Up in Smoke (Kisses and Crimes Book 2)

by Natalie E. Wrye

  I was with Jordan, supporting him… standing beside him. But at the same time, I also was not.

  Brought in by my law firm to represent and defend the senator’s office, I sat by helplessly, straddling a dangerous fence—one that was electrified on one side and wrapped in lethal barbed wire on the other.

  Pain on one end. Pure agony on the other.

  There was no winning in this lawsuit, and so I went with my gut… but my gut brought me to Bishop… and, ultimately, Jackson. I knew no other way of getting my hands on that file—a file I knew could literally be the difference between life or death…

  At least… that’s how I rationalized our “breaking and entering” in my mind.

  And well, hell, didn’t the file we were stealing belong to Jordan in the first place…?

  His written deposition—taken by his lawyer, sealed up in a manila folder and promised to be held until the trial—magically found its way into congressman Fletcher’s hands.

  And with another Abracadabra-Presto-Chango!, his slick-haired and even slicker talking lawyer had skipped town, disappeared around the same time as the missing depo, leaving poor Jordan with no representation, no plan… and certainly no hope.

  Senator Fletcher had certainly made sure of that.

  I was, in essence, Jordan’s last resort.

  And Bishop and Jackson were mine.

  So, Jordan and I waited while our last resorts stormed into the opulent offices. On the corner of a deadened street. At three in the morning. In the blustering cold.

  And suddenly the D.C. weather got a little bit icier, made so by the abrupt gusts traveling upwind. A harsh draft swept in with the coming of the snowstorm, up the street and in our direction…

  Bringing a man, tall and almost undetectable, with it.

  I couldn’t see his face.

  His walk was fast, purposeful. Muted-colored clothing covered him from head-to-toe, and I wondered if he looked ominous among the snow because it was so blindingly white…

  Or because he was.

  I didn’t understand…

  No way was this a vagabond. A homeless person, maybe, but he didn’t have the gait of a wanderer, seeking shelter or food.

  No.

  Those unfortunate souls were hunched when they walked, plodding along the concrete sidewalks as the brunt of Atlantic winter battered their heavily hooded faces and bodies.

  Theirs was not an easy trek during the winter.

  And when they approached, you spotted them from a mile off. In hulking hats and coats. Wrapped in half-worn blankets and quilts.

  They wore dark clothing. Not white…

  This man was dressed as if he were heading to a ski lodge, covered in a wintry white coat with nude trappings.

  He had the posture of a man who knew where he was going. And when I realized where he was going as well, I could barely get the words out.

  I grabbed onto Jordan’s arm from the passenger seat.

  Several seconds later, I heard the gunshots…

  And the rumble of the car engine became deafeningly loud. No, it was the rumbling of the floor from the stampeding opera attendees, the richly dressed patrons, who were heading in my direction.

  The simultaneous noise echoed in both my subconscious and immediate surroundings. The sounds of bullets and rumbling ripped through my memory, making a beeline out of my daydream and roaring without mercy into my reality.

  I was getting ready to be swallowed up by the sea of a panicked crowd’s high-priced soles.

  Until…

  A hand grabbed me.

  It pulled me roughly.

  “Come on!”

  And then I was off and running. Careening blindly amidst the playhouse’s seats.

  The opera had no phantom, but it had turned to horror.

  Gold fixtures winked at me as I passed, and the red carpet beneath my feet felt like quicksand.

  The harder I ran, the stronger it pulled, slowing me down, sucking me into the floor as I scrambled to stay ahead of the frantic horde of the opera house.

  I gripped the hand that engulfed mine for dear life. I didn’t even realize whose hand it was until I looked up.

  Jackson.

  Ahead of me. Sprinting up the stands, past the seats and towards the exit with blinding speed.

  I could barely keep up. I lost a shoe. Stumbling behind him, breathing out in staggering breaths, I made it to the marble covered floor amidst the second level lobby.

  And there, in front of the swinging exit doors, I collapsed, falling to my knees on my chiffon, huffing between huge gulps as I struggled for air, feeling spent—finished.

  I didn’t have an ounce of energy—mental or physical—left in me.

  I begged Jackson to go—to leave me.

  And within seconds, I was in his arms, swept up off my feet. My head lay on his collar, the back of my knees in the crook of one of his elbows, my lower back cradled in the other.

  I kept my face tucked into his shoulder as Jackson carried me—gown and all—into the New York City streets to a cacophony of horns and scattered yells.

  I didn’t remember making it to his car, but by the time we had, both of my shoes were gone. My red hair tumbled in curls over my shoulders, and my gown had ripped, split open below my thigh.

  I knew I looked a mess, but when Jackson glanced over at me, I suddenly felt more precious than ever.

  His eyes were wide, focused.

  It was as if he was seeing me for the first time, and there was wonder in his stare—a sense of astonishment, relief… and absolute need.

  If I could… I would have stayed right there under that stare forever…

  But I knew I couldn’t.

  I’d left Chip behind, and, hell, Sienna.

  I’d given my eager secretary my opera ticket and for all I knew she had been trampled among the chaos, or worse—she could have been sniped by a bullet.

  I found a renewed courage I didn’t know I had, reaching for the passenger door. As my fingers closed around the door handle, my hands were snatched from beneath it.

  Jackson swiped my wrist, holding it in his hand, and as he wrapped his digits around my tender skin, he captured my gaze.

  His voice was molten.

  It belied the expression of pure panic on his pained but beautiful face, and in that moment I wanted nothing more than to comfort him.

  Touch him. Ease the alarm that I knew we both felt.

  The world around us was exploding into madness, but when he looked at me, we felt like the only two people in the world.

  His words rumbled with barely-contained urgency.

  “You’re not going back out there,” he said.

  I gazed back at him.

  “I can.” I swallowed hard. “I have to. Sienna’s out there. I left Chip back at the…”

  “No, Pea. I let you out of my sight once. And that was a mistake. This time, I’m not letting you go. You’re sticking with me until this thing is done.”

  Jackson looked to the road ahead.

  “Or until I’m just fucking dead…”

  He said no more. He child-locked the doors.

  The ignition was turned, the engine was fired up and off we went out of the parking space and into a densely packed street in his darkened Audi. In which direction we were heading, I had no clue, but it wasn’t over…

  We weren’t running way.

  There was no place to escape to where my nightmares, real and imaginary, couldn’t reach me.

  A place where I couldn’t hear the sounds of death and couldn’t feel the ambient fear breathing down my neck.

  We were trapped. I was trapped. And the longer I stuck by Jackson, the more I wanted to… and the more danger I was ultimately in.

  We were the flame and the fuel.

  Combustible.

  Nothing without each other… but an inferno whenever combined.

  I knew it couldn’t work… being with him.

  Every time I used the word “we” in a se
ntence with Jackson Reed, the sentence tended to end dangerously. I knew better.

  We were never supposed to be a “we.”

  But who was right?

  Was I? For keeping my distance from Jackson? Or was Delilah for telling me to give him a chance?

  I didn’t know.

  All I knew is that for right now I was bound to him. I didn’t know how to get myself out.

  Our best friend, Bishop. The Jordan Chambers file.

  My attraction.

  They all connected me to the one man who pushed and pulled me like no other. He took what he wanted—including me—whenever he saw fit… and I was crazy enough about him to allow him.

  He had captured me against my will two months ago. He had captivated and taken me all of our lives. Until eventually he left me behind… and took irreplaceable pieces of me with him.

  Our relationship was doomed; we were fucked from the start.

  And I needed to know…

  The Halloween party. Jordan’s file. The opera.

  Jackson continued to show up at the most opportune times.

  And just when I thought the fires of turmoil had died down, he had this horrible habit of appearing around every corner, stoking the blaze… dousing gasoline over every sign of trouble and setting it aflame.

  I looked over at Jackson and saw that his jaw was locked. His tuxedo jacket off, the collar of his shirt sweaty and undone, he was gripping the steering wheel as if it would fly away.

  At that moment, I knew he knew.

  I knew he knew more than he was saying.

  What the hell had just happened back there?

  So, I asked him.

  His response was more honest than I anticipated. He blew out a breath. He wouldn’t look at me.

  “An assassination attempt on Senator Fletcher.” He stared at the road. “A successful one, I think…”

  ***

  JACKSON

  She finally nodded off.

  I drove away from the city, and as I shook off my second sleepless day, I tried to shed a shitload of guilt, regret, and utter fucking helplessness from my shoulders.

  I wasn’t telling Pea the truth…

  The guilt came from all the lying; the helplessness came from my inability to do more to reassure her, and the regret…

  Fuck it.

  There was no regret.

  Penelope was the only piece of Heaven I had in the middle of a Hell of my own making.

  Several days ago, at the bar, I’d beaten the senator’s two thugs half to death. I’d slammed one man into a table, knocked out another man’s tooth with a shot glass, and threatened to shove a pool stick up any intervener’s ass when they came to stop me.

  Fuck, I was getting too old for this shit.

  Thirty-three years of being a hard-ass hadn’t done much to “temper” my temper. I’d seen the rules change in the last ten years, and the things you could get away with—in the agency and, hell, anywhere else— you just couldn’t anymore. And well… everyone knew how I felt about rules…

  Fuck ‘em.

  Apparently, you couldn’t put bullets in people’s kneecaps, either, these days. And if another agent in the field broke the law, you couldn’t look the other way. You couldn’t pardon them. And you certainly couldn’t help them escape the country... which is exactly what I had done.

  In fact, I’d done every one of those things in just one night.

  I helped my very best friend escape the country. I helped his wife leave with him.

  And when a federal agent tried to stop me, I put a nine-millimeter projectile below his quad muscle… and handcuffed a hostage on my way out.

  And now she was out. My little hostage—for the second time. Sleeping like a baby in my passenger seat.

  Her eyes had fluttered closed the second we heard from Sienna—safe and sound. I still couldn’t get ahold of Jeff, and I prayed that my rookie had enough sense to charge what was probably a dead phone by morning.

  The space inside the car felt stuffy—sweaty. The air was stifling, damp with tension and the sweat that still covered our bodies from the opera pandemonium.

  One hand on the steering wheel, it almost felt as if my lungs were beginning to grow too tight. I knew my holster felt too tight. And by the time we crossed onto the other side of the bridge, back onto her side of the City, my pants definitely felt too tight.

  It was this suffocating weather.

  It was her suffocating presence.

  A rainy October was sliding headfirst into a even rainier November, and at that moment, I couldn’t decide which one was wetter: the atmosphere… or the space between my little hostage’s legs.

  I kept my concentration on the road, knowing if I thought about it too hard, if I really remembered it the way I wanted to… that I already had my answer.

  She protested louder than a bitch when I insisted on leaving Sienna and Jeff behind, so much so that I almost bound and gagged her on our way out of the city while the surface of her skin was still humming with fear.

  She was lucky the only thing I did was sweep her into my arms. If this had been four years ago, I would have done worse.

  I would have hog-tied her, flipped her over my shoulder, and every time she made a noise, I would have slapped a swift hand to the back of her tight little ass.

  Not that I was much different now, but I had grown up.

  I now realized that my actions had consequences, and the worst of them all was napping peacefully, cuddled innocently, and somehow downright seductively, in the passenger seat of my Audi—right beside me.

  I looked at her, letting my gaze caress every inch of her, knowing I should never see her again.

  Two months ago, I’d let the heat back in New York die down for five days while we’d stayed in Pennsylvania. From my best friend Bishop’s drop-off at that tiny airport in South Jersey to our quick hop over the Ben Franklin Bridge to Philly, I’d planted the two of us in The Middle-of-Nowhere Lancaster.

  It was supposed to be safe.

  Who would have known that the danger wouldn’t come from the outside but from in? Who would have known that the biggest threat to me wasn’t some thick-necked Fed, but a woman?

  A woman that I’d strangely started thinking of as mine again.

  Mine to keep. Mine to protect.

  This tempting woman… who for those next five days laid ten feet away from me at night.

  She was the only one to ever arrest me. And she’d done it in the oddest of ways, capturing pieces of me that I didn’t even know existed. I had to save her from herself. But saving her meant sacrificing more pieces of my own fucking hide, and I didn’t know if I had any good parts left to give.

  I parked in front of the first motel I’d found where the street was darkest.

  There, I left the car running, staring at her, and in that instant, I wondered if maybe if it was her. Maybe Penelope had been the last decent piece of me…

  She stirred just as soon as the thought crossed my mind. Moaning softly in the passenger seat, Penelope shifted a sheet of dark red hair across her face and something within me—something strong and deep and forgotten—shifted with it.

  Remnants of a past I’d wanted to leave behind reared its ugly head, except there wasn’t anything ugly about it.

  First loves were always like this… or so I’d been told.

  What’d we been to each other then was something wild and strong and impossible. It was burgeoned by youth, fueled by the intensity of pure emotion that comes with not having lived enough life.

  We were too ignorant, too stupid to let the real world sink in… and the beginning had been the stuff of fucking dreams.

  It was only the end that had turned grotesque.

  With one eye on her and the other practically on my back, I hit the front desk, finagling a deal with the lone motel clerk, and by the time I made it back to my locked car, I knew I had to make a decision right then and there.

  I could leave Penelope.

  Pick
her up, drop her off at Delilah’s, hand them a set of tickets and never look back.

  She was my past, but was I endangering her by believing that my future was where she belonged?

  I looked at her once more.

  I committed the vision of her to memory and then I finally reached out, lifting her gently with both hands.

  She awakened, and this time she didn’t recoil. She leaned in to my touch, and all I wanted to do was give her more of it.

  She looked up at me, sleepily. She didn’t even ask where I was taking her.

  The walk up to the motel’s front door was short. I already had the keys—and her—in hand.

  Pea rubbed a hand above her brow, and I kissed her forehead slowly, withdrawing to gaze down at her.

  Her mouth was set in a straight line.

  Her dark blue eyes met my sky-colored ones, and I could tell she was trying to look into me. To see answers that weren’t even there.

  “What are we doing?” she asked, at last.

  We. I liked the sound of the word on her lips. Not “her.” Not “me.”

  We.

  “We’re breaking our promises to each other. We’re throwing the rulebook out the window,” I answered, reaching towards our outside door. The night was clear, and so were my intentions. “I’m not sending you away… And this time? I’m not letting ‘business’ get between us. That’s it… and that’s all.”

  She accepted the answer, and without waiting, I opened the door, one-handed, shutting it behind us.

  The off-road spot where we were staying for the night was colder inside than out. The sheets looked clean—from what I could see, and though I hadn’t turned the lights on, I could tell that the décor was simple, modest.

  Three hours outside of the City, in a town smaller than my fist, this was about as good as a little “hideout” was going to get.

  I prepared to set Penelope down on the sheets, my eyes searching for the heater in the room immediately. I placed her soft, toned body on the bed and before I could pull away, the sound of her tiny voice pulled me in.

  It was softer than I’d ever heard it.

  And when she gaped openly at me, her sapphire eyes shimmering under the cover of moonlight, I couldn’t speak.