Holy hell. Too much. It was all too much in one night.
After briefly checking her charges, she shut the coop up, leaving them to cluck among themselves—seeing that hole had scared the hell out of her. The chickens held an important place in her life—in her heart, really—and she couldn’t imagine who else would ever fill it.
The sky exploded above her, coloring the tomato and basil plants pink and, for a few seconds, giving her yard an artificial movie-set light. Rather than go immediately back inside, George collapsed heavily onto her wooden porch steps and tilted her head back, staring at the show and listening to the animals’ agitation. Were fireworks even safe right now, with the lack of rain this year?
A wet nose pushed at her elbow, and she raised her arm to let Leonard climb onto her lap. The big black-and-white cat took up more room than he’d probably been allotted at birth, but George just couldn’t stand to put him on a diet. Why deprive him when he had, at most, another few years on this earth?
Tonight was… It had been…
She swallowed.
She was supposed to feel fear right now, she thought, for herself. But she didn’t. Other than a throbbing on her face and pain where she’d landed on her hip, she felt an oddly thrumming excitement that was so wholly inappropriate, she wondered if she shouldn’t consider turning herself in to some kind of ethical committee or getting in touch with her mentor from when she’d been a resident. Or going to see a therapist. How on earth was it possible to come out of an attack like that—one that had left her battered and bruised—and feel nothing but regret that the man who’d saved you hadn’t agreed to come in for a cup of coffee?
How pathetic am I? A complete mess, and—
With a gasp, she touched her face. Was there blood? Did she look horrible? Was that why he’d refused her offer, looked at her hand on his arm like it was poison, and—
What the hell is wrong with me? I’m out of my mind.
Shifting Leonard off her lap, she stood, went inside, and tromped up the stairs to her bedroom, shutting lights off as she went. She went into the bathroom and looked at herself in the mirror. Crap. There were scrapes on her face, and grit was still embedded in her knees. She’d need to disinfect, but she didn’t want to. No, all she wanted to do was sink into sleep and forget about everything. Especially that last bit on her porch.
How had things turned upside down so quickly?
Instead, she settled for a stinging, lukewarm shower, a clean nightgown, and bed, where even the weight of Leonard purring on her belly was too much to handle.
Between her sheets, though, sleep didn’t hold the blissful nothing she’d hoped for. No, instead of oblivion, she lay awake in bed, eyes wide open. But there was clearly something wrong with her. A normal person would rehash tonight’s attack, not dwell on the man who’d saved her. A normal person would be scared instead of…titillated. Instead, she sailed along on a strange blend of excitement and guilt, along with something supremely tender that she hadn’t been able to tamp down since Andrew Blane had found his way to her office.
* * *
It was the polygraph test that did it, every fucking night. As if living through it once hadn’t been enough—
No, twice.
He’d had to take two life-changing poly tests—one when he’d applied for a job with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and once for the Sultans. The first had been nothing—child’s play—compared to the one in the club, Ape and Handles and a couple of other guys hovering around him. Ape with his signature ax in his hand.
“We trust you, bro,” Handles had explained. “Just gotta keep our guys safe, man. Fucking cops are on us like flies on shit, and you never know who you can trust anymore. Never know.”
Clay, in deep sleep, relived that conversation every night, saw the smile on Handles’s face. Handles, the national club president, who’d taken him under his wing, had been like a dad to him.
Fuck. Clay’d been nervous that first day he’d gone to the bar where the club guys hung out—the Hangover. He and Lil Dino, the confidential informant who’d vouched for him. Dino’d made a deal with the prosecutor and now had to tell the club guys he’d done time with Clay—a job made a hell of a lot easier by the ink Clay’d gone out and gotten done the week before.
That first day, he’d walked in with Dino, waited for his eyes to adjust, and slowly taken the place in, wondering if any of them would recognize him.
They hadn’t. Not one of them, but that feeling of being a lone sheep in a den of wolves had never quite died down.
After that, it had been a slow, slow game. Riding into Naglestown every few days, eventually getting a job there, then making his trips to see the guys a daily thing until he’d given them that game-changing intel.
He remembered other things, in flashes. Like the day he’d made initial contact with his targets: Handles and Ape, the club’s national sergeant at arms, who, it was quickly apparent, was a fucking psychopath.
Handles and the others had been wary of Jeremy “Indian” Greer from the beginning, as they were of most newcomers, but Ape had hated him on sight—had beaten him and played with him to prove it. Funny how that fucker’s crazy instincts had been so dead-on.
There’d been no warning the day of the polygraph—just a tap on the shoulder and a crooked finger. Clay’d set down the glasses he was cleaning behind the bar, glanced around to catch every fucking eye on him, and followed Handles into the bowels of the building.
It was like a goddamned fort, that place, an impenetrable fortress in the middle of these big, open fields in Nowheresville, Maryland. You couldn’t get a jump on the Sultans. Not with their insane security and paranoid business dealings. Not to mention the firepower those guys had.
Halfway down the inner hall, where the Sultans kept their private on-site quarters, he’d started to feel the cold sweat of anxiety. It wasn’t just a normal event, being summoned like that. No, it was fucking serious.
“Ever taken a lie detector test, Indian?” Handles had asked.
“No,” Clay had lied.
“Me neither,” Handles’d replied, gold-toothed smile destroying his bearded, bald, Daddy Warbucks look.
Fuck. Fuck, fuck. Nobody’d warned him about the test. Thank God he’d trained for this, but fuck, it had been years.
But no, this is good, he realized. Home stretch. McGovern had been threatening to pull him just the other day, and now, if the club was doing this, he had to be close to being a full-patch member. Close to getting in.
Sucking in his belly to quell the nausea brewing there, he’d forced a grin. “Fuck, man. You guys are paranoid.”
“Just keeping the family safe. You seen what happened to the Mongols?”
“No.”
“Got screwed for trusting one asshole too many.”
“Hmm” was all Clay said, but internally he was on fire—equal parts fear and excitement—that feeling he’d gotten addicted to undercover.
They headed down a long set of wide, shallow steps, to what appeared to be a bunker in the basement, through a hall wide enough to drive a car, and then into a dank room where four guys stood around, waiting.
For him.
Beside an old-looking lie detector kit, a chair sat empty, waiting.
Clay offered a quick, cool nod to the occupants and then sat, heart beating a million miles a minute.
Slow. Breathe. Ignore them.
He grinned and looked around.
Jam and Boom-Boom didn’t worry him the way Ape did, standing behind Clay’s chair, casually swinging that ax in his hand. Clay’d heard stories about that fucking ax. He’d seen the goddamned stains it bore a time or two when the guys came back from some trip. Some mission. Those times, Ape had always been a little wilder than usual, a little extra sadistic. It’d been after one of those trips—just the week before, in fact—
that he’d challenged Clay to a fight and gotten pissed when Clay started to beat his ass. And he’d had no choice but to cave when the big fucker had grabbed a bottle from a brother’s hand, smashed it on the bar, and come after him with the sharp end. Getting that slice, though, across the face…that, he realized now, may very well have been just the thing he’d needed to get in.
Fucking club scars, he thought, ass glued to the seat that could become his throne of execution.
Fuck it. He shrugged, cleared his throat, turned, and spat not five inches from the big asshole’s feet.
You wanna kill me, fucker? that gesture said. Then do it.
Then, cool as ice, Clay breathed while the polygraph dude wrapped the cuff around his arm, twined the two long pneumograph tubes around his middle, fiddled with some settings on his laptop, and slid the sensors onto his fingers.
Remember your training, he thought over and over. A mantra, something to hold on to. Feet down, ass squeezed, breathing deep as the stranger cleared his throat and began.
“Are you known here as Indian?”
Big breath, thinking of Carly, getting that pulse up, up, up for the control questions. “Yeah.”
“Is today Monday?” Carly, bruised, those weeks before she died.
“Yeah.”
“Are you wearing a black T-shirt?” Carly, her face beaten in.
“Yes.”
Handles asked, “Did you clean behind the toilet this morning like I told you to?” and Clay decided to lie, letting the stress rise, using it, eating it up, making it his, and remembering that feeling for the big questions.
“Yes,” he said, his voice reflecting the shit spewing in his stomach.
“Do you love slinging booze upstairs?”
He reached for another bad thought and didn’t have to look far for this one—Ape behind him was good enough. “Love it.”
A chuckle from everyone but his nemesis.
“Is your real name Jeremy Greer?”
Happy thoughts—not easy for Clay, since there wasn’t much to be happy about, was there? Calm, blue water. A mountain lake. Carly alive. “Yeah,” he said.
“Have you ever worked in law enforcement?” No longer control questions now. The real deal.
Mountains, a breeze, a brook. “No.”
“Are you currently working with law enforcement?”
“No,” he said, inflecting his voice with a strain of offended irritation, but he couldn’t stop the sweat from dripping out of his hairline, right over a week-old scab and down his cheek.
“Where’d you do your training?” Ape broke in. God, the man had always had a hard-on for him.
“My training?”
“Your fucking law enforcement training? Where’d you do it?”
“What are you talking about, man?”
“You know what I’m fucking saying, you fucking pig. I’ve seen the way you watch us.”
Clay’s body had gone numb then, tingly at the extremities, his limbs cold and his face hot, constricted, no air. He’d fought for air.
No sound except breathing. It went on forever, that quiet, Handles and Ape and everybody else just waiting for him to give himself away. It was one of those moments where his skin felt tight, but the persona felt floppy. Surely they could see the real him peeking through the eye holes?
Another few seconds, and Handles leaned in, a half smile on his face. “We’ve got a deal goin’ on next week. Might have to take care of a couple of people—woman and a kid.” Clay held it together. They wouldn’t kill a kid. He wouldn’t kill a kid. Hold your shit together, Navarro. He breathed deeply and waited for the question. Interviewing 101. Say nothing until you have to. “Would you do that for your club? For your brothers?”
“Yes,” he said, calm, calm, calm. And on it went, Ape breathing down his neck, Boom-Boom watching, eyes devoid of emotion, and Handles staring him down, cold but fatherly in the weirdest fucking way.
“Would you die for the Sultans?” Handles asked, and the door opened, and Carly walked in—and like always, the dream exploded everywhere. Blood, gore, loud, loud, the report of a weapon, Boom-Boom’s hands on his sister’s corpse, her dead eyes turned to Clay, accusatory white globes of hate, Ape’s ax through Clay’s head, hurting like fuck. He dove to the ground, into the stink and shit of the dungeon floor, where the blood of millions soaked into his clothes, up his nose, and he gagged, fought, kicked, screamed himself awake.
Awake. Alive. I’m alive.
But not Carly. Carly was dead. Every time he woke up, she was still dead.
* * *
“He’s gone.” Ape ended the call. He was about to lose his shit, which was precisely the reason for his fucking nickname to begin with. When things went wrong, he went apeshit. Sometimes even when things went right.
“What? He didn’t go into witness protection like Candylan—”
“Don’t call him that,” Ape cut in, needing something to pummel. Somebody’s face would do just fine. Jam’s if he had to. “His name’s Breadthwaite. Special fuckin’ Agent Nikolai fuckin’ Breadthwaite.”
“Fuck kinda name is that? Fucker ain’t even American.” Jam hated anyone who wasn’t American.
“Neither’s Navarro.”
“Shoulda killed him when I had the chance.”
Ape almost laughed. Jam especially hated spics. And it turned out that was precisely what Special Agent Clay Navarro was. A spic from South America. Christ, how the hell had he ever made it into the club? Into the goddamned ATF for that matter? They just hire any old asshole off the street now?
“We’ll get him.” Ape was absolutely certain of that. He had yet to miss a mark. It could take him months. Years, even. That ATF bastard had taken down the leadership of the Sultans. But he still had to testify.
Ape knew he’d stop the cocksucker from taking the stand if it was the last thing he did.
6
Monday morning, George met the heating and cooling guys at the office at six thirty—thankful they’d come out so early—and sighed with relief as her first patient arrived to a decent temperature.
Along with the cool air, her nurse’s return from vacation gave George the sensation of coming back down to earth after a few days spent someplace very, very strange.
Ah, boring normality—her wheelhouse.
Some people craved excitement and change, but George needed things to be the same, predictable. She preferred fine to good, nice to wonderful. Nothing to upset her status quo.
Let her patients be turbulent. George was the calm one. The island in the stream.
Who’d have thought that dermatology could be anything besides sedate?
Purnima arrived with that healthy glow she got every time she went home to India. George assumed it was the diet: real food instead of the hormone- and pesticide-filled crap that masqueraded as nourishment around here. But it was more than that, she knew. Purnima’s eyes looked clearer, her smile centered. God, how George admired that in her—how together the woman was. She might be George’s employee, but she’d always thought there was a ton she could learn from her.
“You’ve been busy, I see,” Purnima said from her spot in front of the computer. “I thought you said you’d take it easy while I was gone? Wasn’t there mention of a minibreak or something?”
George just smiled and hesitated. Should she hug her? She’d been gone for three weeks, after all, and… No. Hugging was inappropriate.
“And then the A/C…” George said with a sigh. “You have no idea.”
“Feels good this morning. Did you call Carmichael’s?”
“Yes,” George said, her face reddening with shame. “I hated to call in a favor, but—”
“You caught his melanoma, George. He wants to help. People are happy to thank you, however they can.”
“Yes, but it’s my job.”
“Sure.” Purnima raised her hands, one on either side, like a scale weighing the difference. “Fixes A/C, cures cancer. I’m sure they come out even in the end.” The woman laughed and clicked a couple of keys before looking up and catching sight of George for the first time.
“My God, what happened to your face?”
“Oh, nothing” was all George said, self-consciously touching the bruise on her cheek. Thankfully, Purnima was discreet enough that she wouldn’t pry after being rebuffed. But then guilt won out, of course, because if it wasn’t safe for her, then… “I was attacked. Outside.”
“No! Who would do that?”
“It was the Fourth of July, and I think they were on drugs, perhaps? There was a scuffle and I intervened and… They were young.”
“What did the police say?”
“I didn’t call the police.”
“Whyever not?”
“I…” George thought about it, suddenly unsure. “I…I suppose I didn’t need to. Someone came to my rescue, and they left.”
Purnima’s brows were up at that, but George didn’t feel like going into it any further. She didn’t quite understand herself why she hadn’t called the police. Maybe something about Andrew Blane made her think he wouldn’t want that. No. He definitely hadn’t seemed to want that.
Whatever the reason, she felt shaky enough as it was today. She was done talking about it, which wasn’t something she cared to examine, especially after spending all day Sunday hunkered down at home, thinking—or rather not thinking—about him.
“So, no patients Friday afternoon, then?”
She debated how to answer but, as usual, gave in to the truth. “There was one.”
Purnima turned back to the screen and keyed through charts for a few more seconds, until she eventually turned back to her boss. And somehow, for some silly reason, George had to force herself, with difficulty, to look her nurse in the eye.
“I don’t see it on the books,” said Purnima.
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