this is where the world drops off
There's a routine to this:
The Stoli slides down her throat. Half an ice cube crushes between her back teeth. The empty glass makes a dull thud on the mahogany bar top. A man asks for the time, and leaves unsatisfied, a swear word not so cleverly hidden under his breath. She taps on the bar for a refill. She only finishes half of it.
And she always catches him in the corner of her eye, like light reflecting off a shiny cigarette lighter. She turns her head, but she's never fast enough: only sees the back of his head, pushing through designer suits and tip-toeing around five-hundred dollar pumps, making his way into the hotel lobby. She always doubts herself for a second, scans the room for someone who is more decidedly him, but finds no one.
The Stoli mutes the sound in her ears of her heels on the expensive marble. There is gold leaf in the archway that leads to the grand staircase, hazy clouds on the ceiling, and a fountain in the middle of the lobby. The man at the front counter nods cordially at her as she passes, rather than stopping her and demanding proof of identity. She's never seen him before. She's never been here before.
And he never tells her what floor exactly, but inside the elevator, she pushes the button for seven anyway. She doesn't try to explain why she's sure he's in room 735. As a creature of the hunt, there is a momentary pain of disappointment when she finds the door ajar, staring at her in its obviousness. This used to be more difficult. She doesn't bother to draw her weapon anymore.
The room, at the end of the hall, has the square-footage of two rooms; even in the darkness, she knows. There's a whiff of stale, hand-rolled cigarettes; briefly, she hopes he has taken up smoking, and that his lungs will starve in blackness. It smells sickly sweet; almost inviting. She knows that he does this just to taunt her.
He is standing at the window, his back to her. There is a blue light from the street, filtered through the sheer curtains, and it's almost too perfect, too clichéd, to believe. Maybe she'll wake up, too, and her role as Vichy France will be a dream.
There's an envelope on the side table. It's real; too real.
But, the thing is: she never leaves. She never has.
Her fingernails trail along the edges of the paper envelope, and he turns around. He tries to say something, to elaborate on whatever is in her hands - a name, a date, a safety deposit box number; a project, an index number, a photo - but she cuts him off.
"Don't."
His voice dies.
Somehow, she has already made it halfway across the room. It used to feel cheap; or, maybe it still does, but she just doesn't care anymore. They tell themselves it's about the information in dozen of envelopes like this one, but really--
"I'm surprised you came," he says, when there's nothing left to say. It's the same old, same old.
She takes in his silk vest, and the expensive jacket hanging off the back of a nearby chair. "What are you this time, a stock broker?" She notices his tie. Her father used to have a tie just like it.
He is close to her now, close enough to smell his expensive cologne, expensive just like everything else about him today. It makes her think of last month - of the half-finished Jackson Pollack-inspired canvas propped in the corner of a dirty apartment in a city covered in snow. Here, though, the cold waits outside, instead of seeping in through old windows and paper-thin walls.
His eyes dart to the envelope in her hand, and then back up at her. "It's a weapon," he says, before she can stop him.
She inhales sharply. "We don't talk about it, remember?" Her hand tightens around the thin envelope, blood pumping to her fingertips and other extremities. It feels like a photograph in there.
"She's five years old, Parker," he continues, and she can't stop herself from seeing the girl's face - a school picture, probably her first, a wide smile and bright blue eyes and soft wavy hair. And there's an address scribbled on the back, too, somewhere in Terra Haute, Indiana. He leans in closer, voice tight and controlled: "Don't you care?"
She shuts her eyes, pushing away the waves crashing down on her mind. Trying, at least. "Jarod," she warns.
"Their latest project." He's baiting her again.
This is not what we agreed to. She tries to breathe evenly, to quell the panic or the fear or the whatever it is that's about to burst inside her mind - she never has been able to accurately describe It. "Stop."
Music, swelling to a crescendo.
She hears him licking his lips. "Raines thinks he can manipulate her abilities and sell her off to the highest bidder."
"No."
"Parker--"
"You're wrong," she says between her teeth. It comes out louder than she intended.
His hands close around her wrists, fingertips resting on her pulsating arteries. He knows the drill. She feels his thumb slide across the bottom of the palm of her left hand. He sighs. "You know I'm not."
"NO."
Her eyes fly open, but she can still see everything, coming and coming and taking over her entire body. A child, electrodes across her forehead, screams for her mother. Her hand twitches, aching for her weapon; his grip on her wrists stops her. The first time it happened, she had her Smith and Wesson pressed against Jarod's forehead in three seconds flat. She's learned. He's learned.
"No," she says, pale in the face, "He'll keep her for himself."
The envelope falls out of her hand.
His hands slide from her wrists and up her arms; they're on her shoulders, and then her neck and her face, and that's when he kisses her - soft at first, but then she sighs and catches his bottom lip between her teeth. She lets him do this to her. It's a twisted game, and it's so very them: he pushes her to her emotional extremes, and she is undoing his belt as they stumble backwards toward a bed.
"He knows--" she whispers in his ear, when he's close enough to her. Her suit pants are in a heap on the floor, and he slides his hand between her legs. She gasps, fingers scraping his back. "Sydney knows." He finds her mouth again, pushing his tongue into hers, in an effort to shut her up.
And he lets her win the battle; this time, at least. She straddles him, his hands on her waist and moving with her hips. There's still a bandage on his shoulder from her bullet that grazed him two weeks ago. That's going to leave a scar.
At four in the morning he is asleep, and she steals the Glock he's hidden in the table beside the bed when she leaves. She tosses it in a dumpster three blocks away, like a spent cigarette.
(She'll be too late, though - she will slide the photo across Sydney's desk, and Broots will locate the retrieval order in the mainframe, but Indiana isn't getting any closer, and the screen door is still blowing open when their sedan skids to a stop in the driveway. Sydney will search for traces of Jarod, and find none, and so she will feel him watching her when they move through empty house, knowing everything and knowing nothing at all.
And at the door, she'll draw her weapon anyway, because nobody's perfect.)