Something in the careful way Parker said it set off alarms.
“What is it?” Georgia asked, reaching for a few of the plastic bags hanging from Parker’s arms and casting a careful glance over her shoulder. Well after dark and cold as fuck outside, the trailer park was blessedly quiet. No people. No cars coming or going. Maybe she was just tired and overreacting.
“I checked my phone for news related to the shooting. I’ve been named a person of interest. The profile Wired magazine did—and the photo they took—is making the rounds.”
Of course it was. When they’d managed to quietly slip out of DC, she’d let herself hope things would get easier. She should have known better. Whoever wanted Parker dead was getting desperate.
And her job was getting harder.
“Yeah.” Georgia swallowed down her irritation and the constant fear that hummed just beneath the surface of her skin, turned the knob, and bumped the door open with her hip when the frame refused to release it. The three-pronged assault on her senses hit with merciless proficiency. Peeling wood paneling greeted the eye as worn-thin shag carpeting hissed a greeting beneath the soles of her shoes. And the smell . . .
“Oh my God, what is that?” Parker asked as he followed her inside, dumping their bags next to the front door that led directly into a sitting room that hadn’t seen a change in furniture or decor since the seventies.
“The heater.”
“Is it always going to do that?” Parker asked. “I mean, I’m grateful the heat’s on, but geez . . .”
“It should get better. The landlady probably turned it on just before we arrived. Dust tends to accumulate on the coils when they haven’t been used in a long time. Turn on the heat and it all burns off, which is what you smell.”
“It’s like . . .” He sniffed, then grimaced.
“Burned hair.”
“Yeah.”
Scooping a few bags off the floor, Georgia strode across the living room, heading for the kitchen tucked into the corner. More wood paneling. A dented stainless-steel sink. An ancient refrigerator doing an admirable impression of the ghost in the attic. Depositing the bags on the counter, Georgia pulled open a cabinet—no evidence of rodents, thank God—and started piling things away.
“Holy flux capacitor, Batman, I think we landed in 1974,” Parker said, awe painting his tone as he plucked at the laminate peeling away from a cabinet door. “On the upside, I’ve always wondered if I’m cut out for living in one of those tiny homes you read about online. This’ll be a little bit like that.”
No. No it wouldn’t be like that, Georgia thought as she slammed a cabinet shut and jerked open the refrigerator. Those homes were new. With modern amenities. Most of them were green. They didn’t creak like a backwoods shack every time the wind blew. They didn’t have water rings the size of inner tubes on the ceiling. They didn’t smell like someone was roasting a dead cat or have closets men locked little girls in when they were bad.
All at once, Georgia couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think. She had to get out. Sleep in the car, on the porch. She’d freeze to death, but anything was better than being in here for one more second.
“Georgia?”
She shoved past Parker, ignoring his concern and his outstretched hand. Broke into a run as she neared the door, slamming through to the outside so hard she missed the top step, tumbled down the next two, and landed on her knees in the half-melted snow. Slush coated her jeans, soaking into the denim as she knelt and fought for breath. She’d hoped the fresh, cold air would help drive away the nausea. Instead, the moment frigid air met overheated, sweat-slicked skin, her nausea doubled down, and acid surged up her throat. Tears burned her eyes as she knelt on the frozen ground and puked what little she’d managed to eat for lunch.
Finally, when the heaving stopped and Georgia could suck in great lungfuls of cold air without choking on a sob, she leaned back onto her heels and, brushing the tears from her face, stood. Tilting her head back, she let the back of her skull fall against her shoulders. Above her, an inky black sky stretched in every direction, a few stars broadcasting through the haze of city light. Though the nausea had passed, she felt it there, crouched in the back of her mind like a lion in the dark, ready to pounce and devour the moment she least expected. She needed to calm the hell down. Fast. She couldn’t go back into the trailer like this. Parker needed to believe she had everything under control, that she could protect him long enough for him to get the job done.
Truth was, as the day had slid by along endless stretches of highway, Georgia had settled into her present situation. Adjusted to the fact she’d be working in less than ideal circumstances.
Which meant her little breakdown of a moment ago was entirely personal. And entirely unprofessional.
“Here.” Parker appeared beside her, handing her an open vitaminwater. “It’s not very cold, but it’ll help rinse the taste out of your mouth.”
So he’d seen her lose it. She expected the knowledge that he’d watched as she’d completely fallen apart to somehow make her feel worse, but instead she found she was far too exhausted to care.
“Thanks.” Her fingers trembled, the traitorous little jerks, as she reached for the drink. “Go inside. Crack a few windows. Place won’t warm as quickly, but it’ll help with the smell.” And give her a bit of time to pull herself together. With any luck, Parker would assume the smell had turned her stomach inside out, rather than . . .
Than what? Distant memories that should have only the power she gave them? A child’s sense of desperation and anguish she should have long ago outgrown? God, she needed therapy. Or better yet, vodka.
Definitely vodka.
Too bad alcohol wasn’t in the budget. Hardly fair, as she’d agreed Parker needed coffee—even if it were the crappy kind that came in a canister.
She swished a bit of water through her mouth, then spit it out. She repeated the process until her mouth held only the vague sense of something fruity. Slowly, she sipped, waiting to see if her stomach would raise a protest.
“Breathing better?” Parker asked, reappearing at her side.
“You shouldn’t be out here, Parker.” Neither of them should, but it wasn’t her face littering the news outlets. She just needed a minute to get her head on straight.
Parker turned, trod up the steps, killed the tiny porch light, and reappeared at her side. “How often do you have them?”
Georgia crossed her arms, balancing her drink in the crook of one elbow. “What do you mean?”
“Panic attacks,” he clarified.
Georgia straightened, shooting him an angry glare. “I didn’t panic.” She hadn’t. She’d just needed a minute to process—a minute he’d denied her when he hadn’t stayed asleep in the car.
“Sorry, I never liked the term. Never really liked ‘anxiety attack,’ either. Made me feel like it was something I should be able to turn off. Something I could control.”
Anxiety attack? No. No way. Georgia shook her head. “I’m fine.”
Parker stared at her for a long moment, a tiny vertical line appearing between his brows. “First one, huh?”
Georgia walked away, heading back up the steps and opening the door. The smell assaulted her, weaker but still there. Her stomach rolled, and an angry buzz of energy slid through her like a whirling, dancing, diving group of birds hell-bent on ripping her open.
Nope. She definitely needed a little more air. Too tired to keep standing and too wet to give a damn, Georgia brushed off the clumps of slush along the top step and sat, letting the cold seep through her wet jeans and numb her. With the porch light off, it was dark enough to risk a few minutes of fresh air. No streetlights for the poor. As long as they stayed on the steps, in the deeper shadows cast by the small porch overhang, they’d be invisible.
“Try taking deep breaths, then longer exhales. It sounds trite to ‘just breathe,’ but that always helped me.” Parker sat next to her, heedless of the wet and cold. He bumped her with his shoulder, the
tilt of a grin curling one side of his mouth. “Welcome to the club. There’s no secret handshake, but the little blue pills don’t suck.”
Georgia snorted out a laugh. “I’ll be taking Viagra in this club, will I?”
Parker laughed. “I was thinking more along the lines of Xanax, but sure.”
Georgia rested her elbows against her knees, rolling the bottle she held between her palms. “Sorry,” she said quietly.
Parker turned his head to look at her. “Don’t be. Frankly, I’m a little relieved.” He palmed the back of his neck, rubbing as if he were self-conscious. “I haven’t had an episode yet . . . A little strange, actually.” He dropped his hand, staring across the lot at the trailers lined up like regimented tombstones. “My anxiety is pretty well under control—way better than it used to be—but little sleep, tons of change, and epic amounts of stress are triggers on their own.” He sighed. “I think that after Ethan, I sort of shut down a bit. Let you tell me what to do and handle the rest. Then as soon as we hit the road, I dove into the files Ethan gave us. It let me have something to focus on. Avoiding things I don’t want to think about is practically my superpower,” Parker said, toeing a rusty nail straining away from the board beneath his feet. “So I’m sorry. I checked out on you, didn’t even really think about how much stress you’re under. I know you didn’t sign up for this,” Parker admitted on a whisper.
Well, hell. He looked miserable, as if the weight of the situation had finally caught up to him. To both of them, she supposed, though in rather different ways. Regardless, she couldn’t let him shoulder guilt that wasn’t his.
“It’s not that,” she assured him. “I mean, don’t get me wrong. This”—she waved a hand at the hulking tin can behind her—“isn’t going to be easy. It’s one thing to take on a long-term client. To be with him day in and day out. But he isn’t usually under constant threat. I’m a little out of my depth here.”
“You got us this far, Georgia. You’ll take us the rest of the way.” The way he said it, as if, obviously, she would get them through whatever lay ahead, humbled her. She wished she were a tenth as certain of their future. Or her ability to protect him.
But that wasn’t really what was bothering her. “It’s this place,” she said, kicking at the rickety handrail next to her. “You ever feel like something’s cursed? Like no matter what you do or how far you’ve come, this one place, this one thing, has the power to screw it all up?”
“Yeah. I do.”
“I hate it here. I hate that I brought us here.” She took Parker’s advice, drawing in a long, shaky breath, then letting it go on a drawn-out sigh. As her breath danced away from her in a cloud of steam, Georgia turned to Parker. “I hate that even after all these years, this place still has the power to wreck me.”
She stared at him for a long moment, though what she was searching for, she couldn’t quite say. Something familiar, maybe. Disinterest. Pity. Or maybe something as bold and refreshing as Parker himself. Something like understanding.
“Will you tell me why?” Not a demand. Not a morbid quest for personal details he could judge her with. Just . . . an invitation to share.
For the first time in her life, she found she wanted to.
“I went into the foster-care system for the first time when I was ten years old. Six months later, my foster father, drunk as usual, locked me in a closet before he beat my foster mother to death, then shot himself in the head. The police found me forty-eight hours later.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Parker braced his forearms on his legs and laced his fingers together. He ached to reach for her. To take one of her cold hands between his and rub away the chill. Metaphorical or physical, he didn’t care. He just wanted to make it better for her. Knowing that he couldn’t wrecked him. Only the knowledge that she wouldn’t appreciate tenderness, wouldn’t want gentle sympathy, held him still and let her talk.
“In so many ways, that home was the worst placement. Too much change, way too fast. And without my brother. That was the hardest part.”
“You were close?” Parker asked when she paused, reaching for her wrist and the watch that was no longer there.
“Very.” She laughed, the sound stretched and brittle. “Well, not when we were kids, I guess. Will was four years older, and I worshipped him, which basically meant wherever he was and whatever he was doing, I wanted to be right there in the thick of it.” She glanced at Parker, her mouth twitching with remembered amusement. “He used to call me a tick. ‘Mom,’” she imitated, her voice going high and nasal, “‘I need a match, there’s a life-sucking parasite attached to my side.’” She shook her head.
“What an ass.” Parker laughed.
“Yeah, well, I used to call him a weasel—no one was better at getting into or out of trouble.” She chuckled. “He never forgave me. The name stuck, followed him all the way through Special Forces.”
What was it with spec ops guys and awful nicknames? Mouse. Snake. Weasel . . . Peanut.
“It’s so hard to picture you trailing behind anyone,” he said.
“Will was the only exception. And if my hero worship annoyed him, my desire to prove I was just as good or better at everything he did drove him nuts.” She tapped her chin, finger sliding along a thin white scar. “This one I got when I bet him I could get the swing at the playground higher and then jump farther at the peak than he could. Four stitches. My mother was furious.” She shot him a smug look, the memory of the challenge lightening her expression. “He told me a month later that it didn’t count because I didn’t stick the landing.” She shook her head.
“Let me guess. You stuck the landing.”
“Hell no. My mother took one look at my blood-covered clothes and declared that I was obviously not her daughter and should be returned to the hospital posthaste.” The corners of her eyes crinkled. “My father just shook his head and grabbed his keys to take me to the ER. Said that being on a first-name basis with the on-call doctor was a Bennett family tradition . . . though seven times in six months might have been pushing it.”
“They sound amazing,” Parker said, not bothering to hide the potent jealousy that flooded him, momentarily smothering his sympathy. What wouldn’t he have done for a family like that? For even one moment in an emergency room with an exasperated mother and oddly proud father? He pushed away the envy and reminded himself that while Georgia had wonderful memories of her childhood, of her family, it was probably those memories that had made her adolescence so much worse. Hard, Parker knew, to miss what you’d never really had. “How old were you?”
“Seven.”
“And when they died?” he asked.
“The same year,” she said, her energy draining as bad memories eclipsed the good.
“And that’s when you went into foster care?” Parker asked.
“No. Actually, Will and I went to live with our grandmother—my father’s mother. My mother’s parents had her late in life. I never knew them. But Gran we grew up around. That was the first time I lived in a trailer park, actually.”
“Yeah?” Parker had assumed her only experience had been with the foster family who’d locked her away.
“Yeah. Though it never felt that way. Gram had a double-wide, a manufactured home, she called it. Three bedrooms, two baths. Small, compared to what we were used to, but nice. Clean. Most of the neighbors were older snowbirds, so the place was quiet and well kept. And we were close to the beach, which was great.”
“How long were you there?”
Georgia shrugged, toying with a loose strand of hair. “Almost eighteen months. Enough time to get comfortable, to think things were leveling out and getting better. It was an especially hard time for Will. He was thirteen, had left all his childhood friends behind and had to start over. That’s when we got close.”
Parker waited, letting Georgia get comfortable in the silence between them, process the memories he could read on her face but that she wasn’t ready to share. He hoped they were good o
nes.
“But then things changed again. Gram tripped—on a lawn ornament, of all things—and broke her hip.” Georgia turned to him. “Did you know the mortality rate in the year following a hip fracture is greatly increased?”
Parker shook his head. He’d never known his father at all, and his mother’s extended family had been long estranged by the time he came along, for reasons he’d only learned when he was nearly an adult himself.
“Yeah, neither did we.” She stood, brushing the snow from her ass, and stretched. Ready to run but nowhere to go.
Parker knew the feeling. Understood the desire to just go, leave everything behind you, and start fresh. He also knew the minute you thought you’d run far enough, hard enough, or long enough, you’d turn a blind corner and be right back where you started.
“That’s when social services stepped in.”
“And they separated you,” Parker said, imagining a ten-year-old Georgia, who’d lost far too much already, being taken from her brother. Had she cried? Or just stood there, unsurprised at how life could be so endlessly cruel? Both options tore at him, and both evolved his understanding of the woman she was.
“They separated us,” she agreed. “Then . . .” Her shoulders hitched as she stood, the yellow blur of the cheap porch light casting a sickly glow. “You have to understand,” she said, turning to him, “so many foster families take kids in solely for the check the government cuts them every month. Cheryl and Wallace, they needed the money having kids around brought in.”
“That money was for you, Georgia. For your care, your benefit.”
She smiled at him, her eyes watery. “It doesn’t really work that way, though.”
“Doesn’t make it okay.” God, the knowledge burned. The first priority of all parents should be the child in their care, the child they’d promised to protect. It was something he hadn’t always understood or believed—he had his own dysfunctional family to make excuses for, after all—but Ethan had drilled it into his head until it stuck. You are not the parent. You are not meant to take care of her. Sacrifice everything for her. It was a truth Parker had embraced, one he repeated to himself every time he spoke with his mother. Every time he denied her request for money. Every time he hung up on a screaming, crying rant. But he also knew that severing some ties was almost impossible. That excuses and explanations were second nature. Sometimes it was just easier to believe that things hadn’t been that bad.
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