Up in Smoke (Kisses and Crimes Book 2)

by Natalie E. Wrye

  If this were four years ago, I would have definitely been more thorough. Without a proper brush-up on my training, I might have just made myself a sitting duck.

  It was one thing to take care of myself, but now that Jeff was here, I felt responsible for him, too. The boy was greener than Kermit the Frog and more reckless to fucking boot.

  If he thought he was helping me keep tabs on the senator, he was in for a rude awakening. He knew jack-shit about stealth… and the senator’s security would spot him coming from a mile away.

  I had to find the annoying prick to save his ass.

  I had to find him to save both of our asses.

  The next room I roamed into was just as the dark as the last. Crimson curtains framed a grand window and cool dark sheets graced the edge of the bed.

  I touched the edge of the mattress, briefly wondering about the last time I’d slept on one since starting my own investigations agency.

  I left the room. On the precipice of panic, I proceeded to the next one. Only the door was closed. And locked.

  Odd.

  Every other bedroom wasn’t. I had seen the evidence. I tried the knob of the locked door again, checking just to be sure.

  Nothing.

  The warmth of my costume grew to stifling levels, and it felt as if I was suffocating in my own suit. And I couldn’t stop it from happening.

  The tunnel vision.

  It had made me an exemplary solider. It had made me an even better agent. Once.

  The world fell away, and my focus centered on the door, heightening every sensitivity in my body.

  Curiosity clashed with caution, and before I could stop myself, I was picking the lock with the end of a sharpened plastic blade snuck in under my own clothing, twisting the keyhole carefully before giving it a slight shake and pushing my way inside.

  A cursory glance told me that I’d entered into the senator’s study, and despite my former fear—a keen awareness that had racked my body just seconds ago, I’d forgotten all about Jeff the second I stepped inside.

  Books on shelves lined the periphery of the room. I reached my hands out to slide them against the smooth surfaces of the mahogany shelving, reveling at the rich feel of the bookcases and drawers.

  The smell of leather, cigar smoke, and wealth coursed through the air and my constricted nostrils. I removed my Bat mask, breathing easier.

  My hands stilled above the darkened top of the senator’s grand, wooden desk. This time, I wasn’t just letting curiosity overcome caution.

  I was letting it squelch it and trample it into oblivion.

  I crouched at the knee, taking one of the smaller blades from my customized Swiss Army knife. I edged it towards the top keyhole.

  My world began to quiet.

  The sounds of moans, muffled and eager, filtered through the walls, and my mind went into mute mode, shutting out everything bit by bit.

  Even the sound of my own heart started to hush. I listened to its softening steady beat, until another beat in the air caught my attention.

  Or rather it wasn’t a beat. More like a thump. Singular and soft.

  The sound of a footstep.

  I froze, feeling a shock shoot across my spine. My costume had dulled my senses, stifling my awareness, but now that I had heard it, there was no mistaking it.

  Someone was in the room.

  I withdrew the knife carefully from the edge of the desk, locking my limbs. The study was bigger than I thought, and I was stupid enough not to have checked it first.

  I cursed myself quietly, damning to hell my impatience, my sloppiness, and whatever fucker was currently in the room with me.

  I waited.

  I waited so long that my boots began to grow roots into the floor. Because that’s how you flushed out an enemy. You smothered him with patience, lulling him into an ill-conceived comfort until eventually he slipped up.

  He’d make a move. He’d touched an object. Or he’d breathe.

  And when he did, you were there to pounce on him, snuff him out. Eliminate the threat.

  It was a lesson that my unsuspecting threat would soon learn… because he had done all three. Unable to hold position, he wandered carelessly towards the center of the room from the side bathroom door.

  He had presumed that his potential threat was gone. He had assumed oh, so fucking wrong.

  I counted his footsteps, measuring his distance by their sound.

  Ten feet. Seven feet. Five feet. Two.

  He was practically on top of me. But the room was pitch black. Moonlight barely filtered through the darkened curtains, and he couldn’t see me, hunkered behind the oversized desk, my hands ready, my breathing steady.

  By the time he recognized the danger, it was too late.

  I descended like a tsunami.

  I struck outwards, reaching with all ten fingers until I felt smooth skin. Once my fingertips brushed the tip of the spine, I slide them upwards.

  I was always good at this part.

  In less than a second, I was capable of taking total control of the neck. I compressed it between my palms. Victorious, I squeezed, slamming two hands around the stranger’s throat until I could feel the air escape.

  I never squeezed to harm. No. Not at this point, at least.

  I squeezed enough to stun, to sink the threat into the depths of submission. I never killed for pleasure, but I had killed. I was a coffee man, so it wasn’t exactly my “cup of tea”… but my tastes did vary when it called for it.

  And with the pressure of tonight’s mission on my shoulders, my appetite was positively whet.

  I growled quietly into a face that I knew could barely wheeze. My voice was pure gravel.

  It never occurred to me how soft the body beneath my fingers actually was. I was so close my teeth could almost graze the person’s lips.

  “Who the fuck are you?” I demanded.

  FIRE IN THE HOLE

  PENELOPE

  I couldn’t breathe.

  And it wasn’t from nervousness. Not from fear or anxiety or even the all-consuming dread that I felt the minute I heard sounds around me.

  I couldn’t breathe because someone was quietly crushing my windpipe.

  I thought the coast was clear. I walked back into the center of the room and into a pair of hands that were as strong as the Jaws of Life. A voice, barely more audible than a breeze, washed in heavy breaths across my frightened face.

  The breaths were cool, disturbingly even, and had a sweet smell tinged with the scent of whiskey. Surprisingly pleasant, it was the only thing my terrified mind could process.

  Maybe because I knew that it would be the last thing my brain would ever remember…

  I tried to speak, but the sound of my voice died in my throat.

  The man let go of my neck, and embarrassingly I sputtered. It was actually easier to catch my breath than I expected, like a faucet of air that had been turned on within my lungs.

  I breathed deeply as I tried to take a step backwards, and I wondered just who the hell this man was to have done what he had done. And though I couldn’t see his eyes… I knew he was silently daring me to even think about walking away from him.

  And was that… was that a Bat suit that he was wearing?

  I clutched at my own throat as if to protect it.

  “Do I have to ask you again?” he rumbled quietly.

  “I’m…” I drew a blank. I exhaled, lowering my hands. “I’m nobody.”

  “You don’t seem like nobody. You seem like somebody lurking behind locked doors in places where you don’t belong.”

  His voice was molten. He spoke with an authority that contradicted his ridiculous appearance, and I stared back at his shadowy silhouette. The ridiculous costume should have made him seem more harmless, but it did the opposite.

  Darkly dangerous, it made me feel like I really was the comic book criminal, caught red-handed, and the masked vigilante was there to stop me.

  Fuck. It was slowly setting in. The “ma
sked crusader” was the senator’s own security.

  I was beyond screwed.

  “Listen, Sir…” I twisted the jester hat I’d been wearing all night in my hands. His response was gruff.

  “I ain’t no fucking ‘Sir’.” His tone struck some tiny chord in me. One minute ago, I was afraid of this man. Now all I felt was curiosity. He sure didn’t talk like security.

  And by the look of him, tall and fully costumed, he didn’t seem to be one, either. I stared at him, neither of us backing down.

  It was almost as if we didn’t know what to do next. He had surprised me, and when I thought about it, I was sure I had taken him aback as well.

  What the fuck was he even doing here?

  I opened my mouth to speak, not sure what the hell would come out. And that’s when I heard it.

  The sound of footsteps on the other side of the door accompanied by voices. One of the voices sounded just beyond the heavy wood, but the other? The other hadn’t. It had an electronic quality, a static-y tenor that indicated that it was coming from a mic, a recorder.

  Or a walkie-talkie.

  I couldn’t breathe for the second time that night. Because I had been wrong. The man in front of me wasn’t security.

  But the man behind the door was.

  Before I could gasp, the man in the bat suit had grabbed me once again, dragging me.

  Shocking me into silence, he cupped his hand under the curve of my ass, picking me off of the floor. Slapping the other five fingers over my mouth, he carried me into the bathroom, planting my body against the wall where he held me there, his own body—costume and all—holding me flush against the wall as he whispered in my ear.

  “Shhhh…”

  It was a sound I felt more than heard. It trailed from my neck along the length of my spine. There was something familiar in it, something distinct that created a shudder across my shoulders.

  He was a stranger, one who had nearly strangled me less than sixty seconds before, and I could not stop the visceral reaction I had to him.

  I was nervous about the man outside of the study. I was more nervous about the man against my body.

  I held my breath.

  I listened to the door open and squeezed my eyes shut.

  The man who entered the office practically cackled.

  “Did you the see the tits on Fletcher’s wife? Je-sus. This is the hottest one he’s had yet. Give it another five years, and she’ll be single again. And when she is, she’s mine. I’ll quit this detail just to jump all over that ass.”

  The static-y voice replied soon after.

  “Fuck you, mate,” the disembodied voice laughed. His voice was a nasally and thick as his British accent. “If anyone’s going to be fucking her, it’s me. Your waist is as wide as your mouth, and the only thing your big gob is probably good for is cock-sucking.”

  “You wish, prick,” the man in the room spat. “There’s enough of that happening in Fletcher’s bedrooms. The maid service will be in for a hell of a job by the time morning hits.”

  The conversation was lewd. I had a few words of my own for these pervy, depraved fuckbags that worked in the senator’s employ, but I couldn’t speak.

  The nerves had taken over, and even if they hadn’t, Batman’s hand was preventing even a squeak from peeping out.

  I inhaled through quivering nostrils.

  The footsteps neared, the nasty comments from the security detail’s conversation inching even closer as the American security guard walked further into the room.

  He was near the desk, if my mental calculations were right. I could barely think. All I could do was feel.

  I felt the hard body pressed against my breasts, the breathing in my ear, the “hushing” whispers against my shoulder. I let the man—a possible murderer for all the fuck I knew—flood my mind with these bewildering sensations.

  Either way I looked at it… I was up shit’s creek without a paddle.

  I was in over my head the moment I stepped foot into this house.

  I waited for the bodyguard to walk right around the corner and into the tiny side room. But the sound of glass breaking, sudden and piercing, had broken into the recesses of my fear, letting a light shine through.

  The security guard stopped.

  “Christ!” he shrieked. I could hear the quiet click of a button. “Scott, what the hell was that?”

  “I don’t know, Gare. Maybe one of those literal fuckers on the second floor kicked something over?”

  “Well, find the fuck out. This isn’t supposed to be some backdoor brothel, you know. This is still a classy party.”

  I wanted to laugh at the “classy” part he just mentioned. But I didn’t have the chance. He left. And in his wake, I breathed the biggest sigh of relief I could fucking take.

  My captor finally removed his hand.

  “You ok?” he asked.

  Surprised, I responded. “Y-yeah… at least, I think so. I’m not struggling to breathe anymore.” I gave him a pointed look, and then he glanced down at me.

  He backed up by a step. His presence was overwhelming, and even when he increased the separation between us, I still felt a pull.

  It was as if there were tiny threads connecting us. His solid body stood a few feet from mine, and it still felt as if his warmth was all over me.

  I should have feared him. I should have been fucking running for the hills, but something had stopped me.

  I didn’t know what it was, didn’t want to know what it was… until he opened his barely concealed mouth.

  “I’m sorry about that…” he started. “But then again, you shouldn’t exactly be here.” He paused with a gravity that I didn’t understand. “Should you, Pea?”

  ***

  JACKSON

  I could smell her.

  I could smell her all over me.

  The scent of lavender combined with the heady scent of her skin, and the second I pulled her into the bathroom, I had known. I had finally known who the woman in my arms was.

  I knew it was my Harley. I could tell from the tight tailoring of her form-fitting dress.

  Her hat was off. The darkness in the study had prevented me from seeing much else, but I could sense everything.

  The lower frills on her dress stuck out like a sore thumb, and my first assumption had been that she was sent to spy on me. I hadn’t trusted anyone in four years. Male. Female. Friend or foe.

  They were all the same.

  With the exception of my secretary and, Bishop, the man who I’d once nearly died beside, everyone else was expendable.

  For the longest time, I wasn’t sure if that list included her. I still wasn’t sure… even when she was standing three feet in front of me, breathing heavily, bathing me in the particular perfume that belonged to her and her alone.

  Nobody smelled as fucking good as Penelope. Nobody.

  I was “safe” as long as she was in Paris. But here? Caught in close proximity to this woman who’d wrecked my life—in more ways than one, her presence was like a potent poison.

  I was sickened. I was enraged.

  And I was absolutely, positively, fucking drawn to her.

  And maybe that was the basis of her appeal.

  Penelope was a chapter of my life that had ended on an ellipsis. I was a businessman, just like she was a career woman, and like any true workaholics, we didn’t just close the chapters of our lives.

  We burned them… starting the next page while the last went up in smoke.

  People like Penelope and me didn’t mourn the ashes; we kept right on moving, but somehow, destiny wouldn’t allow me to turn the page.

  Over the years, my one summer sweetheart resurfaced again and again.

  I almost touched her skin just to see if she was real. I refused to grab hold of her hand, scared of what I would do. I spoke instead.

  “You need to come with me…” I said.

  Her voice quivered. “Jackson? Batman?”

  “We need to get out of her
e, Pea. Before we really do get caught. Is that what you want?”

  She shook her head slowly, leaning her back against the wall.

  “Okay.” I withdrew further from her body. “I’ll check the hallway. And then you can lead the way out.”

  Our exit was swift. Taking a sweep of the hallway with my eyes, I beckoned Penelope forward. Replacing her hat, adjusting my mask, I led us directly to the stairs.

  The sound of quick footsteps following almost made me drag her down them. Paranoid, I spun on the person behind us. I startled him just as much as he startled me.

  I nearly shocked the badly-fitting wig off his hard head. He stumbled.

  “Ho—ly shit. Are you trying to kill me, Jax?” Jeff exhaled.

  I drilled him with my eyes. “In a word… yes. And if you don’t have a death wish, you’ll stop all the damned meddling.”

  He faltered. “But didn’t I do good?”

  “What?” I barked.

  “With the perfect distraction.” He shrugged. “I threw a glass plate against a wall several doors down. Watched you break in. But not before snagging this.” He smugly held out a slender piece of cardboard.

  No. It wasn’t cardboard. It was a folder. The same one I’d come here to steal tonight.

  Dammit.

  Fucking fools and babes. God protected the hell out of them. But why He saw fit to protect this one in particular, I had no clue. I couldn’t tell if Jeff was the luckiest fucker to ever take up stealth… or the dumbest.

  I was willing to bet that it was a bit of both.

  I’d considered tapping any one of my other associates at Reed Investigations Agency to help me tail her, but instead decided to make Jeff my first call.

  A hire based solely off an e-mail by my best friend, Bishop, I’d given Jeff the bulk of the associate assignments, grooming him to maybe one day take my place, but six weeks into it, I’d had second, third and four thoughts about whether this kid could cut it.

  He’d gone off the rails more than once, and when it came down to it, Jeff proved to have the rapt attention span of a boiled egg.

  He was fucking lucky he was still of some use with the mystery caller’s case. If not for that, he’d already be standing in the local unemployment line.