Page 73 of Vicious Betrayal

I quietly gather her clothes and change into a fresh set myself, taking my jeans and sweaty T-shirt along with the pile. I take my gun with me, not willing to let Oksana have a shot at me when I come back, and tug the door firmly shut as I step outside. Even if she is stupid enough to try to run, I can track her now. I'll see the moment she tries to leave the hotel room.

The motel's laundromat is a narrow concrete room at the far end of the strip, lit by a single buzzing fluorescent tube that flickers against a row of dented washers and dryers. The air inside smells like cheap powdered bleach. I dump her clothes and mine into a washer and slide quarters into the rusted slot.

While the wash cycle runs, I walk across the cracked asphalt lot. The rain has tapered off into a dense mist that clings to the asphalt, and the air smells of wet pine needles and diesel exhaust. Across the road, a twenty-four-hour Shell station hums under white lights.

I push through the glass door, and the kid behind the counter doesn't look up from his phone. I grab two bottles of ginger ale, some waters, a few types of crackers, and a couple of protein bars. Once the kid rings them up, I head over to a diner a few yards down the street.

It's empty at this hour, and smells like coffee and burnt grease. Any other time, I'd settle into one of the booths and enjoy the liminal silence, but I don't dare leave Oksana alone in the room for long. If she wakes up while I'm gone, there's a chance she'll try to run, and even though I can track her and catch her, it'll be a pain in the ass. I'd rather not have to.

I get takeout of scrambled eggs, ham, and dry toast, and another takeout box of grilled chicken with a side of steamed veggies. Nothing fancy, but hopefully bland enough that she can keep it down between the stress and the pregnancy.

When I get back, there's no sign of Oksana outside, and her tracker says she's still in the room. I throw the clothes in the dryer, and when they're done, try not to linger too long on her clothes. They don't smell like her any longer; they smell like the cheap detergent I got from the vending machine, and I'm grateful for that. The scent of her on them when I brought them down nearly killed me.

I balance the laundry over one arm, take the food and the plastic bags in the other, and head back down the concrete walk to our room.

When the deadbolt clicks open, Oksana is sitting upright in the middle of the bed, the comforter pulled up around her waist. Her eyes are huge, dark circles bruised beneath the lower lids, her knuckles white where she's gripping the blanket. When she sees it's me, the panic in her face collapses, then turns into a new kind of fear that makes me feel like I'm getting gutted all over again.

"You were gone," she whispers. Her voice is hoarse.

"Laundromat," I say flatly, letting the heavy door swing shut behind me and throwing the deadbolt. "And I got food from the diner across the road."

I set the bags on the dresser, alongside the two bottles of ginger ale and the warm stack of folded laundry. I pull the styrofoam container of eggs and toast from the bag and set it on the laminate nightstand beside her side of the bed, dropping a plastic fork onto the lid.

She doesn't reach for the food. She just stares at the styrofoam, then at the green bottles of ginger ale, and finally down at the clean, dry clothes sitting folded on the dresser. Her throat moves as she swallows. A small line forms between her eyebrows. "You... you went out to wash my clothes? And ginger ale?"

"The ginger ale is for your nausea." I strip off my jacket and set my gun down within reach. "Eat while it's still warm."

"Cormac..." She shifts on the mattress, and her voice has that soft, pleading cadence that used to make me stop whatever I was doing just to pull her into my lap. "You didn't have to do all this. You're... you're taking care of me."

I turn around slowly. The room is too small for the weight between us. The air feels choked with tension as she stares at me.

"Don't flatter yourself, Oksana," I say, keeping every trace of warmth out of my voice. The words come out hard and clipped. "You're carrying my child. The baby needs food, and a mother whose body isn't shutting down from shock."

Her mouth parts slightly, the color draining from her lips as if I'd struck her across the face. She looks down at her hands in her lap, her shoulders curling inward. "I understand," she whispers to the comforter.

"Good."

I walk over to the window, pulling the heavy drapes back a fraction of an inch to check the gravel lot. No strange headlights.

In the glass reflection, I can see the side of her head. One earring catches the light, and a sick, twisted knot pulls tight in my gut.

I don't know what the fuck I'm doing. If I were smart, I'd take her back to Declan and let him sort this out. Take whatever tongue-lashing I've got coming for being so fucking stupid, take my punishment, and forget about her. Instead, I've got her caged in a roadside room with a tracker in her ear, feeding her ginger ale and folding her laundry like a doting husband while I figure out how to reconcile what should happen to her with how I feel about her.

"Eat," I tell her without turning from the glass. "Then go back to sleep."

Behind me, I hear the squeak of the styrofoam lid opening, the faint rustle of a plastic wrapper, and the slow sound of her forcing herself to chew.

By three in the morning, the rain outside has turned to sleet, rattling against the wall.

Oksana finished half the eggs and drank a full glass of water without a word. Then she lay back down, as instructed, and went back to sleep. I need rest too, but I'm not getting into that bed with her.

If I lie down beside her, if I feel the heat coming off her skin, the soft curve of her waist pressing against my hip—I'll lose whatever will I have left. I'll pull her against my chest, bury my face in the hollow of her neck, and let myself believe whatever lies she wants to tell me about why she stole those files from my laptop.

I take a scratchy blanket from the top shelf of the open closet, fold it twice, and drop it onto the stained carpet between the foot of the bed and the heavy front door. I sit down with my back against the wall, my legs stretched out across the floor, my gun resting on the carpet beside my right thigh.

The floor is hard, the cold seeping straight into my lower back and hip joints. My knee aches from an old fracture. Every sound in the room seems magnified, her breathing loud enough that I feel it in my veins.

It's torture. I spent all these years building a life where nobody could touch me, where no woman could make me look over my shoulder. My head was always clear, my hands were always steady. And now a twenty-year-old girl has me sitting on a motel floor in the dark, guarding her while I ruminate over the betrayal that's likely going to get her killed, and could still ruin my life.