A Shameless Little Con

by Meli Raine

Silas moves between me and Monica again, deftly getting me out the door and into the hallway, zigging and zagging down turns until we’re in front of a plain door. He knocks.

  The door opens.

  A short man with thinning grey hair answers, wearing a doctor’s lab coat, holding a small electronic device in his hand about the size of an iPad mini. He opens the door further and looks at me, one eyebrow going up. Dark brown rheumy eyes take me in. He has no eyelashes, and the whites of his eyes are tinged yellow.

  “Jane Borokov, I assume?”

  “Are you searching someone else for implants today?” I ask, looking at the clock pointedly. It’s late. Then again, when you work for whatever agency this doctor is with, time ceases to matter.

  “You expect me to say no.” His voice is faintly accented, something from a romance language. I cannot tell whether it’s Spanish, French, Portuguese–who knows. Silas motions for me to enter before him, and in the space between us, the doctor starts to close the door, leaving Silas out.

  “No. I’m staying,” he says, squeezing into the tiny exam room.

  “Absolutely not,” the doctor says.

  “Absolutely yes.” Silas’s body grows the way it does when he’s defending me. “Or she leaves.”

  “This isn’t protocol.”

  “Depends on whose protocol you’re talking about. My orders say I have visual on the client at all times. She’s under death-threat watch.”

  “Or you’re a pervert who wants to see her naked.”

  “Oh, he already has,” I quickly explain. “Twice.”

  “That’s not helping, Jane.” Silas gives the doctor an unblinking look, saying nothing more.

  “Fine. Jane, sit here for the dental exam.” He pats the doctor’s rolling stool at the end of a standard exam table, the kind you find in any doctor’s office.

  And then I see the folded stirrups. No worries, though. Marshall said it was just a skin check.

  “Dental exam?” I ask.

  “Implants can be placed in teeth. Easiest, oldest way to use them to communicate,” he explains, though it’s clear he’s annoyed by being asked.

  “Oh. Okay.”

  “Any crowns? Implanted teeth?”

  “No.”

  “Fillings?”

  “No. My mother had perfect teeth, and so do I.”

  “What about your father?”

  “No idea. He died before I was born.”

  I open my mouth and the doctor pokes around, stabbing my gums, running the sharp metal spike along the edges of all my teeth where they go beneath the gum line. I taste blood quickly.

  “Perfectly aligned,” he says.”Braces?”

  “Three years.”

  “And no cavities?”

  “None.”

  “Well, that makes this faster. Bloodwork next. Do you have one arm that’s better?” He moves a tray covered with phlebotomy supplies next to the stool.

  I extend my left arm. “Here. I have one good vein,” I say, wanting to make this as painless as possible.

  The doctor taps it lightly with his glove-covered finger and makes a face of approval. “This will be easy.”

  And it is, relatively speaking. Eight vials of blood later, we’re done. He tapes a wad of gauze over the insertion site and scribbles on the tablet.

  He turns away, pointing to a folded sheet at the base of the exam table. “Remove all your clothes and we can do the next part of the exam.”

  Undressing for a pose at Alice’s is one thing. This–this feels like I’m agreeing to my own abuse. Like I’m offering myself up.

  Which I am.

  The look on Lindsay’s face when Drew said that I might be connected to his parents’ deaths made me want to cry, to blabber on and on about how I’m so sorry. To prove to them, once and for all, that I didn’t do any of this.

  But how do you prove a negative?

  My clothes slide off my body as Silas and the doctor–whose name I still don’t know and don’t want to ask for–turn their backs to me. I undress quickly and move onto the exam table, the paper crinkling beneath my bare ass, the plastic underneath cold on my outer thighs and butt as I hold the sheet up under my armpits, waiting.

  “Borokov, huh? Is that Russian?”

  “Yes. My mom emigrated when she was young.”

  “Any family ties back in your motherland?” He presses a hand on my bare shoulder, guiding me back to lie on the table, his face covered by a light-green paper mask, eyes excited.

  A cold dread starts to pump through me. “No.”

  “Does he really have to be in the room?” the doctor snaps as he yanks the sheet off my body, my completely nude form now stretched out on the exam table. My muscles can’t relax, so everything feels colder, tighter, more painful.

  Vulnerable.

  “I do,” Silas says, his voice heavy with an emotion that isn’t just about duty.

  “You’re taking up room. It’s a tiny exam space.”

  “Do your best.”

  I can’t explain it, but the doctor gives me the major creeps. Not that it isn’t already awkward as hell, being naked in front of Silas. Out of the corner of my eye, I can see him trying to be discreet, looking anywhere but my direction. My nipples harden and one thigh twitches as I think about the fact that Silas is eighteen inches away from me, sitting on a small examination stool, one simple turn giving him a view of my exposed body.

  “You’re warm, aren’t you?” the doctor says, his voice cutting through the handful of seconds where I was transported into my imagination. I shiver, my bladder suddenly pressing, the feeling making me flatten my hips against the paper and vinyl covering the table.

  He holds a magnifying glass in one hand.

  For the next ten minutes, I am put through a comprehensive body exam, with the doctor searching for a needle in a haystack.

  I am the haystack.

  He looks everywhere, turning me over, parting my butt cheeks, using the magnifying lens to look at every nook and cranny. He stays on the surface of my skin. I just close my eyes and try to be anywhere but here.

  The doctor pokes and prods at every scar, every blemish, eyes scanning my body meticulously, cataloging imperfections.

  The stark difference between his gaze and that of Alice painting me is like living in a parallel universe.

  As the doctor searches my back, Silas’s phone buzzes. He is turned away from me. I open my eyes a crack to see him pull the phone to his ear, taking a call.

  “You can talk in the hallway,” the doctor says crankily.

  “I can’t leave the client.”

  The client.

  The doctor’s cold latex-covered fingers occasionally touch spots on my skin, his breath hot in erratic patches against my back, my ribs, my buttocks. It’s excruciating. Not the touch–the sense of being a specimen. Of needing to “pass” this exam.

  Of not knowing why this is really happening.

  “Mom, I can’t–slow down. What?” Silas is speaking as quietly as he can but he’s only a few feet away. We can hear it all.

  Silas sighs. “Can’t talk now. You know what to do. We’ve talked about it before. She can’t compromise my work.”

  She?

  “Look,” he says, voice dropping to anger. “It’s more of the same. I know–I know,” he adds, exasperated. “But listen to me. You know what to do. I’ll call you when I have a break at work.”

  Click.

  He hangs up on his mother.

  I’m relieved to have something other than the exam to think about. What’s going on in Silas’s life?

  Just then, my legs are forcefully parted. I let out a small sound, a protest I didn’t consciously mount, one that the rough touch and the creepy vibe elicit.

  “We’ve been told to do a thorough examination,” he says. I hear the snap of a glove, then feel fingers on my inner thigh. High.

  I sit up, fast, and make a growling noise low in my throat, body tightening into a ball, curling all my openings so th
ey are covered.

  Except my mouth.

  “Whatever it is you think you’re about to do to me, no. I withdraw all consent for this search.”

  Suddenly, Silas is between me and the doctor, his wide back dark with his blue suit jacket, the contrast startling.

  “You can’t withdraw,” the doctor says from the other side of Silas. “Consent was never needed. Or asked for,” he adds in a disapproving tone, as if I’m the transgressor.

  “You heard her,” Silas says firmly. “She withdraws consent.” His body tenses, holding firm.

  “She doesn’t have a say in this. It’s like any other strip search. We’re well within our rights to–”

  “She said no.” Silas’s voice is low and deadly, with the kind of authority I’ve heard in Drew but never this man, who has literally turned himself into a wall.

  For me.

  “Your boss says yes.”

  “My boss doesn’t know what you’re doing to her.”

  “You really think that?” The doctor’s voice is mocking. “I won’t stop the exam without permission from your boss.”

  “And I won’t let you touch her again.”

  “Then we’re at an impasse.”

  Given the doctor is about eight inches shorter than Silas and thirty years older, if this comes to blows, I’m not worried.

  My stomach sinks anyhow, because one call to Silas’s boss–does he mean Drew?–means I lose.

  And Silas has to stand down.

  I know how bureaucracies work. I know how this strange, extra-judicial system works, too. I am only standing up for myself because the doctor is about to cross a line.

  “I withdraw consent,” I say again.

  “We may need to do this by force if you don’t just accept fate and let me finish,” the doctor says.

  “Said every rapist in history, ever,” I snap. “Now I withdraw consent and I’m reporting you to the police! You’re threatening–”

  Silas acts quickly, his dark suited arm moving to the right, the doctor’s lab coat trapped in one big hand. The guy is up against the wall, choking.

  Silas’s voice is deadly calm.

  “You will not threaten her. You will never, ever touch her again. If I hear that you’ve made that fucked-up force threat to a woman submitting for an exam like this, I’ll make sure you’re on the radar screen of people in the government you’ve never heard of–and don’t want to. Understood?”

  The doctor just makes a gagging sound.

  Silas drops him. Ever see a spider skitter away from a small spray of water?

  That’s exactly what he looks like as he leaves.

  “He’s right,” I say as I grab the thin sheet, covering myself with it. “If you weren’t here, he could have just made me do whatever he was about to do. Was he really going to search my… there… for implants? For chips?”

  Silas reaches up and hands me a hospital gown without turning around. “It’s possible to find them there, yes.”

  “Why not do a scan?”

  “Because bad guys always seem to find a way to be just savvy enough to be ahead of technology. And also because of intimidation.”

  “Intimidation?”

  “As a technique. No one wants a cavity search.”

  “You knew that was about to happen to me?” I shove my legs hard into my skirt opening and zip up, throwing my arms through my bra loops, snapping fast. I think I’m setting a personal best for quick dressing.

  “No. No,” he says forcefully. “Until I came in here I had no idea what they were doing.”

  “Drew ordered this?”

  “Not Drew.”

  “Then who? His boss? Oh, my God, did Harry order this?”

  “I can’t tell you who.”

  “You can protect me from it but you can’t name the person who ordered it?”

  “Welcome to the security industry.”

  “It’s all about the secrecy, isn’t it? Give your clients what they want, protect them at all costs, but use those secrets to position yourself at an advantage.” My words come out in a rushed scramble. Fear pushes them through my quivering lips.

  He goes quiet.

  “Are you decent?” he asks finally.

  “No, but I’m dressed.”

  His little snort of amusement thaws me, slightly. I know he can’t divulge information sometimes. It’s how this whole world works.

  But still–someone ordered a full cavity search on me. Someone high enough up in government to make it happen. Without Silas, I’d be in pain right now.

  Or worse.

  “Who would do that? I’m a private citizen who is here in protective custody because of the car bomb. No one seriously thinks I’ve done anything, except for Monica.”

  Silence.

  Oh, no.

  “Monica?”

  Silence.

  I sigh, pacing in the tiny room, narrowing my eyes to shut out the bright, overbearing fluorescent lights above that hover like an annoying alien ship.

  “Fine. I get it. You can’t say anything.” It’s easier to be angry with him than to process what just happened.

  “No, Jane. I can’t.”

  I walk to the door. Just as I’m reaching for the doorknob, so is he. Our hands collide, his grabbing my elbow to support me.

  He doesn’t let go when he could. Or when he should.

  “I’m sorry you went through that. Are you okay?”

  I am holding my breath.

  I am holding my breath because Silas is touching me with a gentleness that belies every attitude I thought he had toward me.

  He’s blocking out the light, his eyes so kind, so sweet. As I look up, I swear he’s staring at my lips, which gives me a few seconds to look at him. My skin hurts, like someone is stretching it too hard. The tension makes it unbearably itchy suddenly. Physical memories of the doctor’s hand on my inner thigh trigger all my Kegel muscles to clench. I close my eyes, wincing.

  “He didn’t actually hurt you, did he?” Silas sounds like the thought hadn’t occurred to him until now, and that if the doctor did, he is a dead man.

  “No. I’m just–I’m just–it’s too much,” I say, my body taking this tiny little flash of compassion from him and running with it, taking advantage of the momentary lapse in constant vigilance to relax, to process.

  To cry.

  “Jane,” he says, sounding helplessly pissed, still angry at the doctor yet unable to help me. “No one deserves what you’ve gone through.”

  “But I do!” I say in a bitter, over-the-top voice. “I’m the worst person ever. Don’t you understand, Silas? Everyone thinks they know me. I’m pigeon-holed. I’m screwed whether I’m innocent or not. Sometimes I think it would be easier to just give it up. Tell them they were right all along. Instead of desperately trying to get people to believe my truth, feed them the lie they want. Maybe that’s the secret to life: give in sooner than you want to. It makes all the problems go away.”

  “It doesn’t. You just end up with new problems.”

  A million smartass replies to that comment come flying through my mouth. They stop at my teeth, the tip of my tongue slipping through lips just long enough for him to see. His body drops, like he’s let go of a burden across the back of his neck. I feel an intimacy with him that is insane considering what I just went through.

  And then I’m in his arms, smelling him, my face pressed gently against his chest. Slowly, with an aching hesitation that must take Herculean effort to overcome, his arms wrap around my shoulders, hands flat against my back, fingers planting themselves firmly in the curve of my waist, offering comfort.

  I drink it in, the sensation so unreal that I start to dissociate. If I’m going to separate my mind from my body, shouldn’t it be during an assault like I almost experienced from the doctor? Instead, I’m doing this because of an embrace?

  Silas’s embrace.

  “I shouldn’t be doing this,” he murmurs in my ear.

  “No, you shouldn’t.”<
br />
  “We shouldn’t be doing this.”

  “No, we shouldn’t.”

  He doesn’t budge.

  Finally he says, “But I am.”

  “We are.”

  “I’m sorry, Jane.”

  “Me too, Silas.”

  “No. You have nothing to be sorry for. Not to me. Not to anyone.” His breath warms my hair and neck, smelling like coffee. The hard edge of his chest holster presses into my breast, reminding me that he’s hard core. Dangerous. A trained soldier who can turn on all of the selves inside him designed to kill in order to protect.

  He thinks I’m the dangerous one?

  A stillness settles over us, the air changing. We’ve moved from comfort to something more, a tantalizing potential that expands as time takes over. Every detail of movement becomes more intense, more important, just more. The cloth of his suit jacket scratches against my cheek. His fingers stroke the bones of my shoulder blades, exquisite and satisfying. My hands press him closer to me, his body seeping warmth into mine.

  I’m melting.

  If I look up, will he kiss me? The attraction is so strong. So intoxicating. I could just pull away and pause time, looking into his eyes to see if he feels this, too.

  Silas beats me to it, head tipped down, taking me in with eyes that search mine for answers I can only give using my body as a conduit to the heart.

  The same body that was just turned into a rope in a very slick game of tug-of-war.

  He bends down and I panic, unsure suddenly, wanting and willing but oh, so uncertain.

  When his lips land on the crown of my head, his sigh a breath of promise, I feel two distinct emotions at the same time.

  Relief.

  And regret.

  Chapter 15

  Monica’s words won’t stop looping through me as we walk back to the conference room. My father killed himself when Mom was pregnant with me. She never wanted to talk about it. I don’t even know how he died–just that he did.

  Depression, anxiety–they’re genetic. They run in families.

  Why is she bringing this up now?

  As we walk back into the room, Lindsay looks at me, then down at my left arm.

  “What’s that?”

  “The doctor drew enough blood to fill a vampire’s backup supply before he tried to give me a pap smear and a free colonoscopy.”