Getting Wilde

by Jenn Stark

  Man, all that had sucked. Still, if I hadn’t stepped in, Eshe would have tried to force the girls from Kavala to perform for her, and they clearly weren’t up for that kind of crazy. Then again, maybe they wouldn’t feel it as strongly as I did. Maybe since they’d been doing it for years, the experience of being blasted apart and then put back together would feel like coming home.

  I sort of doubted it.

  The trip down the stairs was mercifully brief, since I had gravity on my side. By the time I pushed out onto the floor, I felt more or less steady. A controlled sort of chaos was holding forth at the far end of the hallway. But it didn’t look like desperate chaos. More like happy, fluffy chaos. I needed more fluffy in my life.

  Besides, that had to be where the girls were being held. I eased out alongside the wall, pausing a moment to rest. Because of the ruckus, no one noticed me. I was feeling better, I told myself. I could totally make it if I stayed pressed up against the wall.

  Ten steps down the hallway, I began to rethink my decision.

  Twenty steps, and my breathing gave out again.

  But it was at step twenty-three that my good luck really took a nosedive.

  A firm, no-nonsense palm appeared out of nowhere, pressing into the wall before my eyes. It was attached to a powerful forearm that disappeared beneath the sleeve of a rumpled white shirt rolled up almost to the elbow.

  But I didn’t get much beyond the hand, honestly, given what was dangling from it.

  An LVMPD police detective badge. With a name I had imprinted on my cerebral cortex since the first time I’d heard it when I was twelve years old.

  “Hello, Sariah,” Brody Rooks said.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Wincing, I flopped around so at least I had the wall at my back, then I forced myself to look up. And up still farther. I’d remembered him being tall, intense, and mind-bogglingly hot but…I hadn’t expected there to be so much of him.

  Then again, I hadn’t expected ever to see the man again.

  What little shot I’d had at breathing normally was now completely dead.

  Standing in front of me was six-foot-something’s worth of heart-stoppingly gorgeous detective in a rumpled suit and a three-day beard. His eyes were rimmed with fine lines and ringed with fatigue, his hair looked like he’d been raking his hands through it, his body was as tight and coiled as a lion about to spring. Some of what I saw was new, but most of it was as familiar as my own breath, a million different details pounding at me, filling in ten years of memories.

  “Hello, Brody.”

  He jerked back at the sound of my voice, as if he’d half-thought I was a mirage. His hand dropped from the wall. Eyes the color of a winter sky took my measure, the smooth, tight lips and chiseled jaw assaulting the fading sepia-toned image I had carefully preserved in the scrapbook of my mind, inviolate and impenetrable.

  I’d left that image behind the moment I’d picked myself up off a hot Memphis back lot ten years ago, the sound of my own annihilation ringing in my ears, the smell of copper and fire rank in my nose. Stumbling, coughing, and half-dead with shock, I’d walked away that morning from everything in my life that had turned to pure evil.

  And I’d run from the only thing left that was good.

  “That was you, I assume,” he said coolly. “Four days ago at Binion’s?”

  I didn’t bother answering that one, and his jaw tightened. The subtle movement unlocked a completely unexpected and unwanted flood of heat inside me, valuable at this moment only because it mortified me to the point of movement. I lurched off the wall, swaying, and began trudging down the corridor again.

  Brody turned too, not touching me. Which I appreciated. Almost. “What are you doing here?” He didn’t ask the second question, and the more obvious one: What are you doing alive? I appreciated that too.

  “I’m here to make sure the girls are okay. There’s no law against that, I assume.”

  He morphed smoothly into cop mode. “What’s your connection to them?”

  “Saw them on the street outside of that terrible, terrible accident.” We reached the knot of people in front of the girls’ room. There were fewer of them now. Fewer was good. Apparently sensing that I was in no shape to be stopped, Brody let me keep going. I homed in on Nikki’s glitter.

  “I’m sorry, ma’am, you can’t—”

  “She’s on the approved list.” Nikki waved me in, her eyes rounding as she took in my new detective-size shadow. “Hello, Officer Hottie.”

  My gaze flew to hers, but her bright-green contacts were trained on Brody. Beside me, he sighed. “I thought you said you didn’t know her, Nikki.”

  “I had no idea you meant dollface. But, Sara, look sharp. The girls apparently stopped their cardiac arrest dealio the moment you had your little fainting spell in the parking garage. They woke up crying out for you. We’ve only barely gotten them calmed down.”

  Leaving Brody behind, I pressed forward into the room. It had to be one of the nicest hospital rooms I’d ever seen, a double wide with two side-by-side beds and enough monitors to run the space station. “What is all this?”

  “Experimental technology wing. Three guesses who underwrites it.”

  “Sarawilde.” The haunting sound knifed through me. I blinked, focusing on the girls. Just like in the medical suite at Prime Luxe, they both turned as if they were tethered to the same string and fixed me with a double-barreled stare. Unlike any other medical team I’d ever encountered, the crew surrounding the girls actually stood back as I got close. Either these guys had been prepped on me, or they landed far more squarely on the “research” side of the spectrum than “caregiver.” Worked for me.

  “What’re their names?”

  “Jos and Prayim,” Nikki supplied. “Translator at your elbow.”

  At the sound of their names, the girls’ hands lifted, reaching for me, their eyes luminous with shared pain. Ah shit. “Did they—” I turned to the translator, a small man in linen trousers and a short-sleeved dress shirt. “Do they know what happened, ah, with me?”

  He put the question to them in a melodic language—Greek, I assumed, or some variant close to that. The girls’ faces clouded with sadness, their words coming thick and fast.

  “They know that you—” The translator frowned. “They are saying you stepped into the mist? For them. They know you were not prepared. They know you’re—”

  “Okay, that’s enough.” I was keenly aware of Brody standing behind me, listening keenly. “Tell them I’m fine, that they have to get better, that’s the important thing. To heal.” I flapped my hand at them. “Or do whatever they need to do. I’ll be fine.”

  The translator spoke again, and the girls’ eyes flashed back to me, too big, too haunted. Between them, their parents watched the two girls mournfully. “I don’t suppose they’ve experienced this before.”

  “Actually, they have,” Nikki said. “Apparently, they have ‘appeared to die’ on a number of occasions since birth. Occupational hazard.”

  “Right.” I knew I should leave, but I couldn’t help but ask, “Does it get better?”

  The translator put the question to the girls, and their smiles sent a warm wash of reassurance through me. Then the short man spoke again. “Not at all,” he said. “But the pain is a gift to the goddess, for which they are honored.”

  Great. “Of course it is.”

  Nikki eyed me as Brody finally moved forward and grabbed my arm. A jolt of recognition flowed through me. Not the electrical pulse that I experienced with the touch of a Connected, but the touch of familiarity, of long-ago hopes and wishes and stupid emotions that really had no place surging up now, with a flash of heat so strong I wondered if I was going through the change twenty years too early.

  “So this is your secret, Sara Wilde.”

  The voice purred over the heads of everyone in the room, and I jerked to a stop, scanning the room. Aleksander Kreios leaned against the far wall, watching me. No one seemed to notice h
im except Nikki, however. Nikki and Jos and Prayim, whose eyes grew large, their faces so rapt that even their parents looked over to the far wall, frowning.

  “What is it?” Brody hadn’t let go of my arm, but he wasn’t stupid. His gaze went to the far wall, and he frowned. “What’s with the wall?”

  With a wink, Kreios winked out, apparently an illusion tuned solely to the Connected channel. The girls blinked and appeared confused again, and Nikki moved forward in a flash of sequins and swagger.

  “Time to break up the party and let these girls get some rest. Detective? Sara?”

  The research team stood mutely to the side, and I wondered at them again. Where had Armaeus found them? And what was he hoping to gain?

  We shuffled out into the corridor, Nikki staunchly by my side.

  “Saria—Sara,” Brody corrected himself, as soon as we’d cleared the knot of people. “You want to tell me what’s going on?”

  “Are you here in an official capacity, Detective?” Nikki asked, her voice dripping with Southern charm that was completely fake but somehow worked for her. “Or you want me to give Dixie a call? I bet she’s probably in the hospital right now, looking after her other girls.”

  I blinked. Dixie?

  Meanwhile, Brody winced. “Nikki, this isn’t the time.”

  “No really, this is perfect.” Nikki had her cell phone out, waving it around. It was as bedazzled as her uniform. “Since Sara here clearly isn’t the person you asked about the other day, and no one else knows she could have been that person either, it probably makes sense for us to have your little chat with Sara another day? Not in the middle of a crowd while girlfriend here can barely keep her feet. But there’s no need to waste the opportunity for you and Dixie to get together.”

  It was my turn to stare. Brody wasn’t taking that well. His tired face now had two flags of color at the cheeks, and he grimaced. “We’re no longer together, Nikki. You know that.”

  “Hmm. Well, not sure Dix knows that, word to the wise. What is definite fact is that Sara here is about to faint. Let us go freshen up, and we’ll be back in a jiff.”

  “Not happening.” Brody turned and glared. “Beat it, Nikki.”

  “I’m not going—”

  “It’s fine, really,” I said, reaching out to touch her arm. Her strength radiated from her, welcome and sure. “I can talk.”

  She blew out a long breath. “Fine.” She swiveled toward Brody. “You’ve got three minutes, and then we’re outtie.”

  Not giving him a chance to disagree, she turned up the corridor, her booming voice loud enough to wake the dead. “Doctor! I need to talk with the doctor.”

  Brody half pulled, half carried me to the next open room, pushing me inside it, then stepping in himself. He didn’t close the door behind him, but I still felt trapped. Not being a huge fan of being trapped, I welcomed the spurt of anger that cleared away most of my fog. I forced my chin up and braced myself against the wall. I was a big fan of walls at the moment.

  Brody stood on the balls of his feet, like a predator about to pounce. “Let’s start with an easy one, Sara,” he said. “What brings you to Vegas? It’s a long way from Memphis, don’t you think?”

  “I could ask you the same question.” I shrugged. “I didn’t think this kind of town would be your style.”

  As soon as I said the words, I knew I’d somehow misstepped. In my defense, it’d been a really long day.

  “My style?” Brody’s words were too careful, too quiet. “Based on what? Your oh-so-thorough assessment of my character when you were seventeen years old? The scene in your rearview mirror as you vanished into thin air?” Sharp brows lifted above his resolute gaze, and his lips twisted. “Tell me, Sara, was it my style that made you leave the city without informing the police that you were still alive the morning after your mother was taken? Was it my style that caused you to disappear completely, leaving us to assume you’d also been killed—or were kidnapped—by the same thugs who’d gotten to her?”

  His words assaulted me, bringing back memories still too fresh after ten years. The explosion, the screaming, the nightmare of pain and rancid fear… I stiffened, turning away from him. “What I did and why I did it is none of your business.”

  “Wrong answer.” Brody moved so quickly that my gasp was caught in my throat. My feint was more like a faint, and his hands locked on my shoulders, catching me up against the wall.

  Heat pulsed through me as he shifted his hands to rest against the wall on either side of my head. Now I really did feel trapped. And intimidated. And overwhelmed by emotions I couldn’t even process. Brody Knight, the star of a million fantasies and a million nightmares, was in front of me now. Real. Alive. Leaning into me. I was afraid to even blink as he edged closer yet. His lips were so near, they brushed against mine, and a million jolts of completely non-Connected energy shot through me. I whimpered, my lungs suddenly forgetting how to work.

  “Now this, Sara, really is my style,” Brody murmured , his lips moving against mine, a hint of a kiss so intense that my bones ached for him to just do it already. “So I suggest you start talking.”

  No talking, no talking, my body screamed. “I don’t have anything to say to you,” I whispered.

  “Oh, I think you do.” His leaned back from me to study my face, and his hips torqued against mine. I might be unable to breathe, but Brody’s body was as jacked as mine was, even if his words were still furious. “I think you have about ten years of things to say to me, Sara, starting with where the hell you went on the morning of May thirteenth.”

  I stared at him, memorizing his pupils for something to do while my brain flapped its hands around and bleated. If I could just get him out of this room, I would run. Fast, hard, and for as long as it took to get away. It had worked ten years ago, it’d work now. I couldn’t tell him the truth—not then, and definitely not now. Not ever, really. Some things just couldn’t be undone. “Can you give me some air, here?” I managed.

  He hesitated, glaring at me.

  I gaped back, channeling fluster. It wasn’t all that hard.

  Finally, as if it took him far more effort than it should have, Brody stepped back just far enough to reach into his jacket pocket and pull out a small, weather-beaten notebook, fastened with a thick rubber band and bookmarked with a pen. He opened the little book, sliding the pen free, then glanced back up at me. Once more, the cool, confident cop was on display—the hot, hard predator leashed. I didn’t know which Brody was more dangerous. “Okay,” he said, pen poised. “Where did you go?”

  My lungs finally collapsed again, and with breath came defiance. “How can it possibly matter—”

  He moved just a half inch closer to me, stopping my words mid-bitch. “Just answer the damn question, Sara,” he said. “It’s important.”

  “I left town. I hitchhiked,” I said flatly. “I was picked up at a campground by a woman in an RV. End of story.”

  “Who was it?”

  “Doesn’t matter, she’s dead now. Natural causes.”

  He made another notation. “Then what? Where did you go after she gave you a ride?”

  “Around.” I waved my hand. “We traveled all over the place. There was a bunch of retirees going from campground to campground, seeing the sights. That’s where I went. Sorry it’s not more exciting.”

  “For ten years.” His gaze on me was level and hard. “You mean to tell me that you’ve been roaming around with a group of itinerant campers for ten years. No job, no school, no credit cards—”

  “Last time I checked, none of that was a crime.”

  “I was looking for you!” he exploded, fury and disbelief raging over his face. “The morning of the explosion, we all thought we’d find you in that rattle trap of a trailer, and there was nothing—nothing! There were no calls, not one of your classmates knew where you’d gone, there wasn’t one scrap of information. I tracked Jane Doe deaths and kidnapping reports for the next three years, expecting either you or what was
left of you to show up. When nothing happened, I didn’t know if that was good or bad.”

  So much death. Swirling all around me, so much death. “I wasn’t your responsibility,” I said stiffly.

  “Your mother had been killed on my watch, Lara. That makes you my responsibility.”

  “Your mother…killed.” Hearing the words rocked me in a way I couldn’t have expected. Something inside me, the last fragile bud of disbelief, curled up and died. I’d known my mother was dead, of course. I’d known it ten years ago. But no one had ever said the words to me. No one had ever—

  “Okay, Mr. Hide Your Witness in a Closet, time’s up.” Nikki had appeared in the doorway, taking in the scene with the air of a woman ready to take a body down. “Unless you’re going to arrest Sara for unlawful saving of everyone’s asses, we’re done here. You’ve got other fish to fry.”

  Brody growled as I pushed myself off the wall and scrambled to the side. “Not even—”

  “Detective.” A man in a white coat entered the room as well, waving an official-looking clipboard. “Having all these uniformed officers on site is not part of our normal protocol. If you could just sign—”

  Brody shot out a hand and caught my arm, turning me around to face him. His eyes were hard as flint, a mixture of anger and—something deeper, more primal in his face. “This isn’t finished.”

  Nikki stepped closer. “It’s not even begun, Sugar Lips. Now go do your manly business, and let me get Sara over to Dixie’s.”

  He blanched. “That’s where she’s staying?”

  “You know the number!” Nikki clapped her hands on my shoulders, steering me out the door as the doctor pushed his clipboard into Brody’s hands.

  By the time Brody looked up again, we were gone.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  An hour later we were in a whole new world. With donuts.

  Nikki had brought me to the Palazzo Casino and, after a brief stop at the front desk, had sent me into the mega-hotel’s rabbit warren of shops and restaurants to secure provisions. My instructions were clear and simple: get donuts, wait about twenty minutes so we wouldn’t be seen in the casino together, then head up to the room.