Chapter 13

thirteen

Absolutely nothing changeswhen we get home except for one thing—sometimes, at the corners of a conversation or as he passes me when I hold the door for him or as we say goodbye after another night in the hall, I catch him looking at my mouth.

I will degrade you. I will enjoy it.

I haven’t forgotten a single syllable of that conversation, and I don’t think he has either. But my pride makes a delayed appearance and insists on guarding itself from future rejection. He’ll just say no again if you try, it says, sulky and pouty in my thoughts. If he really wanted you, he’d fuck you anyway. So I don’t bring it up again, and neither does he, even though I sometimes can’t think of anything else but long, strong fingers, the dip of his Adam’s apple when he drinks his gin. The way his cock gleamed ruddy and thick under wet latex in his office.

Two nights after we get home from Singapore, I hear a knock on my door, the first visitor I’ve had since I moved in. Curious, I go to answer it, wondering who it could be this late in the evening, and then my heart stutters behind my ribs when I see Mark through the peephole.

“Sir,” I say, opening the door, “do you want to go back up to the hall?”

“No,” Mark says, stepping inside, and he’s not wearing hissuit anymore. He’s in dark tactical pants and a black turtleneck. Black boots and no watch. “I thought we could take a trip.”

I glance down at my phone, see that it’s two in the morning. Remember that it’s my job to do whatever he wants.

“Yes, sir. Should I change?”

“You should. Dark clothes, and be quick.”

I go and change into dark pants and a black compression shirt I wear to run sometimes, dark sneakers, and then come back.

“And leave your phone here,” Mark says.

Thirty minutes later, we’re parking our car at a Chevy Chase tennis court. I look at it as we get out of a beige Camry that Mark put different plates on before we left Lyonesse.

“I didn’t picture you as the Camry type, sir,” I say as Mark pulls out a stocking cap and uses it to cover his blond hair.

“That would be the point,” he murmurs, and then he looks up at the moon and heaves a giant sigh. “Come on.”

We walk through the court and a long park, staying under the trees where possible, and then we get to a row of Tudor-style houses. We stand in the shadow of one while Mark appraises its neighbor. The streetlight makes a harsh chiaroscuro of his face; the lines of his cheek and jaw are sharply visible, along with the slopes of his mouth. I think I could count every one of his eyelashes like this.

“You’re going to follow me to that house,” he says as he produces a slender flashlight from his pocket, which I take. It’s warm from his body. “The occupant is currently with an escort, but when he returns home, he will come through the back door. He will come as quietly as possible so he doesn’t wake his wife.”

I see the problem right away. “So you need me to keep watch.”

“Flash the light into the upper left window two times if you see him. A taxi will drop him off at the top of the road. But I’ll be quick.”

“Sir, I—” I stop myself, torn. I don’t feel comfortable doing something patently illegal.

On the other hand, what did I expect when I took a job with a self-admitted blackmailer?

“I promise I’m not resurrecting my wet-work days, Tristan. And if it soothes your conscience, I’ll be the only one breaking and entering.”

I take in a breath. The night is brisk, and my fingers and toes are starting to get cold. I wish Mark didn’t look so good in a black turtleneck.

“Okay, sir,” I say, and then we make our way through the grass and trees to the house, where Mark lets himself into the unlocked back door. I see sensors for a security system mounted on the doorframe and have a momentary jolt of panic, but Mark touches my shoulder and then points to the security console on the wall. It’s blinking green.

It’s disarmed. For a philanderer to sneak back inside more easily, I assume.

With a nod to show I understand, I step back, flashlight at the ready, as Mark disappears into the bowels of the house. My senses are on high alert, and I hear everything, every gust of wind and creak of branches, every pop and sigh of the house. I fist the flashlight, my thumb resting on the button, my blood racing.

The stakes are so much lower than they were in Carpathia, but it’s like my body doesn’t understand how to calibrate danger anymore. It’s like there’s either zero danger or it’s an existential fucking threat, and here in a snoozing Maryland suburb, my adrenaline is spiking like I’m about to attack an enemy camp.

But there’s no enemy, no camp, and soon, there’s not even any need for the flashlight. Mark emerges from the shadows of the house, closes the door behind him, and off we lope back to the car.

“What were we doing, sir?” I ask finally, once we’re on the road again. “If we weren’t stealing anything or hurting anyone?”

“I was leaving something behind for our unfaithful friend,” Mark says. He’s wearing gloves—he must have put them on inside the house—and they make his hands look larger, more powerful than ever as they move on the steering wheel.

“Are you going to tell me more than that?”

“Not until I know if it’s worked and that we’ve done this properly, without any link back to us. The less you know until I have that certainty, the safer.”

A very Special Activities Center way to think.

“At any rate,” he says as we pull into the lower level of the club’s parking garage, “we should know soon enough.”

* * *

It worked.The next afternoon, the space exploration bill—the one with a comfortable margin for passing the senate chamber—fails.

I read the updates on my phone while Mark is in a meeting in his office. Two senators changed their votes without any notice. One senator claimed transportation issues and didn’t show up. And the last came down with gastroenteritis so violent that he couldn’t even leave his house.

His house which is in Chevy Chase, Maryland.

The most interesting bill to pass through Congress during President Embry Moore’s administration is dead, and it’s because of four senators.

Hill, Avendano, Hodges, and Collier.

Mark’s meeting ends, and I have my phone put away by the time the door opens and Lady Anguish steps out, giving me a small vulpine smile. Mark steps out too, kissing her hand before she boards the elevator.

“Did you see?” he asks once the elevator doors close. His voice is triumphant, and there’s a boyish glint to his eye. He looks like he just pulled off a high school prank.

A high school prank that I think he might have earned fifty million dollars for.

“Did we give an elected lawmaker gastroenteritis last night, sir?”

Mark waves a hand. “We merely infused gastroenteritis onto his toothbrush. What happened next was out of our control. Besides, I can’t blackmail everyone, Tristan. It would get boring.”

“And why are we blackmailing anyone again? Around a popular bill that would be objectively a good thing?”

“My definition of objective good is more limited than yours,” Mark reminds me. And then he walks back into his office as I trail behind him. “There are two companies with the ability to partner with NASA for a renewed space program. One is a clear favorite because they’re ready to expand immediately. The other company has much better tech and design but isn’t ready to scale up.”

“So that company?.?.?.?”

“Asked me to kill the bill, yes. Never fear, though. It’ll be back soon. It’s too necessary and there’s too much public interest for it to stay dead.”

“And by the time it comes back, the company that hired you will be ready to compete more evenly?”

“That’s right. And if they get a favorable government contract, fifty million dollars will be a drop in the bucket,” Mark says. “An advisable gamble for them. A great stock opportunity for me.”

He’s pushing papers together on his desk now, and I think about how he fucked a curvy sub half to death on this desk. Left her nipples wet and her thighs rope-bitten, and now he’s casually mentioning how he derailed federal legislation in less than three days because someone had good stock options.

Mark glances up at me, and victory still burns through his normally cool expression. “Let’s get lunch,” he says. “I’m starving.”