Man of Action

by Janie Crouch

  “I must have misunderstood the nature of the club you were infiltrating. This club must be different than Jaguar’s, more like a restaurant.”

  Brandon all but sneered. “No. It was a strip joint. Maybe a little higher rent than Jaguar’s, but there were still mostly naked girls dancing on the stage. And the waitresses’ outfits weren’t much better. Drunken guys. Groping. You know the drill.”

  “And Andrea was all right?”

  “More than. I’ll bet she made a killing in tips. Looked perfectly at home in a bustier and heels. All smiles.”

  Brandon couldn’t get the image out of his mind. It wasn’t even the outfit that bothered him so much. He’d gladly have watched her all day in that skirt and top. Would’ve loved to have peeled her out of it. Under much different circumstances.

  It was her actions. Her flirtations, friendliness. The smiles she’d given other men. Touches she’d allowed.

  He felt the warrior clawing his way up. He wanted to go and beat down all the men who had dared to touch her. Then pin her to his side and make love to her until she was never even tempted to smile at another man.

  Steve interrupted his thoughts. “Wow. She must be better at undercover work than I would’ve thought. Good for her, for fighting through it to do her job.”

  “She didn’t look like she was doing a job.”

  “Brandon, if you could’ve seen her at Jaguar’s when Grace Parker and I picked her up there four years ago, you’d be amazed that she could even function tonight, much less do her undercover work well.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She was all but broken. She hated every minute she worked in that club—it was destroying her piece by piece. Going back into a similar situation has to be overwhelming for her, probably terrifying.”

  Brandon could feel something clench in the pit of his stomach. Again.

  “I’m proud of her for just facing it,” Steve continued. “Even if she had only made it for ten minutes, I still would’ve been proud. To hear that she did so well? Be sure to pass along my official and personal congratulations for a job well done.”

  Brandon murmured something; he wasn’t quite sure what.

  “I hope this will help you guys find the killer. Because I’m sure Andrea paid a high personal price getting out there the last two nights.”

  Brandon managed to say the correct words and end the call with his boss.

  That feeling in his gut still hadn’t gone away. Still felt like a heaviness pressing down on him. How heavy was the weight?

  The exact weight of a judgmental, hypocritical ass.

  Someone who had acted completely unprofessional the past two nights and it hadn’t been the unseasoned consultant with no undercover experience. She’d done what she was supposed to do. Make nice with the locals and try to get a reading on anybody who might not fit in.

  All Brandon had been able to see was the short skirt, revealing top and sexy makeup. Not the capable law-enforcement figure underneath.

  Or the very vulnerable woman who had probably needed support from him. Possibly during her time at the club. Definitely afterward.

  He’d turned away. Deliberately.

  The shower had long since turned off. He realized Andrea hadn’t come through the living room at all. Not that he expected her to come say good-night, but she hadn’t come to get any food from the kitchen or even a glass of water.

  Regardless of her outfit, she’d worked very hard for the five hours he’d watched and some time before he’d arrived. That tray probably would’ve gotten heavy after a while, and her heels were even higher than usual. That couldn’t have been easy on her feet.

  Brandon rubbed a hand down his face. She had preferred going to bed hungry and thirsty than to walk by him to get what she needed.

  He headed back to one of the two bedrooms this house contained, looking at the one he and Andrea had slept in together two nights ago. They’d fallen in bed after showering, both exhausted by the hours of training and lovemaking. She’d slept in his arms the entire night, and he’d smiled when he’d awakened to still find her there. No running away this time.

  But she wasn’t in that bed now. It was empty, covers of the king-size bed still undisturbed. He walked over to the other, smaller room that barely fit the single bed, dresser and desk.

  There was Andrea sound asleep.

  The light in her room was on. Her back was pressed all the way against the wall the bed sat against, one arm resting halfway over her head in a defensive position. Even in sleep she was prepared for someone to strike.

  Brandon knew he had added to her psychological need for that posture by his actions. The thought shredded him.

  He pulled out the chair from the desk and sat in it, watching her sleep. He wanted to wake her up, to apologize.

  He hadn’t said anything that an outsider would consider cruel. Hadn’t done anything that would seem unforgivable. But Brandon knew how sensitive Andrea was, the emotions she could sense and decipher. She’d known how he felt. His disapproval, his anger. The distaste he’d felt.

  God, he would take it all back if he could.

  Given some time to process it now, and with the help of both Keira and Steve, he realized he hadn’t really been prepared to see her like that. Hadn’t really come to grips that she had taken off her clothes for money when she was younger.

  But now, sitting here, watching her, he realized he had no right to judge her. He’d been raised by two loving parents, surrounded by two brothers and a sister. He’d been a challenging child, acting out in his younger grades, on a route to trouble. His parents had loved him enough, known him well enough to realize the problem was he wasn’t being challenged sufficiently. They’d moved him to a gifted academy, one that allowed him to excel at his own pace.

  The course of his life had been set. He’d flourished from there.

  Who’d been around to see that Andrea flourished? No one. The opposite, in fact.

  She shouldn’t have to apologize for how she had chosen to survive. The important fact was that she had. She was already ashamed of it.

  He had added to that shame. What did that make him?

  He reached toward her to wake her up, tell her all these things, beg her forgiveness, but dark circles under her eyes stopped him. She needed rest. She’d been working hard for days and hadn’t been getting enough sleep. The things he needed to say could be said in the morning. They were his burden to carry.

  He wanted to at least pick her up and carry her to the bed they’d shared. He wanted to hold her during the night. Be close to her.

  But he had to face the fact that she might not want that anymore. She was sleeping peacefully now. For once he would make an unselfish decision concerning her and leave her alone.

  She’d scrubbed her face completely clean, making her look so young and innocent and vulnerable that it was almost painful to look at her.

  He realized she was exactly those things. Even when she had on a skimpy outfit and a ton of makeup and platform heels, she was still those things: young and innocent and vulnerable.

  She had to go back there again tomorrow night—hell, it was so late, it was tonight—but this time he planned to make sure she understood that she wouldn’t be going in there alone.

  If there was one benefit of having an IQ as high as his, it was that you learned from your mistakes and you learned fast.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Andrea slept later than she had been, but not enough to wipe the exhaustion from her body. Her sleep had been plagued by nightmares. First ones that hadn’t bothered her for a while, of her uncle and her life in Buckeye. Then ones of the past two nights, groping hands and the man she’d seen in the lightning.

  Her heart began to thud just thinking about him.

  She forced the t
hought of it out of her head. She had to admit she’d been so emotionally piqued getting off work in the storm that it was possible she’d imagined the whole thing. Not the man. She had definitely seen the man. But maybe he hadn’t meant her any ill intent at all. Maybe he’d just been a guy walking across the parking lot and it just got all spooky-out-of-proportion because of the lightning.

  She also didn’t want to think about Brandon and how he obviously now felt about her. She noticed he’d left her where she was for the second night in a row, sleeping alone in the small guest bed. He hadn’t wanted to be near her. Hadn’t touched her at all since he’d seen her at Club Paradise.

  She threw off her covers and got out of bed, still fully dressed in sweatpants and a T-shirt. She even had a bra on. She knew sleeping fully clothed was something she did when she felt nervous or uncomfortable. A habit from the days when she’d had to run in the middle of the night from her uncle. Sometimes she fought the urge. Last night she hadn’t.

  She was surprised to see Brandon already awake, pulling out the beginnings of breakfast in the kitchen. She stopped in the doorway.

  “Hi.” His black hair was tousled and his chest was bare. Andrea fought the urge to lick her lips. It was totally unfair that she was this attracted to him when he obviously wasn’t attracted to her lately.

  “Want some coffee?” She nodded and he smiled at her before turning to get a mug and pour her some.

  Her fingers touched his when he handed her the mug. At least this time he didn’t jerk away as if he couldn’t stand to touch her.

  “Thanks.” Her voice was husky with sleep. She didn’t know what else to say to him.

  “I’m going to make some breakfast, okay? I don’t think you ate anything last night and you worked pretty hard.” He smiled again. “Then we can compare notes, see if we come up with anything.”

  Andrea was confused by his behavior. This was different from the cold and distant Brandon she’d experienced for the past day and a half.

  He was being professional, she realized, something in her sinking. He knew they still had to work together even though he found her distasteful. Their personal relationship was over but he was at least making an effort to make the situation less awkward. She could do the same.

  It wasn’t the first time she’d put back together the shattered pieces of her emotions. They might not be without cracks, but she knew the glue would hold. Later, after they’d stopped this killer and made sure no more women died, when she was back at Omega and no one was around, then she could fall apart.

  While watching him cook, Andrea wondered if Brandon would suggest to Steve that she wasn’t Omega material. That he’d seen her in action and she just wouldn’t be a good fit long-term.

  Maybe it was just time for her to move on altogether.

  He brought a plate filled with eggs, bacon and toast and set it in front of her.

  “Eat up,” he said. “We’ve got a full day. And night.”

  She took a bite of her toast and realized how famished she was. He set his own plate down and began eating, also.

  Her plate was nearly empty when he asked about last night. She was glad she was nearly done because her food became tasteless. She didn’t want to think about last night. Didn’t want to face him as she talked about it, knowing what he thought about her. His disgust.

  “I wasn’t able to pick out anyone in the club who seemed to be acting odd,” he said as he took a sip of the coffee. “But then again, I didn’t think the killer would actually be there.”

  “Because you think he follows DJ Shocker in. That he’s in the club for the first time that night.”

  “Maybe not in the club for the first time, but picking his victim then. I was working on a profile last night.”

  Andrea wasn’t sure if he meant while he was at Club Paradise or later while she was sleeping.

  “Except for victim two, the truck-stop waitress, all the murders have occurred between twenty-four and forty-eight hours after DJ Shocker’s appearance at the club,” Brandon continued. “I think the killer picks his victim that night, perhaps the one who is acting the most overtly promiscuous, and comes back to kill her later. But he might come in before, since DJ Shocker’s events are so well advertised, to check out potential victims.”

  “Okay, that’s sick, but logical.”

  “Have you gotten anything over the last couple of nights? Anyone who has seemed out of place?”

  She took another sip of her coffee to fortify herself, then looked back down at her plate. She didn’t want to eat another bite, but at least it gave her somewhere else to look besides at Brandon.

  “It was pretty tough, at first. Filtering through...everything.” The barrage of sounds and sights. The unwelcomed touches of men who thought she was cheap. “The first couple of hours of the first night, honestly, I was just trying to survive. Wasn’t sure I was going to be able to do it.”

  “And then what happened?” Brandon’s voice was hoarse, almost anguished. She could feel the unhappiness coming from him, but couldn’t bring herself to look at his face.

  “I don’t know. I just had a suck-it-up talk with myself. I had a job to do, and if I didn’t, another woman was going to die.”

  “Sounds like a pretty professional way to think.”

  For a stripper.

  He didn’t say it, and she had to admit she didn’t even know if he was thinking it. But she was.

  She still didn’t look up from her plate. She took the last bite of her toast that now tasted like cardboard in her mouth.

  “Not surprisingly, the overwhelming emotion in the club was lust. Drunken euphoria was a close second. I colored all those in my mind as red and then just ignored them. Guilt—I’m sure more than a few married men were in attendance last night—I colored as green, because I thought that might be worth looking into. Anger and disgust, the key emotions I thought might come from the killer, I tried to color as blue.”

  “Using colors, that’s smart. Did you see any blue?”

  “A little.” She finally looked at him. “But not from anyone I thought was the killer.”

  He was too smart not to know she was referring to him. “Andrea—”

  She didn’t want to talk about his disgust with her. She was holding on by a thin enough thread as it was. She stood up, grabbing their plates.

  “You cooked. I’ll do dishes. Thanks for breakfast, by the way.”

  He stood up too and grabbed her wrist gently. “Andrea.”

  She looked at him, but his face was so intent with something to say she had to look away. She could not do this right now. Not if she had to make it through the entire day and night beyond.

  “Brandon, I can’t. Not right now. You felt what you felt. Whatever we have to talk about, can we just do it later?”

  “Fine. But I’ll do the dishes. You go sit. You’ll be on your feet enough today. Plus we have another self-defense lesson in fifteen minutes.”

  She thought about what had happened with the last self-defense lesson, how they’d ended up in bed all afternoon. “Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

  “As long as there’s a killer around, it’s a good idea.”

  That wasn’t what Andrea had meant, but she didn’t press it. She just left him to do the dishes and went to sit on the couch. The next thing she knew, Brandon was shaking her awake, gently.

  “Come on, lazybones. Nap break is over. Time to do some work.” She found his face close to hers, smiling, as she opened her eyes.

  She touched his cheek before she remembered she wasn’t supposed to. But he didn’t pull back as she expected. Instead he leaned forward and kissed her on the forehead.

  “I must have fallen asleep for a few minutes,” she murmured.

  “Try two hours.”

  Her eyes flew open at that
. “Are you serious?”

  He smiled again. “It’s okay. You needed it. But now it’s time to work.”

  He stood and held his hand down to help her from the couch. She stretched and took it.

  “Okay, let’s go over our bear-hug move first.”

  They practiced that a few times and Andrea was pleasantly surprised at what she remembered. What her body automatically remembered. Brandon praised her for it, too.

  They spent the next hour going over how to twist out of wrist holds, and the most vulnerable points of an attacker she could hit.

  The physical activity, focusing on something besides what was going on between her and Brandon, felt good. She found she had a knack for it, because it was somewhat like dancing, ironically. She just had to think of what step came next. And eventually her body knew what step came next without her having to think about it.

  “Okay, one more thing I want to teach today. If someone has you on the ground in a choke hold.”

  He had Andrea lie on her back and he straddled her hips. He gripped her throat with one hand.

  “Most of what I’ve shown you hasn’t been dependent on strength or speed, just on basic human mechanics. Joints only turn certain ways. This is more labor intensive on your part. Someone bigger, heavier, is going to be harder to get off you.”

  Andrea wasn’t sure she could do this. Having Brandon this close in this position? If he slid his hand over they’d be in an embrace rather than in combat. But she tried to focus.

  Like all the other techniques he’d shown her, he went over the moves slowly at first: trapping his leg with her foot, grabbing his wrist and elbow, hiking up her hips and flipping him over.

  She could do it when he worked with her, but once they started going at a faster speed Andrea had trouble.

  “What’s the problem?” he asked. “You’re going to have to move more quickly and fluidly than that for it to work.”

  Andrea gritted her teeth. She didn’t think she could do this—he was too big. And she might hurt him. And she really did not want to thrust her hips up against his.