Defender Hellhound (Protection, Inc: Defenders Book 3) Read online

  “Too bad we can’t put this on YouTube,” Natalie remarked. “Biggest viral hit ever.”

  When the pups wore themselves out and flopped into a fluffy heap on the floor, she took out the books she’d borrowed, touching their covers with anticipatory delight. Glancing up, she said, “Hey… Want to trade?”

  Puzzled, he said, “I brought an e-reader.”

  “Want a new one?” Natalie took hers from her purse and offered it to him. “You let me see your library—want to see mine?”

  “Of course!” He took her Kindle and turned it on. It was a device identical to millions and millions of others, but the books downloaded to it made it unique. They would show him what she was interested in and what she enjoyed, much as his bookcase had told her something about him. It was a very intimate possession to loan out—a gesture of trust, even.

  He was soon engrossed in her library. It was hard to tell if she had everything Stephen King had ever written, because her books weren’t sorted in any way, but it sure looked like it. Not to mention a whole lot of other books whose covers featured vampires, living skeletons, and giant ants. There was even one with a fanged skeleton riding a giant ant.

  In addition to horror and stage magic, she also seemed fond of old children’s books—boarding school stories, dog stories, and horse stories—and romance. The lack of organization made for some hilarious juxtapositions on the screen, with a tentacled horror on the left seeming to reach toward the kissing couple on the right.

  “Found anything interesting?” Natalie asked. Teasingly, she said, “Stretch yourself—read about a lonely widow and the hunky drifter who saves her ranch and warms her bed!”

  If he had to read about other people having sex, he’d lose his mind. “Do you have anything on here that was a favorite book of yours when you were a girl?”

  “Lots.” She stretched her lithe body across the space between their beds and rapidly flipped through her Kindle. She stopped on a cover with a pair of pink ballet shoes. “Here you go.”

  She returned to her bed. A quick glance showed that she had selected Modesty Blaise for her own night’s reading. Ransom settled back with Ballet Shoes. He never reneged on an offer, and he wanted to get a window into what Natalie had loved as a girl. Though he wasn’t sure exactly what he’d learn. It seemed obvious that she would have been interested in a book about girls performing onstage.

  When he looked up, he found that night had fallen. Natalie was still engrossed in Modesty Blaise, holding it close to her face and squinting in the dimming light. She glanced up when he clicked on the bedside lights.

  “What’s Modesty up to?” Ransom asked.

  “She just rescued Willie from Gabriel’s gang. I love her. She’s badass.” Mischief twinkled in her eyes as she said, “What do you think of Ballet Shoes? Or are you giving up?”

  “Of course not. I finished it. It’s short. And I liked it. It was a lot less… fluffy pink tutus… than I expected. The personalities of the sisters were so vivid. Your favorite sister is Posy, right?”

  “Of course,” said Natalie. “But not because she’s the one who performs in a leotard.”

  “No. Posy’s incredibly determined. She knows what she wants, and she goes after it, no matter what anyone else thinks. That’s very you.”

  “Your favorite is Petrova, right? Smart, interested in science, cares more about her work than getting applauded, fits in even less than Posy.”

  “You got it,” Ransom admitted. “I identify.”

  “What did you read when you were a boy?”

  “Nonfiction, mostly. Some science fiction. When I was a little kid, I was really into dog stories.”

  “Did you ever have a dog?”

  “No. My mother was allergic.” Ransom leaned over to scratch Heidi’s ears. She gazed up at him with the utter adoration that the dogs in the stories always had, and which he’d eventually decided was a fictional device to make kids buy books. But no. Heidi loved him, absolutely and unconditionally. He could feel it. “I’d forgotten about the dog books. I didn’t keep reading them after I was ten or so. Now I remember why I loved them.”

  “I never forgot the things I loved as a kid,” said Natalie. “You should download some of those dog books. Read them again with Heidi at your feet.”

  “Only the ones where the dog doesn’t die.”

  “I hated the books where the dog dies!”

  “And the ones where the kid has to give away the dog at the end. They were so depressing.”

  They lay in their separate beds, side by side, talking about the books they loved and the books they hated and the books they’d never been able to find again because all they remembered was something like, “The cover was green and the villain falls into a well at the end.”

  The hours flew by until they caught themselves yawning at the same time. One by one, they shut themselves in the bathroom and got into pajamas, and then returned to bed.

  “Good night, Natalie.”

  “Good night, Ransom.”

  They turned off the lights. But though he was tired, he lay wide awake, listening to her soft breathing. He could imagine the length of her slim body so vividly that it was almost as if they lay in the same bed; whenever he moved, he was jarred by touching empty space.

  His mind wouldn’t turn off, wouldn’t even slow. He worried about Natalie, longed for Natalie, and wondered how she really felt about him. He tried not to, but he couldn’t help torturing himself by imagining what she’d do if she found out his last, worst secret.

  In the brief breaks between thinking about her, he thought about his team and how he’d never see them again. He kept uselessly replaying his confrontation with Roland and rewriting it so that it came out differently, only to know that it had already happened and could never be changed.

  His power began to creep in, pushing useless information on him. A type of Vietnamese folk painting on paper made from bark of the rhamnoneuron balansae tree uses powdered egg shells and charred bamboo leaves for white and black paint. The motel clerk was, right now, watching a rerun of Top Chef, season nine, episode six, eleven minutes and thirty-two seconds in… thirty-one seconds… thirty seconds…

  “Ransom?” Natalie’s voice was the barest whisper, but it cut through the churning storm inside his mind.

  “I’m awake,” he whispered back; he didn’t need to worry about waking her up, but it felt wrong to break the hush in the room. “Are you all right?”

  “Yeah. But I can’t sleep.”

  “Me neither.” He wanted to reach out to her, but was immediately swamped by a million reasons why he shouldn’t do it, along with details of a road being built in Canada and the scientific names of several types of butterflies and—

  Ransom stretched out his hand across the space between their beds. It was barely visible in the darkness, a shadow amongst shadows. But he saw movement, and then warm slim fingers wrapped around his.

  At first he was only aware of how much he cared about her, how much he wanted her, how frustrating it was to only touch like this, and how wonderful it was to touch her at all. Then he realized that his power had turned off. His mind was quiet, and even the rush of his own thoughts had stilled.

  “That’s better,” murmured Natalie. “Don’t let go.”

  “Don’t let go of me, either.”

  They didn’t.

  Chapter 14

  The time that followed was the happiest and most heartbreaking, the most wonderful and most frustrating of Natalie’s life.

  She and Ransom found a deserted section of the beach, where she built a sand circus and he built an amazingly sturdy driftwood castle to which she added a moat stocked with sand crabs. Wally played chicken with the waves, standing with his paws braced in the sand and barking at them, then teleporting back to dry sand a second before they came crashing down. Heidi preferred to attack the waves, rushing them headlong and cunningly teleporting behind them, only to be annoyed anew every time she got a nose full of salt wat
er.

  Ransom taught her to drive, patiently coaching her as she drove the Mustang around empty parking lots. Sometimes she caught his knuckles going white when she stepped too hard on the gas and nearly achieved escape velocity, but he never said a word.

  She achieved GO TO A MALL, dragging him to eat Cinnabons and watch her pop in and out of dressing rooms, modeling outfits. Neither of them could finish even a single Cinnabon—apparently her tolerance for sugar maxed out at half of one—and the clothes modeling turned out to be an exercise in sexual frustration.

  Natalie began to resort to more and more frumpy, baggy, unflattering outfits in an effort to drag her mind away from the image of yanking him into the dressing room with her so she could unbuckle his pants while he took off her blouse and—at that point she had to press her hot forehead against the cool wall and think very firmly of the least sexy things she could imagine, like cold mashed potatoes and being chased by an angry swan.

  When she finally emerged, back in her original clothes, she found Ransom gone. He eventually returned with his shirt damp and his hair wet, explaining unconvincingly that a water fountain had splashed him. Natalie was pretty sure that, lacking a cold shower, he’d done the best he could manage with a bathroom sink.

  She crossed off EAT AT A DINER multiple times, since she enjoyed the first one so much. Hamburgers and Coke and French fries and all types of pie, jukeboxes and friendly waitresses and bottomless cups of coffee—it was always a delight, especially with Ransom across from her, looking incrementally less surprised every time he tried a slice of pie and found it good.

  The waitresses kept commenting on how sweet they were, the way they held hands across the table. Ransom always flinched when they said it, so subtly that they never noticed: a tiny flicker of the eyelids and a fractional tightening of his grip. It gave her a prickle at the back of her eyes, which she drove away by thinking of how not-sweet she’d like to be with him, which then forced her get up and do what she’d begun thinking of as the Ransom Maneuver: dunking her entire head in the bathroom sink with the cold water on full blast.

  With all the extra hair-washing she was doing, her dye began to fade. She got out her rubber gloves and tubes of dye, brought a chair into the bathroom so she could sit over the sink and face the mirror, then called Ransom in to help her with the back.

  “How often do you do this?” he asked.

  “Every three months at a salon, and I touch it up myself every other week.” She had to laugh at his surprise. “What, did you think it grew like this?”

  “It’s hard to remember that it’s dye. It seems so natural on you. When did you start?”

  “I tried out a couple colors when I joined the circus. Red, black, blonde. None of them suited me, any more than my real color does.”

  “What is the real color?”

  “Dust.” She shivered, thinking of dust swirling around her ankles. Sterile, powdery dust, in which nothing could grow…

  In the mirror, she saw Ransom’s dark eyes, the color of rich fertile earth, seeming to look straight into her soul.

  “Did you see something, right now?” she asked. “I mean, with your power.”

  He shook his head. “I was wondering if you were remembering something.”

  Relieved, she said, “Right! When I started dyeing my hair. Janet gave me a trip to a fancy salon for my thirteenth birthday. The hairdresser had skin the color of ebony and hair the color of sunshine. It looked so gorgeous on her, I told her I wanted to color my hair, I didn’t want it to look natural, and to do whatever she thought suited me. I said, ‘Go wild. Seriously.’ She looked at Janet, and Janet nodded. And the next thing I knew, I had beautiful rainbow hair. For the first time in my life, I looked the way I felt inside.”

  “You’re making me want to dye my hair.”

  “You could. I’ve got everything you need right here.”

  He smiled, a little wistfully, and shook his head. “I don’t think I could get that feeling from my hair, no matter what I did to it.”

  “Well, your hair’s perfect for you already. It’d be a shame for you to change it. All those shades of red and brown…” She reached backward and tugged on a lock. It was silky but resilient, holding its wave. She traced it down to his scalp, and watched his eyes close and his open hands curl into fists.

  “I don’t…” His voice cracked. “I don’t think I should help you with the dye. If me touching your hair feels anything like you touching mine...”

  The memory of her heart fluttering like a trapped bird made her pull her hand away. “Right. You’re right.”

  She turned back to the mirror, squeezing out dabs of brilliant dye and streaking them through her hair, highlighting some locks and leaving others alone to fade to pastel.

  In the mirror, Ransom watched her, his gaze hungry. When she used a hand mirror to dye the back, he said, “You never needed me.”

  There was a bitter edge to his words that made her wonder if they had a double meaning. True, she didn’t need him. She’d never needed anybody. She’d survive, for better or for worse, but she’d survive…

  She corrected herself: she’d believed she’d survive.

  “I wanted you to help. But no, I don’t need you. I can do it myself, I always have. Don’t watch, I want to surprise you.” Her voice came out louder and sharper than she’d intended. It had to, to drown out her own thoughts.

  He went out, and she closed the bathroom door. She had to wait for an hour for the dye to sink in, and she hadn’t brought a book or her Kindle. She hadn’t intended to spend that time sitting alone in the bathroom because she was afraid that she’d start to cry if she saw him and let herself think about everything she could never have. But here she was, stuck inside, without anything to distract her from the thoughts she didn’t want to have.

  “I’m going to slide something under the door,” Ransom said from outside.

  Bewildered, she watched as a flat black thing slid under the door. It was halfway in before she recognized her own Kindle case.

  “Thanks,” she called back. “Set a timer for an hour, will you?”

  “Got it.”

  He’d not only thought to give her the Kindle, he’d warned her in advance so she wouldn’t be dangerously startled by a black thing sliding under the door.

  He’d jumped off a cliff for her.

  He’d given himself the world’s worst migraine for her.

  He’d let her drag him to diners and malls and amusement parks, and he hadn’t been embarrassed to have fun at them too.

  He’d never made her feel inferior for her lack of formal education, even though she’d never even gone to high school and he had a degree in biochemistry and read textbooks for fun.

  He’d never tried to stop her from making her own decisions.

  He’d held her hand all night when she couldn’t sleep.

  When all they could do was hold hands, she’d learned every inch of his: every nail, every callus, every knuckle, every line on his palm. When all they could do was look, she’d memorized his autumn-colored hair and his broad shoulders and his sad eyes.

  He loved Heidi and Wally, and they adored him.

  He shared his books.

  He’d not only read Ballet Shoes, not only enjoyed it, and not only admitted that he enjoyed it, he even had a favorite sister.

  I love him.

  The thought filled her first with joy, and then with terror, and finally with a frustrated anger at herself. How could she let herself fall in love now, when they couldn’t even kiss without risking her life? What could love do for either of them now, other than breaking their hearts?

  She could never tell him how she really felt.

  Natalie had never learned to walk the tightrope, but she knew what it felt like now: balancing on a wire above an abyss, taking careful step after careful step, and smiling all the while.

  Chapter 15

  You said the wrong thing, growled his hellhound. You always say the wrong thing. You’ve
ruined everything.

  No, I haven’t. Ransom threw images to his hellhound of Natalie reaching for his hand, Natalie enthusiastically recommending books, Natalie watching him eat when she thought he wasn’t looking and smiling, always smiling. She’s just taking a time-out.

  Sure enough, once she was done waiting and showering and blow-drying, she threw open the bathroom door, ran to the window, and held her head in the sunlight. “What do you think?”

  The sun made her newly-dyed hair glow like light itself. There were bold streaks of color against soft pastels, individual strands dyed to blend together like a pointillist painting, parts that made him think of sunsets and parts that made him think of oceans and parts that made him think of graffiti. But none of it clashed any more than a rainbow or a butterfly clashes. And while her hair drew his eye, so did the rest of her: her ever-changing eyes, her strong chin, her lithe body, her clever hands. Everything about her was all of a piece, unique and unusual and beautiful and perfect.

  “You look like an Impressionist painting,” he said. “Not just your hair. All of you.”

  “Thanks, that’s the best compliment. Especially with colors like these, you want to wear them. They shouldn’t wear you.”

  “They most definitely don’t.”

  She smiled brightly. Maybe a little too brightly. He couldn’t put his finger on exactly what it was, but something about her felt too… shiny. Brittle, like a spun sugar shell. A fragile shell, but still one meant to keep him at a distance.

  He recalled her past as a con artist, and how she’d once said that she’d never try to con him because he’d see through it.

  He was about to ask her when his hellhound cut in, growling, Do you really want to know?