RainStorm

me, about how, in her eyes, I was just a
    new fool, another mark to be led by his dick and manipulated. The
    thought irritated me, which was what I needed. It short-circuited
    my unavoidable mechanical reaction and gave me back some of the
    air I wanted to project.
    "Hey, Delilah," I said softly, letting her see a little coldness in my
    eyes, "let's cut the shit. I'm not here to flirt with you. We might be
    able to help each other, I don't know. But not if you keep trying to
    play me like I'm some testosterone-addled fourteen-year-old and
    you're my date at the prom. Okay?"
    She smiled and cocked her head, and of course her poise only
    added to her appeal. "Why would I be trying to play you?" she asked.
    I wanted to snap her out of this mode, move her outside her
    comfort zone. So far, I hadn't managed.
    "Because you're good at it," I said, still looking at her, "and
    people like to do what they're good at. Hell, if they gave out Academy
    Awards for what you do, I think you'd get Best Actress."
    Her eyes narrowed a fraction, but other than that she kept her
    cool. Still, I thought I might be heading in the right direction.
    "You seem to have a rather low opinion of yourself," she said.
    I smiled, because I'd been half expecting something like that.
    Most men won't do anything that could lessen their perceived
    chances of taking a gorgeous woman to bed. They're horrified
    even at the thought that something might accidentally dim the
    temporary glow of an attractive woman's sexual adulation, lest all
    those longing looks be exposed as farce, deflating the always fragile
    facade of the needy male ego. Delilah knew the dynamic. She had
    just explicitly acknowledged, even invoked it.
    "Actually, I have a rather high opinion of myself," I said. "But
    I've seen you working Belghazi, and he's smarter than most. I know
    what you can do, and I want you to stop doing it with me. Assuming
    you can stop, of course. Or have you been running this game
    for so long that you can't help yourself?"
    For the first time I saw her lose a little poise. Her head retracted
    a fraction in a movement that was not quite a flinch, and her eyes
    dilated in a way that told me she'd just received a little helping of
    adrenaline.
    "What do you want, then?" she asked, after a moment. Her expression
    was neutral, but her eyes were angry, her posture more
    rigid than it had been a moment earlier. The combination made
    her look quietly dangerous. I realized this was my first peek at the
    person behind the artifice, my first chance to see something other
    than what she wanted me to see.
    The crazy thing was, it made her look better than ever. It was
    like seeing a woman's real beauty after she's removed the makeup
    that only served to obscure it, a glimpse of a geisha the more stunning
    shorn of her ritual white camouflage.
    "The same thing you do," I told her. "I want to make sure we
    don't trip all over each other trying to do our jobs and both get
    killed in the process."
    "And what are our jobs?"
    I smiled. "This is going to be tricky, isn't it," I said.
    "Very," she said. Her expression had transitioned from I'm-pissed and trying not to show-it
    to something reserved and unreadable. I
    knew what I'd said had rattled her, although I wasn't sure precisely
    what nerve I'd managed to touch, and I admired her swift recovery.
    "Why don't we start with what we know," I said. "You want
    something from Belghazi's computer."
    She raised her eyebrows but said nothing. That hint of incongruous
    good humor was back in her eyes.
    "But you haven't managed to get it yet," I went on. "Belghazi
    keeps the computer with him all the time. When you finally got a
    crack at it, you couldn't get past the password protection."
    "We should talk about the other things we know," she said.
    "Yes?"
    "Like what you want with Belghazi."
    I shrugged. "I've got other business with Belghazi. What's on his
    computer doesn't interest me."
    "Yes, you seemed uninterested in his computer. More interested
    in him."
    I said nothing. There was no advantage in confirming any of
    her insights.
    "And he was right there. Unconscious. Helpless. I asked myself,
    'Why did this man leave without finishing what he came for?'"
    "You don't know what I came for," I said, but of course she did.
    "You'd knocked me down, and I obviously didn't have a weapon,"
    she said, looking at me. "I couldn't have done anything to prevent
    you. And you knew it. But you didn't follow through."
    I shrugged, still looking