“So let me have some fun.” I accepted my third drink with a bright smile, and the bartender smiled back. He was all right looking, not nearly as gorgeous as Dylan, but that didn’t stop Dylan from scowling a little as the other man walked away. I bit back a grin as I raised the glass to my mouth.
“I guess you’re less dangerous when you’re a little tipsy,” he murmured.
“Dangerous, huh? What an interesting choice of words,” I purred. I felt myself sliding into the role of the seductress, like I was putting on an old coat. “I’m not really dangerous, you know. That’s only what I want people to think. It’s a façade.”
“Oh, really? Well, it’s a pretty convincing one.”
I leaned my chin on my palm and looked at him through half-lidded eyes. “What have I done so far to give you the idea I’m so dangerous?”
“Besides waving a gun in my face?” he murmured, keeping an eye on the bartender. He had nothing to worry about—we were virtually alone at that time of day, with only a couple of obvious regulars slumped over the other end of the bar.
“Come on. That wasn’t intentional, and I really did think it was unloaded. That’s not much of an argument. What do you think I’m going to do? Scale the walls? Dash across rooftops in the dark of night? This isn’t a movie. I’m just a regular person.” A regular person with a handful of fake IDs and enough foreign currency to set me up on the other side of the world.
“There’s nothing regular about you, if you don’t mind my saying.”
“And if I do mind?”
He polished off his burger. “Too late. I already said it.”
I bit the side of my tongue to keep from laughing. “What’s so abnormal about me, then? What makes me so special?”
“Don’t bait me.”
“I’m not trying to bait you. Come on. I really wanna know.” I elbowed him playfully before taking a sip of my drink. Was it just my imagination, or was he a little flushed? In any other situation, it would’ve been fun to play with him—actually, I was already having too much fun. I had to get my head back in the game.
Suddenly, his expression hardened. “You’re different, and you know it. Don’t treat me like one of your targets.” He polished off his burger, then reached for his wallet.
That was unexpected. Rarely did a man throw me, but he managed it. “What’s wrong? What did I say?”
“Nothing. Don’t worry about it.” He glanced at my plate. “You finished?”
“Uh, I guess?” I was, pretty much, at least with the food. It was him I wasn’t finished with. “What’s the rush?”
“We’ve already been out long enough. I’m sure Pax wants to get that car out of here.” He signaled the bartender for the check. I finished my drink—no sense letting it go to waste—and watched in surprise as he put a few bills down on the surface of the bar.
“I told you I’d treat for lunch today,” I reminded him.
“Don’t worry about it. You can get it next time.” He stood there, waiting for me. I had no choice but to get up and follow him out the door. Had I pushed too hard? He had called me dangerous. He was on his guard all the time. I had to keep that in mind.
“Do you really not like me?” I stumbled a little as I stepped out the door and into the sunlight. Maybe all that drinking had affected me more than I thought it did when I was sitting down. I felt myself falling and had a gruesome image of what my knees would look like after coming into contact with the sidewalk, but I didn’t have to worry. He turned and caught me easily. It was like floating, just effortlessly hanging in the air with his hands around my arms.
“You okay?” He put me back on my feet. I noticed how he didn’t look me in the eye. Meanwhile, I couldn’t ignore the feeling of his hands on me even when he wasn’t touching me anymore. I blamed it on the alcohol.
“Yeah, I’m fine. Thanks.” I shook off the fluttery feeling in my stomach. We walked to his Jeep and made the ride back to the safe house in silence. It looked like I’d have to go back to the drawing board.
Chapter Ten – Dylan
It would be a lot easier for the both of us once she figured out that I wasn’t one of her toys.
Did she think I was stupid? We were just talking about the way she used men, and then she got flirty out of nowhere. Sure, it might’ve been the alcohol, but there was something deliberate about it. Like she was thinking too much, like there was nothing natural happening.
And she almost had me. I couldn’t have hated myself more than I did just then, when I remembered how close I had come to getting sucked in by her little act. The ketchup in the corner of her mouth. God, how obvious. But that hadn’t stopped me from watching her like a starving man staring at a buffet.
I reminded myself of that time and again over the next week. Whenever she seemed more friendly than usual, I reminded myself of the way she had flirted. The way she told me she knew what men wanted. She thought she knew what I wanted, too.
Maybe I did want it. No, more than maybe. I definitely did. That was why I had to keep distance between us. Eventually, she stopped trying—but I could still sense the wheels turning in her head. She was trying like hell to think up a way to sneak past me and out the door. She could keep trying.
We fell into a sort of rhythm. I was always up before five in the morning, and that was when I’d work out. She was usually up around seven, after I was finished and showered. She’d make coffee, then work out in her room. I’d hear her huffing and puffing as she did whatever she did—dancing, stretching, whatever. She wouldn’t tell me anything about it. She wouldn’t tell me much about anything after I shut her down at the bar. Maybe I had been a little too harsh, but we didn’t have to be friends. I had a job to do.
Even so, she would cook dinner for the two of us. She was a good cook. When I told her I thought so, she gave me a look like I had told her the sky was blue. “I know,” she said. “It’s one of my ‘normal person’ skills.”
“You can’t just take a compliment. I’m trying to tell you I admire the way you cook, and I appreciate you taking the time to do it.” She only looked me up and down with a raised eyebrow, then went back to eating her broiled salmon.
Aside from our shared meals, we pretty much spent the day apart. She’d read, I’d watch TV. She’d do things on her laptop that I wasn’t allowed to know about. I would check in on things at the office. It was the usual stuff. I wished I was part of that stuff instead of sitting around, collecting dust. Pax was still adamant that we not go anywhere without his approval since Vienna was such a flight risk. I wished she would run. I could get back to something like a normal life.
I had just made up the couch on Thursday night, over a week after first meeting Vienna, when my phone rang. Pax almost never called so late at night, unless there was something seriously wrong. Only it wasn’t Pax. It was Ricardo.
“We might have a problem,” he reported in a tight voice. Like he would call if there wasn’t an issue. It wasn’t like we were friends.
I sank down onto the couch. And I was just about to go to sleep, too. “I can only imagine what this means,” I said. “So many things could be going wrong. What is it?”
“A contact of Vienna’s is dead. The file just crossed my desk—evidently, she just met with this guy last week? You were with her?”
“Erich?”
“Yeah. Erich Gardner. Found dead on an abandoned pier.”
“Shit.” I scrubbed a hand over my face. “She’s gonna lose it.”
“It’s your job to keep her from losing it,” Ricardo reminded me.
“No, it’s my job to keep her from running,” I fired back.
“Right. Sometimes I get things mixed up. I’m too tired to even banter tonight. I honestly thought this case would be easy because she turned herself in. Like it’s my first day here or something.”
I took a look at the closed bedroom door. I could just imagine how upset she would be when she found out, and what she would think it meant for her. The thing was, I wou
ldn’t be able to tell her she was overreacting. “Okay. This’ll be fine. I’ll tell her.”
“And we don’t know for sure why this guy ended up dead,” he reminded me. “He wasn’t a pillar of the community.”
“True. Could’ve been drugs or something.” I remembered the way he’d scratched at his arms, covered even though it was a hot day.
“Yeah, we’re waiting on the coroner’s report before we confirm it was foul play. But that pier is pretty well-known for drug activity.”
“You sound like you think it was sketchy, though.”
“I’ve learned over the years that people like him are lucky to die of natural causes. Let’s put it that way.”
Yes, and she could’ve been one of those people, too. I thanked Ricardo for the information, then hung up. I still had no idea how to tell her. It would be better to wait until morning, I decided. That way she could at least get some sleep.
Only I didn’t have the luxury of waiting. “You know how thin these walls are?” she whispered from down the hall.
I jumped. She was like a ghost—something that helped her when she was working, I guessed. I had never seen her the way she was just then, half-slumped over, arms crossed over her stomach, leaning against the door frame to her bedroom.
“You weren’t supposed to hear that. I thought you were sleeping.”
“I thought I was, too. But I heard enough of what you were saying.” She came to me, and her eyes had a haunted look. “Is it true? He’s dead?”
I wished I didn’t have to nod, but I did. “I’m sorry.”
She started swaying on her feet, and I gathered her in my arms and pulled her onto my lap. I didn’t even think first—my arms were around her before I knew it. Her head rested on my shoulder.
“I can’t believe it. I can’t believe it.” She covered her face with her hands and burst into tears. I held her as she shook with sobs.
“I’m really sorry. They don’t know how it happened. It was probably an overdose or a deal gone wrong.” And that was supposed to comfort her? Well, it was in my head. I could see how maybe that wouldn’t do it, though. I wasn’t surprised that she didn’t stop crying.
“I know it wasn’t,” she sobbed. “I know it was because of me.”
“Because of you?”
“I should’ve just given up the jewelry.” She sounded so devastated, like a heartbroken little girl. Where was the sophisticated, worldly woman she always pretending to be? Maybe it wasn’t even pretend. Maybe she really was that woman. But she was also a scared little kid, and that kid was in my arms, sobbing her heart out.
“You did what you felt was right—and you still don’t know if the jewels were the reason why he’s dead. He had a lot of other people he worked with, right? It wasn’t just you.”
“You’re right about that,” she admitted. “He had a pretty broad network.”
“So, come on. What are the odds?”
“I guess you’re right.” She didn’t sound like she meant it—then again, neither did I. It was too big a coincidence.
“He was supposed to get out of town, wasn’t he? I mean, we told him to.” She shook her head, sniffling. “I wish he had listened.”
“Me, too.”
She snickered. “You didn’t even like him.”
“That doesn’t mean I wanted him to die. He was still a person. And you cared about him.”
“I did, but can I tell you a secret?”
“Sure.” I stroked her back as she rested against me.
She took a deep breath. “I’m scared, too. For myself. I don’t know what I care more about right now.”
“That’s okay. You’re only human.”
She lifted her head to give me a suspicious look. “You don’t have to patronize me just because I’m upset.”
I shook my head. “I’m not patronizing you. I know how you feel.”
“How could you know?”
I kept stroking her back and wondered if it was worth opening up. If it made her feel a little better, I guessed it was. And it wasn’t like she would tell anybody else. “I felt that way once or twice back in Iraq.”
Her eyes went wide. “You did?”
“When I lost friends. It was shitty, of course. Young guys, guys I liked, guys who were like my brothers. That’s bad enough.” My voice dropped to almost a whisper. “But if anybody ever tells you they don’t feel just a little relieved when it’s not them, especially when they’ve been through a couple of tours, they’re full of shit. There’s a point where you feel like you’re cheating death, almost. When it’s not you, that’s almost a relief. At the same time, you feel like you’re tempting Fate. Every time somebody dies, you wonder if you’re next. And that’s some scary shit.”
We looked at each other for a long time, until I finally laughed a little. “I never told anybody that.”
“Your secret’s safe with me.” She looked like she was feeling a little better, but she still settled back in against my chest. “I wish I had never done the job. God, if I had a buck for every time I’ve thought that.”
“Do you have any idea at all who wanted it done? I mean, did Erich ever say anything?”
“Not a word. He was a professional—and before you laugh at that, I’m serious. He knew how to keep his mouth shut.”
“That’s sort of frustrating for us, isn’t it?”
“But he at least tried to keep me safe—even though it didn’t work, since the asshole found out where I live.” She shook her head. “God, what if they’ve been in and out of my apartment the last week?”
“The cops have eyes on your apartment at all times.”
“They do?”
“Of course. There’s a whole investigation going on right now. The cops want to know who wanted the goods.”
She leaned back to look at me. “Are they going to ask me to tell them about my other jobs, too?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Are you sure?’
“No, I’m not sure,” I admitted, “but I doubt it. I do think, if they find out Erich was murdered, they’ll want you to cooperate.”
She sighed. “That’s what I was afraid of.”
“You don’t have much of a choice. Don’t you see that?”
“That doesn’t make it any easier.” She pulled herself up off my lap, and the sense of loss I felt was surprising. The moment had passed. She was back to being her usual stubborn, self-reliant self. It had been nice, just acting like two people for a little while instead of people who only got on each other’s nerves.
We both looked at my phone when it buzzed. Come in tomorrow. Nine o’clock. I showed her Ricardo’s text, and one corner of her bottom lip disappeared as she chewed on it. I felt sorry for her then. I wished she would let her guard down and just be a person all the time, not only when she was too distracted to put up a front.
“He’s going to ask me all sorts of questions,” she murmured, then kept chewing. I told myself not to watch as she did it. I couldn’t help wondering what her lips would taste like under mine.
“And you’ll just have to answer them. You had to know this would be coming sometime, being under our protection, turning yourself in the way you did.”
“I guess so.” Her eyes flashed at me all of a sudden. She could turn on a dime. “I guess you’ll want to hear all about it, too, so you can feel good about yourself for being such a good boy.”
“Get real,” I snarled. “Sorry if you can’t handle somebody being nice to you. I won’t make that mistake again.”
She glared at me for a beat, then stormed off to her room. What was with her? She had to stop thinking like a criminal and start thinking like a normal person if she had any chance of keeping either of us sane before her trial came up.
I sank back against the cushions, sleep forgotten. All I could do was remember how right it felt to hold her in my arms as she cried.
Chapter Eleven – Vienna
I had to get out. I couldn’t wait for him to loo
sen up and given in to me. I needed to go, fast.
But how? I chewed my nails to the quick as I paced the length of the bedroom. I was a nail biter when I was a kid, something it took time to break myself of. Funny how old habits could come back when it felt like the world was falling apart.
Erich. I couldn’t get the image of his face out of my head. He wasn’t the smartest. He sure wasn’t the most honest. I had no idea how he got into the life, but I would’ve bet it wasn’t because his parents trained him to do it. I had always lived by a certain set of standards, but that was because I was privileged enough to live that way. I did what I did because I was good at it, because I liked it and the money was good. He worked to survive, nothing more. What did survival mean? Probably drugs—I couldn’t pretend to believe the lies he used to tell. Keeping a roof over his head and scraping enough money together for something to eat. Poor Erich.
I wondered how long he’d been dead when they found him. He should’ve left town. The client must’ve gotten tired of waiting. I had let Erich down, no matter what Dylan said. I should’ve thought of somebody besides myself before going to the cops. All I had ever thought about was me, just the way Mom and Dad always taught. I had to look out for Number One. Instead of doing that, I should’ve collected the fee for the job and skipped town—the country, even. But no, I had panicked. That was another thing Mom and Dad taught me, not to panic when things got crazy.
Things were officially crazier than they had ever been, and I was panicking again. I slammed my fist into my palm as I paced. It had to be the way a drowning person felt, like the water was creeping up all the time and just about to cover my head. I wouldn’t be able to breathe much longer. I couldn’t figure out how to keep my head above water.
The bag in the back of my underwear drawer kept calling my name. Knowing it was there wasn’t helping. All I had to do was take it out, pulling out the passport of the person I felt like being next, and go. Simple as that. I had never been so tempted to do anything, ever. Even when I sat in Dylan’s lap and leaned against him and wanted to stay there forever because he had a way of making me feel safe for once. When I was in his arms, even when I was in tears, I could relax and breathe. I didn’t have to carry the entire world on my shoulders. He was more than strong enough to carry the load for the two of us.
Lewis Security Page 36