Nine
BEING SO USELESS
How many days had we been here? Long enough for me to lose track. I kind of had a routine going where I sat on the couch with my feet up on it and a blanket covering me while I read or watched TV until the sun finished setting. So that was where I was when the sun set, my ebook forgotten, and feeling all kinds of twitchy. I wanted todosomething. I wanted to know why the hell Quillan wasn’t telling us everything was cool now, mission accomplished.
Hamilton walked into the room looking all crisp in his dark trousers and pale blue dress shirt, shoes snapping on the tiles. “We need to talk about something.”
“Yeah, we do.” He looked as fired up as I suddenly felt. “Where the hell is Quillan? It’s beendays. Shouldn’t he have the lab destroyed and stuff by now? Dude like him should be able to run through a few walls and take the whole place down, you know?”
He blinked at me. Several times.
I made an oops face. “Is that not what you wanted to talk about?”
He huffed a laugh. “Well, no, but I did just get off the phone with one of his people downstairs who wouldn’t say more thanthat he wasn’t back yet.” He crossed his arms, looking grouchy. “They’ve decided the case is need-to-know, and I don’t.”
I huffed in disgust. “Uh, yuh-huh, we do too need to know.”
He made a noise very near a growl, and I took that to be him agreeing with me.
I didn’t want to be on the outside looking in. I wanted to know what was going on. As nice as this penthouse suite was, it was also starting to feel a little like a jail cell since we couldn’t leave. I wanted fresh air. I kind of wanted sunshine, though I was a bit worried that he was turning me into a vampire. But, oh well, looked like we were still trapped in time-out.
“So what was the other thing?” I asked him.
“Other thing?”
“I’m sure you were going to tell me about all that at some point…” I raised an eyebrow until he nodded. “But you came in wanting to talk about…”
“Yes. Right.” He cleared his throat. “Hammy is not an appropriate nickname.”
Now I was blinking at him. That was his important discussion? “Hammy is a pet name.”
“Hammy is not happening.” He smiled with a lot of fang showing.
“Oh, really?” I said, accepting that challenge.
Suddenly, a bright as hell light shone in from right outside the window at the end of the couch. Likerightthere! What the fuck would have a light like that glaring in here? And then the light got bigger, like it was coming closer, and I could hear the distinctthump-thump-thumpof a helicopter.
Police? News? Who just rode up to a building like that and looked in?
In one of his vampire speed moves, Hamilton was across the room and looking all around like the light wasn’t making him blind. Then he turned around as the light moved away, rose likethe helicopter might be flying over the building, and I realized he’d had his eyes closed.
“Wiley, get up. We have to get out of here.”
“What?” As I said that, there came a huge bang like someone was using a battering ram on…the ceiling? In the bedroom? “What’s happening?”
Hamilton hunkered down beside the couch and took my hand. “Something’s gone terribly wrong,” he said in a frighteningly calm voice. “The building is surrounded by police and other vehicles. That banging is the people from the helicopter trying to break in from the roof.”
It was a very steady banging. My heartbeat was not at all steady, but it was definitely banging.
“Weneedto leave.”
I nodded. Hamilton helped me up, my knees absolutely wobbling, and I stood there clutching my blanket and trembling. I’d been planning to order the lobster for dinner tonight. I’d never had lobster before. I was going to crack claws and dip bits in melted butter and do everything else they did in the movies when they ate lobster.
“Stay behind me,” Hamilton ordered. “Once I’ve dealt with them, I’ll signal you to come up. Alright?”
I tried to keep breathing, visions of close-quarter gunshots dancing in my brain. I was vamped-up on my man’s very regular deposits inside my person, but was that enough to heal a headshot? Because I had a feeling this bunch of trigger-happy nut jobs weren’t going to miss.
“Wiley?”
