Man of Action

by Janie Crouch

  Brandon eased back into info and tactics he’d learned in his basic psychology classes way back in undergrad: get someone comfortable with you if you wanted them to freely share information. The best way to do that was a compliment.

  That was easy with Andrea. Her skills were impressive.

  “I think everything you’ve said about the guys tonight is spot-on. You caught a few things I missed.” He wasn’t faking any sincerity when he said it. “And I like to think I don’t miss very much.”

  He could see the tension ease out of her torso even from across the table. She really didn’t want to talk about high school. Maybe it was just being here in town; maybe it was something she never wanted to talk about. Brandon wouldn’t push.

  He smiled at her. “Steve was right about your abilities. It’s impressive.”

  She smiled back at him, obviously basking in his praise. That was something for him to file away. It confirmed what Steve had told him in his office on Monday. Andrea still wasn’t sure about herself and exactly where and how she belonged in Omega.

  Which was a shame. Someone with her abilities should rest very comfortably in them. It would make her a better analyst if she wasn’t constantly second-guessing herself. Brandon found himself wanting to help her with that.

  To make Omega a stronger law-enforcement entity, of course. It had nothing to do with getting closer to the woman sitting across from him, with seeing more of her smiles, seeing her relax and ease into her own abilities.

  He forced himself to tear his eyes away from hers and eat the last bite of his food.

  He would start on neutral territory.

  “So, where’d you go to college? Did you decide to study criminal science or end up going with psychology?” It had been a question he’d had to choose, but had found he couldn’t decide, so he’d ended up studying both.

  “I, um...I—”

  Brandon looked up from his plate and found all of Andrea’s tension back. More. She was biting her lip and pulling at her blazer sleeve.

  Evidently the subject of college was even worse than high school.

  “Andrea—”

  She stood up, her chair scraping loudly on the floor. She flinched. “Brandon, I’m sorry. I have to go. I’m not feeling well.”

  “Just wait and I’ll—”

  “No. I’m sorry, no—”

  She was gone, hurrying out the restaurant door before he could stop her.

  Chapter Six

  Brandon paid the bill a few minutes later, trying to figure out what had just happened. He replayed the conversation in his mind to see if he’d said anything that could be construed by Andrea as offensive or threatening.

  All he’d really done was ask her about high school and college.

  Brandon had been studying people long enough to know her behavior signified more than just a desire not to talk about herself. It came back to what he had argued about with Steve in his office.

  Andrea Gordon had secrets. And they had to do with this town.

  What Brandon didn’t know was if he should press or not. Her secrets, whatever they were, didn’t seem to get in the way of her doing her job. He had no complaints about the insights she was bringing into the case.

  But the man inside him—his basic, most primal man—could not abide that she was hiding things from him. That she had pain, that she needed help, and she would not share that with him. He wanted to force her to tell him so he could fight the battle for her.

  Brandon grimaced as he sat back in his chair. He knew himself well enough to know there were parts of his psyche that he didn’t allow to break through very often, but were still quite strong inside him.

  The part of him he called the warrior.

  The warrior kept things very simple, saw only in black and white, right or wrong. Not the shades of gray that his intellect wandered in all the time. The warrior inside was who kept Brandon from becoming a criminal himself.

  The darkness and the warrior combated each other.

  God knew he came by the warrior honestly. He had literal fighter’s blood flowing through his veins from his ancestors on both sides: Japanese samurai from his father’s side, Scottish clansmen from his mother’s.

  The warrior wasn’t interested in profiling or studying nonverbal cues. He wasn’t interested in what was politically correct or even polite. He was interested in fighting for what was just. What was his.

  Brandon didn’t let the warrior side of himself come to light very often. He preferred to use his intellect and reasoning abilities to get things done.

  But when it came to Andrea, the warrior kept pushing his way forward.

  Well, that was too damn bad, because Brandon wasn’t about to let his Neanderthal self run roughshod over this entire investigation. Brandon had to work with Andrea. She was his partner, for however long this case lasted. He would not go demanding answers from her.

  Demanding kisses from her.

  But he would go find her and make sure she was okay. Let her know he wasn’t going to push her to talk about things she wasn’t ready to share.

  The warrior inside all but growled, but Brandon ignored him, pushing him back down.

  Brandon exited the restaurant and walked back up the block toward the hotel. And, just his luck, it was starting to drizzle hard enough to be an annoyance.

  He almost didn’t see Andrea.

  Of course, he wasn’t looking for her to be standing on the edge of the parking lot since she’d left the restaurant ten minutes ago. But she was, staring at a car—an old beat-up Chevy—parked close to the hotel’s front entrance.

  She wasn’t moving, just standing in the rain. Frozen in what seemed to be terror.

  Brandon’s first thought was that it was Damian Freihof, the would-be bank bomber. Had he found Andrea here? But then he realized Freihof wouldn’t be sitting in a car and Andrea wouldn’t just be staring at him if he was.

  He walked up to Andrea, careful to come at her slowly and from the side so he didn’t sneak up on her in any way.

  “Hi.” He kept his voice even, calm. “What are you doing out here? Everything okay?”

  She looked at him then back at the parking lot.

  Without being obvious about it, Brandon withdrew his weapon from the holster at his side. Had she seen something to do with the case?

  “Andrea.” His voice was a little stronger now. “What’s going on? Is it something to do with the murders? Did you see something or did someone threaten you?”

  She kept staring.

  “Andrea, look at me.”

  She finally turned to him, hair plastered to her head from the rain, makeup beginning to smear on her face.

  “I need you to tell me what’s happening. Is there danger? Did you see something having to do with the case?”

  Andrea’s eyes finally focused on Brandon. “N-no. No, there’s no danger. I just...I just thought...” He waited but she didn’t finish her sentence.

  Okay, not an immediate danger and nothing from the investigation. Something from her past, then. He holstered his weapon. There wasn’t danger, but she needed help. Especially since she didn’t seem capable of taking care of herself at the moment.

  “Let’s go inside, sweetheart.” The endearment slipped out unbidden. “Let’s get you out of the rain.”

  She stiffened. “No, I can’t go inside.” Her attention narrowed again on the old car parked near the front entrance, under the hotel’s overhang. It looked as if someone was sitting inside, but it was too far for Brandon to get any details.

  He and Andrea couldn’t stay out in the rain—even the desert of Arizona was cold in March. Andrea was already shivering.

  The car seemed to be the center of her terror, not the hotel.

  “What if we go in the side
door?” Brandon pointed to a door nearer to them. It wasn’t close to their rooms, but it would at least mean not having to go in the main entrance through the parking lot.

  She looked over at the door he referred to and nodded. Brandon wrapped an arm around her slim form and led her to the door. Once inside he kept her in his grasp as they made their way down the hall. She was still shivering.

  Warrior or not, there was no way Brandon was letting Andrea out of his sight right now. He wasn’t even sure he could let her out of his arms.

  He stopped at his room and got his key card out of his pocket. He knew Andrea was in bad shape when she didn’t protest him bringing her into his room.

  He shrugged off his jacket and threw it over the chair, then helped her take off her soaked blazer and eased her down to sit on the edge of the bed.

  He left her for a moment to go get a towel from the bathroom. When he came back she hadn’t moved at all, was still sitting, huddled into herself, where he’d left her.

  His heart broke a little bit at her flinch when he put the towel around her and began gently drying her hair.

  “Shh. I won’t hurt you. I just want to make sure you don’t get sick.” He took a corner of the towel and wiped it across her cheeks in an effort to dry them and also remove some of the makeup that had run down her cheeks. Her green eyes just stared out at him.

  Brandon left the towel wrapped around her shoulders and grabbed a chair so he could set it right in front of her. He sat so they were eye to eye.

  “Who was that in the car out front?”

  He heard the tiny hitch in her breathing. “You saw it?”

  “No, I could just see that you saw whoever it was.”

  “That’s my aunt and uncle’s car. They raised me after my mom died when I was ten.”

  “And you don’t want them to know you’re here?”

  A shudder racked Andrea. “No. I don’t ever want to see either of them again.”

  She looked away and began rubbing her arm, repeatedly. He looked down and saw scars, multiple small lines all around her elbow. He’d never seen the scars before but then realized it was because he’d never seen her without a long-sleeved shirt or blazer.

  Her professional wardrobe was not just an emotional barrier between her and the world; it was a physical one.

  As he looked down at the scars again, at her countenance, her posture, a rage flooded him. She had been abused.

  He immediately tamped down his anger, knowing she would read it and could take it the wrong way. She needed support right now. Gentleness. Caring.

  “They hurt you.” His voice was barely more than a whisper, but it wasn’t a question.

  “They’re alcoholics. And whenever they drank... My uncle mostly. My aunt just locked herself in her room.”

  A tear rolled down her cheek as she looked away from him out the window. She was still rubbing her arm.

  “I know they can’t hurt me now. I’m older. Stronger. Not the same person who lived in their house.”

  “All of that is true. Every word.”

  “And you could arrest them if they tried anything.”

  She was obviously trying to give herself a pep talk.

  He nodded. “I wouldn’t hesitate to do so.”

  “I was so young and stupid. They didn’t want me after my mom died, but I didn’t have anywhere else to go. I tried to stay out of their way as much as possible. But in a way, I guess I should be thankful for them.”

  Brandon couldn’t think of a single reason why an abuse survivor should be thankful for what she’d been through.

  She shrugged. “It’s because of my uncle that I learned to read people so well. The situation at home forced me to really study nuances of expressions.”

  “So you could stay a step ahead of his fists.”

  She nodded. “But it didn’t always work. Sometimes you knew what was coming, but you couldn’t escape it.”

  She was referring to her situation in second person instead of first—distancing herself. It was a coping strategy.

  “The situation at home may have helped you hone your skills at a younger age than you would have otherwise,” he agreed. “But I imagine your gift at reading people still would be there. You would’ve always been an extraordinary behavioral analyst—you just wouldn’t have known about it until later in your studies.”

  Suddenly some of her earlier words and actions clicked into place for Brandon. Her defensiveness about college, the reason she had given him two different graduating years for high school.

  “You ran away, didn’t you?”

  She flushed, embarrassed. “Yes. I was about to turn seventeen. My uncle came in, drunk, and pulled me from a sound sleep, throwing me off the bed before beginning to whale on me. I got out, after falling through a glass table. But I never spent another night in that house.”

  Rage coursed through Brandon. The temptation to go out there and give her uncle just the slightest taste of his own medicine almost overwhelmed him. But he ratcheted his temper under control.

  Andrea needed him here.

  “Good for you.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Sure, except for the fact that I had to drop out of high school. I was never any good at school anyway.” She seemed to shrink into herself. “I’m dyslexic, so reading was—still is—hard for me.”

  Brandon grimaced. Dealing with dyslexia was a challenge for any child. And a child who had no academic or emotional support at home? A setup for failure. He thought about how he had mentally criticized her for not reading the police file at the airport. Now he knew why. Reading it would be difficult enough for her; reading in a crowded place with a bunch of distractions would be nearly impossible.

  “Steve Drackett and Grace Parker, the head psychologist for Omega, met me in Phoenix when I was nineteen. I helped them with a bank hostage situation.”

  Brandon nodded, leaning closer to her and taking the hand that was still rubbing at her scars. He gently ran his fingers along her knuckles, not sure if he was trying to soothe her or himself. He knew about the bank, or at least about Damian Freihof. At this moment Brandon completely agreed with Steve’s decision not to tell Andrea about Freihof. Buckeye was hard enough on her without adding the possible threat of a madman.

  “They had me do some testing, because Steve was sure I had a natural ability at reading people.”

  “Behavioral and nonverbal communication diagnostic,” Brandon murmured, not letting go of her hand.

  “You know it?”

  “I’m familiar with it.” More than. He’d helped develop the latest, most thorough version of it when he’d been in grad school ten years ago. She’d taken the test he’d helped create.

  “So you ran away to escape an impossible home situation and had to quit school. Steve and Grace realized how naturally gifted you were and brought you into the Omega fold.”

  She glanced down for just a second before looking at him again. “Yes, pretty much.”

  There was other stuff she wasn’t telling him—glancing down rapidly was almost always a tell of hiding something. Amazing that she could read so clearly the emotions and microexpressions of others, but couldn’t control them in herself.

  But mostly what she felt, what every nonverbal element of her body language and facial expressions spoke for her, was shame.

  “I’m not really your typical Omega caliber person, right?” She smiled crookedly, not quite looking him in the eyes. “No education, no training. Can’t even read right. Afraid to face an old couple in a car.”

  Those sentences explained so much about her and her behavior over the past few years at Omega. She wasn’t standoffish or an ice queen; she was an abuse survivor. She’d been keeping herself apart so her colleagues wouldn’t find out about her past, afraid they would consider her unw
orthy of being part of the Omega team.

  Brandon couldn’t stop himself. He let go of her hands to cup her face, gently wiping her still-damp hair back from her cheeks.

  “A few people might have thought that at first, but no one would think it now, given your track record with cases.”

  She just shrugged.

  He trailed his fingers down her cheek. The warrior in him happy to have her close, to finally know some of her pain so he could try to protect her. “You have a gift. Steve recognized it so thoroughly that he brought you—an unknown teenager—into Omega. And he has never regretted that decision, I’m positive.”

  “But I don’t have any education. Any training.”

  “You can get both of those if you want it—you have plenty of time. Hell, if I could naturally do what you do? I would’ve stopped going to school when I was ten.”

  A ghost of a smile, but at least it was a real one. Brandon wasn’t sure he’d ever seen anything so beautiful. He got up and sat next to her on the bed so he could put his arm around her. He had to be closer to her.

  “I did get my GED a couple years ago,” she murmured, leaning into him. “And have taken a few semesters of college courses. But the dyslexia makes it hard.”

  “Of course it does,” he said against her hair, pride running through him. “But you’ve persevered. You’ll take it slow and finish as you’re able. With your abilities, getting a degree is no big rush.”

  Brandon slid them back so they rested against the headboard of the bed. He kept his arm around her for support, but also because he couldn’t seem to force himself to put any distance between them. She didn’t seem to want it, either.

  He wondered how long it had been since someone had just held her like this.

  If ever.

  He could feel her relaxing into him. Tension easing out of her body.

  “I suppose I should go see if my aunt and uncle are still out there. I shouldn’t be surprised they heard I’m in town. Gossip runs pretty freely around here.” She shrugged. “I don’t want to see them. Don’t know why they would want to see me. But I guess I’ve got to face them sometime.”