The Surrender Gate: A Desire Exchange Novel

  “Sounds good,” she whispers.

  “So I think I’m going to hang out downstairs for a while and—”

  “I would have stopped, Marcus. If you’d asked me to, I would have stopped the whole thing.”

  He nods, purses his lips, rolls his head from side to side as if he’s trying to casually work a crick out of his neck. But she can tell he’s measuring his next words in exactly the way she just gave herself permission not to. “I promised you I won’t stand in the way of you keeping your promise to Arthur. That’s how it’s gonna be. For another twenty-four hours, at least.”

  “Still…”

  “I’m a patient man, Emily Blaine.”

  “Tonight would have required a lot more than patience out of me if our roles had been reversed.”

  “Who says it didn’t?”

  “Fair enough.”

  “You didn’t cheat on me,” he says quietly, but it sounds like he’s trying to convince himself as well. “That’s not what happened. So get that off your back, okay?”

  “Okay,” she whispers.

  “Do you need anything? Water? Something stronger, maybe?”

  “I need you to tell me something.”

  “Shoot.”

  “That thing you said to me, while it was happening. Do you remember what you said?”

  “I told you that you were beautiful.”

  “Yeah. That. Did you say it just to make me feel better about what was going on?”

  “No.”

  “Why’d you say it then?”

  “Because you’re beautiful.”

  A flush sweeps through her body from head to toe.

  “Is it my turn to ask a question?” he asks.

  “Shoot.”

  “Did you enjoy it?”

  “At first, it was overwhelming, and then it was…pure pleasure. And then…I heard your voice in my ear and…”

  “And then?” His voice is tight as a bowstring.

  “I came.”

  He’s been trying for a casual pose, arms crossed over his chest as he leans one shoulder against the doorframe. But now it’s his crossed arms that betray his sudden, desperate inhalation. His muffled groan has the threat of a bellow quavering in the center of it. She can feel his desire as if it were a spectral presence leaping out from his oh-so-patient body, pressing her to the bed, claiming her for his own in the wake of having to witness her ravishment by such sleek, wild, and anonymous competition. But he steadies himself, an act that causes his thick neck to flush red and his nostrils to flare and his eyes to burn.

  “Good to know,” he whispers.

  “I thought you’d think so.”

  “Yeah. Thanks for sharing.”

  “You going to go take things out on another mailbox?”

  “I think I got it all out the first time. But I am going to hang out downstairs for a while. Just to, you know, make sure everything’s secure.”

  “Secure. Right.”

  “You sure you don’t want a drink?”

  “I’m sure.”

  He nods and turns toward the landing.

  “Marcus?”

  He stops, but he doesn’t turn around.

  “I admire your patience,” she says. “But I don’t require it.”

  “Maybe not,” he says without turning. “But you deserve it, Emily Blaine.”

  And then he’s gone.

  But the comfort of hearing him moving around downstairs, checking locks, opening drawers, maybe fixing himself a drink as strong as the one he offered her, has her drifting off to sleep within minutes. She wakes a little while later to the sounds of Marcus bagging all the evidence in the master bathroom. Then a soft click tells her he’s hit the wall switch that kills all the lights in the master suite.

  As silence falls, sleep threatens to take her again.

  But he hasn’t left the room.

  She hears him carefully stacking the evidence he’s just collected on the desk next to the computer, followed by the hard thunk of his holstered gun coming to rest on the nightstand. Then he’s sinking down onto the bed next to her, his movements careful and hesitant but deliberate. One powerful arm curves over her stomach just as his breath begins to tickle the back of her neck. Is he taking in the smell of her for the first time, the same way she subtly took in the smell of him while he carried her to the beach?

  She snuggles back into his spooning embrace.

  In a gentle whisper, he says, “Sweet dreams, Emily Blaine.”

  “You too, Marcus Dylan.”

  And then, carried into sleep by his powerful arms, she starts to think his patience might not be such a bad thing after all.

  19

  The room isn’t the worst she’s ever seen. The curtains and bedspread both came up clean when she subjected them to swipes of her index finger. But what makes this little roadside motel a good choice for a staging area is its location, not its décor. It’s a twenty-minute drive to the rendezvous point, and for some reason, that strikes her as the perfect amount of time; just enough to get centered, not so much that she’ll be able to work herself into a panic before she gets there.

  The three potential outfits she took from Lily’s closet are spread out across one of the double beds; a pleated belt chiffon dress the color of swamp water, a silk blouse paired with designer jeans, and a red sequined cocktail dress. Even though she’s been studying these items for almost an hour, only now is she realizing what a ridiculous exercise this is. You can’t pick an outfit when you don’t know the occasion, and while the emissaries of The Desire Exchange who visited her last night took plenty of information from her, they offered little in return.

  A sharp knock startles her. The burst of laughter that answers her startled cry is so unexpectedly familiar, Emily literally jumps the foot of the bed in her rush to answer the door. Jonathan gives her his thousand-watt smile, takes her in his arms and forces her backward across the doorframe as he tightens his embrace. “Surprise!”

  His chest-shaking laughter is an instant balm on her nerves. Their brief time apart seems to have invigorated him, given them both a chance to reboot. His Leonard Miller costume consists of a pressed white dress shirt under a leather motorcycle jacket and skin-tight designer jeans that hug his every muscle below the waist. “I thought we weren’t supposed to see each other,” she gasps into his chest.

  “You’re not,” Marcus says, stepping into the room. He carries a closed laptop computer in one hand. Frank Dupuy is right on his tail.

  “Hey, listen! For once, I was actually following the rules,” Jonathan says. “My man Dupuy’s the one who brought me here.”

  “Yeah,” Dupuy says. “I did it to save the shoe stores of Atlanta.”

  “I knew you were going to spend that money on shoes,” Emily says.

  “I was playing the part of a conspicuous consumer!” Jonathan wails.

  “For you that’s not a part, Jonathan,” Emily says.

  “I am going to ignore this bullying and revel in the fact that my dear, good friend, who is only a friend, by the way”—he narrows his eyes in Marcus’s direction as he says this, leaving Emily to wonder if the two men just discussed this topic outside—“is certainly a sight for sore eyes. Sore eyes, I might add, that were covered in honey the night before by some full-on Cirque du Soleil weirdness, I am telling you! What was going on with those people anyway? I mean, don’t get me wrong. I get up to some freaky shit when the sun goes down, but usually I don’t have to shower for a whole day after it. I still smell like Burt rubbed his bees all over me.”

  “Too bad you didn’t have anyone to help you clean up,” Marcus says, and then he gives her a quick wink.

  “Well, well, well,” Jonathan says with a raised eyebrow. “What happened to waiting?”

  “What happened to keeping your mouth shut?” Marcus asks.

  “I’m sorry?” Jonathan says. “There was a moment when I agreed to keep my mouth shut? That doesn’t sound like me.”

  “So I take it I
’ve been a topic of conversation between you two,” Emily says.

  “Oh, indeed,” Jonathan says then he leans in as if they’re sharing a conspiratorial whisper, even though he doesn’t lower his voice in the slightest. “He called to ask for my blessing—”

  “I did not ask for your—”

  “— I said he could have it as long as he treated you like a queen. That’s what I was supposed to say, right?”

  “Something like that,” Emily whispers.

  Dupuy says, “Chatterbox here’s got a rendezvous point that’s about an hour south. If we’re going to do this, I need to get him in position soon. One of his upright positions.”

  “He doesn’t like me,” Jonathan whispers to Emily.

  “I never said I didn’t—” Dupuy tries, but it’s no use.

  “See, he’s gay but he’s a bear and I’m not, and bears apparently think they’re, like, the manliest gays of all. So even though I spend every moment of my free time at the gym, in Frank’s world, I’m just this annoying sissy ballerina who keeps doing pirouettes across his crawfish boil.”

  “He’s lying,” Dupuy says to her. “I hate crawfish.”

  “I’m sorry,” Emily says, having heard only every other word of Jonathan’s stand-up routine. “If we’re going to do this? What does that mean?”

  Marcus answers her by opening the laptop. He holds up the computer in both hands so all three of them can see the night-vision angle from one of the beach house’s exterior cameras that currently fills the screen. At first, she assumes it’s a live shot until she remembers there’s still sunlight lancing the live oak branches above the parking lot outside. The view includes the beach house’s driveway, and the driveway of the house next door. Only when she sees the numbers ticking by on the counter at the bottom of the screen does she realize the video is already playing.

  “Remember how I said I couldn’t see them leave?” Marcus asks.

  “I remember…”

  “Well, here’s one of ’em, coming up at two minutes, thirty-five seconds.”

  Sure enough, just as he predicted, her silent messenger, fully robed, descends the staircase from the kitchen door to the driveway. Once he steps outside the bright halo cast by the security light over the driveway, he jumps into the air and...

  Emily can feel the air in the motel room stop moving as all three of them have the exact same reaction.

  “What the hell?” Jonathan whispers.

  She’s still trying to make sense of what they’ve just seen when Marcus reaches around the side of the computer and taps a key. The clip replays. Robed, hooded, and moving swiftly, her silent messenger descends the wooden steps to the driveway, passes outside of the security light’s halo, bends his right leg, jumps up into the air and then somehow vanishes against the patch of night sky visible between both houses.

  “It’s a trick,” Emily finally says. “They’re circus performers or something. Illusionists. I don’t know…”

  “If it’s a trick, that means they knew we were watching,” Dupuy says.

  “Which means tonight could be a trap,” Marcus adds.

  “That weird thing with the power,” Jonathan says. Hearing him reference the same strange phenomena she witnessed the night before sends a shiver through Emily. “Did we ever figure that out? Maybe they were hacking into the system. Maybe they just cut the footage out so it looks like the guy vanishes into thin air.”

  “Also a sign that tonight could be a trap,” Marcus says quietly.

  “Did you pick up anything like this?” Jonathan asks, turning to his minder.

  “No,” Dupuy answers. “But you were in a townhouse. I didn’t have as many exterior angles.”

  “Which means what?” Jonathan asks.

  “Which means I didn’t see them leave at all,” Dupuy answers. “Unless they went off the roof.”

  “Which would mean they could fly,” Jonathan asks, suppressing a laugh when he notes the somber mood that’s settled over the motel room. “Oh, come on! You’re not telling us you think these people can…fly, are you?”

  Marcus sets the laptop down atop the chunky circa 1999 television. Emily can sense the struggle within him, the struggle to be impartial even as he burns with a desire to put a stop to this whole thing.

  “We are presenting you with evidence that cannot be easily explained,” Marcus says. “Evidence that suggests there might be more risks to tonight’s operation than previously thought.”

  “It’s just a magic trick,” Jonathan says. “It’s like the candles.”

  “The candles that lit without matches or any kind of flame?” Emily asks. “Those candles?”

  “They had a switch on the bottom or something,” Jonathan says. “I don’t know.”

  “They don’t have a switch on the bottom,” Marcus says.

  “How do you know?”

  “Because they left them behind and I bagged all of them, and they don’t have a switch or a battery or any kind of internal compartment. There’s nothing electronic about them at all. And you want to know something else?”

  “Not really,” Jonathan says quietly. “You’re kind of freaking me out.”

  “I couldn’t light them,” Marcus says, only he’s staring into Emily’s eyes now. “No matter what I did, no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get one of them to light. And I couldn’t get them to light because—”

  “They don’t have wicks,” Emily finishes for him. He nods and no one says anything for several long minutes filled by the hum and rattle of the AC unit.

  “You’re not saying we hallucinated those flames, are you?” Jonathan asks.

  “Couldn’t have,” Dupuy chimes in. “We could see them clear as day on our monitors.”

  “I want to see one,” Emily says. “Right now.”

  “I dropped them at Magnolia Gate when we went through New Orleans on the way here,” Marcus says “They can’t make them light either.”

  “Look,” Dupuy says, his tone a stark contrast to the heaviness in Marcus’s voice, a sign that the two men have been at odds over this issue for a while now. “I’m sure if we had the time, we could find an easy explanation for all of this, but everything about this has been so damn rushed. I just don’t think we can—”

  “It’s rushed because Arthur’s dying,” Emily says. “I want to speak to him. Right now.”

  “You can’t,” Marcus says.

  “What do you mean I can’t?”

  “I mean he’s been intubated.” He misreads her silence as a lack of familiarity with the term. “It means he’s sedated and he’s got a tube down—”

  “I know what intubated means,” Emily snaps.

  “He’s got pneumonia,” Dupuy says, probably to take some of the heat off of Marcus. “They rushed him to Ochsner about twelve hours after Jonathan and Dupuy went to Atlanta and we went to Florida.”

  Her rage is so sudden and powerful, her throat feels straw-sized, but she manages to get a few words through it. “And you’ve known this for how long?” she asks Marcus.

  “Ten minutes, Emily.”

  Dupuy says, “Apparently, Arthur ordered everyone not to tell us anything. He said he didn’t want us being interrupted. Staff at Magnolia Gate finally caved this afternoon. And not to, uh, rub it in, here, but if Arthur doesn’t want us to know he’s in the hospital then…”

  “That he doesn’t think he has much time left,” Marcus says.

  “So Arthur hasn’t seen any of this?” Emily asks.

  Marcus and Dupuy both shake their heads.

  “What about the picture? The woman who brought the book. You said they were going to use face-matching software on it.”

  “No hits yet,” Marcus answers.

  “You had a woman?” Jonathan asks. “I had a man. What about him?”

  “No hits yet on him either,” Marcus answers.

  Emily sinks down onto the foot of the bed, hears her sudden weight shift the outfits on the bedspread behind her. If Jonathan weren’t
afraid of making Marcus jealous, he’d probably have his arms around her by now, but instead he lays a comforting hand on her shoulder.

  “What do you think we should do, Marcus?” she finally asks.

  He clears his throat and swallows, shuts his eyes briefly as if he’s trying to get his balance back after a dizzy spell. It reminds her of the transformation he underwent the night before when she told him it was the sound of his voice that had ultimately sent an orgasm tearing through her in that candlelit bathroom. She prepares herself for military doublespeak, but when he looks into her eyes, there’s an unguarded vulnerability there that makes her want to swim in them.

  “Don’t ask me what I want you to do, Emily. Everyone in this room knows what I want you to do…what I don’t want you to do. But I’m putting that aside, for now, as best I can, and I’m looking at this whole thing with the clearest eyes I’ve got. And all I can see is one of two things happening tonight. One, we walk into a trap. Or two, we’re all about to find out that the universe operates off a different set of laws than we thought.”

  “Oh, come on, man,” Dupuy says. “These people can’t fly, and those candles? They’re some kind of chemical compound we haven’t figured out yet. Guys, seriously! Let’s just all take a deep breath and allow for the possibility here that this is just a bunch of circus performers who started some kind of stupid sex club in the swamp, and we, on the other hand, are four really tired, weirded-out people who could use a lot of sleep.”

  “So your vote is that we do it, Frank?” Emily asks.

  “There’s not a vote here, Emily,” Dupuy answers. “This is your call.”

  “That’s what I was afraid of,” she whispers.

  Jonathan sinks down onto the bed next to her, strokes her back gently. After the silence becomes unbearable for them all, he says, “Penny for your thoughts, Miss Blaine.”