by Fiona Quinn
As he pulled the warm covers up her back, Deep noticed the tattoo between her shoulder blades. It was as large as a fist — an intricately rendered Mockingjay symbol, recognizable even in the darkened room. This was not the tattoo of a drunken night on the town. This was planned. From his own tattoos, Deep knew this one was done by a high-dollar artist over several sittings.
She presented as so prim and proper – if he met her and was guessing about her role in life, he’d say she was a lady-who-lunches. Pampered. Entitled. That she was tattooed at all was a surprise. That she’d chosen this one—rather than hearts or butterflies or even ribbons and poetry like he’d seen on the girls he knew who had tattoos—this one had the feel of a soldiers’ ink.
It was another puzzle. She was a puzzle.
Whatever was going on for Lacey, she needed to trust him. With that thought, Deep felt the friction of her obstructions rubbing against his nerves. And as he contemplated all of the mysteries that surrounded her, Deep grew angry. He didn’t know what to attach this anger to; it was an emotion he rarely experienced. He did know, though, that the energy blowing off his skin like a desert haboob would make everything worse. He needed to burn it off before he spoke to her.
Deep quietly left the bed, grabbed some clothes, and moved to the bathroom, where he set a note against the mirror, letting her know where to find him. He headed down to the basement to run his daily five and do some lifting in Lynx’s home gym.
***
As Deep put the weights back on their stand, he felt like he’d screwed his head on straight again. Water moving through the pipes told him that Lacey was in the bath. The thought of her naked body covered in soap bubbles made his cock hard. Once again, his dick was taking over his brain. This might be a problem. He moved toward the tiny gym bathroom to take a quick rinse in the shower. A very cold rinse in the shower. There were actually good reasons for Iniquus’s ‘keep your dick zipped’ rules. Deep had blown it by taking Lacey to bed. True, he was emotionally invested before they’d made love. But having had her in his arms like that, it would muddy his perceptions and decisions even further. It would be better if he was at arms’ length and fully in his rational mind. But that bridge had been crossed and burned. It couldn’t be helped, and didn’t even really matter. From the get-go, Deep knew he’d do anything it took to protect her, whatever the threat and whatever her truth.
Chapter Twenty
Deep
Monday Morning
Coffee on, Deep sat at the computer and worked on his task from yesterday, finding addresses that might turn up more information.
Lacey walked in and dropped a kiss on his lips.
“Good morning.” A sappy smile spread across his face.
“Have you been up long?” she asked.
“A couple of hours.” He shifted some papers out of his way. “There’s fresh java. I thought we could grab breakfast out.”
Lacey moved into the kitchen. “You want me to top off your cup?”
“I’m good,” he called to her.
“Oh, I’d say you’re better than just good,” she called back.
That made him laugh. He was still grinning when she made her way back to the dining room with a mug on a salad plate and sat down kitty-corner to him. She curled a knee up to her chest and tucked the other foot under her hip. She looked very small and fragile as she blew ripples across the surface of her coffee, and he felt his protective instincts ramp themselves up. He was going to get to the bottom of this, one way or another, so they could move forward—one way or another.
“How did you get so good at this computer thing? Is that what you have your college degree in? Cyber security or something?” Lacey asked, then took a tentative sip from the mug.
Deep leaned back in his chair, stretching his long legs out in front of him and crossing them at the ankle. He scratched at his over-night stubble. “I went to the University of Hands-on Experience.”
Lacey tipped her head as if asking for more information, and Deep decided that she was testing him – seeing how forthcoming he’d be about his past. He’d better serve up some meat, he realized, if he was expecting her to share something from her plate with him afterwards.
“Dad took off and left my mom with five kids — my four sisters and me. I was the filling in the sister sandwich – I have two older sisters and two younger sisters. But we were all born in the same decade, so we were close age-wise and caring-wise. When I graduated from high school, though, I’d had it up to the throat living in a woman’s world. So I did the manliest thing I knew.”
“You joined the military and became a soldier.”
Deep puffed out his chest. “I became a marine. Ooh rah!”
Lacy giggled, and it was the sweetest sound he thought he’d ever heard.
“I imagine that was like diving into a testosterone swamp,” she said. “Did you like it? Bootcamp?”
“One of the best decisions I’ve ever made. It was a good fit for me. Filled in some of the manly shit I’d missed out on when my dad moved on.” Deep offered up a lopsided smile. That won him a soft smile in return that warmed Lacey’s eyes. And his heart stuttered.
Deep licked his lips. Keep going, he told himself. Tell her the truth and not the bar pick-up lines. “They sent me for advanced training with the Raiders, then deployed me to Afghanistan for a few go-rounds. Things went bad, and I landed back in the states at the VA hospital for a while. To keep myself sane, I worked on learning new skills, and it seems that hacking computers fits the way my brain’s wired. It comes easily to me. When I was released from the hospital, a SEAL I met on a couple of combined efforts, Striker Rheas, helped me get my gig at Iniquus. They put me on Striker’s team as technical support – as things improved for me capability-wise, I went back into the field with them.”
“Striker Rheas—that’s Lynx’s fiancé?”
“Right.”
“Is that why you have scars on your hip and legs? You left the Marines because you were injured over there?”
When did she see the scars on my hip and legs? “Once a Marine, always a Marine.” Deep said it in such an adamant tone that he saw Lacey dip her head like a chastised kid.
“The scars on my legs. . . I turned around one day to find myself standing a little too close to a grenade, which won me a free trip to Europe, then back stateside. They gave me a new femur and hip – stainless steel and Teflon. They’re pretty good. My injury’s not holding me back from much. It acts like a pretty accurate barometer, and I can still save a beautiful woman from a little red dot.” He reached out and brushed Lacey’s hair from her eyes and bent in to kiss the tip of her nose, trying to roll back the mistake he’d made with his earlier growl. “But I did retire my position in the Marine Corps.”
“I’m so sorry.” Her eyes turned red and glassy like she was going to cry, and Deep knew if those tears were for him, he wouldn’t be able to take it.
“Don’t be. Really. I was one of a handful of lucky soldiers that got picked to play guinea pig with this new-fangled skin gun they were trying out. I’m a walking miracle.”
“Say that again - a skin gun?” Lacey put her mug on the plate and wrapped her arms around her posted knee.
“You know that when soldiers are injured in the Middle East, they send them first to Germany and then home.”
“Yes, Landstuhl Medical Center,” Lacey said.
Deep scratched his cheek and ran his hand over his chin to buy himself a few seconds. He hated talking about that point in his life. “I was pretty badly burned — forty-three percent of my body. My whole left side, up my leg, over my chest and face. I looked pretty horrific. But lucky for me, I had second-degree burns and not third-degree burns. Of course, that would be lucky on any day. But I arrived at Landstuhl the same day as this guy from McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine. He had developed this gun that sprays a solution of cells and water onto the damaged skin.”
Lacey’s brow creased. As she listened intently, she leaned
forward and rested her chin on her posted knee.
“The professor and his research fellows came to talk to me. They offered to let me be a test subject. I jumped at the chance.”
“What did it do when they sprayed water and cells on your burns?”
“Basically, what these guys were doing was harvesting healthy skin from other parts of my body, and then they used a ‘skin gun’ to spray my own skin stem cells onto the wound. Sort of like using a paint sprayer. Then they wrapped me up in special bandages that helped support my skin as it regenerated on its own. A couple of weeks later, I looked in the mirror, and I was back to my pretty self.” He smiled and stroked a hand over his face and neck.
Lacey craned her neck, scrutinizing him. “All I see is a really hot guy.” She smiled and leaned back.
“It was the biggest miracle, Lacey. If you had seen me before – I looked like a monster. I thought that that was going to be my life, walking around freaking people out by how horrible I looked. I didn’t want to get shipped home. I didn’t want my mom to see me like that, you know? I mean – it would have killed her.”
Lacey was frowning at him and shaking her head. He wasn’t sure how to interpret that. “The guys I met who got the normal treatment – the grafts that they grow – that takes months, and they got terrible infections and some of them died because of them.”
“Why couldn’t they use the skin gun on all of the soldiers, even if it was experimental?”
“Some of the wounded had third-degree burns, and the skin-gun technique doesn’t work for that yet. But on me, it worked great. It took a few months for the color of my skin to come back to normal and the texture to develop. When you feel my skin, there’s not much changed except where they did my leg surgery and sewed up all the holes. I was so blessed. I’m telling you, this skin-gun technology is a miracle. Of course, if you ask my mom, she’ll tell you that I got myself back together and almost as good as new because I was wearing the St. Michael’s medal she gave me.” Deep reached into his shirt and pulled out a chain with a pewter pendant.
Lacey took it in her hands to examine it more closely. “Did you know that St. Michael is the patron saint of artists?”
“Also of bakers and soldiers.” Deep grinned. “I told Mom I thought that she would have preferred I became a baker to a soldier. My mom loves going to the bakery. Every Sunday, without fail, we’d go up to Fiorina’s after mass to get cannoli and cakes.”
“That sounds lovely. Do you still go to mass?” Lacey kissed the medal and stuck it back in his shirt.
“When I’m home. Special occasions. Always on Christmas. My religion is important – a touchstone. My culture.”
“Kind of like the background in a painting. It dictates the color and mood, but doesn’t really affect the action in the picture?”
“Exactly.” Deep leaned back and crossed his arms. “Okay, now it’s my turn, why don’t you tell me the story behind the Mockingjay symbol on your back? I would think, since you’re a fine arts kind of girl, that you would pick something different.”
Lacey cocked her head to the side and sent him a one sided smile. “Like what?”
“I don’t know, Van Gogh’s missing ear? A Monet water lily?”
“You like 19th century art?”
“I’m not much when it comes to knowing about art. Those are the ones I remember from my Western Civ class.”
“I see. Well, there’s not much to the story. I gave it to myself as an eighteenth birthday gift.”
“It’s done by someone with a lot of skill. I’ve seen tattoos done by some amazing artists – yours is one of the best. It looks 3D. That was an expensive birthday gift. I was surprised when I saw it. You didn’t strike me as the type of girl who’d get a tattoo.”
“Really? What kind of girl did I strike you as?”
“Oh, you know, the kind of girl who likes to have tea parties in her rose garden and throw charity galas for the country-club set.” The smile he sent her was to tell her he was teasing – but in reality, he wasn’t teasing much. “Why’d you choose there, between your shoulder blades?”
Lacey reached back and touched the spot where her tattoo lay. “It’s where I’d reach for an arrow if I were wearing a quiver.” She smiled as she mimed pulling the arrow over her back, stringing it on a bow and letting it fly.
“So you identified with the character, Katniss? I haven’t read the book. I saw the first movie, though. It was pretty intense. What part of that speaks to you?”
Lacey stalled, as she often did when he asked her things. He’d tried to make it sound like polite conversation. But it felt to Deep like his words caught on the hem of all those layers she had donned to protect herself. He desperately wanted to lift up the edges and peek under the skirts of her armor.
Deep read resignation and anxiety in her eyes, and he felt like an ass. Here he was, pushing her again.
“The book came out when I was a senior in high school, and I was heavily into reading dystopia. In the first book, Katniss Everdeen’s dad was killed in a coal mining accident, leaving her mom depressed and unable to provide for her children. It was up to Katniss from a very early age to use her intelligence and her skills to stay safe and alive and maybe even flourish. I thought she was a pretty good role model for me.”
“I’m not sure I’m following.”
“My dad, he was killed in a skiing accident. If you’re a rich guy, that’s really the way to go. He was skiing in Vail and lost control. Plowed right into a tree and died on impact.”
Deep nodded encouragement her way.
“I was six when Dad died, so I remember everything pretty well. We had a big house–too big—and it was just mom and me. My mom wasn’t a very strong woman. She was depressed after Dad’s death. She spent most of her days in bed. She didn’t want the lights on, or the drapes opened. She didn’t want noises around her, like talking. It was rather tomb-like.” Lacey chuckled a little, though there was nothing funny about what she was saying.
As Deep listened, he wanted to gather Lacey into his arms and stroke her hair. But he thought if he did anything other than listen, she’d use it as an excuse to stop talking.
Lacey’s eyes strayed to the window, so it looked like she was telling her story to the naked branches tapping against the pane. “We were very rich, but Mom fired everyone who worked for us in the house. She didn’t like their noise or movement. She kept the gardeners because someone had to cut the lawn. That’s about it.” Lacey seemed to fold in on herself.
“She was like the mother in The Hunger Games?” Deep asked, trying to pull her back into the room and out of her memories.
“Yeah. Incapable. When you’re as depressed as my mom was, you forget things. Things like paying the electrical and water bills, buying food and stuff. I understood that she was ill. Her mind wouldn’t let her love me. Or take care of me.”
Deep reached out his hand to cover Lacey’s. “Did she finally get the help that she needed?”
“No, she died. I guess breathing became too much for her, too.”
When Deep saw Lacey’s body wilt, he knew she was sharing something very private and painful. “How old were you when she passed?” Deep sought out her eyes, but Lacey refused to look at him.
“Almost seventeen. My Uncle Bartholomew became my guardian. He told me to stay put and finish up my senior year, and then go ahead with my plans for college. So I did. I had been running the house for a while, anyway.” She paused for a long moment. “It didn’t make much difference in the day to day of my life. The day I turned twenty-five and came into my trust fund, I sold the place. I accepted the first offer that came my way, which was about half the market value. Not a sound economic decision, of course. But a huge weight lifted off me as soon as it was out of my hands. I’m so glad I’ll never see that house again.” She offered up a sad smile. Talking about her house and childhood seemed to drain all of the light and life out of Lacey.
“People had to have intervened on your beha
lf – someone must have noticed.”
“My teachers, eventually. They told me I stank, and I needed to take a bath. But we didn’t have any water. They turn it off when you don’t pay the bills, no matter how much money you have in the banks. The principal at my prep school ended up contacting my mom’s lawyer, and the lawyer hired a CPA to pay our bills. He hired a nanny and a housekeeper.”
“But that didn’t turn things around?”
“The help made noise, so Mom would fire them. I’d call her lawyer; he’d send in the next wave.”
“And the tattoo?”
“Reminds me that I have skills. I can take care of myself. I’ll be fine, thank you kindly.”
“Do you believe that?” Deep asked.
“Ha! No. I don’t believe that at all.”
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t have the kinds of skillsets I need to get free of this mess.”
“But I do,” Deep said.
Lacey finally focused on him.
“I do,” Deep insisted.
Chapter Twenty-One
Lacey
Monday
Lacey tucked her hair under a fuzzy hat and wrapped a scarf around her neck and the bottom part of her face, effecting a disguise so she could leave the house. She was glad they were headed out the door. This morning’s conversation had been hard to hear and hard to speak.
She kept seeing Deep in a mud hut in the desert, burnt and broken, and screaming in pain. God, it sucked the oxygen right out of her cells, completely deflating her. The image she conjured of that grenade exploding blew enough sand into her consciousness that it masked the shame she felt for being loveless and unlovable as a child. Unwanted. A task for a lawyer to contend with. And really, her story was sad, but Deep’s was harrowing. No comparison. It felt selfish for her to harbor any sense of self-pity when he had survived so much worse.