by Tessa Blake
“You need to wait right here. He’ll be out when … when he’s done.”
Whatever that means.
She scrubs the heels of her hands over the tears on her cheeks. “He’s in there because of me. I should—”
“You should what, go running in there and … what? Stop him? Help him? Show him your bra?”
She pulls her shirt together again with shaking hands. “No, I … no. I can’t…”
Whatever she can’t, she trails off and doesn’t elaborate.
The passenger window beside her glides smoothly down, and when I look, Billy’s leaning across the seat, holding a small plastic box in one hand.
“Sewing kit,” he says. “Maybe you could…”
It’s such a small but profound act of kindness that I almost cry myself. But one of us has to hold it together and there’s no way it’s going to be Ainsley—nor should it be.
“Thank you.” I take the kit from him and open it.
There’s not much: a couple of needles, a few miniature spools of thread, the world’s most useless pair of scissors. But I grab a couple of tiny safety pins and hand it back to him.
Ainsley bats my hands away when I reach for her shirt. “Stop that.”
“No, you stop that,” I reach out again and tug the torn edges together, fastening one safety pin right at her cleavage. “You want him to come out here and see you crying on the sidewalk with your tits hanging out?”
She draws herself up, pulls in a couple of shuddering breaths. “No.”
“Then get it together.” I fasten the other safety pin a couple of inches below the first. “Let’s get you home and then—”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
“I’ll take you right home,” Billy pipes up, “and come back for those other guys. No charge. Just get in and tell me where you need to go, Miss.”
“I’m not leaving without—” Ainsley cuts herself off, looking at something over my shoulder. Then she’s pushing past me, and hobbling down the sidewalk toward Rafe and Miles, who have emerged from the warehouse.
Miles steps to the side, and Rafe comes to a stop in front of Ainsley. His hands, shaking, reach out and touch her gently. Her hair, her cheek, her bloody lip.
“What did he do?” His voice is shaking as much as his hands are. The edges of his shirt cuffs are bloody.
“I don’t want to—”
I move to stand at her side. “She’s okay.” As far as I’m concerned, that’s all he needs for now. “And she doesn’t have to say more than that.”
Miles coughs politely, and holds something out to Ainsley. Her underwear—left inside the warehouse, I assume. Oh, Miles, I think. What a thoughtful, dumbass thing to do.
Ainsley shakes her head and Miles tosses them into a trash can next to the corner street sign.
Rafe touches Ainsley again, one finger gentle on her busted lip. “Let’s go home, okay?”
She nods.
7
Brigitte
I wake up in Ainsley’s guest room, still exhausted. I don’t feel like I slept more than ten minutes in a row all night. The clock says it’s 11:00, and I groan.
Ainsley opted to come to her place last night instead of going to Rafe’s, something I can definitely understand. She needed a shower, and to decompress, and a friend to cry on.
I was glad to find out that she wasn’t actually raped, but I imagine that coming that close to it is nearly as bad, and she was pretty shaken up. We had some wine—too much wine, honestly—and she took that shower, and then we stayed up most of the night doing something we’ve done plenty of other times: talking about guys. It would almost be like high school, if Ainsley’s boyfriend hadn’t just killed a guy—and if she weren’t hiding from him the enormous secret that she’s a reporter, and that he’s her current assignment.
Sticky, for sure.
I get out of bed and get moving; lying there isn’t going to make me feel any more rested, and I need to get to work by noon. I’m not on-air until four o’clock, but there’s prep and makeup and all that to deal with.
I keep a backup outfit here, as Ainsley keeps one at my place, so that’s clothes sorted anyway. In the interest of not scaring pedestrians or my Uber driver, I use a little of Ainsley’s makeup to conceal the bags under my eyes and my ghostly-yet-sallow complexion, then make a pot of coffee and pour some in a go-cup for me. I’m just requesting a car when Ainsley pads into the kitchen on bare feet.
“Sorry I kept you up so late.” She pulls down a cup and pours herself some coffee. “I don’t feel like I slept at all.”
“Me, neither, but it’s fine.” I click to confirm my trip. “Gotta run, or I’ll be late.”
“Brig… thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” I give her a one-armed hug. “You’ll let me know if I can do anything to help with your project?”
She hugs me back. “I think I’ve got it, thanks. But I’ll let you know.”
She decided last night that she’s going to go ahead and write that story about Rafe—only she’s going to make it a story about how he’s not guilty of the real estate fraud she’s been investigating. It’s some big deal—fake tenants, tax avoidance, some White House lawyer killed himself over it. I haven’t followed it all that closely, but I trust Ainsley. If she says the guy from last night—Marco—was responsible and Rafe wasn’t, I believe her.
And she’s decided the only way she can come clean about her fake name and her real job is if she does it with a story that exonerates him, in hand and published.
I hope it works.
I jog down the stairs and climb into the waiting car. Sipping my coffee on the way to the studio, I think back to one topic we only briefly touched on last night.
“So… the brother is cute.”
Ainsley wrinkles her nose. “You think so?”
“I do.”
“You’re not normally into bad boys,” she says, grinning.
“Is that what he is? A bad boy?”
“Well, he doesn’t have a job, apparently. Lives off Rafe’s money and spends his days surfing.” She shrugs. “Maybe you should just take him for a tumble anyway,” she says, then shrieks as I pretend to shove her off the couch. “Just kidding. Like you’d do that.”
She had a point. I’m not a one-night-stand kind of girl—never have been. Not a prude, by any means, but I’m just … cautious.
It’s pointless to speculate, anyway. I’m sure he’s just lingering in my mind because we met under such extraordinary circumstances. Everything is heightened in times like that; every feeling is just so much more when there’s so much at stake.
He was more than cute, though, truth be told. Not my type, precisely, with his dark hair streaked by the sun and the full-sleeve tats on both arms, but I’m not blind, am I? Clear, blue eyes. Full lips. And that body, pressed against me during that seemingly endless ride through Brooklyn, slender but firmly muscled in all the right places. I didn’t really think about it at the time—kind of preoccupied—but my brain definitely filed it away to think about later.
The vest is dumb, though. Who just walks around in a leather motorcycle vest?
The driver pulls the car over to the curb in front of the Channel 6 studio, and I hop out. No time to think about Miles Garrett, whom I will probably never see again.
On the way home, I call Ainsley to check in. She tells me her story is submitted, and now she just has to play the waiting game.
“The waiting game sucks,” I say. “Let’s play Hungry Hungry Hippos.”
It’s a quote from The Simpsons—which we watched in syndication an awful lot while we were in college—and it’s pretty much expected that when one of us sets the joke up, the other has to knock it down. Still, it’s pretty amusing to see the look my Uber driver gives me in the rearview mirror.
“I’m so nervous,” she says. “I have no idea how he’ll react.”
“Maybe you don’t have to tell him in person,” I say, carefully.
“Brigitte!”
“He would never hurt me.” Her voice is very firm.
I don’t really have any choice but to let it go. He was very tender with her last night
Jesus, was it only last night?
The car pulls up in front of my building, and I hop out, saying goodbye to Ainsley as I do. There’s a restaurant right on my corner, a Roman street food place that sells every good thing that can be imagined, often tucked into a little pizza-dough pocket or fried inside balls of rice. I consider grabbing something there before I go upstairs, but think better of it. The camera adds ten pounds, and I’m already carrying probably ten too many anyway.
Upstairs, I kick my shoes into the entryway closet and head to the kitchen, where I pour a glass of wine to reward myself for not getting Italian food. I’m headed to the bedroom to change into pajama pants when there’s a knock at the door.
That’s odd.
I cross the living room and look through the peephole.
Okay, that’s really odd. Why is he here?
I swing the door open, and Miles Garrett is standing on the other side.
“How did you find out where I live?”
“Hello to you too.” He leans casually against the door jamb. “I’m good, thanks. A little tired.”
“Look,” I say, “I’m not really in the mood—”
His voice drops to a bare whisper. “I spent the bulk of my day cleaning up a murder scene, so I’m not really in the mood either.”
“Why are you here, then?”
“We need to talk,” he says. “Do you want to go somewhere neutral, or are you going to invite me in?”
8
Miles
She stands there glowering at me, a glass of wine in one hand and the other still on the door, as if she might yet slam it in my face. She’s wearing wide-legged black pants and a gray shirt that makes her eyes look dramatically blue. She’s every bit as gorgeous as I thought she was yesterday, with a face made of dramatic angles and a body that would give a teenage boy wet dreams.
Hell, it’s probably gonna give this grown man one, as well.
“Talk about what?” she asks warily.
“A few things,” I say, “none of which I want to discuss in the hallway.“
“I don’t see what—”
“Listen.” I’m about done arguing. “We can go somewhere, or I can come in, but those are the options. I’m not going away.”
She says nothing, just gazes at me for what feels like a long time. Then she says simply, “Wait here,” and shuts the door—softly, but firmly.
I figure it does no harm to wait five or ten minutes, see if she actually does come back. And after just a few minutes, she does. The door opens and she steps out into the hallway with me.
She’s changed into another pair of jeans, these ones painted on like a second skin. Her top is sleeveless and white, something stretchy that plunges into a deep V between her incredible tits, then wraps around her midriff in a complicated twist that emphasizes her hourglass figure and, if I’m honest, just about stops my heart.
Sweet Jesus.
She turns her back on me to lock the door, then turns back. “Okay,” she says. “But I’m picking where we go.”
I shrug—why should I care—and she moves off down the hallway toward the elevator. I notice she’s got her phone stuck in her back pocket again. There’s something weirdly sexy about it, and it irritates me that I can’t pinpoint why. Why should that be the thing that’s got me going rock-hard in my pants?
We step into the elevator, and every elevator sex scene I’ve watched in a movie flashes through my head simultaneously. That spicy, sexy scent she wears is in my nose again. I take a deep breath.
Get a grip, man.
When we’re out on the sidewalk, she points down Orchard Street. “Let’s go to Max Fish.”
“I thought …” I wave in the direction of Ludlow.
“Not for five years,” she says. “Don’t get down to the Lower East Side much?”
“Don’t get back to New York at all, really. Not for about that same length of time.” I let her set the pace as we cross the street and head down the block. “I’ve been out west.”
“Yeah, Ainsley mentioned that,” she says.
A gaggle of women in tiaras forces us to split up around them, and when we come back together after they’ve passed, I can’t help asking: “You and Ainsley were talking about me?”
Two faint spots of color appear on her cheeks; a matching flush creeps across her chest where it’s exposed by the V of her shirt. “I … you came up.”
I hold back a smile.
“Oh, look, there’s Wildair,” she says. “Their wine list is just ….” She makes a sexy little yum sound in her throat. ”Maybe we should— No. Not tonight.”
“Are you trying to change the subject?”
“I just think that tonight’s a beer night.”
I let her get away with it. “You categorize your nights by what booze you consume?”
“Sure.” She smiles. “There’s bourbon nights for when you want to capture that Rat Pack vibe—or, you know, for when your best friend is kidnapped. Wine nights, for dates and girls nights out. And beer nights, for when someone wants to threaten you into keeping your mouth shut about a murder.”
“I’m not threatening anyone,” I say, looking around us. “And keep your voice down.”
“Oh, please, this is New York. No one’s listening to us. And if they are, they’ll just think we’re writing yet another tedious mafia screenplay.”
She stops and pulls open the door to the bar. Despite having moved from its old location, Max Fish has managed to keep its eclectic vibe—at least from the outside.
And when I follow Brigitte inside, I see that they’ve kept something else as well.
“I see you could still do fucking brain surgery in here.”
It’s mobbed, stifling, and bright as an operating room. Light fixtures with bohemian-looking lampshades dangle here and there from the ceiling, but they’re just decorative. They aren’t even capable of creating this kind of light.
“You know, there are lots of bars around here,” I say. “Some of them are murky and dim, how I like it.”
She glowers at me. “I don’t know you. I think I’d like this … discussion to take place somewhere that’s not murky and dim, thanks.”
“Fair enough.”
We move to the bar and order beers—Beck’s for her, Stella for me. She reaches for her purse, but I flip the bartender a credit card. One of mine, not the business card. I don’t even know why.
“I can get it,” she says.
“You can get the next round,” I tell her, scrawling my signature on the slip.
She grabs a bowl of what looks like trail mix, and I follow her—trying and failing not to watch her ass sway as she walks—to a small round two-top near the pool table, in a corner where the light is a bare degree less savage. The music isn’t, though; that’s plenty loud. I move my seat around so that we’re next to each other instead of across the table, figuring there’s no need to be shouting about murder and kidnapping in the middle of a giant crowd of Lower East Side scenesters.
Time to get down to it.
“So,” I say, “let’s talk about that screenplay.”
9
Miles
Brigitte laughs. “Okay, sure, let’s talk about that.”
Her laugh is … amazing. Full-throated, unrestrained. No girlish giggling, like most women seem to do. A woman who can laugh like that knows how to enjoy life.
A woman with a laugh like that is probably excellent in bed.
“What are you smirking about?” she asks.
Oops.
“Just thinking where to begin.” I snag an M&M out of her bowl and toss it in my mouth. It turns out to be a Skittle. “Well, that’s fucking disgusting,” I say after I choke it d
own.
She laughs again, and I think again about getting her in bed.
This is ridiculous.
“So,” I say again. “If our guy … you know … murdered the other guy, it was only because he was trying to protect the girl, right?”
“I don’t know.” Now she’s the one smirking, as if she’s amused by me. “If our hero wanted to— You know what? I’m not sure this guy is the hero.”
“I’m sorry?”
“What if he’s just another one of the bad guys?” She drinks some of her beer, her eyes challenging me. “I mean, great on him for saving her, but the dude killed a guy with his bare hands.”
“More his feet,” I mutter.
“Whatever.” Her eyes are still on me, intense and serious. “I just figure the girl’s best friend would probably be really worried about her. That’s natural. So what is she supposed to think about this guy who’s got her friend all turned around, has all these weird kinks, then turns out to be super violent and probably really dangerous? Doesn’t that seem like a good cause for alarm?”
She’s got a point, I suppose. She doesn’t know Rafe—or me.
But then, I don’t know Ainsley, or her.
I think about it while I root around in her bowl looking for something that can’t trick me. I settle for a cashew.
“You got something against Skittles?” she asks.
“Only when I think they’re M&Ms.”
She grimaces. “Okay, fair. There’s a candy store around the corner. All the M&Ms you could ask for.”
“The thing about the best friend,” I say, “is that our hero—who is, in fact, a hero—doesn’t know anything about her, either. He should be looking into her life, making sure she’s not going to rat them out. But he’s moping around waiting for the girl to call him, right? Which means the brother has to focus on the details—like making sure the girl and the friend can be trusted. It’s a very sticky situation.”
“She’ll call,” Brigitte says. “I think he can relax about that.”