A Brutal Tenderness

by Marata Eros

  “Clear?” he repeats, though I know he’s not really asking.

  “Crystal, sir.”

  “Good.” He looks from Dec to Luke. “And you two, act like fuckups at the university where it’s authentic. Off the clock, act like Bureau.” His gaze shifts back to me. “Don’t go too deep on this, Steel. Make contact with Jess Mackey and put that fucking stepbrother on notice.” He runs a hand through his hair. “God help us if we’re wrong on this.”

  We won’t be wrong, can’t be wrong. If our profiler is right, Thad will move in to take a chance at Jewell, and we’ll be there to nail the shit bag when he does. A serial killer sees any intimacy as a threat to his plan. His dominance. I’m betting Thad is the dominant type.

  O’Rourke turns to go, then spins around, his eyes drilling Adams and Clearwater. “And, boys?”

  We wait.

  “Don’t get too cozy undercover. Don’t become what you’re playacting. Pretending isn’t real.”

  I leave the hot engine of my Harley ticking as I walk away from the university parking lot, making my way to where I know Jewell will be. I don’t have a plan to make contact with her. I’m not going to lie to myself; I’m stalling. I’m going to meet, in the flesh, the only person who could have stopped Faith’s murder, could have prevented the death of a woman who was like a sister to me. Someone who couldn’t even muster a scream, a 911 call, for the woman who had put her before everyone else.

  Then I see her in the hall, talking to that lacrosse douche. Suddenly the image of her dancing fills my head, playing like a slow-motion movie of seduction behind my eyelids. I shake the image from my mind, instead rifling through the mental head count of the students, shrugging off many possibilities of who this jerk could be. Finally, a scrap of memory presents itself—Mitch Maverick, I vaguely remember. A recent transfer student. I make a mental note to look up his background because he’s talking to our swan in hiding. Can’t have that. Anyone who even breathes around Jewell gets infiltrated.

  I take ample opportunity to watch the two as they make faces of interest at each other.

  He makes me sick, just like her—two rich brats gravitating toward each other. Water seeks its own level, I think with barely contained disgust. It’s like a homing device; they know they’re cut from the same cloth.

  Well, fuck that. O’Rourke wants me to make contact? Fine.

  I truck over, using the confident gait I adopt when I know I might have to use my fists instead of my words. It feels good, like the beast who smells the lock getting turned to signal its freedom from its cage. I can almost hear it sigh inside me. I always feel so sure of the physical. That I can dominate. My cock and my fists: Those do what I tell them.

  A small smile curls my lips. I’m in utter control here. I have it.

  Then Jewell MacLeod turns and looks at me full on.

  The surveillance tapes didn’t prepare me. The recounting of the horror of her testimony didn’t either. They were a pale shadow of what happens between us in this moment. It’s a sucker punch that takes me in a classic one-two. If I hadn’t been trained to pretend, to be someone else, she’d have brought me to my knees with a look.

  It instantly slams into me why Faith loved her, it strikes me between the eyes like a physical blow: Jewell is fragile, vulnerable. She’s a woman on the chasm of breaking apart. Faith had felt the same thing I’m feeling now: a fierce sense of protection.

  I listen to Maverick’s limp introductions and completely dismiss him, studying the woman in front of me. Her carefully dyed hair gleams softly, the mess of its weight carefully knotted at the bottom of her neck, strands escaping along her collarbone.

  The sudden urge to kiss her along that delicate intersection pops up unbidden in my mind. When her eyes meet mine, I gaze into the false sea of blueness, knowing the deep emeralds that are beneath.

  I shift as I stand, subtly getting myself in hand and break the spell as she sticks out her hand, and I almost blow it by calling her Jewell. At the last moment, I repeat the name she’s using, the one Maverick introduced her as. “Jess Mackey?”

  I wrap her hand in mine, and when our skin meets in that first press of flesh, heat instantly travels from our contact and tells the guy downstairs that everything is alive and well.

  Fucking great, I think, shifting my weight again.

  This can’t be happening. How can I feel anything other than hatred for the girl who let her selfish fear, her gutless passivity, overtake her when Faith needed her most?

  Even telling myself that, I can hardly let go of her. I look into her eyes and see them widen at the contact.

  Does she feel it too? Before I can get a read on her, Maverick wrecks the moment by clearing his throat.

  Jewell steps back, our fingers sliding out of each other’s hold like reluctant taffy.

  I strain to think of something to normalize the moment and immediately fall back on being an asshole. I’ve had moderate success with that in the past.

  “Just wanted to meet your girlfriend,” I tell Maverick. My smile’s full of sarcasm. “She looks a little lost, if you ask me.”

  “No one did . . . ask you,” Maverick says as he puts me on point for half a second.

  Then I hear the velvet of Jewell’s voice, and another small tingle shoots up my spine. Fuck, I’m in so much trouble here. This is not how this is supposed to go. I can’t lose the grip on how I’m supposed to feel: cold, distant, calculating.

  But this is the kind of event that reams of paperwork and two years of surveillance can never convey. Chemistry, raw and pure, is a conduit between us.

  “I’m not anyone’s girlfriend,” Jewell notes in a cool tone of subtle reprimand.

  Kinda feisty, I’m surprised to note. That’s not something I’d known about her.

  Then Jewell turns on her heel and practically runs off.

  What the fuck? I smile as I watch her move off, Maverick calling pathetically after her.

  Suddenly I sense it’s Jewell MacLeod who’s in control here, and I start to panic. Maybe I’m not the right guy for the job. But then an idea takes shape, and it’s one that will work with O’Rourke’s directive—and make my dick calm down.

  The question is, Will she go with it?

  2

  FBI Temporary Headquarters—Normandy Park

  “So how was biology, Brad?” I ask, sucking the water out of

  my bottle down by half, workout gear clinging to my chilling body. I need to rehydrate. Badly. I left Adams down there licking his wounds. I give a tight smile, then slug down the rest, tossing the bottle in the recycling can.

  Dec’s brows dump over his brown eyes, his scowl deepening as he crams half a sandwich in his mouth, talking around it. “Y’know, Steel . . .”

  My brows pop.

  “You’re an uptight sucker. Why don’t you work it out?” I flex, laughing. “Thinking I’m doing enough of that

  already.”

  Clearwater looks at me, nods, then says, “Yeah, Hercules.

  What gives?”

  I shrug, no time for self-examination for me, but I give the

  best response I can. “I need this case to close, Dec. I won’t be happy until it’s signed, sealed, and delivered, that little bitch Jewell delivered up for justice like a cherry on top. That’ll make

  a dude wound .”

  Dec gives a small frown. “Yeah . . . about Jess Mackey.” “Jewell,” I clarify in a flat voice.

  “Steel, come on, ya hard-ass. She’s hiding. Whether we

  know it or not, keep your focus.”

  I close my eyes and take a deep breath. I open them, my

  expression resolute. “Okay, whatever. What is it?”

  Dec slams his palm on the table, the salt and pepper shakers

  rattling. “Listen, Steel, I know you blame our girl for Faith’s

  death . . .”

  “I don’t blame her. I hold her accountable.” My eyes hold

  his, unflinching, determined.

  D
ec sighs, swinging his dark hair out of his eyes. “For

  Christ’s sake, Cas, she’s a ballet dancer. She couldn’t hurt

  anyone.”

  As I open my mouth, his finger wags in front of me. “No,

  shut up for once.” His eyes bore into mine. “You’re wrong about

  her. She’s shy and sweet.” Then his eyes narrow. “Think about

  it, Steel. What was she supposed to do? Open that closet and

  defend Faith?” he asks, his palms up and away from his body,

  “Fucking think about it, Cas. She would have died too. Thad

  would have chewed her up and spit her out.”

  My next words are meant to hurt, to deflect. I’m so good at

  this verbal maneuvering tactic it’s second nature. “You want to

  bang her,” I state.

  There’s a charged silence.

  “I want to beat your head in for that, Steel,” Dec says in an

  ominous tone. Then, “Not everything’s about sex.”

  Right. “Uh-huh,” I agree unconvincingly.

  His hands clench, and I know he’s thinking about having

  a go. Then his shoulders relax. “She’s not the kind of girl you

  bang, my friend. She’s not one of your little submissives.” I frown, my hands bracketing my hips. “What kind of girl is

  she, then?” I ask sarcastically.

  Dec waits a second, allowing the pause to swell between us.

  “She’s the kind of girl you love, Cas.”

  “She’s too terrible to love,” I say in a knee-jerk response. But

  Dec is ready, a smile spreading across his face.

  “She’s too good not to.”

  Fuck, I think, we’re talking about the subject here. Maybe we’re

  all getting a bit too close. And yet his yapping is beginning to

  break down the walls of the carefully constructed image of

  Jewell that I’d created in my mind of a passive, narcissistic

  woman, which I’d been clinging to for two years.

  But for the sake of the job, I know I have to ignore my

  fellow agent’s words.

  She’s just bait to entice the killer out of hiding.

  My rage over Faith’s death needs to fall on someone,

  especially with Thad out of reach.

  But it doesn’t sit as comfortably on Jewell as it once did.

  It’s easy to compromise a fuel line, especially when the car’s owner would rather dance than put gas in her car. I’ve never met a car I can’t persuade to do my bidding, and her shit Kia was a pushover. Must be a big step down from her usual wheels, I think with disdain.

  That’s me, the car whisperer. Should have been a mechanic instead of chasing killers.

  I’m leaning against my hog, as comfortably as some men’s favorite recliner. My showered body is as relaxed as it can be two hours after I pressed myself hard into service at the gym with Adams. Clearwater’s words burn inside my brain, but I drown them with the cool waters of my icy resolve: She’s a subject in a serial murder sting. That’s all Jewell McLeod is.

  Maybe if I keep reminding myself enough, I’ll believe my own words.

  I speak into the mike under my thin T, the bulk of my leather jacket camouflaging it: “Subject approaching.”

  I watch Jewell rushing up the knoll of finely manicured grounds of the campus in a graceful jog that begs to be a sprint, wisps springing from the tight bun she winds all that long hair into.

  I give a hard swallow, wondering what it looks like down. An image bursts into my brain of her body against mine, that long hair swinging in my face, tickling my ribs, a curtain of silk enclosing us as I grab her hipbones like handles, making her body move the way I want it, owning it. The image is so vivid, so visceral, that I completely miss her trying to start her shitty little Kia at the same time I push away my stubborn thoughts of screwing the subject of our protection.

  The woman I’ve determined to hate.

  I watch her take a delicate hand and strike the steering wheel, and when she gasps at the pain she brings on herself, I give in to the tiniest flinch at her distress.

  Dammit. I shake off my empathy.

  It’s time. She’s got a date with douche, and we need to make the perp think she’s being courted. I should be happy that said douche is interested too. That’ll make it seem more imperative for Thad to go after her.

  We’re forcing the compulsions we’re banking on him having. In theory, attention paid to Jewell should compel him to stalk her and thereby reveal himself.

  But her date doesn’t make me happy. In fact, it makes me want to break Maverick’s hands off. I’m conflicted as hell. Not the reaction I should be having.

  Jewell hasn’t noticed me yet. I straighten, stride to the door, and throw a hand on the hood.

  “Hey,” I say, leaning in.

  She turns, startled eyes to mine, and I automatically search for the green I know lies beneath. “Hi,” she responds tentatively.

  “Get out,” I say, nodding toward the car, letting her know I can help.

  Her eyes widen with fear and more than a tinge of irritation.

  She huffs, blowing an escaped strand of hair out of her face. My eyes move to her lips and I swallow again—hard.

  “No,” she says, looking away from me.

  “I can take a look,” I explain, stepping away from the car.

  Jewell’s brows slowly rise, but she slides out of the car, one sleeve of her top rolling off her shoulder, and my eyes tag that bare stretch of skin. I tear them away and squeeze into the small car.

  I act like concentration to start the car is warranted, my damn knees kissing my chin. I hunt for the bar that will move the seat back and give me more room. It allows some room, but no car is usually comfortable for someone six foot four. I turn the key and give a subtle pump of my boot on the pedal, provoking a minor flood of gas. The residual gas in the fuel line sparks a brief ignition and stutters to a full start, like I want.

  Then it predictably dies.

  My eyes meet hers and don’t look away. “You know, Jess,” I say, “a car runs better if you put gas in it.”

  Her disbelief is comical, and she rushes over and leans in the car. The fragrance from her recent shower and the underlying scent that is uniquely hers suffocate me as she sees the empty gauge.

  When Jewell turns, her face is inches from my own. And then she spooks at my closeness. As she pulls her head back too fast, she raps it hard on the rim of the window.

  I know a blackout when I see one. I’ve had a few, the signs are obvious.

  I do what I’ve promised myself I’d never do.

  I go beyond the obligatory handshake, and I’m out of the car and swooping to keep Jewell from falling on the pavement.

  As I hold her, something deep within me responds. Even I’m not powerful enough to self-delude at this point. I want her. My role as her protector suddenly becomes more than just a job description. I feel the urge to keep her safe.

  She breaks my chain of epiphanies. “How tall are you?” Jewell asks, her words running together.

  I smile despite my jumbled-up mental shit. “You must have hit your head hard.”

  I put her gently away from me—pure self-preservation. If I don’t, I’ll do something I can’t take back, won’t want to take back.

  Jewell lifts her head, shaking to seemingly rid herself of the muddle that the hit gave her, and exclaims frantically, “I need to go!”

  “Where? I’ll take you,” I say, grabbing her slim arm in case she face plants.

  She backs away, and I release her. Jewell shakes her head, putting a hand to it, orienting herself.

  Not on my watch. “I said I’ll take you.” My eyes tell her I’m not fucking asking. I’m not much for permissions anyway.

  Jewell takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. I watch her eyes, dangerous windows to her soul, and once again the feeling washes over me, th
e feeling that I know her, that in some way I’ve always known her.

  “Okay,” she says reluctantly.

  “Where?” I ask as I walk with deliberate precision toward my waiting bike, though I know damn well. I’ve seen her make coffee at Java Head every Saturday for going on two years through the window of the downtown coffee shop.

  I slip my helmet on and hand the spare to Jewell as she carefully avoids touching my fingers—an avoidance that tells me so much about how she feels, about how I make her feel.

  “Java Head,” she finally replies, trying to maintain her distance behind me.

  But that’s not how tandem motorcycle riding goes. She wraps her dancer’s arms around my waist, a safe distance between our bodies. I give a grin that she can’t see and jerk her against my back, the parts of her I’ve fantasized about pressed in a heated and intimate kiss of our bodies as I let go of the throttle and the bike rolls toward her place of work, an unlikely place for her date with the lacrosse asshole.

  Maybe I ride a little faster than I should, thinking thoughts better left untouched.

  The ballerina in hiding clings to my back as I realize I can’t answer my own question.

  If I hate Jewell, why don’t I want to let her go?

  3

  I ride off, making sure that I’m out of sight of Jewell, and loop around to our surveillance site. I slide into the tight crevice of parking I’ve worked out with the shop owners of the Pike District. Flashing my badge is a real motivator, especially when dealing with irate merchants whose cramped parking allotments are already stretched to the breaking point.

  I slip off the warm seat of my bike, placing my helmet on the seat, and wend my way toward the building with a great vantage point. The smells of the city assault me with their familiarity: food, booze, and people for surveillance. The underlying odor of car exhaust reminds me where I am and what I’m doing like an anchor in the stormy sea of my internal conflict. I look up, shielding my eyes from a brilliant sun, showcased by Seattle’s typical Indian summer. I don’t trip as I traverse the alley that holds the remnants of the original cobblestoned streets that run underfoot, paved over many times. Rips in the asphalt like antique wounds bleed through. I approach the solid steel door that faces the alley dead center. I give a hard rhythmic knock in a pattern that changes every day. There’s an answering knock, and I reply with the required sequence. The bolt slides with a shrieking pull and I’m in. Luke wears the standard all-black cargo pants with black T, his utility pockets filled with the tools of our trade.