Читать книгу Shannon McKenna Bundle: Ultimate Weapon, Extreme Danger, Behind Closed Doors, Hot Night, & Return to Me - Shannon McKenna - Страница 17

Val slouched in a chair by the bed, grateful for the warmth and silence of the hotel room. Steele cuddled her child under the blankets.

He was immensely relieved that he had not been compelled to use force. He did not want to hurt her, and she was so quick and strong, it would have been inevitable if she had resisted. With the child already so traumatized, it would have been unpleasant, to say the least.

Steele was not doing well. Her lips were bluish, her eyes shadowed, her face an ashy gray. She hugged the child tightly to her body, stroking and murmuring. Rachel’s closed eyes looked sunken in her pinched white face.

He, on the other hand, was keeping his long coat on, oozing blood splotch and all, to camouflage his erection. An inconvenient physiological reaction to combat stress. He was sure that Steele would not be surprised by it, but also not amused in her present mood. He had no desire to hear what she would say. Imagining it was enough.

“How is she?” he asked.

“Better. She’s calmed down and breathing more deeply now. And she’s almost asleep, so shut up,” was Steele’s caustic reply.

Val sighed and flung his head back. His face itched from the glue, his scalp from the wig. The cotton batting stuffed inside his nose, lips, and cheeks irritated him beyond belief. He wished he could shower to get the cloying stench of marijuana and patchouli out of his nose, but getting naked under a deafening stream of hot water was unwise. If she slipped away now, he no longer had the RF tag on her jewelry case to follow. The first thing she’d done when she’d gotten to the hotel room was to pry the thing out of the case and flush it down the toilet.

He got up and headed to the bathroom, leaving its door wide open so he could see the path to the room door. How had the other team found her? He peeled off fake facial hair and soaped his face as he pondered it. As yet, Novak had no reason to think that he would not comply with the terms of their bargain. It had to be Hegel, PSS.

He pried and spat the cotton out of his mouth into the toilet, flushing it, not about to leave that much DNA where anyone could find it. He rinsed and spat again, thinking. No one but him had the codes and RF frequencies he had tagged Steele’s stroller and vehicle with. Hegel knew where she lived, but how could he have known about her trip to the airport in time to get a local team in place? The Taurus she drove had never been tagged. And she would have noticed if anyone was following her on a lonely highway at night.

The only explanation was that Hegel had marked him, not her. That the B team had located her by following him. But how? He’d taken care of the usual things before he left Budapest. New laptop, new phone, new organizer. He had changed every piece of luggage, footwear, clothing.

He’d used every trick he knew to shake followers, checking repeatedly to make sure he was clean. To the point of outright paranoia.

Val stared into the mirror, trying to form a matrix, but he was too exhausted. He looked haggard, his face carved out and shadowed with stubble. He hadn’t slept since before he went to Budapest. It showed.

It was hot in the room. Steele had turned up the heat to the maximum to get the baby warm. He popped a sweat under the coat.

Fuck the erection. It wasn’t as if she’d never seen one before.

He had to deal with the wound. The bullet had ripped through the fabric of his coat and torn a bloody furrow across the meat of his upper arm. It stung, but he’d taken far worse.

He shrugged off the coat and the bloody shirt, and hissed through clenched teeth as he washed the shoulder with soap and hot water. The sink was spotted with pink, but the wound barely oozed at this point.

He went out and retrieved the medical kit from his bag. Steele and the child were both asleep, at least apparently. They needed it.

He dressed his arm, and sank into the chair again, not bothering to put another shirt on with that heat blasting. He held his gun in his hand, resting on his leg, and watched them sleep.

Steele moved restlessly. Once, she muttered something in a language he could not place. From the tone, it sounded like a plea. He had no intention of dozing off, but the blackout blinds were down and the excessive heat could make him sleepy. His arm throbbed dully.

Tiny hands on his knees jolted him awake. The little girl, huge-eyed, was reaching out to grab the barrel of his Glock.

Cazzo! He jerked the thing up out of her reach. Just what he needed, another brutal shock to his nervous system. “God, no,” he whispered. “Don’t touch it, piccola. Dangerous.”

Rachel thought it was a game, of course, and leaped to grab it, gurgling with glee. The nap had evidently restored her. She looked fine.

The laughter woke Steele. She jolted upright and took in the situation in an instant, diving from the bed and grabbing the child around the waist. “Rachel, Jesus! Don’t you ever, ever touch one of those, baby. Not ever, hear me? God, Janos, what the hell were you thinking, leaving that thing lying around?”

“I did not leave it,” he said grimly. “It was in my hand.”

“Just keep it the hell out of her reach!” Steele hissed.

Startled and upset, Rachel began to cry. Tam hugged her tightly, looking resigned. “I guess this means she’s not in shock.”

A shrill and stressful half hour passed before the child was happy again, distracted by an array of tiny toys, random colorful objects and books that Steele produced from the black bag. Val put on a clean shirt and strapped on his shoulder holster in the meantime. He would keep the gun fastened tight and high on his body from now on.

The little girl soon decided that he was more interesting than her toys. She toddled over, holding two small dolls. She held one out.

He took it. And now? Should he animate it? Make admiring comments? He’d never been around children, just Giulietta’s baby, when he was young, and that had ended so horribly. He still had queasy dreams about it now and again.

Rachel resolved his dilemma by holding up her other doll and pressing it, chest to chest, against the one he held. She adjusted its stiff, hard little plastic arms until it embraced his.

“Hug,” she explained solemnly.

A hot sensation swelled in his chest, tight and uncomfortable. He breathed the strange feeling down and adjusted the arms of his doll until it returned the other’s embrace. As best it could, of course, hampered by unyielding plastic and stiff mechanical ball joints. “Hug,” he echoed obediently.

Rachel rewarded him with a smile that startled him with its beauty. She pressed the dolls face-to-face. “Kiss?” she inquired.

He laughed at her earnest request. “Let’s not rush things,” he said. “I am shy. And we barely know each other.”

Rachel frowned and knocked the dolls’ plastic faces together. “Kiss,” she insisted.

“Rachel, don’t bother Mr. Janos,” Steele said, in a warning tone.

“She is not a bother,” Val said, realizing with surprise that it was true. He held up the doll to face hers. “Kiss,” he said, resigned.

Rachel rewarded him with another radiant smile. Her doll kissed his with enough intensity for him to start feeling a little strange about it. And Steele was giving him a distinctly unfriendly look.

“What?” he demanded. “I did nothing except get my doll kissed. Passively. My doll did not even kiss back.”

Steele shook her head, looking uneasy. “It’s strange. How she goes for you. Usually she screams bloody murder around strange men.”

“Maybe her instincts are better than yours,” he offered.

Tam made a derisive sound. “No, she just has a lot to learn. Learning to watch out for men with handsome faces and big guns comes after basic language skills, how to use a fork, and potty training. Come on, baby, come play with your dolls with Mommy.”

Rachel ignored her and held up another small doll to be admired. “Sveti give dollies,” she informed Val with great gravity.

“Oh, sì?” he responded politely. “Who is Sveti?”

“We see Sveti wedding!” She jumped. “Red dress! For me! Pretty!”

“Wedding?” He glanced at Steele. “You’re going to a wedding?”

“Today wedding! Today wedding! See Sveti! Mommy promise,” Rachel said, glancing fiercely at Steele for corroboration. “Promise!”

A frown marred Steele’s pale brow. “Honey, don’t babble,” she said tightly.

“Want red dress! Want Sveti! Promise!”

Steele massaged her forehead with her fingertips. “I don’t have your red dress now, baby,” she said wearily. “I left it at home. And Sveti’s not here. I’m sorry.”

Rachel’s face crumpled. Val braced himself for her ambulance siren imitation. Today wedding. He didn’t place much weight in a three-year-old’s sense of time, but Steele’s discomfort with Rachel’s revelation suggested that there had been plans to go to some event today, before he maneuvered her into running away.

“Is one of your McCloud friends getting married?” he asked.

“None of your damn business, and how did you know about the McClouds anyhow?”

“Want Sveti!” Rachel wailed. “Want wedding!”

“Is there someone at this wedding who you could trust to keep Rachel safe for you for a while?”

“That’s none of your damn business either.” She got up. “And it’s time for us to go. Thanks again for the—”

“Sit down.” He put all his force behind the words. “I am trying to save your child’s life.”

His tone made even Rachel’s wails trail off in uncertain whimpers. Steele sat slowly on the edge of the bed again, her full mouth pinched.

“The wedding is today?” he asked. “In Seattle?”

A sullen shrug was her response.

“You were planning to go?” he persisted.

“Before I tried to flee the country, yes,” she said bitterly. “Last night’s events put a crimp in my social calendar. This morning’s adventure didn’t help much either.”

“We should go,” he informed her. “It’s the perfect timing.”

Her eyes widened. “What’s this ‘we’ crap? We’re not going anywhere with you, Janos. I’m not exposing my friends to you and your weirdo homicidal pals. And besides, we have nothing to wear.”

“So order something online,” he said. “Have it delivered.”

She shook her head. “Listen to me, Val Janos, or whoever the hell you are. You haven’t even told me yet what the hell is going on. Until you explain to my satisfaction—”

“I can’t.” He shot a significant look at Rachel.

Rachel’s doll was hugging his doll once again. She tilted her head, and peeked up with a flirtatious smile.

“Honey baby, it’s time for you to have a bath,” Steele said briskly. “I’ll go run it for you.” She squinted at him. “And you will talk. Quietly, outside the bathroom door, while she bathes.”

A few minutes of preparation got Rachel paddling happily in a shallow bath with an assortment of floating rubber toys, produced from the miraculous black bag. Steele sat in the bathroom doorway where she could keep an eye on the child, and gestured for Val to sit opposite her on the floor.

“Talk,” she ordered. “Who were those guys?”

“I had no chance to interrogate them, so I cannot be sure,” he said. “But I assume they were a local team put in place by PSS.”

“PSS?” She looked perplexed. “Aren’t you PSS?”

“I was,” he said. “I had a disagreement with the organization. I suspect that after that, my boss no longer trusted me to carry out the mission, so he mobilized another team. They will consider me rogue after what happened this morning.”

“A disagreement? Over what?” she demanded.

“You,” he said baldly. “My boss insisted that I take Rachel and manipulate you with her.”

Her face was a pale, impenetrable mask. “And why didn’t you?”

He thought of several answers. Dangerous, inappropriate answers. But he was not yet ready to voice them. And she was definitely not yet ready to hear them.

“I don’t like hurting children,” he said finally. “It was often a problem for me in this work. When the issue came up again, I said enough, vaffanculo a tutti. I did not like the job in any case. Coercing a woman into going with a depraved pig like Luksch by threatening her child, che schifo. It is squalid.” He shrugged. “My boss said that a man in my position cannot afford such scruples. He was right. So I decided to change my position.”

“I see.” She examined her fingernails. “So, ah, let me get this straight. You followed me and helped me and Rachel in the shuttle just because you’re noble and heroic?”

“Ah…” He floundered, taken aback.

“I take it this is the part in the story where I’m supposed to be deeply impressed by how honorable you are? And melt like chocolate?”

He took the three steps back in his mind and waited until his anger at her sarcasm faded. “It is not a story,” he replied. “It is the truth.”

“Hmm.” She gazed at her daughter, splashing and humming in the tub. “So they took over all the data on me that you gathered for them and had this B team act on it?”

“No,” he said. “This is the part that troubles me. They knew the location of your home because I could not hide it from the satellite. But I do not know how they found you at the airport this morning. I did not share the frequencies that I tagged you with.”

She looked thoughtful. “They found me, but you don’t know how. Hmmph. I smell a ramped-up version of Good Cop, Bad Cop.”

His teeth began to grind. “The good cop does not usually kill the bad cops when that game is played,” he said.

“It depends on the stakes,” she said. “How hard the game is being played, how ruthless the players, how big the payoff. The psychological effects would be intense with murder thrown in.”

He stared at her. “I did not do that,” he said.

Her eyes slid away. “Hmm,” she murmured. “How noble. And very moving, Janos, but it doesn’t explain what you’re doing here with us. You should be lying on a beach on another continent, sipping an umbrella drink, putting all the unpleasantness behind you. If what you say is true, nobody is paying you a salary to cramp our style any longer. So why are we here?”

The woman was mercilessly focused. He had hoped to ease around the danger zone for a while, to warm her up, gain her trust. But no. She shoved him straight toward the perilous moment of truth.

“There is…something else,” he forced out.

She leaned back with a sigh. “Finally, we’re getting somewhere.”

He had scripted several persuasive ways of approaching the dangerous bargain he meant to offer her, but all of them evaporated out of his head, leaving him with the blunt, unlovely truth.

“I grew up in Budapest,” he said, his voice halting.

She tilted an eyebrow. “And this is relevant exactly why, Janos?”

“My mother…” He stopped and swallowed. “She was a prostitute, from Romania. She worked in a brothel there, run by a mafiya boss from Ukraina.”

Steele’s eyes dilated. “Daddy Novak,” she said.

He nodded. “I was very young when she died,” he said. “I got swept up into his organization as a child. I worked for him for years.”

“I see.” Her voice was as hard as glass. “And what does your mafiya past have to do with me?”

He closed his eyes, tried to organize his thoughts. This was not going well. He was not making sense, even to himself. “I am trying to explain the connection,” he said wearily. “There was a man…who helped me years ago. He was kind to me. Educated me, tried to get me out. He failed with the second, through no fault of his own. I care about this man. Novak knows this. He abducted my friend, and now he threatens to torture him to death if I do not…deliver you to him.”

He did not dare to look at her. The heavy silence was underscored by the child’s burbling and splashing from the bathtub.

Steele’s face was ashen. She was so startled, she had no sarcasm to counter him. “Does he know about Rachel?” she whispered.

“From what I could tell, no. He did not mention her.”

“He must not find out,” she said with hushed intensity. “He would never rest until he got her.”

He nodded.

She looked down at her hands. They were trembling visibly. She clenched them into fists. “Why are you telling me this, Janos?” she asked. “It’s not an efficient tactic if you want to save your friend. Why not just knock me on the head and do the deal?”

Val shook his head. “I was hoping to find a better solution to the problem,” he confessed. “One that would not damn me to hell.”

She looked dubious. “You think that a solution exists?”

“I hope so,” he said. “I do not want to hurt you. And Imre would not thank me for saving him from death and torture at your expense.”

“Hmmph,” she snorted. “This Imre must have very high standards if he can reason like that in Novak’s clutches.”

“Oh, God, yes. That he does,” Val agreed fervently. “His high standards have been a pain in my ass for most of my life.”

Tam waited for more, and threw up her arms. “So?” she prompted him. “The suspense is killing me. Tell me about this better solution.”

“I have not formulated it completely,” he admitted. “But I want to offer a trade. You help me with my problem, and I help you with yours.”

Her eyes narrowed thoughtfully. “Go on.”

“By helping eliminate Novak, you help both yourself and your daughter,” he said. “I hire a team, and we will set a trap for Novak. You are the bait, pretending to be fooled into being delivered to him. You will be covered on all sides by manpower and electronic backup.”

“Ah.” Her bright eyes were unreadable. “And what do you offer me in return?”

“I will take care of Georg for you. He will never bother you again.”

“Do you mean kill him?” Her eyebrows shot up. “Ambitious.”

He shrugged. “I will manage it.”

She shook her head, and his heart sank. “It’s a bad bargain,” she said. “Not a fair trade.”

“Why not?” He could not control the jagged edge of frustration in his voice. “We will solve all your problems at once.”

“No. Your problem, Janos,” she pointed out. “Which is much bigger than mine.”

“Is it?” he demanded. “What happened in that shuttle bus did not look like much of a problem to you? Georg Luksch is not a fucking problem for you?”

She dismissed that with a wave of her hand. “If those guys were PSS and working for Georg, then they wouldn’t have killed us,” she said with irrefutable logic. “And I am perfectly capable of taking care of the Georg problem myself, if it comes to that.”

“Oh, yes? With Rachel to protect?” he snarled. “And even if you should succeed at killing Georg, what kind of mother would you be if you are on the run night and day from Daddy Novak for the rest of your short life? He will not rest now that he knows you are alive. You will never sleep again.”

She shook her head. “I never slept much anyhow.”

Val clenched his fists. “Very well. Would you consider doing it for payment?”

She blinked a few times. “How much payment?”

“At least three million euro, perhaps closer to four,” he said rashly. “Everything I own, minus whatever it will cost me to mount this operation. And it will take a little while to pull it all together, transfer the stock options, sell the apartment in Rome, et cetera.”

Her eyes widened. She looked toward Rachel, splashing and singing in the bathtub. “A generous offer, but no,” she said quietly.

He wanted to scream, pound the walls, smash the lamps. “But if Novak and Georg both are—”

“My chances of surviving what you propose are too small,” she cut in. “I appreciate your honesty, and I’m sorry for your friend, but my first responsibility is to Rachel.”

“Which is why you should reconsider,” he said desperately. “The quality of both your lives will improve if—”

“I know what’s at stake,” she snapped. “The answer is still no. There is nothing more for us to talk about. Rachel and I will be on our way as soon as I get her dressed. Unless you intend to abduct or murder us, of course. In any case, excuse me while I go shampoo Rachel’s hair.”

Val sat on his ass outside the bathroom door, limp and bleak and defeated. He stared at Steele where she kneeled by the bathtub, her back straight, her husky voice murmuring nonsense to the child as Rachel sputtered and shrieked at the insult of shampoo. He stared at her black diaper bag, his hand fiddling with the tiny SafeGuard X-Ray Specs burr beacons he had hidden there, in case he got lucky enough to manage to mark her things again. Her murmuring voice floated out of the bathroom. He was out of her line of vision.

He pulled the smallest beacon out, and slid it into the seam at the bottom of her bag. Done. He would know her location, at least for another twenty-four hours. He was not yet ready to admit defeat. And the end of the world.

He got up and logged on to his computer. A few minutes later, Steele carried the wriggling Rachel out wrapped in a big bath towel and dressed her with some difficulty. When Rachel was on the floor again playing with her dolls, Val slid the laptop across the bed and spun the screen around to face her. “Here.”

She frowned down at the screen. “What’s this?”

“The online catalog for the department store at the mall,” he said.

She looked blank. “And? So? What about it?”

“Clothes for the wedding,” he said. “We’ll have them delivered to the hotel.”

Her mouth tightened. “Have you not been listening to a word I said? You’re not going to the wedding, Janos. No is no. Capisci?”

He gritted his teeth. “Do you need clothes for this event, or do you not?”

She gave him a thunderous glare, and then, out of nowhere, her face miraculously cleared. “Whatever I need, did you say?”

“Whatever,” he stubbornly repeated.

Too late, he registered the catlike satisfaction on her face as she tugged the keyboard closer and began to clickity-click with the deft ease of a seasoned online shopper. Oh, cazzo. He was in for it.

She was going to make him pay and pay and pay.

Thank God for cosmetics. Tam dabbed still another layer of coverup under her eyes with the makeup sponge. The bruise-colored shadows down there were gruesome to behold without foundation to camouflage them. She studied the effect, and put on the finishing touches: a final brush of mascara to make already thick lashes thicker, a slick of clear gloss to make the bronze-toned lipstick glisten, color on her cheeks to brighten her shocking pallor.

Not bad. Even on a day from hell.

Janos was in the other room, sunk in silence as he perused the details of her Internet order. Yes, she had been bad, very bad. But he deserved to be punished for his mischief-making. He deserved worse for what he’d done to Rosalia alone, let alone the passports, the adoption agency, the cops. She didn’t even want to total up how much money he’d cost her.

Therefore, she was authorized to fully enjoy the horrified look on his face when he saw the totals. Hah. Take that, testa di cazzo.

She went out into the hotel room and rummaged through the shopping bags, gathering the elements of her ensemble together. Janos watched her take the new shoes out of their box, and then glanced at the receipt for the reference.

“Manolos,” he said, his tone aggrieved. “Eight hundred dollars?”

“A bargain,” she purred. “Excellent value.”

“And the Tigger potty seat? The Cadillac of strollers? Five hundred and eighty seven dollars for cosmetics alone? One thousand, four hundred for a cocktail dress that looks smaller than a hand towel?”

“Looking good is an investment.” She unfolded the iridescent bronze-tinted silk stockings with the retro seams up the back and stroked them with an admiring hand. “You did say whatever we needed, didn’t you?” She slanted him a look of mock dismay. “Does it exceed your budget? Oh, no! I’ll write you a check! Oh, dear…whoops, afraid I can’t after all. I’m a murder suspect now, you see. My assets will be frozen any time now, if they aren’t already. So sorry!”

He made a disgusted sound and she left him to stew, gathering up stockings, shoes, jewelry case, and the dress before she went into the bathroom to pour herself into her outfit.

The stockings and garter belt were delicious, and the dress nicer even than it had looked in the online catalog. Crumpled, stretchy bronze fabric clung lovingly to every curve and hollow. It was almost off the shoulders with built-in support for her bosom that she barely needed. The skirt came down half the length of her thigh. Boldly short for a woman who scorned panties, but she liked living dangerously.

To a point, she mused, thinking of the morning’s events. To a point. She was backing way off on living dangerously.

She braided her hair up into a high, tight coronet and fastened it with a bristling array of Deadly Beauty ornaments, all of them fully armed just in case. Her pendant topaz earrings looked great with the dress, also serving in a pinch as a hypodermic loaded with a quick-acting knock-out drug. She pulled out the necklace, the pièce de resistance.

Her eyes looked back from the mirror, bleak and miserable. She had to be ruthless now. Quick, decisive. To act without hesitation.

She had to stop dawdling and procrastinating, goddamnit.

“Rachel, honey?” she called. “Come on in here. We’ve got to do one last potty stop for you.”

Rachel peered around the bathroom door, resplendent in her new red velvet dress trimmed with black ruffles. The flamenco three-year-old.

“No pee,” she said darkly.

Tam shoved the new Tigger potty seat on to the toilet, tugged down Rachel’s tights and swung the little girl up onto the toilet. “You just concentrate,” she said. “I want to hear that tinkling sound, OK?”

With Rachel cooperating, Tam took a deep breath, stuck out her tits, and sauntered out.

Janos glanced up. The receipt dropped to his lap, forgotten.

She struck a pose, and let him look. She turned, very slowly, showing off. “Do you like it?” she asked throatily.

Janos cleared his throat. “Sì,” he said. “You are magnificent.”

He stood up, and she walked toward him, standing close enough so that he could smell all the outrageously expensive perfumed body and face creams she had bought on his dime.

“Thank you for the dress,” she said softly. “I love it.”

“The investment was worth it,” he conceded.

She dropped her lashes demurely. “How sweet. Such a generous thing to say.” She held up the clasps of the heavy beaten gold necklace with the big, padlock-shaped, moonstone-studded pendant. “Clasp this for me?”

He took them in his fingertips and bent over her head, inhaling her scent. He leaned closer still, until she could feel the brush of his warm breath. He smelled good. His breath smelled good, too. He was so hot, still faintly smelling of patchouli oil, sweat, and man.

She clenched her teeth. Grabbed the pendant in one hand, slid her fingers down to the third bead of the necklace with the other. She found the textured cluster of moonstones, pressed the pendant against his bare shoulder—and pushed the button.

Janos arched and shuddered with a strangled groan for the entire duration of the nerve-scrambling electric zap that she gave him. It was a long one, not out of spite, but because she badly needed an extra margin to get Rachel and all their stuff into a cab and away before he was capable of pursuing them.

He toppled backward onto the bed. It made an enormous rattling crash as his big body hit. Rachel appeared in the corridor seconds later, her tights wound like soft shackles around her wobbly ankles.

Her face was woefully confused. “Val sick?” she asked anxiously. “Need medicine?”

So he was Val to Rachel already, was he? She gritted her teeth, stuffing the taser necklace back into her jewelry case. “Just taking a nap, honey.”

Val groaned and tried to speak. Shit. Her margin of safety was slim. The bastard was a tough one. Tam cursed, and hastened to tug up Rachel’s panties and tights and get her into her brand-new red winter ski jacket, also bought on Janos’s dime. A flurry of gathering shopping bags and scattered toys, babbling incoherent explanations to Rachel, and finally they were out of there. Tam held the wriggling Rachel with one arm and shoved the new stroller, which was heavily laden with bag, purse, potty seat and a cluster of shopping bags, with the other arm.

It started up when they were finally in the cab. Fat, hot tears, sliding right down through her undereye coverup, the cosmetic she could least afford to do without. Goddamn him for making her feel guilty. She dabbed, sniffed, cursed. Tried again to justify herself.

She couldn’t give him what he wanted. She could not trust him for a split second. If what he said was true, he had his nuts in a vise, which made him deadly dangerous.

And if he was lying, he was more dangerous still.

She could not expose her friends to him and his organization while they were drinking and partying and dancing, their babies toddling around their feet. She couldn’t let him see who she left her child with. He couldn’t expect her to. He would not have done so in her place. No one with a functioning brain would. He’d be stupid to take it personally. And Val Janos was anything but stupid.

Still, those tears kept sliding down, one after the other, bringing a gooey landslide of foundation and mascara along with them.