by Angel Payne
“Help APD secure the perimeter!” The intensity of his voice reverberated through his body and hers. “Nobody gets in or out! And notify local medical. I’m hit.”
Nausea burned her trembles away. Question answered. The blood was Kress’s. He’d been shot. Because of her.
Which brought the assault of another terrible thought.
Who else had the sick bastard hit?
* * * *
It was a full forty-eight hours before she could process the memory of that moment again. But even now, sitting safely in one of the mansion’s big sitting rooms, with two agents and an army of security cameras outside, the recall struck Dasha with the same rush of dread. She was back on that stage, pinned beneath Kress, consumed with the wild wondering of whether somebody in that crowd had been hurt. Or killed.
She shivered and thrust her book away. Like she’d retained any of the three sentences she’d reread over the last hour. The words were shadowed by five horrific others. It could have been Kress. Then four more. Dead. Because of me.
It was over. She forced the truth into the meat grinder of her heart. It was all over now. They’d caught the shooter minutes after the incident, in one of the mall’s trash bins, getting ready to use the rifle on his own brains. He’d also been clutching the Vanity Fair cover she’d done last year. When they got the news, David had indulged a moment of morbid humor, stating VF would be more grateful than anyone; imagine the shockwaves through those offices if one of their most successful covers got found on a dead whack-job in a—gasp—shopping mall trash heap.
David didn’t look like he had any more jokes like that to roll out now.
He paced into the garden that adjoined the sitting room, which had become their secret entrance into the house since it provided a handy box hedge shortcut to the carport. The guys had quickly located the garden’s other perk too: an ivy-lined patio with a built-in barbecue and a refrigerator that was continuously stocked, in Kress’s words, by “the magical beer fairy.” And speak of the devil. Kress followed David a few steps, a delay giving David the chance to pop a bottle with an embossed gourmet label, then extend it to the agent upon arrival.
“Ohhh, yeah,” Kress said. “Thanks. Just what the doctor ordered.”
The pair knocked bottlenecks before taking long draws on their brews. Neither observed the sitting room’s slider was open, probably because of the heavy gauze drape a maid had pulled across it in an effort to keep the afternoon heat at bay. And Dasha sat on the chair farthest from the window, so they didn’t notice her in here at all. She was on the brink of rising and disclosing herself, but then the men sprawled into the padded patio chairs, looking gratified as Labradors in a mud puddle, and she didn’t have the heart to interrupt their quality guy bonding. More importantly, she hadn’t seen either of them more relaxed since they’d arrived here. Amazing what could happen when these two weren’t stressing about every move she made—and how dazzling they could look too. Both pairs of long legs stretched out, breathtaking even beneath blue jeans. Their dark heads lolled, and the late-afternoon sun etched the contours of their torsos with the beauty of an artist’s brush.
David emitted a long sigh. “If I remember correctly, the doctor ordered a week of rest and a handful of painkillers.”
Kress didn’t flinch. “Fuck off.”
“Says you, dill weed. If you die of some exotic infection from that wound, I’m the one who has to live with Dasha. She’s a mess as is it about all this crap from the mall. What you did for her—”
“Yeah, I know, I know. Don’t you go getting all sappy on me too. Not after today.”
“Afraid I can’t help you on that either. So hey…listen, Moridian—”
“Shut. Up.”
“No. I…need to thank you, man.”
“Yeah. Fine.”
“If there’s anything I can give you in return—”
“An hour with your subbie?”
Shockingly, David barked a laugh at that. Kress looped in his own chuckle. Dasha was glad for the sounds because they masked her gasp. Subbie. How did Kress know about…that? Had he simply figured it out? But how? Had he just known by looking at them? There was no way David had openly shared that information. He was the king of paranoid about personal secrecy, even before they’d turned this corner in their relationship. But she hadn’t misheard Kress’s joke. Nor the not so joking glance he’d thrown at David afterward.
Nor how her body surged with warmth as a reaction.
She shoved her hair back and downshifted her heartbeat. As for the fresh blood rush to her most intimate core…hopefully, her fast rise and determined steps across the room would help.
She pulled back the sheer with a feigned look of easy-breezy-okay-I-just-got-here. “All right you two, what’s so funny?”
Her smile dropped when theirs did too. Their weary humor evaporated as well. Okay, mutation time. Good-bye Labradors, hello pit bulls. Dasha looked to the new expressions on their faces: tension, sadness, even anger. A wave of energy blasted off them both too. With it came the next shock. Their new attitudes were less about what she’d interrupted and more to do with why they’d even taken the break, why they hadn’t come into the house right away, to look for her how they normally did.
Had they deliberately lagged on seeing her? If so, then why?
A hundred answers did mosquito dives at her. None of them were good. Not when the tension levels in both men’s stares ramped up to DEFCON 3.
“Uh…either of you want another beer?” She nervously grabbed two bottles from the fridge, ignoring the near-full levels on their first drinks.
David smiled in the gentle, knowing way that said he understood. “Thanks, D.” His murmur matched the soft brush of his fingers on hers. They exchanged a meaningful look, which thickened as he snuck a hand along her inner thigh, under the gauzy skirt of her white sundress. She tried to compose her features during the delivery to Kress but found the man’s laser-green eyes fixed on her, taking his face up another DEFCON point. She knew, beyond a doubt, that he’d not just witnessed every inch of David’s caress but enjoyed it. And wanted her to know he had.
Her womb vibrated like an arena speaker on high bass.
She slammed it off. The mixed messages from these two were playing enough havoc with her head; her body was blacklisted from the party list for now.
To prove the point, she locked hands to her hips and glared at Kress. “Okay, so how’re you doing? Did you go for your bandage check today?” She pulled him forward so she could gingerly press the square of gauze beneath his red Ramones T-shirt. “Did they look at everything thoroughly? Did they—”
“No, no. I’m fine, Dasha. Flesh wound, remember? The bullet only grazed me.”
“Only?” she snapped. “A five-inch laceration that turned your back into Spin Art?” Horror broadsided her again. “Damn it,” she snapped, feeling the strange urge to slap him for his flippancy—until the idiot himself forced her attention back down with a forceful tug on her hand.
“Dasha. I’m okay. It was my job. Cut the worry and the guilt.”
“I’m not—”
This time, a low growl from David halted her. Instantly, almost surprisingly, her brain clicked into that different place only he could take her to, where she yanked the protocol off her feelings, and forced herself to face them more honestly. “Fine.” She got in one more starched scowl at Kress anyway. “I’ll work on the guilt, if you work on the bad-cop drama lines.”
Kress matched her on the look, inch for inch. The action forced her to look deeper into his gaze and see he hadn’t dropped the memory of watching David touch her. Or where his imagination had taken the sight.
So much for wishing they’d drop the mixed messages. Or thinking every cell in her body would just ignore them.
Or telling her temper not to erupt when they followed all that with a thick silence.
“Okay, what the hell’s up?” She fumed as they both just took longer swigs on their drinks. “Shoul
dn’t we be celebrating? They got him, right? The bad guy’s put away, and—”
Comprehension sucked the air from her lungs. And the strength from her legs. She sagged, leaning on the barbecue ledge. “Crap. He’s not put away, is he? The bastard got away?”
“He didn’t get away,” David emphasized.
“Then what? He says he didn’t do it or some bullshit like that?”
“His name is Ambrose Smith,” Kress added. “Forty-eight years old, native Atlantian, never been married, lived here with his mom his entire life.” He swung out an emphasizing hand. “His entire life. As in, has never left the city or the state. He doesn’t even own a cell phone. Mom doesn’t either.”
“The last two on the planet,” David said. Dasha swung her stare between them both. “So that means…”
“He’s our rotten peach from Atlanta,” Kress clarified. “But not our mashed pineapple from Miami. The first merely gave inspiration for the second.”
David shot him a grimace. “Did you really just go there?”
“What?”
“Peaches and pineapples?”
“Hey, fruit is good for you.” His dry tone dissolved into a grunt the next second. Dasha barely noticed it. She ground her grip on the granite ledge as acid reknotted her stomach. The coil had been loosening since they’d caught Smith. Now it was back, tighter than before. “Hey…D?” she heard Kress say, the firm highway resurfaced to his voice, though it seemed so far away, so distant. “Dasha, are you—”
“Sweetheart?” David’s interjection came closer. She felt his arm around her. His muscles were flexed as tight as his voice. “Hey, you’re shaking like a—”
She pushed away. She needed to move or the fear would drown her in its dizzying destruction. “So he’s—still out there,” she stammered. “That asshole’s still out there, isn’t he? And now he’s inspiring others?”
The men didn’t get a chance to answer her. A chime came from the sitting room. Her phone. The ring that was specific to Dad.
David glowered. “Fucking great. Just what we need.”
“What?” asked Kress while following her and David back inside. “Who’s—”
“Daddy,” she said into the phone, deliberately pacing away from the guys. The next room had probably been a cigar parlor when the mansion was first built; it was more masculine than the sitting room, with a circle of mahogany wingbacks. “Hey,” she said, curling into one. “Thanks for calling.”
Dad responded, but static drowned him out. David didn’t help, growling from the doorway, “Yeah, thanks for calling—twenty-four hours after a madman shot at your daughter.”
Before she could fling a glare at him, the line cleared. “Dasha? Songbird? Can you hear me now?”
She clenched back a sigh. Songbird. It was the pet name he used on her only when his staffers and the press were around; an endearment that existed only for making a great impression. But right now, she didn’t care. She needed the familiar rhythm of his voice and maybe, just maybe, a bit of the Daddy in him to sneak past the Senator Moore. If any situation could bust him past that divider, surely it was this one.
“Yeah,” she said. “Yeah, I can hear you, Dad. I—I just need—things have been so—”
“I know. They briefed me.”
“They did?” She blinked in surprise. The dark, dismal version of the stuff. “When?”
“Yesterday morning. My security lead received the update from your Agent Moridian. Listen, I know you’re scared, Dasha, but the FBI has a good man on your case, don’t you worry.”
Despite her wholehearted agreement to the assessment of Kress, her chest tightened more. “They told you…yesterday?”
An awkward pause filled the line. Dad finally said, “I would have called sooner, darling. I was worried sick. But we were over in Iraq, and I’m just on the plane back to DC now. As you know, I’m on this trade development task force. The Iraqis really want to get back on their feet. The talks have been intense.”
“I didn’t realize that’d started already.” Now she got her turn with the embarrassment. There had probably been a memo released on all this, and she hadn’t read the damn thing.
“Yes,” Daddy went on, brightening again. They were back in his sweet spot of subjects. “It’s a very exciting time! The agreements we’re entering into will create thousands of new jobs, both here and there. They’re so grateful for our help, and the mutual benefits for both countries will be incredible. We’re exchanging some breakthrough ideas…”
As he launched into a string of statistics and superlatives, Dasha gulped back a softball-sized lump—then gave up on fitting in any hope around it. She forced herself to listen to Dad, to insert the proper “ooos” and “ahs” at all the right places in his sentences…to be the ideal political daughter she so often wasn’t.
Damn it, what was wrong with her? Did she think her ridiculous pop-princess drama was more important than the work he was doing, the lives he was changing? So she had a wingnut who’d made her his latest obsession; wasn’t that practically a rite of passage for her world? Her world, not his… Worse, a world outside the acceptable options for a senator’s kid. She should be with him on that plane. Or if not, then in a St. John suit and pumps somewhere, opening a hospital wing or busting a bottle on a ship or…
Anywhere but here. Not here, helpless and wordless and worthless.
Again.
She tugged her hair into her face, hiding from the stare she already felt from David. He’d be able to see those thoughts on her face; she was certain of it. Right away, he’d see the doubts that snuck back in like mooching old friends, slinking in to camp out in the kitchen of her mind and scarf a free meal of her soul, courtesy of her insecurity.
“…so what do you think about that, darling?”
The question from Dad caught her off guard. But she’d caught enough to hear about a music education program being part of their Save-the-Iraqis miracle package. “That’s…great, Dad. Really. Awesome job. I mean it.”
“I know you do.” But his tone was now more fake than it was in “Songbird” mode. “And your support means the world to me. You know I support you too, Dasha.”
Then make the plane bypass Dulles and come here and be with me. I need you, Daddy. I’m scared. I’m so scared.
“Yeah,” she got out. But little else. The disappointment layered atop David and Kress’s bombshell. Dad wasn’t about to change his flight plans. He’d barely altered his schedule to get in the call. After he hung up, he’d go back to concentrating on changing lives and helping people, confident enough in Kress’s credentials to know they’d find the bad guy and keep his little girl safe.
The trouble was, she felt everything except safe right now.
With a wince, she wondered if she ever would again.
“Songbird mine, we are going into landing mode and they’re making me turn you off.”
“Okay, Dad.”
“Tell that Agent Moridian to keep his eyes on you.”
She glanced up to find Kress doing just about that. His gaze, now the roiling green of an early-stage tornado, made a perfect match to the gray thunderclouds in David’s stare as they stood together in the doorway. Perfect. Not.
“Right.” She dipped her head away from them, indulging one last shred of hope. “Hey…Dad…I love—”
A trio of beeps blared in her ear.
For a long moment, she stared at the dark screen. Just like always. And just like always, she willed for the thing to light up again. She yearned to hear those wonderful words in her ear. Darling, how could I be so silly? I love you too, Dasha…
They didn’t come.
The next words with real volume came from the doorway behind her. Kress issued them, his tone now a bite of gothic sarcasm. “Was that a whole new shit-pile of weird, or am I high?”
“No,” David replied. “You’re wired fine.” He chuffed without humor. “That’s about par for the course when the senator calls.”
“Bu
t it’s like she gets a personality transplant. Right into the Land of No-Spine.”
“Duly noted. About three years ago.”
“But it’s wrong! The guy’s her father. Why doesn’t somebody set the man straight?”
“You think I haven’t tried?”
Dasha still didn’t turn. She didn’t need to. She could clearly envision David’s face anyway. Tension dug into his broad forehead, and his jaw was a hard line of pissed-off. In an equally tight tone, he went on: “The regrettable news is, our girl inherited her stubborn streak from Daddy. Whenever I say anything, the man calls me an old woman, says I’m stressed about nothing. He says Dasha hasn’t voiced anything to him, so all must be well in Oz.”
“And that’s where new-personality girl comes in and doesn’t say a fucking thing.”
“You’re getting it now, Toto.”
“Shit on burned toast. That’s a mess.”
“Amen.”
There was a long pause, but Dasha knew the guys hadn’t stopped communicating. She finally put her phone down and dared a peek out from the chair, half expecting to see them gesturing in American Sign Language. Instead, those twin stormy stares still confronted her. Now they also rocked matching postures: legs planted, arms crossed over the snug shirts encasing those well-honed chests. Crap. If she wasn’t drowning in fear and frustration, she might’ve counted herself a lucky woman just for the view.
She surged to her feet. “You both want to stop talking about ‘the mess’ like she’s not sitting right here?”
David’s jaw flexed harder in reaction. But to her surprise, half a smile played at Kress’s lips. “Well. Somebody needs some discipline.”
“Also duly noted.” When David simply shrugged with that, she was certain her eyes bugged again. He aggravated the effect by dipping a knowing nod at her. “And as I said, working on it.”
“Well, if it were me…”
The rest of the sentence hung unsaid in the air, though Dasha wondered if that was the case. It really did feel like the two had some secret language going on, activated the second Kress had used the magic word. Subbie. In the minutes since then, all their actions felt different, a change she’d been willing to ignore—but now, a shift she couldn’t ignore. Not when David stepped forward, braced his stance, and challenged, “Yeah? What if it were you?”