“Naw.”
“Yes,” Artur said. “You excel at goading. And hiding does not befit royalty. Come, Thomas.”
“Wait a minute!” Fred hissed. But they were already crawling to the other end of the table and slipping out the door. “Dammit!”
She thought for a second. Then took a breath and yelled, “Hey, King! Did I mention your ex is fucking my best friend?”
Long silence, followed by, “That’s a lie. Barb’s frigid. She hates sex.”
“Sex with you, maybe. Either that or my friend cured her because brother, she’s already done it twice today. And it’s not even…” She looked at her watch. “Three o’clock! Guess she’s not missing you too much, huh?”
“Who’s your friend?”
Fred wasn’t sure which was scarier: when he was out of control and firing a gun at random people he’d just met, or when he was scarily calm and trying to think his way out of a hole.
“Put the gun down and maybe I’ll tell you. Heck, put the gun down and I’ll bring you to him. Them. Did I mention my friend—his dick is about a foot long, according to legend—gave Dr. Barb a makeover? She looks awesome. Did you know that dark blue is her color?”
“White is her color! She buttons her lab coats all the way to the top!”
“Not today, pal. Today I bet she doesn’t even know where her lab coat is. You know how it is, young love and all that…”
King snorted. “My ex is a lot of things, but young isn’t one of them.”
Gotcha. “Well, maybe, but that doesn’t bother my friend. He loves older women. Literally! As in, I’m pretty sure he’s loving one right now. She’s got to have fifteen years on him.”
“She’s fucking… a younger guy?”
“Multiple times,” Fred assured him, no longer having to fake cheerfulness. This is kind of fun. The guys were right: goading is my gift. “I hope they’re using birth control, because Dr. Barb’s not exactly ready for the nursing home yet.”
“She’s on ‘the pill’ for her cramps,” King replied absently.
“Oh, well, no bouncing babies for her right now. That’s okay; with her career, and my friend’s career, and all the hot monkey sex they’re having, they prob’ly aren’t ready for kids.”
Silence.
And more silence.
Fred cautiously looked up and saw King framed in the doorway between his office and the conference room. He was pointing the gun straight at her. The barrel, from her standpoint, looked awfully big. She raised her hands and slowly climbed to her feet, thinking, Damned if I’m going to die on my knees.
“I’m a big fan of shooting the messenger,” he said. “And you’re another frigid bitch, if memory serves.”
“Why does that not surprise me in the least?” Come on, guys, what are you waiting for?
As if in answer to her prayers, the other office door splintered down the middle. But King didn’t look around. He didn’t even jump. Instead, he shot Fred with his last two bullets.
Chapter Thirty-three
There were three things Fred would never forget from that afternoon.
Number one: When you’re shot, you don’t stagger dramatically backward or plunge out the eleventh story window. You just stand there.
Number two: Artur can break a man’s neck with one effortless twist, and it sounds like the sound ice makes when you crunch it between your teeth.
And number three: Thomas carried a switchblade.
“Uh,” Fred began, as King’s body was falling, as Artur went red with rage, as Thomas was trying to get her to lie down. “I think I’m—uh—shot.”
“You are shot, Fred. Twice.”
“Why are you pushing me?”
“Because I want you on your back while I’m getting the bullets out.”
She removed his hands. “I really don’t like the sound of that.” She felt she was being calm and reasonable, and didn’t understand why Thomas was as pale as Artur was purple. It didn’t hurt at all. And the bad guy was dead.
“Artur! That cabinet over there. Bring me one of the bottles with either white or brown liquid in it.” Thomas swept his foot beneath hers and knocked her off balance, then knelt on her chest to keep her on the floor.
There was the sound of glass breaking, and then Artur was kneeling beside her. “Will these assist you, Dr. Pearson?”
That’s the first time Artur’s called him Doctor.
“Hey, wait a minute!” Fred yelled, wriggling beneath his knee. “He’s not a real doctor! I mean, he is, but he’s not a medical doctor. He’s a water fellow.”
“I got my M.D. before I went back for my Ph.D. I just found out I had zero interest in triple shifts and other benefits of residency. I don’t like working too hard to save people’s lives.”
“You sound like a real winner, doc.”
“Fred, you’re never sick. And you said you have an incredibly fast metabolism. So I’m betting your bullet wounds will be all healed over tomorrow.” He wiped his blade on the carpet, and then on his pants.
Artur was kneeling beside them and, at some odd prearranged signal she must have missed, suddenly tore her shirt straight down the middle.
“Hey!”
Thomas ignored her. “So we can leave the bullets in you, which would be bad, or we can take you to a hospital for removal, where they’ll do all sorts of tests, which would be bad. Or I can take them out right here before they heal over.” He unscrewed a bottle of Jack Daniels, thumbed the button on his switchblade, and poured booze all the knife and his hands.
“But—”
“Hold her down,” Thomas said shortly and went to work.
Chapter Thirty-four
Jonas and Barb were sitting at the bar in the Presidential Suite, drinking wine (eh, Thomas was rich, he could afford a bottle of Chardonnay) and having a perfectly nice chat about how they planned to spend the rest of their lives together, when the front door rattled.
“Fortunately we’re fully clothed,” Barb teased. “Finally.”
“I still say we should have gone over to your ex’s hotel and caught the ruckus. I mean, there were a million sirens a while ago. I bet it was cool.”
Barb shook her head. “If the police require a statement of course I’ll cooperate. But best to leave things to the professionals.”
Fred stomped in, looking like somebody had worked her over pretty good. Jonas was off the stool and on his feet before he was aware he’d moved. She’d been his sparring partner more than once, and taken full kicks in the face without so much as a bruise. But now Fred was wearing a blood-stained bra and her favorite (and now also bloody) pair of track shorts.. And how many times did he have to beg her not to wear tennis shoes without socks? Yech.
Thomas and Artur came in behind her and they looked almost as bad: both of them spattered with blood
(whose blood?????)
and Thomas sporting what was going to be one hell of a black eye, and Artur with a split lip.
“Little Rika, surely you could see Dr. Pearson knew what he was—”
“Fred, come on, don’t be mad. I did it to save you from—”
“I said no talking to me ever!” Fred whirled on Barb. “And you! Your crazy ex husband shot me. Twice! Also, he’s dead.”
Barb’s mouth hung ajar. “What? Phillip is dead?”
“And he shot me.”
“But you never get hurt,” Jonas managed.
“Well, if someone points a big gun at me and pulls the fucking trigger, I can get hurt, okay, genius? Luckily, Dr. Demento and his faithful lab wretch, Artur the Psycho, were there to save the day. And by save the day, I mean commit federal fucking assault!” Fred kicked the leg of the eight foot dining room table. Said leg collapsed like it was a toothpick, and there was a tremendous ‘whud’ as the thing crashed to the floor.
“And you two! Boning the afternoon away while we’re cleaning up the shit your ex left behind! Him and the Mafia, Thanks for nothing!”
“Phillip has ties to the Mafia
?” Barb gasped.
“Had, Dr. Barb. He’s dead.”
“We did call the police and send them over,” Jonas said weakly. “How could we have known a matter for the EPA was going to turn into a Mafia-laden bloodbath?”
“On the same day both of you get laid for the first time in years? You didn’t think that was a sign of the Apocalypse? Because I sure as shit did! You two can’t have sex again, ever.”
Jonas and Barb looked at each other, then at Fred. “You mean ever ever? Or just with each other?”
“I think, to be on the safe side—” Fred stopped in midrant and put a shaking hand to her forehead. Behind her, Artur and Thomas had quietly walked up until they were each standing just behind her. “I think—I think you better not—ever—”
Then the oddest thing of the entire afternoon (and it had been a doozy) happened: Fred’s eyes rolled up until he could only see the whites and she pitched backward.
Where Thomas and Artur caught her, neat as you please, and Artur lifted her up and laid her on the couch.
“Is there any more of that wine left?” Thomas asked once he had made sure Fred would be fine. He touched his swelling eye and winced. “It’s been a helluva day.”
“If that is a drink like ale or grog, I also would like some.” Artur’s split lip was also swelling nicely.
Barb poured. They clinked. They drank. Fred snored.
Chapter Thirty-five
Fred rolled over, felt a stabbing pain in her shoulder, grabbed it, and groaned. Grabbing it made it worse, so she opened her eyes.
She was on the couch in the living room of the Presidential Suite. And it was dark out.
“Wakey wakey,” Thomas said. He was holding her wrist in one hand and looking at his watch.
She yanked her arm out of his grasp and fought the urge to blacken his other eye. The holding-down bullet-removing game had not been fun. For any of them.
“What’s going on? Where is everybody?”
“Barb and Jonas are down at the police station giving their statements. Artur is conked out in the bedroom.”
“I’m not speaking to you,” she said coldly, “but if I was, I would wonder how you explained King’s neck being broken by a merman.”
“We don’t know anything about that. We didn’t see what happened. Maybe he slipped. Maybe one of his mob buddies came back and paid a visit. All we know is that he tried to kill a couple of people, we ran away, and he’s violating about a thousand EPA regs. He’s dead, so I don’t give a shit. Let the cops and the bureaucrats sort it out.”
Thomas sounded pretty cold during his little speech, and Fred suppressed a shiver. “What are you so mad about? Which is what I would ask if I were speaking to you. Which I am not.”
He had leaned in to look at her pupils, but suddenly his gaze shifted and he was seeing her, not her eyes. “Fred, he shot you! If Artur hadn’t broken his neck, I would have stuck my knife into more than his kidney. He just stood there and shot you. And then I had to dig my knife into your shoulder while Artur held you down and you screamed the place down and cried and begged me—God!” He ran shaking hands through his dark hair, making it stand up in wild clumps. “For putting all of us through that, I could kill him right now all over again.”
“Well, all right, calm down. It’s no big deal. It’s all over. Bad guy’s dead. We win. Drinks all around.” She started to sit up, grimacing. “I’d kill for an aspirin to work, there’s no doubt about—oof!”
Thomas had put a hand on her chest and slammed her back down. “You stay down,” he said.
“Don’t push your luck,” she warned him.
“Stay,” he said again. “Do not make me get Artur in here to make you lie down, Fred. You won’t like it and neither will I.” He got up and started to pace, looking like he was going to leap out of his skin.
She watched him, amazed. “Thomas, what in the world’s gotten into you?”
He whirled on her, dark eyes flashing. “What’s gotten into me?”
“Well, yeah, that’s kind of where I was going with my whole ‘what’s gotten into you’ question.”
“How about this? I love you, you silly bitch, and thanks to that fucker King I had to hurt you. Not exactly all part of my plan for a romantic goddamned evening!”
“But—you—but you don’t even—we haven’t even known each other a week!”
He plunked down in the chair opposite her and waved away her objection. “Oh, hell with that. I knew the minute I saw you in the tank. Of course I love you. How could I love anybody but you?”
“But you’re only going to be here for a couple of weeks! Then it’s off to Millport!” Millport was the University Marine Biology Station in Scotland.
He smiled at her, but oh, such a tired, bitter grin. She almost wished he hadn’t smiled at all. “Been checking on my schedule, huh? And it’s sooner than that, babe. My project here is finished.”
“Well. I wasn’t sure how long our shit project was going to take, that’s why I checked your schedule.”
He propped his hand on his chin and looked at her for a long moment. Finally, he said, “Go back to sleep. I’m sorry I dumped all that on you. I should have waited until you were feeling better.”
“You shouldn’t have dumped it on me at all.”
Thomas shrugged. “Better get used to hearing it. If I have to think it, you have to hear it.”
Fred, having never been in love before, said crossly, “I don’t think that’s how it goes.”
“Go back to sleep.”
“I’m not tired.”
“Yes you are. You lost a ton of blood in the conference room. You almost ended up in the hospital despite my best efforts.”
“Well. Thanks for that.”
“Finally, a glimmer of gratitude. I may faint.”
“Shut up, I’m still not speaking to you.”
“I know.”
“And I’m not tired,” she said, and while they were arguing about it, she fell asleep.
Chapter Thirty-six
A hand on her, shaking her. Time for school already? Wasn’t it Saturday?
“Rika?”
“Five more minutes,” she groaned. “Little Rika, I will be gone in three.” That was not Moon Bimm. That was—She opened her eyes. Artur was on his knees beside the couch. He was so close strands of his red hair were tickling her face.
“Gone in three?” Why did her brain feel like it had turned to oatmeal? Why was she so tired? Where was everybody? “Why? Where is everybody?”
“Your supervisor and your friend went back to your friend’s domicile many hours ago. Thomas is resting. And I must leave. The king requires a full report.”
“Leaving leaving? Leaving right now?”
“The king calls and I must answer. But I could not leave without seeing how you are. I do profoundly apologize for violating your boundaries—”
“What?”
“Holding you down,” he translated. “But I felt Thomas was right. It was best to remove the metal things from your body. Metal does not belong in bodies. However, doing so against your will was—” He looked away. “Difficult.”
“Oh, yeah. I can see how that must have been so difficult. For you two.” She rubbed her shoulder, which still ached. “Lucky for me I’m not prone to infections.”
“Rika, when you are strong once again, I will return.”
“Why?”
“Because you are my princess meant,” he replied simply.
“What?”
“My—fiancee? Except you have not given me your hand so we are only promised to be promised.”
“Artur—what?”
“You will be the Princess of the Black Sea,” he told her, completely ignoring her shushing motions, “and one day you and I will be the High King and Queen after my dear father is gone.”
“No. We. Won’t!”
He smiled at her. “Ah, yes. Biped wooing. Thomas warned me.”
“Thomas warned you?”
“Yes, it is an odd thing, being fond of my greatest rival, but I cannot help it. He is decisive, clever, duplicitous, and violent. All the things that make the bipeds formidable. He informed me that you will be his and not mine, but we have agreed to woo you in our own way and ultimately let you make the choice when you are ready.”
“But—but—but—”
“He will lose, of course. And now, I go.”
Artur got to his feet without using his hands, which looked impressive, and strode to the door. She sat up, swung her legs off the couch, ignored the shooting pains, and raced after him.
“You can’t just leave!”
“But I must.”
“But you can’t just say all that—that stuff and then just march out the door!” Not both of them, she thought frantically. Not both of them!
“But I will come back.” He cupped the back of her neck, kissed her sweetly, then opened the door. “I will always come back.”
He closed the door with a soft click.
“But I don’t want to be the High Queen of the Black Sea!” she shouted at the closed door.
“What are you doing out of bed?” Thomas asked sleepily, standing in the bedroom doorway.
“It’s not a bed, it’s a couch. And who could go to sleep right now?”
He yawned. “Did Artur leave? God, finally. He’s not bad, for an arrogant, entitled, overbearing, non-intellecutal, pompous…” There was more in this vein, but Fred didn’t catch it as Thomas had turned around and gone back to bed.
The doorknob rattled and she stared at it fearfully. What was that line from Dorothy Parker? Or was it Shakespeare? “What fresh hell is this?” From Hamlet or some damned thing, and that’s just how she felt, too, like some fresh hell was lurking around the—
She yanked the door open. Barb and Jonas were in a clinch, from which they separated with difficulty.
“You two,” she said bitterly, and went back inside. She fished a bottle of water from the wet bar (what the hell, Thomas could afford it) and ignored the cooing, cuddling couple behind her.
“Feeling better?” Jonas asked with grating cheer. “Because girlfriend, you look like shit on a plate.”