Requiem for an Assassin

picturing right then that would produce such mimed ferocity, and imagined it must be Hilger.
    She knew there was a dark skein of intensity deep in Rain’s nature, something that only rarely revealed itself at the surface. It was a quality that intrigued her, and, she had to admit, was part of what attracted her to him, but he never let her see it, and her only previous glimpses had been brief and inadvertent. She wondered why he was letting himself cut loose like this now, in a room with so many windows. It must have been the sense of privacy the hotel grounds fostered. Then she realized she had probably posed the wrong question: maybe he wasn’t letting himself. Maybe right now he couldn’t help it. Regardless, this was the longest she’d ever watched him unbeknownst, and it fascinated and excited her in equal measure.
    After five minutes of the drills, Rain started stretching, and Delilah knew he was warming down. She eased away from the window and returned to the room.
    A short while later, sitting in front of the fireplace, the lights turned low, she heard the key in the lock. She stood and watched the door open a crack, then swing wider when Rain saw it was her.
    “Hey,” he said, looking her over. He was pumped from the workout and she liked the way the tee-shirt clung to him.
    “Hey,” she said, smiling. She had planned on giving him a hard time about not being there when she arrived, but now she was just glad to see him.
    He bolted the door, then walked over and kissed her lightly. She reached around for the back of his head, holding him there, prolonging the greeting, letting it turn into something more.
    He raised his glistening arms like a doctor prepping for surgery. “I’m all wet,” he said.
    She let out a little laugh. “Me, too. But I’m starving…why don’t you shower and we’ll get something to eat?”
    They decided on the low-key lounge rather than the more formal dining room, and sat adjacent to each other at a corner table amid dark paneling, low light, and a wood fire. He looked good to her after a week away, casual in faded jeans, a checked oxford cloth shirt, and the cashmere blazer, his dark hair still wet from the shower. Delilah ordered filet of beef with Stilton; Rain, roast chicken with polenta, and they shared terrine of foie gras and a lobster corn custard. Rain chose a bottle of ’89 Lynch-Bages Bordeaux, and while they ate and drank, she asked him questions, and worked to sift through the responses.
    “What does Hilger want?” she asked, quietly. “Why is he doing this?”
    For almost a minute, Rain was silent, rolling the stem of his wineglass through his fingers, his eyes on the liquid inside. Just as Delilah thought he wasn’t going to answer, he said, “He wants me to do three jobs.”
    There was no need to ask what the jobs would consist of. And she knew he wouldn’t tell her the details. In fact, she wasn’t sure she wanted to know.
    “What are you going to do?” she asked.
    Again he was silent for a long time. Then he said, “If I don’t do the jobs, Hilger will kill Dox. If I do the jobs, he’ll kill Dox as soon as I’m done.”
    “Not just that. He might…”
    “Yes, he’ll probably be using one of the jobs as a setup to take me out, too. I know. That’s why I have to find out where Dox is being held, and free him. There’s no other way he’s coming out of this alive.”
    She couldn’t disagree with his assessment. She said, “You’re playing for time, then.”
    Rain nodded. “Time, and information. Part of the reason I wanted to see Hilger in person was to make him move. Tracking someone who’s frozen is hard. Moving, he’ll leave a trail.”
    “Has he?”
    “So far, only fragments. I know he’s got Dox on a boat, and on one of our calls they were in Jakarta. He’s probably moving among various Indonesian islands, and maybe ports in nearby countries. I’m trying to narrow it down.”
    She knew not to ask him whether he had already done one of the jobs. Her gut told her he had. And still it hadn’t been enough. He was going to have to do it again. God.
    She took a sip of wine, thinking. “And you’re sure Dox is…”
    He nodded. “I’ve spoken to him twice. The first time, Hilger did something to him to make him scream. He screamed for a long time.”
    From the flatness of his tone and the stillness of his expression, he might have been describing something he’d read about in the news, not the overheard torture of a