Chapter 20: Night Before

The night before the trial, the apartment on the twentieth floor was very quiet.

A marshal sat in the hall.

Another sat in a car downstairs.

For five weeks Vera had called at nine, and Ray had lied to her in the flat voice.

Kroll's men had walked into one empty address after another and been taken in the lobby by people in vests.

Eleven of them were in a federal jail now, and none had said Kroll's name.

Tomorrow, Nico would say it for them.

He stood at the window in his socks with a blanket around his shoulders, looking down at the lake.

His briefing binder lay closed on the table.

He had not touched it since dinner.

"I keep running the first question," he said. "Please state your name. And my mind goes white."

"Nico Stavros."

"I know. I know it. It's just that tomorrow it will be the only thing the room knows about me."

Ray came up behind him and put his hands on the blanket.

"Come to bed."

"I can't sleep."

"I didn't say sleep."

Nico turned around.

His face was pale, and something raw and eager showed in it.

He took a breath.

"I want to ask you for something," he said. "And I don't want you to be gentle about it."

"Ask."

"Hold me down."

Ray's eyes did not leave his.

"I want you to take it out of my head," Nico said.

"I want you on me, and I want to not be able to move, and I want you to make me stop thinking."

"For an hour."

"Please."

"You've never asked for that."

"I've wanted it since the cabin."

"Since you were on the floor and I held your wrists and I thought, what if it's me." His breath hitched.

"I want it to be you."

Ray did not say anything.

He lifted the blanket off Nico's shoulders and let it fall.

Then he took him by the back of the neck, gently and completely, and walked him to the bed.

"Strip."

Nico stripped.

His hands shook with the buttons, and Ray waited, and did not help.

When he stood naked at the edge of the mattress, flushed to the collarbone, hard already, Ray said, "On your stomach."

Nico lay down.

Ray took off his jacket and his tie and his shirt.

The big body moved in the lamplight, scarred and broad and heavy with muscle.

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