Read Online A Thousand Kisses Deep by Wendy Rosnau - Free Book Online Page B

like a Sully. And Bjorn was blond. I think the one they called Jacy had black hair. Are you him?"
    She took another few seconds to study him further. Suddenly she raised her chin a little higher, made a face. "You're him, aren't you? You're that badass ex-con. You're Sly McEwen."
    It was true he'd spent a healthy stretch behind bars before becoming an Onyxx agent. Living with LeRoy, his psychotic criminal stepfather, it was bound to happen. He supposed LeRoy was responsible for the ornery attitude that had kept him alive on the streets, then later in prison. The same attitude that had landed him a spot in the lineup as one of Merrick 's rat fighters.
    The position suited him. By the time Sly was ten, LeRoy had taught him how to swear in three languages, piss on the run and pick a door lock in two minutes flat. Hot-wiring cars came easy, and driving them at breakneck speeds had earned him the honorary position as LeRoy's getaway driver as early as age thirteen.
    LeRoy's other specialty besides being a professional criminal had been being an abusive son of a bitch. Which had taught Sly how to dodge and duck with lightning speed. Only his mother hadn't learned that maneuver and one night LeRoy's fists had found her vulnerable. That's the reason Sly had been sent to prison at age sixteen—he'd drilled his stepfather between the eyes with a .38 after LeRoy had beaten his mother unconscious.
    He'd been convicted of murder. Had beaten Life, and gotten twelve years in a maximum security prison. If he had it to do all over again, he wouldn't do anything any different. After all, he'd learned that being a badass was better than being dead.
    The way she was looking at him, Sly wondered just how much dirt she knew. Obviously enough. She had wrapped her arms around herself, and if he wasn't mistaken, she had tucked herself a little tighter against the rock wall.
    If she knew he was an ex-con, and worked for Onyxx, the question was, how had she gotten the information? None of that was public knowledge.
    "Simon takes a lot of medication for his allergies. It makes him sleepy," she said, as if she'd read his mind. "I discovered the password for his computer one morning a few months ago. I had been working on breaking the code for over a year. I must have tried every word combination twice. All but the right one, of course. I should have realized it would be something too simple to take seriously."
    "What was it?"
    "My name."
    "Eva Parish, or Creon?"
    "Creon. When I found the file labeled Onyxx it was like a flash of lightning opened up my memory. You see when I was young I was trapped in a house fire. While trying to escape, I fell down a flight of stairs. I must have been knocked out for a while, because some of my memory is foggy about that night. Over the past two years, however, things have been coming back to me. Seeing the word Onyxx on the computer file triggered some things."
    "Like what?"
    "I'll keep them to myself for now. All except Adolf Merrick and the strawberry suckers."
    "What's important about that?"
    "Adolf Merrick used to bring me strawberry suckers when he came to visit my father."
    Testing her, Sly asked, "How long ago was that?"
    "I think it started when I was seven."
    "Did your father work with Merrick at Onyxx?"
    "Yes."
    Sly was determined to keep her talking. "So Simon Parish has a file on Onyxx. Why?"
    "I don't know. But it's quite impressive. It details Onyxx's most successful missions, and its most embarrassing failures. And it lists the agents alphabetically, with a profile on each. No pictures."
    "Explain the other night in the maze."
    "What do you want to know? How to get a ticket to an upcoming performance? Or do you want to audition for a part so you can play, too?"
    There it was again. She either had a bizarre sense of humor, or she was touched in the head. On the tapes he'd noticed that she'd answered a number of Dr. Fielding's questions with some eccentric logic. It was either part of her game, or she was