They felt protective of her, of all crazy things. Nick, too, now. After the organ pirate adventure, he’d landed himself squarely on that short list of people with controlled permission to annoy the living shit out of her without getting killed for it. Maimed, maybe, but not killed.
Their efforts to be her friends were puppyish and earnest. She was charmed by it—sometimes. Amused, even, when she was in the mood. Which hadn’t been lately, with all these nightmares she’d been having. They were way too much like the stress flashbacks she’d suffered back in her younger days. Before she’d turned herself into a human icicle. Robot Bitch, her alter ego.
She wasn’t an icicle now. Particularly not when she pictured Margot, Erin, Liv or Raine parenting Rachel. A jealous, vengeful and totally disproportionate rage blazed up inside her when she pictured one of those women sweetly, gracefully, effortlessly being a better mother to Rachel than she could ever be. Fuck that.
It wasn’t their fault. There was nothing wrong with those women. Oh, no. That was the exact problem. Everything was right with them. Damn them to hell. She would have laughed at herself for being so silly and crazy, if she were not mortally afraid that it would start her up crying again. Only in these naked moments in the wee hours before dawn did she let herself acknowledge humiliating truths like this. She was a jealous bitch. Bitterly envious. Not of their men, God forbid. The last thing she wanted was to be bothered with their silly, pointless, attention-hungry men, although all of those women had relatively good ones—insofar as any man could be called good. That being, after all, a blatant contradiction in terms.
No, it was because their lives made sense. They were hooked into the world, they functioned well, they thrummed, they glowed. They threw out vibes of sexual fulfillment strong enough to knock a celibate like herself back on her scrawny ass at fifty meters.
And they were so unafraid of motherhood. At least the ones that were well into it, and she had no doubt it would be the same for the others when their time came—Liv, and Becca, Nick’s fiancée, soon to be wife. All of them had that feminine, motherly vibe, just like Margot and Raine and Erin. Moo.
For them, motherhood was all joyous cuddling, spiritual fulfilment. Wallowing in bliss with a proud daddy looking on. Glowing at baby’s amazing progress and sparkling genius. Raine was almost due, and glowing like a full moon. Erin’s boy was a year old and Margot’s little redheaded girl was seven months old. Fat, uncomplicated babies, rolling on the rug, gurgling and laughing. In the top percentile for height, weight, good looks, intelligence and happiness. Tra la la.
Not like Tam’s intense, clinging Rachel with the fits of rage, the screaming nightmares, the developmental delays. Bone malformations in her ankles and hips, eye problems caused by months of confinement in artificial light with nothing to focus on farther away than a concrete wall in front of her face. The doctors were always muttering about possible brain damage from abuse, neglect and malnutrition, but Tam was privately convinced that it was bullshit. All they had to do was look Rachel in the eyes, and it was clear that the kid was as sharp as a brass tack, tracking at all levels. She was just a stubborn, hard-headed, suspicious little pissant who did not appreciate being cognitively evaluated by strangers wearing white lab coats. Tam could relate to that perfectly. The doctors just didn’t get it.
Rachel was determined to make up for every last bit of what she’d missed in love and affection, and no one could blame her, but her craving for attention made Tam feel she had the kid wrapped around her head sometimes. Rosalia helped, the sweet, stolid Brazilian lady who came in every day to provide Tam with a chunk of quiet time for work, but that precious chunk was always chipped away at each end by some daily emergency or other, if it wasn’t eaten up entirely, and in any case, it just wasn’t enough. She could barely hear herself think. God, she could barely breathe.
And even so. Even so. That kid was hers. Everyone else had failed her, but Tam would not. No fucking way. She would make it work. Tam pressed her eyes against her knees until the pressure made them ache, and still she saw that dusty trench in the ground they’d thrown her mother and her baby sister into. Irina had been two. Their faces, so pale and stiff and still. Their eyes, so wide. Dirt showering down on top of them. Tossed away like garbage.
The image was stamped on the inside of her eyelids.
Ah, God. Her least desirable memories, crashing into her like a runaway train. This was the price she had to pay for dredging up tenderness out of the depths of herself for Rachel.
She’d dreamed of revenge all her life, not tenderness. She didn’t process tenderness well. It crossed her wires, blew her circuits. It confused and rattled her. Revenge was so much more simple and comprehensible. Revenge she could wrap her highly functioning mind around and feel it start to buzz and hum and work.
She was a well-tuned revenge machine, programmed to locate and kill Drago Stengl, and put the ghosts of her past to rest. And now look at her, trying to manufacture tenderness for Rachel out of a revenge machine. It was like making cookies with a rocket launcher. Like making lemonade with grenades instead of lemons. Problematic as hell.
Rachel’s shrill, teakettle shriek suddenly sounded, and Tam sprang up like she was on springs and bolted for the bedroom. The kid always freaked out when she woke in the dark and found herself alone.
She slid under the covers and curled up around the rigid little body. After she had soothed the child back to sleep, she nuzzled Rachel’s neck, inhaling the fragrance of no-tangles shampoo. Feeling the magic happen. The tension, easing inside her. That soft, hot place, blooming open. So sweet. She couldn’t resist. She was strung out.
Now that the dream images were easing off, her habitual obstinacy was rearing right up to take its place. She was glad. That was much more comfortable.
Hell with it. Rachel might not have a normal mom, or a normal life, but she’d have pure screaming hell on wheels to protect her if anyone ever tried to hurt her again. That was worth something. That counted. It had to count.
So Rachel was damaged. Big fucking deal. So were they all. She was also tough, and strong. Tam would try everything money could buy to help her. Anything that might give her back some small measure of what those murdering pieces of shit had stolen from her.
Rachel was not so damaged that she should be tossed like garbage in a hole. Buried with indifference and bureaucratic bullshit. Rationalizations about points of diminishing returns. Poor allocation of resources. Black holes.
Fuck that. Rachel was not so damaged as that. And even if she was, fuck anyone who didn’t want to waste his or her precious time and energy on black holes and damaged goods, anyway. Fuck them all.
Tam snuggled the child and inhaled the scent of her hair as if it were pure oxygen in a vacuum. Rachel murmured in her sleep, and grabbed a hank of Tam’s long hair in her damp little fist.
She thought of Novak, Georg, all the rest. She thought of the prickle on her neck. Reptile brain, warning her she was being stalked.
The resolve burned itself into Tam’s mind like a brand.
Just try and take her away from me. Go ahead, try. Watch who dies, and how fast.
Budapest, Hungary
“Are you keeping him under strict surveillance, András? Your men should not take their eyes off him for a second. Vajda is a highly trained secret agent. He can melt into thin air before you know it. Who do you have watching him? When did they last report?”
András sighed, inwardly, folded his massive arms over his barrel chest, and carefully modulated his voice. It would not do to display impatience when mafiya boss Gabor
