Page 103 of Mile High Ruin

I should take a cold shower. Instead, I wrap my hand around myself. The first stroke produces enough relief that I exhale through my teeth.

This is pathetic. I’m nearly fifty years old, I’ve been with more beautiful women than I can remember, and I’m sitting alone in a hotel room jerking myself off because I can’t stop thinking about a flight attendant who may have delivered a tracker onto my aircraft.

I stroke harder, and my thoughts refuse to become more reasonable.

I remember her hand around my cock, tentative only for a few seconds before she realized what pressure made me react. I remember the expression on her face when she saw me fully hard, that mixture of surprise and challenge that made me want to put her beneath me and remove the smugness one orgasm at a time.

My hand moves quicker.

In my head, the phone never rings. Anton doesn’t interrupt.

I push inside her.

I imagine how tight she would feel after my fingers and mouth already made her come, how her thighs would close around my hips, how she would try to keep quiet and fail.

I imagine her saying my name.

That’s what does it.

My orgasm hits hard enough that I have to brace one hand against the mattress, my jaw locking while I come across my fist and stomach. For several seconds, I simply sit there breathing.

Then guilt arrives. Immediate and unpleasant.

Not because I masturbated. I have no moral objection to my own hand.

Because less than an hour ago I accused Sloane of being involved in an attempt on my life, kissed her while I was angry enough to hurt someone, then left her alone in a foreign city after she had already been assaulted, shot at, and dragged through half of Bucharest in the same fucking uniform.

And now I’m getting myself off to the memory of her.

I clean myself up, take the cold shower I should have taken in the first place, and dress.

Sleep doesn’t come. I lie down for perhaps twenty minutes before abandoning the attempt completely.

Every time I close my eyes, I see the tracker.

Then Sloane.

Then the tracker again.

By four in the morning, I’ve reviewed everything I know often enough to become more irritated rather than less.

Anton returns shortly after four thirty. I hear voices from the sitting room and leave the bedroom. Marek is already there, sitting on one end of the sofa with his jacket off and a glass of mineral water in his hand. Anton stands near the dining table, placing two phones and a small evidence bag beside a laptop.

I look around. “Where is Iosef?”

Marek glances up. “Hospital.”

I stop. “For what?”

“Shock.”

I stare at him.

Marek takes a drink.

Apparently, he’s serious.

“Shock.”