by K. A. Tucker
I already know that she finds me attractive because of last night’s phone conversation with her friend, but if she noticed my not-so-subtle move, she didn’t let on. Her ability to school her expression, to feign indifference is impressive. Or maybe this idiot, with his spiky black-and-blue hair and pants hanging halfway off his bony ass, and holes in his ears where the metal rings have stretched his flesh out—maybe that’s what breaks her out of her hard shell.
I had hoped to find that out tonight, instead of lurking here in the shadows. But that fucking biker showed up. She didn’t want to work on him, she wanted me. I could tell. And she was protecting me by stepping in. Worried about me going up against a soft, slow man on a motorcycle. Probably assumed I didn’t recognize the insignia, because why would I? Why would I familiarize myself with the gang the police are focusing their efforts on in her uncle’s murder?
I could have had that guy in the Dumpster with the rest of the trash in under ten seconds. If Ivy wasn’t standing right there, I might have. But I had to step away instead, because taking him on would have caused a scene, and I need to be a ghost. So I climbed back into my car and waited on the street for hours, until I saw her little Honda whip around the corner and head home.
Now I’m back to tailing her, learning about her. I haven’t learned much, though, other than that she hovers on the abrasive side with everyone—not just me—and her body doesn’t stop swaying when there’s music playing.
And she’s not just some miscreant tagger, marring city streets with spray paint.
She’s one hell of a talented artist.
She also surrounds herself with half-wits. These guys . . . I shake my head. I’m guessing at least one of the three—probably the one with the shaved head whom they call Joker and who moves like a street brawler—has a criminal record. I don’t think she intentionally seeks them out. They just have common interests. Biker gangs that love to get tattoos at her uncle’s shop, local petty criminals she hangs out with when she’s spraying walls. Who the hell knows why Bentley said she associated with the IRA. There’s likely another coincidental connection.
The more I learn about her, the more I’m convinced that she has no idea what kind of trouble her uncle was caught up in and that she’s just a young and edgy tattoo artist who simply doesn’t want to settle down.
As I refocus my attention on her, I realize that perhaps that’s only what I want her to be.
She’s shed the light jean jacket she wore over here, revealing an oversize white tank top that’s thrown over a second, tighter black one. It’s a casual I-don’t-care look. But with her skintight black pants and her boots, it’s sexy as hell. All the more so because I’ve already had a good long look at what’s hidden beneath. She shouldn’t be dressed like that out here. I wouldn’t trust the guys she’s with, let alone the junkies in the shadows.
She’s not at all concerned, though. If she were, she’d be glancing over her shoulder frequently. But she’s in her own little world under the glow of the lanterns, working on a disturbingly accurate portrayal of the man in the inset of the newspaper article. Her uncle, a person she clearly loved very much. Her twiggy little arms, tense with effort, work tirelessly with sweeps of blues and purple shadows, until she’s managed to capture finer details of his eyes, nose, and mouth.
She climbs down from the stepladder and backs up, simply standing there. She’s admiring her work. Or maybe just thinking about him, about her grief. Reaching down into the shadows, her hand comes back with a small pink object. She unscrews the top and brings it to her lips to takes a swig. Booze.
“Dat’s da bomb! Like a boss, yo!” The fucking moron with blue hair and pants barely holding on to his skinny thighs walks over with his idiotic limplike swagger to stand next to her, slinging his arm over her shoulder. Why does she associate with him?
It’s moments like these—seeing guys like this—that I wish the American government took a page out of other countries’ rule books and forced every eighteen-year-old male into the military to work this level of stupid out of him.
Of course, I don’t really believe that because most of these men—boys—couldn’t face a day of war. It would break them, just like it broke the strongest of us.
“Fez . . .” She turns to glare at him. “You sound like a douche bag. You realize that, right?”
“Whatchu sayin’? Everyone loves the Fez!” He actually sounds offended. Good.
“Not everyone.”
“Then how come I got over five hundred thousand followers on my channel?”
“Because their brains haven’t fully formed yet.” She swats his arm off her and steps away. “And don’t touch me unless I tell you that you can.”
I smile. But I’m also on alert now, wondering how he’s going to react to such a low blow to his ego. Wondering how I’m going to handle just sitting here and watching it happen, because I can’t spring out of the shadows to save her.
He simply scratches the back of his head. Maybe he’s used to this level of abuse from her. Maybe he likes it. “That’s a good one of Ned. He would have loved that,” he offers, suddenly switching to standard English.
A pause and then, “Thanks.” Her voice softens instantly.
“I guess you’re cuttin’ it now?”
She drags the ladder over to the mostly blank canvas of wall beside him. “I’m just getting started.” Her lithe body climbs the steps to the top, to stretch on the tiptoes of her Doc Martens, reaching as far as she can with seemingly no concern about falling.
With a sigh of relief, I settle back against the wall with arms folded over my chest, curious to see what she’s going to come up with now. People so rarely surprise me anymore, but I have a feeling she might.
The latest song ends and a new one begins, with a stronger, more mesmerizing beat. While she needs to keep her hips and feet still for balance, her free hand begins waving and dipping with the rhythm as her other hand lays waste to the wall with large sweeps of black paint. It’s another face, I can tell. Apparently she has a thing for drawing faces, if this and her sketchbook at home are any indication.
“Hey. You got a light?” A raspy whisper calls out from my left, about ten feet away, where the guy has sat quietly for the past hour.
“No.”
He shuffles over, closer, until the pungent smell of him has my nostrils flaring. “How about a twenty, then?”
I don’t answer. While my patience can be infinite for a specific task, it’s almost nonexistent for late-night junkies trying to accost someone minding his own business.
“Come on, man!”
I should have expected this. They don’t like it when you ignore them.
It’s unlikely our voices will carry over the music, unless this junkie gets more irate, which is possible. Ivy can’t be so oblivious to expect that they are the only ones here, but if she discovers me, there’s no way to explain why I am, too.
“I just need a fix and I’ll be good. Just help me out with—”
His voice cuts out as soon as my fist delivers an uppercut under his jaw. I grab hold of his filthy body to ease it down carefully. He should be out for a while.
Hoping that earns me some peace, I continue watching Ivy work, until the face begins to take shape. A man, with black hair and a long, slender nose and square jaw. It’s hard to tell what color his eyes are from this distance, and the poor lighting, but I can tell they’re dark. It’s not until she begins spraying the outline of a short, sculpted beard that I realize who the man is.
She’s painting me.
My face, on the wall of this dilapidated, condemned building.
It shouldn’t please me, and yet it does.
I smile. I’ve gotten inside her head without even trying.
I’ve been trained to resist the urges of sleep, to push myself longer and further than a normal human being. I’ve survived on no more than four hours of rest per night for weeks at a time. Many nights, I rely on Ambien to drift off. But I’ve been awake
for nearly two days now, aside from that short catnap in my car, and my eyes burn with exhaustion.
Still, I tail Ivy as she walks the length of Ocean Beach, her sketchbook tucked under an arm. The rising sun and quiet streets make it more difficult, but I manage to keep my presence unknown, because that’s what I’m good at.
She heads toward the shoreline and settles herself onto a crop of stones, giving the surfer in the distance a moment of her attention. He’s impressive enough to distract even me, navigating the treacherous swells of the outer sandbar with the expertise of a seasoned surfer. He’d have to be. These are some of the hardest waves to surf in the world, especially in prime season, which we’re deep in the middle of.
Growing up in San Francisco, it’s only natural that I know how to surf. Still, it’s been eleven years since I rode these waves. Eight since I stood on a board in San Diego, near the base. At one time, some people called me an expert, too.
My experience with deep, frigid waters and sweeping currents certainly helped when it came to passing the intensive tests that are required to become a SEAL. Tests that only twenty percent of candidates ever pass. I blew through the basic physical requirements. In the intensive twenty-four-week-long BUD/S training program, I led my group for time in the physical conditioning and combat diving phases.
For a sport that I enjoyed so much, I’m surprised I’ve forgotten it so easily. I watch that surfer now with a small amount of envy, and promise myself that, when this assignment is over, I’ll coast on a barrel wave again.
Ivy has dismissed the surfer already and is now flipping pages over in her sketchbook, her hair fluttering around her with the soft breeze. Her head’s down and she has seemingly shut out everything around her. After a full night of spray-painting walls, I don’t know how she has any desire to draw, but I guess that’s why I’m not an artist. My creativity is limited to how I’m going to get past security gates and passcodes and barking dogs without being identified.
I simply lean against a lightpost and watch as she sketches from that rock for half an hour, as the sun rises farther in the sky and people in brightly colored latex outfits pass her, out for their morning jog—some alone, some in groups, some with dogs who veer off path with noses pointed toward her—until she closes her book, tucks it under her arm, and trudges through the sand toward her car.
Not until I’ve watched her drag her feet up the stairs of her home, her energy finally spent, do I leave her for my own rented bed.
“Yeah,” I say into the receiver, my eyes shut against the beam of midmorning sunlight shining directly on me. The thin and tattered cotton curtain hanging over the window is pointless for both shade and decoration.
“What’s the update?”
I sigh. “Negative for the house.”
“You’ve searched everywhere?” Bentley pants into the receiver. I assume he’s on his treadmill. The guy always loved going for a morning run.
“Top to bottom.”
“Dammit,” he mutters under his breath.
I reach over my head to pinch and tug at the lifted wallpaper seam until it begins to tear away, waiting for Bentley to say something. If he’s going to annoy me by checking up daily like this, then he can be the one putting effort into the conversation. And if he pisses me off enough, I can just go back to Greece.
Except I’m not going to do that, because for some stupid reason, I already feel a vested interest in making sure that video is found and nothing happens to Ivy in the process. Because even though I don’t have evidence for this, I have a gut feeling that she’s completely innocent.
“What’s your next move?”
“The shop. And her.”
“Keep me informed. If nothing turns up today, I’ll bring in help for you.”
“What? No.” My stomach tightens instantly. “You know I work alone.”
“And you know that this tape needs to be found or we’re all fucked!” he snaps. “This job of yours? Any future assignments? You can kiss it all good-bye.” He pauses, and when he speaks again, his tone is more calm. “They’ll be there to help turn over rocks.”
“I thought you said you didn’t want any more people involved?”
“I don’t. These two are the idiots who helped make the mess, so now they’re going to help clean it up.”
The two guys who killed Royce and Ivy’s uncle. Great.
“They’ll stay out of your way with the girl. I agree, it’s best you work on her alone.”
The dial tone fills my ear and I realize that he’s hung up on me. Tossing the phone onto the bed next to me, I simply lie there for a moment, listening to car doors slam and horns honk from down below. It’s cool outside, but that doesn’t translate in here, with the poor air circulation. The air duct on the wall across from me is meant for air-conditioning, but it’s being used for nothing more than the hidden camera that I found in my preliminary search, expecting as much. I covered it with a piece of cardboard for privacy and left it at that. The scrawny forty-year-old male receptionist downstairs doesn’t need to be jerking off to the sight of my unconscious naked body, but I’m not going to say shit about it, just like he’s not going to say anything about the torn wallpaper.
I give my forehead a hard rub, an annoyed whisper of “Fuck . . .” slipping out of my mouth. Bringing those two guys in means that they could connect me to this. I’m usually far removed from Alliance and for good reason. This is a mistake on Bentley’s part, but it’s his call. He must be desperate.
I reach up and pull another chunk off. Something to kill time with while I wait to resume the search for this damning video confession.
And see Ivy.
ELEVEN
IVY
I jump at the sound of knuckles hitting glass.
The shade is pulled down, so I can’t be sure that it’s him. And as much as I’d love to not care whether it is, I already know that if I go to the door and find anyone besides Sebastian standing there, I’m going to be royally disappointed.
We never agreed on a time yesterday, thanks to Bobby, something I realized when my eyes cracked open at noon. So I threw on some clothes and rushed to my car, telling myself that I was in a hurry only because I’d already wasted enough of the day sleeping and still had plenty to do at Black Rabbit.
Really, it’s because I didn’t want to miss Sebastian.
If he’s coming back, that is. And I so desperately need him to, so I can prove to myself that my reaction to working on Bobby yesterday was an anomaly—an insidious after-effect of Ned’s horrific death and nothing that will stop me from inking people permanently.
Forcing myself to walk at an extra-slow pace, so as not to appear overeager, I make my way to the door and peer out from behind the shade.
My heart skips a beat at the sight of Sebastian.
And I’m instantly disappointed in myself. I can’t be having this kind of a reaction to a guy who lives in a city I’m about to leave. “Sebastian.”
His intense gaze is hidden behind reflective aviators today. I can see myself in them. My bright, wide eyes. I’m not hiding my eagerness very well.
“Ivy.” Even through the closed door, his voice is so deep, so even, so instantly soothing to me, that it sends a shiver down my back. No one should be able to elicit that kind of reaction by just saying my name.
I turn the dead bolt and open the door for him.
He steps past me, and suddenly Black Rabbit doesn’t seem as eerie and lonely anymore. Just his presence swallows up some of the anxiety that’s been hanging over me.
He inhales deeply. “You like that scent, don’t you?”
I use the excuse of locking the door to turn my back on him and hide my reddened cheeks. There’s nothing cheaper than a woman who wears too much perfume, and it doesn’t matter how much she paid for the bottle. Or how much her friend paid for the bottle, in this case. Still half-asleep, I must have gone a little overboard with it before I left the house, if he’s commenting on it now.
“We’re doing this in the back room, I gather?” His sharp raptor gaze sizes up the shop in a very calculated way. I worked double time all afternoon, both to keep my idle hands and mind busy while I waited, and because the painters are coming first thing tomorrow morning. There’s nothing much left here, except a few cardboard boxes and a thousand thumb tacks, where Ned had pinned up old newspaper clippings and pictures. I’m probably the least sentimental person on the planet when it comes to material things, and yet I can’t bear to throw them out, so they’re now neatly piled in a box. Maybe someday I’ll put them in an album.
Or I’ll get Dakota to put them in an album. She likes to scrapbook when she gets high.
Composing myself, I edge past him, reaching for the clipboard. “Unless you want to lie out here on the floor. You need to fill out this paperwork, and then I need a copy of your ID.”
He stares at it. “What’s this for?”
“It’s a legal requirement. I can’t put a needle to your skin until you’ve signed. You can fill it out while I finish getting the room ready.” Ned was always strict about filling out the required paperwork. The threat of losing his license was enough to scare him and, while I was working here, to scare me into following his lead.
“Right,” he mutters. “I forgot about that.” I lead him into the back room, watching quietly as his gaze scans the black walls—covered in dusty square outlines where Ned’s portfolio of the weirdest tattoos that he’d ever done used to hang—then the cases of ink that I haven’t decided whether to take home for my own use or sell with the store, and the leather table, laid out flat and covered in plastic wrap, my tools and supplies set on the tray beside it. “The room looks ready to me.”
It’s been ready for him for over two hours. What I need to do is get me ready. “So you said this isn’t your first time?”
The corner of his mouth curls. Setting the clipboard down on top of a box, he reaches over his head and peels off his T-shirt to reveal a canvas of skin and hard muscles and a few scars, along with a sizable tattoo covering his left shoulder.