Instead, some instinct made her wait. Something—the whisper of footsteps, a shift in the air as large bodies moved in the darkness—made her curl even more tightly into herself.
And she caught her breath as her blood froze in her veins because it was the two men from the mall—the bald man named Jake and the man with the hat—and God save her, they were with Todd, whom Mr. Nelson had sent to kill her.
They didn’t see her. They didn’t even think to look around—believing that they were alone in the deserted garden.
One of them—Jake—spoke. His voice was low, but it carried clearly to Neesha. “The older brother and the husband are military, so shoot to kill. But we want both the kid and his bitch of a sister alive. Are we clear?”
The other two men nodded, and Todd, always eager, started for the stairs. But Jake stopped him.
“Masks,” he said. “We want them to think we’re going to let them go after they give us what we want.”
And Neesha didn’t understand what he meant, until they all reached into their pockets and pulled on hats that stretched all the way down to cover their faces.
As they started for the stairs, she knew she had to act. She had to stand up, to shout, to scream.
And then she had to run so that they’d kill her now, quickly, with a bullet to the head. Because if they took her alive, she’d die slowly and painfully.
But she couldn’t move, couldn’t speak. Terror had her too securely in its claws. All she could do was tremble as she watched.
But then the three men stopped before they started up the stairs. They moved quickly, fading back into the shadows because someone was coming.
God help her, it was Ben, coming swiftly down the stairs, his movement graceful and sure.
And Neesha still couldn’t scream through her frozen throat, not even to warn him.
As he reached the bottom, one of the men—Jake—said, “Jesus, it’s the kid,” and Todd and the other man moved toward him.
Ben realized he wasn’t alone, realized who they were, and he scrambled back toward the stairs, even as he opened his mouth to try to scream. The first came out as little more than a squeak, “Help!” But then he drew in air and let loose. “Hel—”
One of them must’ve hit him in the head, because his shout was silenced and his body went limp.
But lights went on in the apartment nearest to that set of stairs, and Jake and Todd and the other man with the hat grabbed Ben and ran.
Neesha could see the entrance to the street from where she was hiding, and she watched as the three men hustled Ben into a waiting car, being driven by a fourth man. They took off with a squeal of tires, even as that downstairs apartment door opened and an elderly man leaned out.
“Keep it down out here,” he called crossly. “People are trying to sleep!”
He slammed the door shut, and the sudden sharp sound freed Neesha, unfreezing her.
She stood up, careful to stay in the shadows, as she moved down that entrance toward the street.
It was deserted. There were no cars idling, no one there.
And even though she knew the right thing to do was to run upstairs to Eden’s apartment and hammer on the door, terror still coursed through her veins.
And when she ran, it was down the street, away from the apartment, as fast as her trembling legs could carry her.
SATURDAY, 9 MAY 2009
OH DARK HUNDRED
Izzy awoke with a start, and a very solid sense that something was wrong.
He was instantly alert, and even though it was dark, he knew immediately where he was: on the cheap foam mattress on the floor of the living room in Eden’s Las Vegas apartment.
He also knew that he was, absolutely, alone in that bed. And that it had been his choice that put him out here, and not with Eden, in her bedroom.
No doubt about it, he was a fucking idiot. And yeah, that was wrong. If he’d caved and gone in there with her, then he would’ve been a fucking idiot. Instead, he was a decidedly non-fucking idiot, but an idiot just the same.
Over by the window, the air conditioner was roaring, working desperately to cool the place down and not quite succeeding. The clock on the ancient VCR told him that it was four minutes after midnight. He hadn’t slept that long—only about two hours—but he’d slept hard, and he already felt more like himself, i.e., significantly less angry and enormously more horny, which was dangerous, considering Eden was in the next room.
Still, he had to take a leak, so he pushed himself off the floor and headed toward the bathroom, careful not to bump the air mattress where Ben was fast asleep, a silent, motionless lump beneath the covers.
He didn’t bother to turn on the light—there was plenty coming in from the streetlamp outside the narrow bathroom window, so he just pushed the door closed and locked it.
It wasn’t easy to whiz with a boner, but Izzy didn’t believe in having to think about death and destruction simply in order to keep from spraying the bathroom floor and walls—even though he’d witnessed more than his share during his adult life. He’d been there, done that, and had learned to process it ASAP, so bringing it back into his focus was never an option.
He hadn’t yet, however, processed his current problems with Eden and it shouldn’t have taken more than a quick replay of the way she’d driven the rental directly into that truck to give him a total freak-out softie, but that didn’t work, either. So he set to work alleviating the problem the old-fashioned way, with a little bit of soap and water from the sink on his hands, and a fantasy of Eden running like a silent movie through his brain.
His fantasy version of Eden looked like Eden and smiled like Eden and moved like Eden and fucked liked Eden. And as long as he kept her in the imaginary apartment in his mind, where she could cook and clean and perpetually wait for him to come home so she could rock his world, like some kind of a Stepford wife, he didn’t have to imagine her putting herself into harm’s way to create a diversion that would save the littlest hooker-with-a-heart-of-gold in Vegas.
Except the problem was, when he tried to imagine that version of Eden? She wasn’t Eden.
And Izzy recognized with a flash of insight that came from no longer having a completely sleep-deprived brain, that he hadn’t been angry with Eden merely because she’d put her life in danger by behaving foolishly and impetuously. Because Jenn had been right. What Eden had done was incredibly courageous. And while it wasn’t what he would have done had he been behind the wheel of the rental car—he would’ve gone after Neesha, gotten her into the car, and gotten them all the hell away from the bad guys—it was pretty damn close.
No way would he have left a little girl at the mercy of two men who were hunting her, even if he didn’t know why. So really, why be so angry with Eden for doing what he would have done?
No, she didn’t have his training or his experience or his size or his strength. But her choices had been limited. Stand there, wringing her hands and watching while Neesha got grabbed or gunned down? Run to get him to help, which would’ve come too late? Or do what she’d done—act and, yes, put herself at risk, because not to act was unthinkable, despite her lack of training, experience, size, and strength.
Although as far as strength went? What Eden didn’t have in muscle mass she more than made up for in sheer will.
And the truth was, when it came to the real Eden versus his appallingly unattractive and plastic Stepford wife version? It was her very impetuousness and crazy-ass courage that had attracted him to her, right from the start. No shrinking violet, she. She was who she was—with plenty of swagger and attitude, and damn, just thinking about her—the real her—made him hot.
Hotter.
And yes, while watching her take those crazy risks tonight had damn near given him a stroke, the real problem here was his, not hers. “Whoops, sorry—whoa.”
And … fucking fabulous, it was Eden—although if Izzy had to make a choice between Eden or Ben, as to who was the better candidate to walk in on him in t
he bathroom while his dick was in his hand …? Well, it was probably best that it was Eden.
Of course, being Eden, she didn’t beat an immediate retreat. She just stood there, looking at him through the now half-open door. Any other woman on the planet would have been embarrassed for both of them—yes, mostly for him, the masturbating loser—and would’ve at least averted her eyes. Not so much Eden. She was absolutely checking him out, probably because—Izzy being who he was—he refused to try to hide what he’d been doing and fumble himself back into his shorts. Instead, he just stood there, temporarily on pause, and stared right back at her.
“You really should learn to lock the door,” she told him.
“I did lock it,” he whispered back. “Do you mind? I’d like a little privacy …?”
He turned his back on her—conversation over—but she didn’t take the social cue, assuming social cues worked in this situation. Although yes, she eventually closed the bathroom door, but only after she put herself on his side of it. She locked it, checked that it was securely latched—a step he’d apparently missed when he’d first come in—and then sat up on the sink counter. “Do you mind if I watch?”
He laughed his surprise. “This isn’t exactly a spectator sport.”
“I’m curious,” she said. “Plus, it’s unbelievably hot.”
“You think that me, jerking off in the bathroom, is hot,” he said, lacing his voice with his disbelief.
“I think that you, anywhere, is hot,” Eden told him, which was such a freaking line, especially coming out of a woman who looked the way she did. She was wearing an old T-shirt and a pair of boxers, with her face scrubbed of all makeup and her hair back in a braid, and she still managed to be hotter than ninety-nine-point-nine percent of all human beings who walked the earth. “Plus, I couldn’t sleep, either—and maybe I can get some pointers. I mean, your technique must be pretty good if you’d prefer this to … being with me.”
And just like that, all of her cockiness and badass attitude vanished, leaving her vulnerable and uncertain. Izzy could see her hurt in her eyes—she didn’t try to hide it as she gazed at him.
And looking at her like that triggered something in him—a wave of sorrow so intense, he had to sit down. So he put himself away and he lowered the lid of the toilet and he sat.
Of course, she immediately apologized. “Sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to—”
“No,” he stopped her. “Don’t. Because it’s me, Eden. It’s all me. And I’m the one who’s sorry.”
Her face caught the light from the window, and he could tell from the way she was looking back at him that she knew exactly what he meant. But she didn’t want to understand, so she shook her head. “I don’t—”
“I can’t be who you want me to be,” he told her honestly. “I just can’t do it anymore.”
She leaned forward. “I don’t want you to be anyone but—”
“Yeah, you do,” he said. “You only want the happy fuck-me guy.”
Eden laughed at that—a burst of disbelieving air. “You think I want—”
“I’m leaving,” he interrupted her. “Tomorrow. You don’t need me here, so … I really should get back to the base.”
Now she was looking at him and nodding as if in agreement. But her lips were pressed tightly together, like a little kid who was trying desperately not to cry.
“So that’s it, then?” she said. “I mess up, once. One time. And you leave …?”
“That’s not why I’m leaving,” he told her quietly.
“You said you’d stay,” she started hotly.
“For as long as you needed me,” he finished for her. He sighed. “Sweetheart, let’s be honest here. You don’t need me anymore. Dan and Jenn are going to help Ben and … He’s going to be great with them. It’s better this way, not just for Ben, but—”
“For you,” she said, sliding down off the sink. “Yeah, okay, I get it. Sorry to have inconvenienced you. I’m glad I don’t have to do that anymore.”
Izzy stood up, too. “Not for me,” he said, moving to block her path back to the door. “For you. This way you don’t have to sacrifice—”
“Yeah, sorry, I think you’re projecting—”
“And this way”—he raised his voice to speak over her—“Ben gets to live in a home that isn’t so goddamn dysfunctional for a change, where we don’t have to keep lying to him about why we’re together. He’s still innocent enough to believe that people get married because they love each other—”
“Oh, like Danny and Jenn?” Eden countered.
“Exactly like Dan and Jenn,” Izzy shot back. “You know she loves him. You can’t spend more than two seconds in a room with her, without feeling it—the Force is strong in that one.”
“So what?” Eden said. “She loves him. Big whoop. Doesn’t it fit your definition of dysfunctional if it doesn’t go both ways?”
“I’m sorry, weren’t you there tonight?” he answered her stupid question with a stupid question of his own. “Have you ever, in your entire life, seen Danny that happy? I thought he was going to shit himself with joy. And believe me, that wasn’t about Ben. That was all Jennilyn. If that’s not love? I don’t know what is.”
Eden was silent at that, because he was right, and she damn well knew it.
“It’s better for Ben this way,” Izzy told her, quietly now. “And yeah, okay, it is better for me—”
“Because you don’t want to be Happy Fuck-Me Guy,” she said. “Glad we worked that out. Sorry to have put you through all that inconvenient sex.”
“And it’s better for you,” he finished. “Eden, you can have a life.”
“Getting rich from stripping,” she said, “because screw you, you can’t tell me what I can and cannot do if you’re … leaving me.” She started to cry then, with huge gulping sobs, as if something had broken inside of her, and she couldn’t keep her emotions hidden any longer.
Izzy was caught by surprise. She was usually so stoic that a single escaped tear was, for her, the equivalent of an emotional explosion that needed to be immediately brushed away and hidden.
She turned and ran—no doubt horrified by her outburst—flinging the bathroom door open so that it hit the wall with a bang.
She escaped into her bedroom, slamming that door, too, and as Izzy prepared to follow, to apologize and—holy shit—to try to talk her out of the stripper thing, which was clearly a knee-jerk reaction, he stuck his head into the living room, to reassure Ben that everything was okay.
He expected to see the kid sitting up. There was no way he could’ve slept through those door slams, but he hadn’t moved. In fact, he wasn’t even stirring, and Izzy went toward him to investigate, concerned that he was sick. The whole diabetes thing was a little scary and he didn’t know enough about it, other than the fact that kids with it sometimes went into comas.
Another good reason to leave the parenting to Danny and Jenn. Izzy would be tempted to check on the kid twenty times each night. God help him if he ever had a baby of his own …
“Yo, Ben,” he said as he bent down to look. He found himself face-to-face not with a face, but with one of the sofa pillows. He pulled the covers back and, hell yeah, it was classic high jinks from overnight camp. Ben had put pillows beneath his blankets to make it look as if he were in bed, asleep.
Son of a bitch.
Izzy slapped on the light both in the entryway and in the kitchen, but the kid had definitely left the apartment. In fact, he’d left behind a note on the kitchen table.
Ran to the drugstore on the corner. Be right back.
Son of a bitch.
“Eden!” Izzy grabbed his cargo shorts, and on his way back to the bathroom, he hammered on the bedroom door. “I know this is bad timing, but Ben’s gone AWOL.”
She opened the door immediately, eyes red, and he thrust the note at her, then headed into the bathroom, stepping into his shorts as he went.
This time, he had no problem with the mechanics of ta
king a leak.
And also because, this time, he’d left the door open, it wasn’t that big a surprise when Eden came in, too, to splash water on her blotchy face.
“Do you think he left because he heard us fighting?” she asked as she dried herself on one of her faded pink towels.
“I don’t know,” Izzy said as he flushed and zipped, moving past her into the living room to jam his feet into his boots. “But I’ll ask him when I find him. After I kick his ass.”
“Yeah, well, you can’t kick his ass until I kick his ass first,” Eden said, hopping as she slipped her feet into her sneakers, even as she fastened the button on her cutoff shorts and stuck a baseball cap onto her head. She scooped up both her cell phone and her keys and was out the door before Izzy.
SATURDAY, MAY 9, 2009
1:06 A.M.
Jenn wasn’t sure which woke her up—the sound of Danny’s cell phone ringing in the darkness, shrill and persistent, or his whispering, “Shit, shit, shit …” as he tried to pull his arm out from beneath her without waking her.
But he couldn’t find his phone and he let loose with a whole string of creative sailor words—all sotto voce—until she told him, “Your pants are over the back of that chair …? By the window …?” as she sat up, turned on the light, and reached for her glasses.
“Damn it!” he said as the moment he dug his phone from his pants pocket, it stopped ringing. He turned to look at her. “God, baby, I’m so sorry that woke you.”
“It’s all right,” she said, because there were plenty of bad things one could find when turning on the light in the middle of the night. Her naked new husband was not one of them. “I know you’re not supposed to turn off your cell phone, but … Was that … work?”
She knew that, as a Navy SEAL, when he got the call, he had to go.
“No,” he said. “I’m not … It would have to be World War Three for them to call me in while I’m out on medical leave.” He shook his head as he glanced down at his phone, then looked back at her, trepidation in his eyes. “This is a different World War Three. That was my mother.”
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