by Jade Powers
AFTER A FLIGHT SPENT practicing the words that would let Wendy down easy, Carson arrived at Temper’s house, only to find that Wendy’s agreement wasn’t really an agreement at all. She had ditched him. When he found out Wendy had hopped a plane to New York, he wondered what the hell he was doing chasing his tail in Colorado in the first place.
Temper had been the one to break the news...and in person.
Carson cursed. He swept a hand through his hair, the gesture ending in a fist at his side. He asked, “Are you sure?”
Temper hated being caught in Wendy’s mess, especially since this guy actually seemed to care what happened to her friend. She said, “Wendy’s not thinking straight. Somehow she thinks everything she needs to know is going to be wrapped up in a pretty bow waiting for her. I told her she was asking for trouble.”
Carson rubbed his eyes. He was weary. After hours of wrangling to get an appointment with the head of the base, Carson spent fifteen minutes discovering that the guy in the current position knew that something bad had gone down at the base and was sent to clean it up. He had no idea who or what, only that he himself was a decent man and his predecessor was not. Any secret or shady deals he uncovered had already been sent to the proper authorities. The new head at the base hadn’t even caught the vaguest rumor of a hit on John.
Which meant that Carson had nothing to report to Wendy. He fully expected her to be waiting when he stopped at Temper’s house to report his findings. Carson didn’t expect her friend to be pacing the living room, worried sick because Wendy had left a few hours before to challenge the very person who might have ordered John’s death.
“She’s been through a lot,” Carson said. He couldn’t help but excuse Wendy for thinking of people in a better light than he did. After all, John had kept her well clear of the corporate thievery and the sinister undercurrent that had plunged them all into darkness. That underbelly felt sticky in its reach, able to catch a person up and drag them back no matter how far they’d run.
“That’s no excuse to abandon responsibilities and jump into danger,” Temper said. She still wore her black work shirt. Normally a striking woman, right now Temper looked tired, hair half out of its pony tail, dark circles under her eyes, and pale cheeks that should be rosy. Carson could stand on her porch all day long arguing over Wendy’s virtues and foibles, but neither her best friend nor her useless bodyguard would be anywhere near a happy resolution.
“I’m sorry. I just can’t believe she’d leave the same day I’m set to return.” Carson felt betrayed. It took him the walk to his car to realize where the depth of his annoyance stemmed. It wasn’t that she ditched him to go to New York, which she had. It wasn’t even that she lied, which was probable. It was that she didn’t even think to wait, didn’t even consider Carson’s presence as an option while she chased after her husband’s murderer. As far as Wendy was concerned, he was in the way, someone to send off on a meaningless chase while she pursued her own means.
Carson left Temper’s house feeling sorely used. He called to book the next flight to New York out of Phoenix.
Carson would be on the next flight to New York. Not because of an interest in Wendy, but because it was his job. At least that was the way he felt better when he considered it. Otherwise, he’d be chasing an attraction, someone who would never share his feelings, who would think of him as that annoying man who followed her to New York. No doubt Wendy had just gone underground, hiding from McFarland. She was an independent woman, sure of herself and her life.
The death of Wendy’s neighbor disturbed Carson more than he let on. Wendy was meant to die on that sidewalk. Carson knew that in the depths of his bones. And now Carson had to hunt Wendy down and bring her home before something else happened. He doubted she’d even listen to him.
He called McFarland and got right to the point. Carson asked, “Is Wendy Bartlett there?”
“No, she hasn’t arrived yet. She was due hours ago. I am...concerned.” McFarland paused. He knew Carson as one of Drake’s men. That recommended Carson as a decent fellow as much as anything else. Some of the biotech CO’s hired armed bullies. Drake’s care in hiring meant that his people were trusted in certain sectors more than others. Not that McFarland gave his trust without limit. Nor would he discuss this on the phone. McFarland suspected a phone tap. He didn’t dare tell Carson all of his suspicions.
“And you had nothing to do with her disappearance?” Carson asked. It was a blunt question, but there wasn’t much time.
“No. Let me give you my address. You will stay with us when you arrive.”
Carson didn’t like getting entangled like that. Political people were some of the scariest in the world. They had different reasons for doing things, motives deeper and darker than they would ever say aloud. Carson said, “I’d rather stay in a hotel.”
“I’m sure you would. Come by the house first. Listen to what I have to say. If you still want a hotel room, fine. Don’t worry about waking us up. I doubt I’ll sleep much tonight anyway.” McFarland said. The last part sounded like a grumble.
Hanging up the phone, Carson sighed. He needed a vacation. Maybe he would call Drake and tell his boss to find someone else to chase after John’s widow. He scrubbed his hair. Just the thought seemed cold. Damn it.
He would visit McFarland as promised. Even if the general had planned John’s death, he was too cunning to come after Carson directly. If McFarland wanted Carson dead, he’d send a squad, not invite the man to his house. Carson left Temper the number to the New York hotel where he could be reached, just in case Wendy called.
WENDY CLUNG TO THE rail where she sat. She felt frightened. Alone in a strange city, Wendy had nowhere to go, nowhere to feel safe. Were they looking for her by name? If she checked into a hotel under her real name, McFarland would find her, but she didn’t have an alias. She wasn’t a criminal, wasn’t even an important person. She was just the widow of someone who knew too much. To think she freaking flew to New York. That must have made him laugh...Wendy walking right into his trap.
She didn’t feel humiliated or abashed. Her secondary emotion after fear was anger, pure rage. Now she knew. If the limo driver sent to pick her up would shoot at her, McFarland was involved. That meant McFarland was one hundred percent involved in John’s death. Wendy wanted justice, so bad she was almost willing to die for it. Almost.
She wasn’t going to cry on the damn subway. Not in this throng of people. No way. Wendy had been strong before. She would be strong now. She wanted revenge. She wanted that jerk dead. Wendy recognized her own powerlessness, and that hurt more than anything.
Still shaking when the train stopped, Wendy joined the crowds as they walked up the stairs. She didn’t know where she was going. She didn’t particularly much care. She would just have to trust the random stranger on the subway.
Loneliness perched on her heart like a dove, bland and quiet, barely cooing, but with such a presence that she couldn’t help but feel the pressure. No matter what she did in New York, John wasn’t coming back. Her eyes prickled with the knowledge as the doors opened and she stepped off the subway. Wendy forced herself to walk back up those stairs and back to the street. The sunlight seemed like a travesty against her sadness.
Wendy first noticed the liquor store across the street. It was a tiny store with shelves of colorful bottles. Buying a bottle of Kentucky bourbon, Wendy walked to the hotel. The bourbon was in a large grocery bag, courtesy of the clerk. Not that Wendy had anything to hide. Not a single soul in this great city would give a damn if Wendy drank herself silly.
Checking in, Wendy took the elevator up to her room. She’d escaped death today. Instead of celebration, she felt despair, as if all of her great plans were built of ash and charcoal. She hoped for a night of oblivion, to erase her memory of everything and just go numb.
She called Temper. Wendy knew she wouldn’t remember to call after getting drunk, and that is exactly what she intended to do. For one night. Then she would handle her
broken heart from the inside out. Nothing external made her feel better. Somehow she had to face this grief, wrangle with it until it was subdued. Tonight, she was out of fight.
Temper actually sounded relieved to hear from her. Wendy had expected to get the cold and angry friend. After giving Temper the name of her hotel and room, Wendy assured Temper that she was fine, glossing over the fact that she had lost her luggage, her carry-on, and her pride to McFarland’s lackey, a man who would no doubt kill her on sight, if he ever found her again. Wendy was stronger than that. She would make them pay for John’s death.
Wendy kept the call brief.
After hanging up, she took the ice bucket, filled it to the brim and returned to her room. This was not the way one mourned a husband. This was a way to delay mourning, to build a hazy shroud around the memory, to soften the sharp edges, to turn into an alcoholic. Wendy didn’t worry about that danger. She’d never been one to drink. Bourbon was John’s drink. Tonight, she would hold a wake.
This was a toast to her husband. She dropped ice into one of those tiny white plastic complimentary cups that hotels provide for water. Then she filled it with bourbon, taking her first sip. Her tongue sizzled. The taste was not to her liking, but she drank anyway.
Bourbon had always been John’s drink.
Wendy spoke to John while she paced the room, her heart longing for a time and a place that no longer existed. “Why did you leave me? We had enough money. You could have quit.”
That wasn’t the worst of it. That last trip, something had prodded Wendy’s intuition. She had begged John not to go. She’d said that something felt wrong, that she needed him to stay. Wendy could almost feel his hand brushing the hair from her neck, his lips descending. But it was all a day dream, a fantasy.
Wendy drank more. She lifted her cup and with mournful anger said, “McFarland had you killed. How’s that for loyalty? You start a new job with him, and he did you like that.”
Briefly shifting the blinds, Wendy viewed the city from a height, feeling small and insignificant. With a sense of vertigo, she blocked out the view again and returned to her pacing. Storming around the room like a caged panther, she cried out, “Why would you leave me? Why? I needed you. I’ve been cleaning your stuff, and you left so much.”
She paced and ranted, pouring out her soul to a ghost. She’d poured at least three, maybe four cups while she stomped back and forth calling out grievance after grievance to the empty night. Finally, exhausted and alone, Wendy stopped. Her eyes were dry. This had been an angry night without tears.
Wendy shifted to the bed. The last couple of hours had shaken her. Maybe drinking was the wrong way to handle emotional problems, but at the moment, Wendy didn’t care. Anger warred with grief. Nothing she could do would bring John back. She knew that. But the idea that someone could just take him away from her, without even the slightest care for her grief festered on her soul like an open wound turning gangrenous. It made her furious.
It was late when someone knocked on the hotel door. Wendy was drunk by that time if not weaving and staggering.
Yanking open the door, Wendy was surprised to see Carson standing in the hallway. She blinked in the light for a moment. “What are you doing here?”
She couldn’t tell if Carson was merely put out or actually hurt by her words. He sounded resigned when he said, “I have no idea. Are you okay?”
Wendy didn’t even know the answer to that question, so she ignored it. Holding the door open, she said, “Come in.”
“Are you sure? It’s late. I just wanted to check on you. Make sure you’re safe.” Carson held back, his eyes searching. God, she wanted to jump him, right here, right now. Missing conversation with John was only the half, and the weaker part of her pain. Sometimes her shoulders ached with longing, her skin felt pained in the emptiness of not being touched. She wanted to be touched, so badly.
This wasn’t John.
But Wendy was too tired, too drunk, too lonely to care. She said, “I’m sure.”
There would be time enough for regrets tomorrow. For tonight, Wendy was tired of talking to ghosts. Carson stood awkwardly at the side of the room. It was almost pathetic how he fiddled with his jacket and looked at everything in the room but her. Poor man. He was out of his league.
Wendy poured a straight shot of bourbon into a white cup and handed it to Carson. “You’ll feel better for a shot of this. I’m throwing a wake. Take off your shoes. Make yourself comfortable. You look like a junior high kid at his first dance.”
Carson forced a smile and took the cup. Although he didn’t remove his shoes, he did sit on the edge of her bed, looking about as comfortable as if he were sitting on a blackberry vine. Sipping from the cup, he said, “Did you find anything?”
“Yeah, McFarland tried to have me killed. His driver stopped in an empty alley. When I ran, he pulled a gun on me and fired a couple of shots.” Wendy’s laugh was bitter. She patted Carson’s knee and shook her head, “I could have used a bodyguard there. Sorry about that. I never did confront McFarland. Just ran here to this hotel, and I’ve been hiding out ever since.”
Carson took her hand, removed it from his knee. If Wendy hadn’t drunk quite so many cups of bourbon, she might have even been embarrassed or affronted, but she hardly noticed the delicate removal while Carson took her hand. He asked again, “Are you okay?”
Wendy shrugged. It wasn’t really a question that deserved an answer at this point. She said, “How did you find me?”
“I stopped by the house when I got back from Colorado. I had just missed you. Temper was worried. She said you wouldn’t listen to reason. I hopped the next flight to New York, spoke about a half hour to McFarland and then checked in at the hotel.”
“I guess she was right to be worried, huh?” Wendy grabbed the bottle and refilled her cup, then topped Carson off. That made her feel guilty, as if John were sitting there instead, watching her fall apart. To assuage that guilt she said, “I’m not an alcoholic. I mean, I know how this looks, but I can’t even remember the last time I drank. I just wondered if it would work.”
“Did it?”
“No,” Wendy sobbed. She’d been holding back, even in her rant at John, she’d been hiding the deeper pain from herself. The thoughts that would completely unravel her were kept at bay, buried under layers of rage, but Carson’s hand on hers somehow tore open that seal and Wendy found herself crying out, “It’s our anniversary today, and he’s not here. Why didn’t he listen to me?”
Wendy couldn’t hold in the pain anymore. As she sobbed, Carson’s arms surrounded her, comforting the worst of her grief. The deepest grief cannot be comforted but only endured. Somehow she thought her soul would fall out of her body if she had to feel that hurt any longer. Burrowing against Carson’s shirt, Wendy could smell his cologne. It was different from John’s. Had it been the same, she wouldn’t have accepted Carson’s solace.
She cried until her heart was empty.
Chapter 6
CARSON WAS A MAN’S man. He didn’t understand women. His three years with a live-in girlfriend only confused him more. Now he was sitting in a hotel room in New York City with John’s widow, who was drunk and huggable. When she answered the door in her t-shirt and pajama shorts with a hopeless plea in her eyes, Carson figured he’d just step in for a moment until she got herself together. Then he’d find another room in the hotel and wait for morning.
Somehow her pain had devastated him. He couldn’t leave with her so broken. But damn it. He didn’t know how to stop that hurt, either. He was only a man, and he felt so helpless standing around while she spilled her heart.
Wendy was crying, and he was completely lost.
So he put his arms around her. That he’d always had feelings for Wendy complicated the matter. He was hard and not in the metaphorical way. God, he wanted her so bad. It was wrong, so very wrong. She needed a friend, not a cock. So he held her while his own body raged with desire, and Carson tried not to betray his friendship o
r his morals while he wished like hell he were anywhere else.
He wouldn’t have abandoned her. And he couldn’t believe John would spend a single night away from Wendy, not for all the hazard pay or overtime in the world. There were some things money can’t buy. Love. Time. Happiness. Time was that slippery trade that everyone made for money.
Carson hadn’t cared enough about anyone to stick around. The first time he laid eyes on Wendy, he fell for her and that attraction that went beyond looks and figure. Her laugh, that merry tease in her eye had tugged him like the other side of a magnet. Not for him that day. The day Carson met Wendy, she had been flirting with her husband just before they’d gone on a mission. He’d returned John safely to his wife, never letting on that in the depths of his heart, he had a seed of jealousy. He was too much of a man to even think about his buddy’s wife. So he buried the feelings.
“I don’t know how to get through this,” Wendy said. Her voice was quiet, subdued. She didn’t sound drunk, but Carson could see how much of the bottle was left. A woman Wendy’s size couldn’t put that much away without the alcohol having a serious effect.
Carson cleared his throat. What could he say to that? He leaned his cheek on her hair and said, “Sometimes you just hurt. You don’t need anything special to get through. You just let yourself feel the pain. Even the deepest hurt will let you go eventually, even if you wish it back.”
With a sobbing laugh, Wendy asked, “Why would I ever wish for it back?”
Kissing the top of her head, Carson said, “If the pain leaves before you’re ready, you’ll think somehow you should keep hurting for John. That somehow you are doing him a disservice if you forget too soon. But you’re not. Someday you’ll remember the happy moments with him and even if the sorrow touches your heart, it won’t have the same burn. Just get through today, okay? Promise me you’ll keep getting through the minute in front of you, no matter how much your heart hurts.”