of herb tea on the stand by the tub. It, too, should help her unwind. She thanked him quietly and closed the door. He hoped she would not fall asleep in the tub. Finding her drowned would be irritating after the effort he was making to ensure she stayed alive.

He ran through forms while she soaked. He found it harder to concentrate than usual. After a while, he gave up. He lit a fire and straightened the living room. It had always amused Karol how domestic Gage had become. They had joked about it right before Karol's last trip.

When she came into the living room, wearing his bathrobe, he was staring into the fire. She sat down next to him, curling her legs up under her.

"This is nice," she said softly. He nodded.

"Did the bath help?' he asked.

"It did. I don't know what you put in the water, but it worked. Smelled funky, but worked." She let her head rest on the back of the couch and closed her eyes.

"I am glad." His gaze traveled over her, lingering on the curve of her neck. Her wet hair spilled over the dark leather in rivulets of gold. He locked his fingers to keep from reaching out to touch it.

"I'm sorry about snapping earlier. I was," she started.

"Angry and distracted," he finished.

"Yeah. I got too comfortable here," she admitted. "It's been a long time since I felt comfortable anywhere. It will be easier when I'm in my own place."

"Which will also be comfortable," he offered, purposely ignoring her confession.

"I'm sure it will be. And thank you again." She stretched, the robe parting to reveal one thigh.

"It is all part of the bargain," he replied, a little rougher than he had intended.

"I'm never going to be able to pay you back, am I?" she asked quietly.

"Never is a very long time. The debt will be settled eventually. Otherwise it would be slavery."

"And you've already told me not to call you master, so that's off the table."

"Good to know you paid attention," he said wryly.

"You tend to make your points memorable. I guess I'll have to wait to see what you want from me." Her sigh was exaggerated.

"I am sure I will think of something," he said.

"I hate waiting."

"Patience is a virtue, princess."

"In case you hadn't noticed, I'm pretty short on virtues," she said. "I'm way more familiar with vices."

"I would say more with sins than vices, but you do not strike me as the religious sort."

"Not anymore. I can't believe in God, not after everything I've been through." Her voice was tinged with sadness.

"Nor I." His with resignation.

"Good thing, too." She purposely lightened her tone. "Otherwise I'd be all worried about being struck down and going to hell. I figure there's enough of hell here and if the afterlife is nothing more than quiet darkness, well, that suits me fine."

"You seem to have put quite a bit of thought into this."

"Up until I met you, odds were pretty good I was going to die trying to take these guys out. No offense to your legendary skill, but it's still a distinct possibility." She shrugged.

"It always is," he agreed. "But with proper planning you should survive. I will do what I can to see you do."

"Of course you will. No profit in it for you if you don't. And God knows that's the only thing that matters." She couldn't suppress a giggle.

"That is unkind," he said.

She raised an eyebrow at him and kept laughing, eyes alight, cheeks flushed.

He would remember her this way.

"I'm the one who's unkind?" she finally managed to say. "You're holding everything over my head, and I'm supposed to feel bad for you? I don't think so."

"But I am helping you, doing my best to make sure you survive."

"It might be easier to sell if you were doing it out of the kindness of your heart instead of with an eye to how it will benefit you." She began laughing again, softly this time.

"Trust me, princess, everything I do has been motivated by kindness. I simply recognize that everything also has a price."

"Ah. The school of prostitution economics. I don't think we covered that in my Econ classes, but I'm familiar with the idea."

"I believe they call it the free market," he said.

"And the difference would be?"

He threw up his hands. This contest could not be won. He was glad her mood had lightened.

She leaned over and very gently spoke, her lips almost touching his neck. "This prostitute, of whatever sort, is going to bed."

He stayed perfectly still, unsure of what he would do if he let himself move. She moved closer. The smell of her was enthralling.

"Good night." She held his gaze. "Master." Her breath caressed his lips.

He closed his eyes. When he opened them, she was walking away. He waited until the fire had died down to embers before joining her.

When he woke up the next morning, her head lay on his chest, one arm draped over his stomach, the other flung out to the side. His hand rested on her back, fingers threaded through her hair. He moved carefully, to avoid waking her, only to discover she was already awake. And smiling. She rolled out of bed and, with what could only have been an intentional swish of her hips, left the room without a backwards glance.

He made sure they ate before setting out for the apartment. She smiled during the whole ride. He tried to ignore it, which only fueled her amusement.

She reacted to her first glimpse of the apartment with stunned silence.

"Will it do?" he asked.

"I like it. Even empty, this place is far better than the dump I lived in before." She prowled about, checking out closets and cupboards.

"Nice clock," she said. It was the only thing on the wall.

"It is one of those that sets the time automatically. This is the only place it gets a good signal, so you should probably not move it." If she moved the clock, she might discover the camera. And even if she did not, it would render the carefully selected angles useless.

"Okay." She was bouncing. "When is the furniture coming?"

"Later this morning. I will let them in while you work with Nicky. It will not be much, only a couch, a bed, and a table with two chairs."

"Not like I'm going to be entertaining," she said then paused, "much."

He frowned.

"You have to let me make you dinner at least once," she explained.

"I would like that," he replied. "I will not be able to join you tonight, but we will stock your kitchen with food and cookware when you are done training this afternoon."

"Kaching," she said. He looked at her quizzically.

"One more thing to add to the tab," she said.

"I do not think that will be necessary. Your 'tab' is already difficult enough to calculate."

"Well then, I will have to make it a very nice dinner."

"I have something for you." He went to a kitchen drawer, one of the few she had not opened.

"A housewarming present? You shouldn't have."

"Not quite. But you may find it useful." He handed her a wooden box.

She looked up at him and waited for him to nod before opening it. Inside was a red velvet bundle, folded neatly. She hesitated, then flicked the fabric aside. There were her wrist knives, in new sheaths. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath before opening them again.

"Why?" She watched him closely.

"Because they belong to you. And because it is better to have familiar tools when you go into unfamiliar situations."

"I didn't think you still had them," she said.

"No need to throw away perfectly good weapons. At least not once the police have moved on to other matters. Try not to drop these, though. I may not be able to retrieve them for you again."

She snorted. "I'll see what I can do to avoid big guys in dark alleys, too."

"Didn't I tell you? It is part of the plan to flush them out. That should work nicely, yes?" he teased.

"I don't know. I sort of thought it would be better to blow the whole place up and then go out for a late dinner."

"As an alternate plan, it is not bad. But explosives are touchy, and I would rather not kill those who have no choice to be in the building."

"You're a real humanitarian," she drawled.

"You have no idea," he replied