“Yeah,” I answer, not taking my eyes off Sydney. It’s like I can’t. She’s different somehow. As mesmerizing as ever but something… My mind flashes back to the last time we saw each other… the heat and the anger and the…love. “I need a break,” I say to Shirley, still staring at Sydney. She’s staring back. Not running. Not hiding. My heart gives a loud, pathetic thump of hope.
No. I won’t let her break me again. Sydney Rye is dangerous. Our whole relationship, she’s warned me off her. My love is a death sentence. Well, Sydney, I’m not gonna let you kill me slowly anymore.
“Sure, take fifteen,” Shirley says, giving my back another slap.
“Want to walk down to the beach?” Sydney asks, her voice low, gentle—like she’s afraid of my answer.
“Okay.” I take off my apron and come around the bar—hardening my heart against her. It doesn’t matter what she has to say. I can’t love her anymore. Not if I want to live.
Chapter Seven
Sydney
Wind tugs strands of hair free from my ponytail, lashing it across my cheeks. The beach is deserted, the dark clouds threatening rain and rough surf keeping the few tourists in town away. “I’ve been looking for you,” I say. Mulberry’s lips press together as if he is trying not to speak. “I have something important to tell you.” I yell a little to be heard over the crashing waves.
He gives a small shake of his head and looks back over his shoulder; the main street dead ends at the beach, and his bar is only a block away. “Well, spit it out. I’m working.”
“I’m pregnant.” His head snaps back to me. Mulberry’s mouth opens…closes. Opens again. Dread is spinning my insides, chewing them up. I might puke. “It’s yours,” I say, just so we’re totally clear.
“Mine?” His voice is so low I barely hear it over the pounding surf.
I nod, my eyes narrowing against a blast of sand carried by a strong gust of wind. It stings my face and grits my lips. I press them together, my turn to keep words from spilling out.
Mulberry’s eyes, sharp green and sparkling gold, drop to my stomach. I resist the urge to cover it. Blue pushes his nose against my hand, and I rest my palm on the back of his head, pushing my fingers into his fur instead.
“How?” Mulberry asks.
A laugh escapes from my chest, loosening something in there. “You want me to draw you a picture?”
Mulberry flinches, and his face hardens. “How do I know it’s mine?”
The crack of my open palm slapping his cheek is louder than the waves and the wind. His head rocks to the side, and he stumbles a step back. “Fuck you,” I spit at him before turning on my heel. Blue gives a low growl as he joins me, his nose tapping my hip in solidarity as we stride down the beach.
“Wait, I’m sorry.” Mulberry runs up next to me. He’s smart enough not to grab me. That’s what Robert would do—he’d grab me and make me stop—but Mulberry doesn’t; he falls into step with me. “That was a dick thing to say.” My jaw is clenched so tight I can’t answer him. “Please, I’m sorry.” Focusing on the length of beach in front of me, I pick up my pace.
Mulberry’s limp is more pronounced in the sand. He’s struggling to keep up. His awkward gait wrenches at my heart hard enough to stop me. “You know what?” I say. Mulberry steps in front of me as if to block my path. I could knock him on his ass.
“I’m sorry, I wasn’t expecting…” He thrusts a hand through his hair, making it stand on end.
“Robert told me not to tell you. He said I’d never get what I need from you.”
Mulberry growls and steps closer, so that we are barely inches apart, his big body blocking the wind. “And you listen to him now?”
I meet his eyes, narrow mine. “Was he wrong? You just asked how I knew it was yours.” My voice cracks on the last word, and I clench my jaw, refusing to get emotional. Absolutely refusing to care about him.
A fool’s errand.
His whole body seems to soften, the tension in his broad chest easing as he reaches a hand up and cups my cheek. His lips curl into this private, tiny smile—one he seems to save just for me. Just to melt me. “Don’t,” I say. But I don’t mean it. My body trembles with the need to be melted. To have him say he loves me, and that he wants me, the baby—that he wants this whole impossible thing that is happening between us.
When he remembered me—and our life—Mulberry came to Robert’s house to confront me. To yell at me for pretending like we’d never known each other. We ended up falling into bed. But when I woke up he was gone—too angry to forgive me no matter what we whispered to each other in the dark. No matter how we really felt about each other.
I can’t wrap my mind around this, not any of it. How did we get here?
Mulberry closes the distance between us, folding his arms around me and pulling me into his chest. Tears burn my eyes, but I don’t let them free. I breathe him in. The detergent he’s using is different, and the lingering scent of the bar clings to him, but still, under all that, is his smell. I close my eyes and lean in, let him buffer me from the wind and warm me. Slowly, I bring my arm around his waist and squeeze back.
We will be parents together. If there wasn’t anything else between us but the bundle of cells growing inside of me, we’d be connected, but there is so much more. A terrible, exhilarating history that binds us together.
"I'm sorry," he says again, his breath warm on the top of my head.
“You should be." It comes out like I forgive him. "I'm sorry too. I should've fought for you."
His arms squeeze tighter. And when I pull back, and look up into his face, his eyes are wet. I reach up to try and brush away a tear, but he shies away, roughly wiping his cheek on his shoulder.
“What do you need?” he asks, his gaze on the ocean but his arms still tight around me, his chin right in line with my lips.
“I don’t know. I don’t know what to do.” His jaw clenches. “What?”
He lets out a long breath and slowly looks at me. His eyes are flashing green, the sunlight peeking through the clouds catching glints of gold in there. “Marry me.”
“What?” My voice is high. “Are you insane?”
He frowns deeply and pulls me tighter against him. “Marry me.” It comes out like a demand this time—not that it ever sounded like a request.
I push against his chest, trying to get some space. “Why would we get married?”
“We’re having a baby.” He’s almost yelling now.
“So? That doesn’t mean we have to get married.” His arms are like vices.
“I don’t want my child to be a bastard.”
I stop struggling and look up into his eyes. “Wow,” I say. “Being a Catholic kind of fucked you up.”
That gets him to drop his arms. “Fucked me up? If anyone here is fucked up it’s you!” And now he is yelling.
“I’m worried about how I’m going to keep this baby alive, not whether it’s going to hell or not.”
He shakes his head and blows out a breath. He’s trying to calm down. “Why won’t you marry me?” he asks, his voice low, almost sounding hurt.
“You’ve been hiding from me for weeks and now you want to commit to being with me for the rest of your life. Really?”
“I always wanted to be a husband and father.”
The sadness in his voice rips my chest open, leaving my heart just pumping away in the sand and the salt. It hurts. I don’t speak. Can’t think of what to say. I don’t make dreams come true; I am a fucking angel of death.
We stare at each other, the wind blustering around us. Blue leans against my leg, warming my side. I look down at him. He’s staring up at me in that way he has—pure adoration and faith. A big breath in and I return my gaze to Mulberry. “I never thought I’d be a mother. And I’d make a terrible wife.”
“No you wouldn’t.”
I laugh. “It’s like you don’t know me at all or something.”
“Or that I know you better than you know yourself.” He
steps close again, that private, shy smile slipping loose. “Robert wants you to think that you’re like him: a cold, calculating killer out to get what you think you deserve. But that’s not true. You want to help people, Sydney. You always have.”
“Everybody I love dies.” It slips out so quietly Mulberry leans closer, like he couldn’t hear me.
“What?”
I have to be brave. Meeting his eyes, I say it again. “Everybody I love dies.”
“I’m not dead,” he points out.
“Because I left you alone; I saved you by abandoning you.”
He lets out a huff of a laugh. “And you say I’m the fucked up one.”
“This from the guy who wants to commit a lifetime to a woman he wasn’t even talking to an hour ago, because he’s got some antiquated notion about bastards.” That sounded better in my head.
His smile grows. “I’m not going to die.” His arm comes around my waist again, a subtle promise.
“You have no control over that. I’m a curse. Only a cockroach can survive me.”
“A cockroach like Robert Maxim?”
I wince. “I don’t know.”
“You’ve never been willing to trust me,” Mulberry says, his fingers curling around my hip in a protective hold.
“That’s not true; I did trust you. And then you lied to me and basically sold me out to Robert Maxim.”
Back in New York, I told Mulberry I planned to kill my brother’s murderer—the act of vengeance that spawned Joyful Justice. But when I arrived at Kurt Jessup’s office, he was already dead… at the hands of Robert Maxim. Not only did Robert steal my revenge but he framed me. I later learned it was Mulberry who convinced Robert to kill Kurt… trying to save me from becoming a murderer. Another fool’s errand.
After I failed at killing my brother’s murderer, I hated Robert Maxim, myself and basically the whole human race. Mulberry found me drowning my anger and guilt in a bottle of tequila on a beach in Mexico and convinced me to work for him…but it turned out I wasn’t working for just him. Robert Maxim was a silent owner of the detective agency he’d started. Mulberry threw the wool over my eyes while Robert sank his claws into me.
“I was trying to protect you.” Mulberry’s voice is low. He knows that excuse is dead between us. “We keep hurting each other by trying to protect each other.” He’s right. “Let’s try something new. I’ll love you and you love me, and that’s all we’ll do.”
Tears burn again, and I can’t look at him. Can’t even breathe. “I don’t know if I can do that.” I’m whispering again.
“Why not?” His voice stays soft.
“Because I’m confused and uneasy, and I don’t know…”
“You don’t love me?” A dull edge roughens the quiet tone.
“I do.”
“But?” The edge sharpens.
Forcing my eyes open, I stare at the sand, at my sneakers sinking into it. “I don’t think I can explain it.”
“Try.”
“I might…”
“Do you have feelings for Robert?” The edge is cutting now.
I shake my head, a denial on my tongue but unable to escape my mouth. Because Mulberry might be right.
Blue gives a sharp bark. Mulberry and I both look back the way we came and see Robert running down the sand at us, his suit jacket open and flapping in the wind. “Run!” He yells, the sound of his voice barely reaching us over the rev of a powerful engine as a quad spins off the main road and onto the beach, sand spitting out behind it.
There are two men on the quad, one aims a long and powerful rifle at Robert’s back.
No!
Mulberry bends to his ankle, rising with a pistol in his grip, and steps forward, steadying the small weapon with both hands and squinting to aim.
Gunshots ring out—louder than the surf, louder than my fear—and Robert falls forward, arms out, eyes wide, sailing through the air.
Not even cockroaches can survive me.
Robert
Sand grits my teeth. Sharp pain bites my knee. Sydney’s scream assaults my ears. I grip the rough handle of my pistol and pull it free from the shoulder holster, rolling onto my back.
The quad bears down on me. The driver’s head jerks back—Mulberry must have shot him. I take aim at a tire and blow it, throwing the vehicle off course. The driver’s body falls off and the survivor bails, rolling in the sand about twenty yards away.
I aim at that second figure and pump two bullets into it. It slumps, lifeless. Mulberry passes me, running toward the downed men. “No time,” I yell. “Help me up, we need to move!”
The thwapping of a helicopter racing over the waves toward the beach makes my point.
Sydney grabs my bicep and hauls me to my feet. I sling an arm across her shoulders, wincing as I inadvertently put weight on my knee. Damn weak thing—twisted years ago and never quite came back.
Memories of that injury pound through my brain: Amy’s eyes, those pale blue spheres boring into my own, her voice, barely audible through the ringing in my ears as she yelled for me to keep going. Josh dipping under my arm the way Sydney is under it now, the brother and sister dragging me through the thick jungle, fleeing from our captors. They could have left me to die.
Mulberry slips under my other arm, and they half carry me over the sand as I hobble along. “Who the fuck are they?” Mulberry yells over the sound of the helicopter.
“There is a culvert up ahead,” Sydney points, ignoring Mulberry’s question. Who they are doesn’t matter right now.
We veer up the beach toward the large metal tube that drains storm water onto the beach—a stream bed created by years of runoff cuts through the beach to the ocean.
Bullets pound into the sand, shooting it up in front of us, stinging my eyes. Shit, this will not go unnoticed.
We dive into the culvert—it reeks of brine and street filth. Crouched low, splashing through puddles left from the last rainfall, we move into the shadows and out of range of the helicopter’s gun. The far side of the tunnel is twenty yards ahead of us, the opening we fled into, ten yards behind. We stop, the rank water soaking our feet.
Mulberry steps out from under my arm to face me. “What the fuck is going on?” he demands.
I smirk at him, leaning on Sydney, keeping her close. I’m injured, after all. Mulberry’s eyes narrow as his gaze drifts to my hand clutching her shoulder. “I don’t know,” I answer, making it sound like I do know but just won’t share with him.
Mulberry snarls and steps into my face. I straighten and glance down at the gun still in my hand before slipping it into the holster under my jacket. I’m not going to shoot him. Lifting my eyes to meet Mulberry’s, I raise one brow.
“Would you two stop it?” Sydney says, shifting away, leaving me balancing on my good leg. I test weight on my knee and find it painful but bearable. She moves back toward the entrance, crouching to peer out at the helicopter. “They are hovering over the culvert,” she says. “Waiting for us.”
“He brought this here,” Mulberry grinds out.
“Who cares?” Sydney snaps, keeping her attention on the beach. “We need to get the fuck out of here.” She splashes back toward us. “The police are going to get called. Or those fuckers are going to land.”
Mulberry returns his attention to me. “What are you even doing here?” he asks.
“I came for the fine whiskey at your shithole establishment.”
“Fuck you.” He pushes me, and I let him.
The difference between this man and me: I am ruthless and he is honorable. You know who wins that fight? Hint: me.
I pretend to stumble, and he comes at me, fists clenched. Mulberry is shorter than me but broader, a veritable pile of boulders to my more sinewy strength. Younger, dumber, and desperate for a fight, he’s lost before we even begin.
Bending my knees, I get under him in the cramped space, coming up hard and fast. My fist barrels into his chin. Mulberry arches back, falters as his head hits the top of t
he culvert, but doesn’t go down. Instead he heaves forward, launching himself at me. Bear arms come around my shoulders, holding me as we fall into the shallow water. My face goes under, and I press my mouth closed.
Lashing out with my feet, I kick at his bad leg. Mulberry groans, and his grip loosens enough for me to get my hands between us and push him off. Gasping for air, I roll away from him. He grabs for something—a tree limb?—and turns back to me, on his knees, holding it out like a weapon.
It’s not a tree limb; it’s his fucking prosthetic leg.
Standing, I stay low, circling him. He’s soaking wet, water dripping into his eyes, soaked through his long sleeve shirt, the cotton molding to his skin. It drips off my jacket, making it heavy. It won’t be easy for him to get up with just one leg.
Mulberry starts to smile, then a laugh breaks free and he shakes his head. “What?” I ask.
“You,” he says. “First person I’ve fought since losing my leg who showed no pity.”
“Pity you?” I shake my head. “No.”
“I appreciate that.”
He looks past me then turns to look behind him. I take a step forward, preparing to kick him in the chest and send him back into that stinking water, when I realize Sydney isn’t here. “Where is she?” Mulberry asks, voicing my question.
I turn in a circle—it’s just the two of us. The helicopter sound is fading.
Mulberry struggles to rise. I do not offer help. Pushing my wet hair back, I check the way we came in…the helicopter is out over the waves, returning from where it came. The distant singing of sirens reaches me.
Mulberry approaches, and as I turn to tell him, his fist connects with my jaw. I stumble into the side of the tunnel. “You’re trying to keep her from me. I’m the father of her child!”
I rub my jaw, tasting blood. “You left her.”
“You are incapable of loving anyone but yourself.” Even bent over, Mulberry is steady on one foot, holding his fake leg in both hands now, waiting for me to come at him again rather than take advantage of his position. What an idiot.
Savage Grace (A Sydney Rye Mystery, #12) Page 6