Fuck.
I’m jittery as hell all evening and of course Shae notices. She motions me over to her table once the food’s been served and everyone’s distracted with eating. Elliot and Chris are eating at different tables with other families.
Shae motions for me to lean in close so she can hold up her hand and whisper in my ear. “You all right?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“You are not acting like a man who’s all right. The detail’s chill but you’re not. What’s going on?”
I know she won’t let up until I tell her, so I cut to the chase. “Jordan’s going to see a band at a club tonight. Alone. I’m afraid he’s not taking his personal security seriously because he was talking about walking there from his hotel. I couldn’t talk him into taking a cab. He’s not understanding DC isn’t like Tallahassee.”
“That’s for sure. Where’s the concert?”
“A club near Columbia Heights.”
“Oh, hell, no,” Kev mutters from right next to me. I hadn’t even realized he’d moved in to see what was going on.
“Go get the kid,” she tells me as she sits back, then smirks. “And spank him for being a dumbass.”
I glance around. Where Elliot’s sitting, his back is to us, plus he looks like he’s deep in conversation with a woman at his table who has two kids sitting on either side of her. “What about tonight?”
She tips her head toward Elliot’s table before leaning in again and talking behind her hand. “If he’s too chickenshit to be out with you, that’s no reason you should be alone. Go get your boy. It’s adorable how you glare at any guy who so much as talks to Jordan. Besides, it’s fucking damp and cold outside. He’s going to catch pneumonia.”
Oh, shit. I didn’t realize how obvious I was being over him. Now it makes me wonder who else might have noticed.
“He’s not really mine,” I say, because I’m still caught off-guard by her even noticing. Yet it shouldn’t surprise me, since the three of them obviously wanted me to be “distracted” by Jordan in the first place.
“Whatever. Yours or not, the kid’s going to get himself hurt, or sick, at the very least. Please go do what you do best and keep him safe. Take the rest of the night off. You’ve earned it.”
Shae also doesn’t have to tell me twice. “Thank you, ma’am.” I’m not worried about not saying good-bye to Elliot, because he was supposed to ride home with two staffers from his House office, to go over some items ahead of Monday. I’m not going to interrupt him and then have him stressing over the situation, or that I’m with Jordan. I’ll text him later.
I turn and wait to break into a jog until I’m out of the room. I retrieve my coat from where one of the campaign aides is watching our things and pull it on as I jog down the back service hallway, so I can make my way outside and grab a cab.
Jordan’s hotel isn’t far from where tonight’s event is being held. I call his personal cell, thinking I can catch him en route, but he doesn’t answer. I don’t leave a message.
Unfortunately, when I arrive at the hotel and have the front desk call his room…
Well, fucking of course he’s already left. My anxiety ratchets up another level, and now Special Agent Cruz is at war with Leo and Sir, with the psychologist smugly tsking at me the whole time.
What the hell am I doing?
I love Elliot. But something about Jordan…
Part of the problem lies in what I feel for Jordan feels nearly identical to what I felt for Elliot when I first met him. That instantaneous bolt from the blue. That certainty of sublime perfection.
Like he’s my home.
It’s only gotten stronger the more time I spend alone with him. Last night cemented it for me.
The only two people I’ve ever felt like that about are Elliot and now Jordan.
Maybe this is the event that forces me to make a decision I’ve been able to dodge for years by waiting on Elliot.
Maybe Jordan’s the man who makes either me or Elliot finally face the decision once and for all.
As I race across the lobby, I pull out my personal phone and Google the club’s address. I need a cab. Fortunately, mine is still sitting there. I jump in, give the driver the address, and we head out.
When I call Jordan’s personal cell again, it goes to voicemail after several rings. Not like he sent it to voicemail, but like it’s not being answered. I call his work phone and the same thing happens. I told him if he’s out, he should keep his work phone on him, too.
Meaning he’s probably at the club already and can’t hear his phones ringing…
Or he’s already dead in a Dumpster somewhere.
Shit.
I’m not exactly dressed for a night at a club. I’m also not carrying, dammit. Now that Shae’s president-elect, her detail won’t let me carry around her or Elliot.
Unfortunately, my apartment is in the exact opposite direction, so there’s no time for me to run there first, haul ass up and down three flights of stairs, and grab my gun.
Fuck it. I’ll have to go as-is.
I try calling several more times, plus I’m keeping an eye out just in case we pass him. Not that I’m hopeful we will. I’m nearly certain he’s already at the club.
I hope.
It’s bitterly cold tonight, and damp. At least it’s not raining. My hope is Jordan opted to take a cab after all, but I sense a stubborn streak in him that I might have accidentally reinforced by suggesting he take one in the first place. An attempt, consciously or not, to prove me wrong.
That makes me want him even more, that feisty streak of his. He won’t be a pushover. Not at all.
As we approach the place I groan, because it’s even worse than I feared. There was a gang shooting just two blocks from here last night. Also, the place is fricking packed, man, with people spilling out onto the sidewalk to smoke and vape despite the cold night. I don’t have earplugs with me, either, meaning I’ll probably be deaf by the time I locate Jordan in the packed building.
I find the box office, pay my entry, and I’m given a wristband. Based on the schedule posted in the box office, the second band just started playing. There’s no assigned seating, because it’s general admission. I head into the lobby and find it isn’t as crazy as I thought it’d be, but I can see through the windows in the inner doors that there’s a solid wall of people within the auditorium space. The noise level is already borderline painful, even out here.
Fucking fantastic.
The old theatre building housing the club has seen better days, but the lobby still brings to mind its former glory. Decorative columns with faded and peeling gilded paint festoon the space. Glancing around, I spot a merchandise table at the far end of the room and I head there.
“Don’t suppose you sell ear plugs, do you?” I ask.
Guy looks like he’s twelve. He’s got neck tats, spacers in his ears, a ring in his upper lip, and a purple and green mohawk, with his tattooed scalp shaved on either side. He grins. “Forget yours, Pops?”
I grin back instead of telling him to fuck himself. I must have used my scary Special Agent Leo Cruz grin, the one I didn’t hesitate to use before, when I was still employed by the US government and carried a badge, because his grin fades and he recoils a little.
I dig out my wallet and hold up a ten. “You have any or not?”
He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a small, sealed plastic baggy holding two orange sponge earplugs.
“Two dollars.”
I shove the ten at him and snatch the plugs from his hand. “Keep the change, asshole.”
I’m already ripping the bag open and twisting the plugs into my ears as I push through the inner doors. The sound smacks into me like a living wall, pulsing against and through me. Even with the earplugs it’s still painfully loud. I’d rather shoot at a range without ear protection.
Turns out there’s no seating because there are no seats.
Fuck. I haaaate situations like this. I don’t enjoy club concert
s, especially if I’m not carrying, and I hate them even more like this, when I’m worried about Jordan.
This is like being locked in my worst nightmare when I worked The Shift—a dark, crowded, noisy building with shifting light patterns that make it nearly impossible to get a good bead on a target and make it stupid easy for anyone to hide themselves among the throng.
I spot at least three drug deals going down as I circle the audience perimeter, and I don’t even fucking care. I don’t wear a badge any longer and, unless they were on the White House grounds, it’d be out of my jurisdiction, anyway. They’re probably pushing weed, or E, or K, or maybe acid or something. Typical concert shit.
Not my circus, not my clowns.
At least it’s not a goddamned rave. On the stage, the band currently playing sounds closer to Anew Revolution or Three Days Grace than Arctic Monkeys. Waves of people between me and the stage are bouncing up and down with the beat in a way that nearly gives me motion sickness. The guitars are screaming, the lead singer is screaming, the audience is screaming.
My patience is screaming.
My nerves are screaming.
When I start to hear the sound of metal screaming, I close my eyes and shake my head once, hard, to try to reset. I can’t afford nightmares right now.
I need my focus.
After taking a deep breath, I open my eyes and resume my trek.
The space is far larger than I’d like, with lots of dark crannies around the edges of the main floor where people are congregating. In the middle of the main space, right in front of the stage, there’s a pretty heated mosh pit in motion. I haven’t yet tried working my way through the crowd because I’m hoping my Jordan is smart enough not to be smack in the middle of them. My pucker factor is ratcheting up by the minute.
Make that by the second, when I spot a set of stairs and I turn and look up to find there are two balcony levels above the main floor.
Fuuuuck me.
The crowd is a mix of people from all walks of life and races. It bothers me that I’ve already spotted at least five guys I’m pretty sure are sporting gang colors, and from the way they’re looking at me as I pass, I can tell they aren’t happy about seeing me.
I know what I look like from how I’m dressed, too—Special Agent Leo Cruz, and not a civvie. They don’t know I’m not wearing a badge.
But, hopefully, they assume I’m carrying. That could be good or bad.
I belatedly remember I’m not wearing body armor, either, because I rode with Elliot, and we pulled into the hotel via a secured underground garage. I felt like I wouldn’t need it tonight.
Fuckballs. I feel bizarrely naked and vulnerable right now. Weirdly enough, I do also feel my age, and not because of the smartassed remark from the merchandise guy. More because the median age of nearly everyone around me is about Jordan’s age. He’s eighteen years younger than me.
What the hell does the kid see in me? He’s literally a virgin, for fuck’s sake. Besides, he’s not here for the long-haul. Once his job is finished and the inauguration’s over, he’s probably heading back to Tallahassee to complete his master’s. Last night he wasn’t exactly jumping all over my suggestion that he could get a job in the administration.
This is a recipe for disaster, right? Worse, it’s a recipe for me to get my heart broken.
Again.
Or to needlessly hurt Elliot.
Yet I’m still here, willing to dive into this indiscretion headfirst, when I already have one complicated situation to deal with that’s likely to remain unresolved for at least the next eight to sixteen goddamned years.
I never realized how much of an emotional masochist I must be to do this to myself.
After my first spin around the main level, I realize I’m going to have to go upstairs and search the balconies. On the first landing, I pass another drug deal in progress, a girl who doesn’t even look like she’s legal buying what’s probably E from a skeezy looking guy who’s the closest thing I’ve seen to someone my age since I arrived.
I fight the urge to get in her face and ask if her parents know where the hell she is right now.
Goddammit, Jordan.
I am going to spank that boy’s ass when I get my hands on him.
That thought mentally pulls me up short. No, he’s not “mine” yet, and technically I have no right to lay hands on him.
That doesn’t mean I’m not going to put the fear of Me into that boy when I finally locate him and put my hands on him.
Yes, I will definitely be putting my hands on the boy.
Tension sends my pulse spiking as I work my way up the stairs to the second level and start searching. It’s darker up here, and very little in the way of seating.
While it’s still loud in the balcony, at least it’s not bone-jarringly thumpy, since I’m out of the direct line of fire of the speakers.
This is not fun. In fact, this is the exact opposite of what I would even come close to calling fun.
I would, however, have come with Jordan, had I not needed to work. If I’d had a formal relationship in place with Jordan, I would’ve ordered him to take a cab here and handed him the money from my own pocket, if he couldn’t afford it.
Fuck that. I would have paid someone to come with him, any one of a number of guys I know in the security field who I’d trust to keep him safe.
I pull out my phone and text his personal cell because there’s no way in hell I could hear him even if he did pick up.
Where are you?
I keep my phone in my hand so I can feel it if he replies but I’m not hopeful. If he’s somewhere in the throng downstairs, it’s no wonder he didn’t answer my earlier calls. He probably couldn’t even feel it ringing in his pocket.
The music’s so loud, I’ll be lucky if the damn fillings in my teeth aren’t vibrated loose by the time we leave.
Working my way around the entire second level, I’ve been here nearly thirty minutes now, and there’s still no sign of him. I’m starting to get…anxious. I hope he made it here in the first place.
I stop along the balcony railing and look down into the audience below me, but the main area is dark enough you can’t really make out individuals clearly. If he is down there, especially near the mosh pit—and he’ll get his ass thoroughly spanked once I find him if he is—I’ll have to go down there and work my way through the crowd to find him.
Up I go, one more level.
It stinks of cheap weed up here but there are more benches. Meaning quite a few people making out. The only plus is it’s not as crowded and it’s a little less loud. It takes me about ten minutes to work my way around the balcony and there’s still no sign of him.
My nerves are borderline frayed.
I head down again, performing another thorough sweep of the lower balcony before making my way to the main level. Fortunately, the current band’s set ends, and the audience’s cheers are nearly quiet in comparison as the music fades. The quiet doesn’t last for long, however, because someone puts on music over the sound system and cranks it up well past conversational levels as roadies walk on stage to start the changeover to the main act’s equipment.
At least the house lights come up, just a little.
Don’t get me wrong—I love rock. It’s not the music that’s bothering me. It’s the crowd, for starters, and the logistics, and the motherfucking volume. It’s obnoxiously loud, and I don’t understand why they have to crank it stratospherically high for what is a reasonably small venue.
Some of the crowd heads outside, presumably to smoke, and that hopefully gives me an opening because the mosh pit’s dissolved, for now. I work my way over to the stage and across the floor to the far side of the space, and still don’t see Jordan anywhere.
This is starting to piss me off even though I know it’s irrational to feel that way.
The boy doesn’t owe me anything, doesn’t answer to me. Just because we’ve had dinner together last night, and started talking about a relationship, do
esn’t mean I have the right to go off on him for not responding to my calls and texts.
Every passing minute that I don’t find him means I’m growing more frantic. Because despite knowing it’s not likely, the Florida Man Found Dead in a Dumpster headline is rolling through my mind.
Then it hits me, and I make my way back to the lobby, to the bathrooms there. I push my way in past the line and call out.
“Jordan, you in here?”
Two guys glare at me from the urinals but no one answers from the two stalls. I hold up a hand in apology and duck out. Returning to the main space, I find a hallway there leading to another bathroom, and again strike out.
Fuck.
There’s been no response from him.
I even go outside and look around, just in case he decided to get some air, but find no sign of him.
Back into the lobby, then. I head to the far end where the bar is located and scan the crowd gathered around two very harried-looking bartenders.
The thought occurs to me to go into the main auditorium and yell his name, but that might embarrass him and piss him off.
Once more into the breach…
The playback music is shut off and the anemic house lights lower again. On the stage, the roadies have almost completed the changeover, and two guitarists and a bass player are doing a quick sound check to cheers and applause from the crowd.
I make another circuit of the main level while more people pour into the auditorium, and I end up nearly in the middle, behind the quickly reforming mosh pit area.
Right now, I don’t know if I’m more angry or worried.
I turn to scan the balconies when I catch a glimpse of a blond man in glasses going up the stairs from the second to the third levels.
Up I go again, my leg really starting to sing and adding to my foul mood as the featured band launches into their first number at ear-splitting levels.
Fuck my life. Why am I even here?
Because something about Jordan has hooked into you the way something hooked into you about Elliot, dumbass.
Indiscretion (Inequitable Trilogy Book 1) Page 30