by Renée Jaggér
“Well, you’re in for a treat. He is a darling to work with and the camera loves him, but it’s not difficult when you look like that, am I right?” She giggled and elbowed me.
Seriously? Give me a break, lady. “I guess so. I’m just here to do my job, ma’am.”
“Ma’am? My, aren’t we professional? Let me guess: his new personal assistant?”
I turned so she could see the weapon holstered at my side. “Bodyguard.”
“Oh.” She inched away, reassessing me. “I didn’t realize there were women bodyguards. It must be difficult. I don’t think I’d be able to concentrate. I mean, look at him.” She pulled out her phone and snapped a photo of him as he bent over to put down the weights. “Hashtag snacc!”
She typed it with two Cs. I thought I was going to gag.
Her thumbs hit the screen at a million miles an hour. “Oh, what’s your Insta? I’ll tag you to the photo.”
“I don’t do social media.”
Anna stared at me as if I was some kind of alien, then slowly lifted her phone, took a photo of me, and went back to posting for her followers. “You’re a rare breed in this day and age. Girl, I don’t know how you do it. I would die if I couldn’t log in for a day.”
“Might want to talk to your doctor about that.” I snatched the phone out of her hands.
“Hey! That’s mine!”
She stood next to me complaining nervously but didn’t make a move to try to get her phone back as I deleted the photo she’d taken of me. I hesitated for a minute, thumb hovering over the photo of Ronan she’d snapped. It was one thing for me to remove photos of myself, but maybe he didn’t care. Screw it. She could’ve asked. I hit delete.
Once the photo was gone, I tossed the phone back to her and went to open the door. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to wait outside.”
She made an offended sound. “Hashtag rude!”
“Have a nice day, ma’am. We’ll be with you shortly,” I told her as I shut the door behind her.
“You should’ve let that slide,” Ronan said. He’d apparently finished his workout and stood in the middle of the room, hands on his hips, one of his earbuds in his hand. “You won’t be able to stop them all. Random fangirl photos kind of come with the territory.”
“I’ve seen people look at a juicy steak the way she was looking at you. It was freaking me out. She was like a goddamn cannibal. I swear, it was getting creepy.”
“Was it a good picture of my ass, at least?”
“I don’t see what that has to do with—”
“If it was a good picture, you should’ve let her post it. I haven’t had a good ass shot in a while. Everyone gets the upper body.”
I stared at him. “She was talking in hashtags. Who does that? And what the hell is a ‘snacc’ with two Cs?”
Ronan laughed and popped out the other earbud, tucking both away and shaking his head. “First thing you’re going to have to learn is to pick your battles, Callie. Going after everyone who snaps an unauthorized selfie with my ass in the background is going to wear you out. Come on. Hard part’s done. Now all I have to do is get cleaned up and smile for the camera.”
I sighed and followed him back into the dressing room. He disappeared behind a big privacy wall to clean up while I closed the door to the gym area and made sure it was securely locked. “Why the workout? Seems counter-intuitive to get dirty, only to get cleaned up again.”
He turned on a sink. “It increases blood flow and helps the muscles bulk up. All about getting that stupid six-pack for the camera.”
“Stupid, huh? Doesn’t sound like you care much for it.”
“Oh, I don’t mind the work. Or the attention. Sometimes it gets old, being reduced to how you look, though. It’s a cutthroat business, the male model world, especially if you’re not a physically large person. I work out all the time, but bulking up and getting ripped is hard. I’ve got genetics working against me. Fae naturally tend toward being thinner. Some guys don’t have to work at it.” He came out from behind the privacy wall, having cleaned up and changed into a pair of simple black sweats and a white t-shirt.
“Listen, if I overstepped—”
“It’s fine. You’re new.” He shrugged and slowly went to the door leading back to the studio. “Just remember, I can run my own personal life. If I wanted someone to get on my case about who I spend my time with, I’d call my mother.”
The photoshoot took forever. They stuck Ronan on a weird green sheet that ran over the wall and floor and blasted him with bright lights from all directions. I don’t know how he wasn’t squinting the whole time.
As it turned out, he was more than just an underwear model. They dressed him in all kinds of clothes from khaki shorts to swim trunks to jeans, t-shirts, and sunglasses. It felt like someone was running in every few minutes to adjust some piece of clothing, fix the makeup on his cheeks, or brush his hair. Sometimes all three of them went on at once. Having so many people buzzing all around me, touching me all at once, would’ve pissed me off, but he just stood there, a living mannequin for people to dress, undress, and pose.
The guy behind the camera shouted directions as if his life depended on how fast people obeyed his orders. “Look off to the right. Lift your chin. I need more flex. Give me more apathy in the eyes. Now look like you want to fuck the camera. Now less. Rotate forty degrees. Ninety. More light. Less.” The orders and camera flashes came so rapidly, I didn’t know how anyone could possibly follow what was going on. To me it seemed like chaos, but everyone involved knew their parts by heart.
The entire time, Anna stood on the other side of the set, sending irritated glares my way. She might’ve been pissed at me, but she didn’t try to sneak another photo during the shoot.
It was well into the afternoon by the time the photographer announced they were done, but even then, the work wasn’t finished. Ronan went off to the side to sit with Anna and her boss, going over the photos. My phone buzzed with a notification he’d gotten an email, which turned out to be a bundle of the photos.
“For my agent,” Ronan shouted to me from across the studio. “Do me a favor, Callie. Go through some of those and post a few?”
“Post a few?” I frowned. I didn’t know the first thing about posting pictures on social media. I hadn’t thought that would be part of the job description. Didn’t he have people for that?
I was still scrolling through the photos when I felt a tingle on the back of my neck. I looked up and spied movement in the dressing area, something glowing. No one else seemed to have spotted it. They were all bent over the camera, busy going through the rest of the photos. I put away my phone and went to check it out.
With my hand on my weapon, I carefully crept down the short hallway and stood by the cracked door, listening for movement. There was a dull buzzing sound inside, like a fluorescent lightbulb but louder. What in the world could that be? Slowly, I pushed the door open.
A large black circle stood in the center of the room like a doorway, ringed in electric blue.
What the hell? That hadn’t been there before. I took a step forward to investigate, and the glowing ring rushed toward me and swallowed me whole.
The next thing I knew, I was standing under a hot sun carrying seventy pounds of gear with sand in places sand should never go. Pale brown outcroppings of rock piled up on my right and left, the path ahead a narrow choke point. We were supposed to be on alert for snipers above us, but the area had been calm for weeks, so we’d let our guard down.
Private James Xavier—affectionately known in the unit as Jax—walked beside me. We’d had the bad luck of pulling midday patrol duty. I much preferred night patrols because at least it was cool then, but good old Jax. Nothing could get him down. He was telling me a joke I’d heard a hundred times since boot camp.
“So a grunt and a sailor are in this nightclub on leave, right?” Jax said, squinting up at the sun. “They’re both pissing at the urinals. Sailor finishes up and goes to was
h his hands. Grunt zips up and heads straight for the door. Sailor says really loud from the sink, ‘In Basic, they taught us to wash our hands after we piss.’ And the grunt says—”
“In Basic, they taught him not to piss on his hands,” I finished. “Heard that one. What else have you got?”
“You’re such a bitch, Hart.” Jax gave me a little shove.
“Takes one to know one.” I gave him a harder shove back.
He laughed like a fool. “Man, you know what I miss?”
“Air conditioning? Apple pie? Sleeping in?” Everyone missed everything about civvy life. That was just how it was. Didn’t matter how much you missed it, though, you learned fast enough not to bitch about it within earshot of your sergeant. Out there on patrol, that was where we did our best complaining. Might as well.
“Your mom.” Jax giggled like a teenage girl.
I snorted. “Yeah, never heard that one before, either.”
The radio clipped to my uniform kicked on. “Hotel, Juliet, what’s your position?”
Hotel and Juliet were the designations for H and J respectively, the first letters of the names the squad called us.
“This is Juliet,” Jax reported. “We are just south of the Devil’s asshole, two o’clock to Bumfuck, Nowhere.”
“Very funny,” answered Trisco. “Movement near our position. Going to check it out. Rendezvous on me.”
“Roger that. There in five.”
“It’s probably just another dog,” I said. We’d been seeing a lot of them around the base lately. More than usual.
As Jax was getting ready to agree with me, the popcorn sound of machine gunfire erupted on the other side of the rock outcropping, and a report of shots fired came across the wideband radio.
“Callie!”
I exhaled and I was back in the studio, standing in the middle of the changing room.
Ronan was in front of me, his expression one of concern. He waved a hand in front of my face. “You okay?”
“Yeah, I think so.” I shook my head and looked around for the portal, but it was gone. What the hell was that?
Ronan frowned. “You sure?”
“You didn’t happen to see anything weird in here? Like a glowing light?”
Ronan glanced around the room and shook his head. “Are you feeling okay?”
Maybe the portal had never really been there. It could’ve been some sort of flashback triggered by the recent stress, but I wasn’t sure. I’d never heard of anyone describing flashbacks as being like walking through a portal, and I hadn’t ever had one before. Nightmares, sure, but never a flashback. Maybe that was all it was. Still, it felt like I had been dismissing too many weird happenings since I’d met Ronan, especially in light of the revelation that he was a fae prince. We still needed to talk about that.
He gripped my shoulder and squeezed. “It’s late. You probably haven’t eaten all day, have you? It’s one thing for me to do that. I’m used to it, but you… Why don’t we go grab something to eat? I know a great pizza place across town. Vaughn can catch up with us there.”
I nodded. Pizza did sound good. “Sure.”
The pizza place Ronan took me to was a small hole-in-the-wall with an authentic brick oven and a chef in the back who looked like he used to break knees with a baseball bat for a living. Black and white photos and framed newspaper clippings lined the walls of the narrow eatery, which only had six booths with red leather seats. After a long argument about me acting like the bodyguard I was and watching for threats, which he won, we opted for a place at the counter on a pair of stools covered with the same material. At least our backs weren’t to the door since the counter was off to the side of the walk-up bar.
Despite the place’s small size and unusual location, it was pretty busy. There were people at every booth when we came in, but they started to clear out shortly after our arrival. It was late, after all.
Ronan ordered a personal pizza with mushrooms, ham, chicken, and extra cheese. I got my favorite: crust and cheese, no sauce.
Ronan frowned at me as I handed the menu back to the guy at the counter. “That’s not a pizza. You have to have tomato sauce on it to make it a pizza.”
“It’s round,” I argued. “It has dough and cheese. Where is it written that a pizza must have tomato sauce?”
He turned to the kid behind the counter. “Tell her it has to have tomato sauce.”
The kid shrugged. “Customer’s always right.”
“You’re a monster,” Ronan accused dryly. “You’ve created an abomination. I’m not sure I can sit here and watch you eat that, Callie. It’s a sin against pizza.”
I shrugged. “That’s how I like it. Cheaper to order it that way, too. Sometimes pizza places will give you a discount if you don’t want the sauce, although I’m sure that’s not something you’ve ever had to worry about. You’ve always been loaded, being a prince and all.”
“I know it must seem like my life is all sunshine and roses, but far from it.”
I grunted. “If your only problem is an overbearing mother and potential assassination by vampires, I’d say you’re pretty well off. You’ve never had to worry about paying rent. If your work dried up, you wouldn’t be totally screwed. I don’t mean to sound bitter, but yeah, your life sounds pretty good to me.”
“Grass is always greener on the other side.” He sighed and sipped the water he’d ordered. “Okay, then. Tell me what you’d do in my position. If money was no object, what would you be doing right now?”
I considered it for a moment, scanning the walls like I was searching for ideas. “Probably lounging on some beach in the Caribbean, sipping a ridiculous fruit-flavored drink I’d be embarrassed to drink anywhere else.”
“A beach? That’s cliché. Come on, you can do better. If I handed you a million-dollar check right now, you’re telling me you’d blow it on mai tais, cabana boys, and beach vacations?”
He was right. The beach was probably what everyone said. The truth was, I’d seen enough sand for a lifetime. I shrugged. “Realistically, I think I’d buy a house. A car. Invest the rest. I’m pretty boring.”
“What if you already had all that? Dream bigger. Go on. Anything you’ve ever wanted.”
I studied his eager face for a minute and looked away. “You’ll laugh.”
“I won’t. I promise. Come on, Callie. You spent the day watching random strangers strip me down, dress me up, and pose me like a doll. I’m not going to laugh at you for being honest.”
I fiddled with the straw in my glass. “I’ve always wanted to go into space.”
“Space?” He made a face. “Why?”
“Because it seems like it would be peaceful up there. Quiet. Serene. A good place to get perspective, you know?”
The kid behind the counter slid our pizzas onto the bar in front of us.
Ronan nodded to my pizza. “You need some perspective if you think that counts as a pizza.”
“If we’re going to critique each other’s food choices, maybe you should think about cutting back on the calories if you want to maintain that figure of yours.”
Ronan laughed and picked up the parmesan shaker. “Trust me, I’ll be fine. My personal trainer might kill me if he knew I was eating this, but what he doesn’t know won’t hurt him. His routine is insane. I’m sure I’ll burn it all off before the next shoot.”
He picked up the pizza to take a bite.
I happened to look up before I grabbed mine and glanced into the big-screen TV. It was off, but I caught a glimpse of light reflecting off something metallic several stories up.
I reacted by instinct, tackling Ronan to the ground as the glass behind us shattered. A bullet whizzed past us, burying itself in the wall. I held him down for a minute, until I was relatively sure there weren’t going to be any more shots coming, then sat up, drew my weapon, and tried to spot whoever had fired the shot.
A dark figure darted in front of a window in the building across the street, two stories up.
The building across from the pizzeria was an old apartment building undergoing renovations. The front door was blocked, so I raced around the side. At least I knew he wouldn’t be exiting through there, though I didn’t wait to check the back. Chances were good the shooter was already gone, but maybe I could catch him if I hurried.
I burst through the side door and took the dusty stairs two at a time. The movement in the window had been on the third floor, but once I reached it, I had to stop for a moment to get my bearings. He would’ve been in one of the rooms facing the pizzeria, and that whole wing of the building had been blocked off by heavy tarps. I pointed my gun at the ground and slid through them sideways, bringing my weapon up in case he was there waiting for me.
The hallway was clear, but that didn’t mean the whole floor was. I’d have to go room to room to make sure he wasn’t hiding up there, and the longer I was away from Ronan, the higher the chance that something else would happen.
I’ll just clear the rooms in this hall, I thought and checked the closest one. It was dark and the lights weren’t working, so I had to use a flashlight to check the darkened corners. One by one, I checked and cleared every room in the hall, finding no sign of the shooter until I reached the halfway point. There, I found a room with a spent shell casing. He must’ve been in a real hurry if he hadn’t stopped to collect that. I was able to take a picture of the shell casing since the phone had a flash. Then something else caught my eye: a scrap of olive-green canvas caught on a nail near the door. It was the only other clue in the room. I studied it, but no matter how much I looked at it, it didn’t tell me what it belonged to. I took a snap of that too.
A spent shell casing and a scrap of green canvas, I thought. It wasn’t much to go on, but it was better than nothing.