by Marata Eros
But he blows me away with a stay of execution, if you will. “You’re staying.”
I stop, planting my hands on my hips, the skin scabbed and
pissed when I splay my fingers. I wait. I’ve never been much for words, and I don’t get uncomfortable with silences. Where others fill them with conversation, I let the silence spin like a web.
O’Rourke knows this and lets his thoughts come together. Finally he says what he’s thinking. “It’s too late in the game to pull your messed-up ass off.”
Ah.
He scrubs the little bit of hair on his head. Back and forth, back and forth, then drills me with angry eyes. “You’re in too deep. I don’t know how we’ll ever salvage this, Steel. You’ve fucked it six ways to Sunday with your unethical bullshit.”
I open my mouth.
He wags his index finger in front of me, and my mouth snaps shut. “Uh-uh. No. I do the talking.” His eyes lock with mine. “Not you, not Adams. Because he’ll cover for whatever idiotic idea you’ve got up your sleeve.”
Not everything, I think, remembering him hitting Jewell. I’m still not done with that.
O’Rourke begins walking and I reluctantly follow. When we reach the unmarked black SUV, he turns, my hair having grown long enough to hold the moisture of the steady drizzle that falls.
“Stay out of the dancer’s tutu.” I can feel the frown on my face and he steps into the line of my body. “Watch her, guard her, lead our guy out from underneath the rock where he’s hiding. But stop . . . Fucking. Her.”
I close my eyes, the scent of Jewell, her body in my hands, underneath me, part of me, accepting me, a tactile imprint that’s burned into my brain like a toxin. A tonic.
I don’t know which, I just know I have to have more.
A brushfire of etched memories sears and burns in my brain, and I can’t erase it.
Being told to not have sex with Jewell isn’t the issue. Can I turn off my cock? Yeah . . . somehow.
It’s the heart that I can’t.
“You can’t work the press,” Jonas states as he waves around a dismissive hand, taking a sip of old cold coffee. A staple of the locals around here. They don’t give a shit about the java, only that it’s fully leaded.
I sigh. “Listen,” I say, leaning forward, trying for reasonable and, judging from Adams’s face, missing it pretty good. “He’s in jail for the serials, got it?” I say, jerking a thumb at my partner, who gives a small nod of acknowledgment.
Jonas Moore grunts, slapping his iPad closed, and leans back, taking another sip of the thankless coffee. The waitress walks by and he flicks the rim for more.
Disgusting. I grimace, scrubbing my face. My patience . . . well, the hell with my patience. I don’t have any.
She pours more with a smirk. She knows it’s shit. Good old Doris.
I’m in a foul mood and want to shove that sludge up his ass. Adams rakes a look over my face and gives a half shake of his head at me like a prayer, and I almost laugh right there.
I’m going to lean on this little scab until he folds. Fuck it.
I move forward and a flicker of genuine fear flashes through those flat brown eyes of his, then is gone. Male-kind hasn’t totally lost that instinctive circle, where males prowl around, taking the measure of one another. Moore just saw a primal assessment that makes him uneasy.
Good.
“My partner is taking a little vacation, and while he’s doing it, the real killer will come out and play.”
“No,” Jonas says in a terse verbal slap. “We go to print with this trumped-up bullshit, and every female between sixteen and seventy thinks she’s safe from this animal. Thinks the feds have nabbed and tagged the sicko who’s been doing the girls.” He throws his stylist behind his ear, signaling just how done he is with note taking, or anything else, for that matter.
“I won’t be a party to this . . . falsehood. It endangers people. It endangers lives,” he states with sanctimonious finality.
I slap my hand on the table and his cup leaps off the surface, coffee grounds and brackish brown water slopping over the rim. “If we don’t do this, all the ground we’ve gained will be lost. He has to feel complacent, ready . . . superior.” My eyes nail him to the spot. “Help us nail this guy,” I say with quiet intensity, my body buzzing with it.
Jonas looks into my eyes, and the moment swells uncomfortably between us. Not for me.
For him.
I let the silence build until it strains the air we breathe and my partner shifts, then Moore begins to squirm. I remain silent, giving nothing.
I know I’ve won. It’s in his eyes.
Jonas takes a deep sigh. “Two weeks, Agent Steel.”
I throw my hands up in easy surrender now that my way is coming to pass. “That’s all I’m asking for . . .” I begin as if I’m going easy on him, and he shakes his head, as grim as I’ve ever seen another human being.
Jonas Moore stands. I move to stand as well, towering over him like I do most males. I put my hand out to shake his, and he ignores it, his eyes locking on mine with barely veiled disdain. “God help you if you’re wrong,” he says, “and he uses this window to hunt again while innocent women lie like lambs before the slaughter.”
He turns and walks away, his cold coffee gone.
“Man, that sucked.”
“He’s right,” I say to Adams, and he cocks a brow. “It’s a risk.”
Adams shrugs. “No guts, no glory, Steel.” He claps me on the back.
My sense of foreboding grows. The last piece is in place.
Thad should bite.
16
The press is under wraps and the lie’s been told, the media perpetuating our version of things. U Dub is cocooned in a false euphoria, courtesy of the feds. Students roam the halls relaxed now, lulled into a sense of security laid by careful planning. The reporter who’s in our pocket is feeding the public consciousness exactly what we’ve told him to inter Thad in a grave of complacency. He will feel safe . . . and come out to play.
Now we wait.
I can’t fuck things up now. Jewell is out of the hospital and facing more than just grades that are compromised by my tampering.
Thad will come out to play. I can feel the surety thrumming through my body as I go through the motions of my various roles, playing the college senior with a light load of classes, giving the visual cues as part-time campus security, back to bouncing at Skoochies.
Jewell beats in my brain. Her scent, her body, her face that I want to kiss and hold. I close my mind’s eye against it, but it returns over and over again.
It’s slowly driving me crazy. But I have to give her space. I have to follow orders, and I have to let the final elements of our plan fall into place.
“Steel . . .” Clearwater begins, getting right in my grill. I can smell his sweat and blood, and it makes my heart speed, spoiling for more of the fight, our session on that mat not nearly enough with the pressures of this case. “Jewell has a pure soul. That’s why this one wants her. He’ll take as many as he can get . . . you know this. We don’t have to be profilers to know this. The evil defile the pure. Get your fucking head out of your ass.”
I hear clapping and look up and it’s Luke Adams and Agent Carmichael as our audience. Great, just fucking special.
“The great Agent Castile brought low by a woman,” Carmichael purrs, inciting my ass.
It’s working.
“Heard you were playing hide the beef stick with our subject, Cas?” Her eyes glitter with malice as she circles Clearwater and me, stopping just out of reach.
I can’t believe I did the sexual tango with this bitch, role playing or not, she’s a ballbuster. I scowl at her and she moves in for the kill.
“I have backup primary, I watch your little Jewell,” she says with condescension.
I wait, what’s the fucking point?
Adams is more verbal, “What’s your fucked-up point, Carmichael?”
I smile.
&nbs
p; Oh, fuck . . . this is personal.
She swings her eyes back to mine. “There are twenty-two thousand women on this campus and you have to compromise our investigation for this slutty rich little ballerina?” She laughs and I move.
Carmichael’s eyes widen and Clearwater and Adams become statues of stillness. They know there’s no force on earth that would make me hurt a woman.
Though Carmichael begs exception.
Her eyes widen and she gets in defensive formation. “Don’t,” she says, though the fear in her eyes transfers to her body with a low tremble.
“I’m not going to hurt you, Carmichael,” I scoff, then search her face, a mix of anger, fear, and shame. “But you’d like that, wouldn’t you?” I finish in a low question. A flash of embarrassment flows through her eyes and is gone.
“You’re an arrogant prick,” she says, straightening.
Clearwater comes to stand beside me, giving Carmichael a piercing scrutiny. “It’s not about Jewell MacLeod, is it, Carmichael?”
She turns to face him.
“It’s about you digging that piece of Cas you got in secondary, right?” Adams says with the weight of knowledge behind him.
Carmichael gives a snort of disgust and turns away. “I wouldn’t do you if you were the last man on earth,” she says, her eyes on mine.
I cock a brow. Lot of heat for not giving a ripe shit about me. Lot of anger toward Jewell. That, I don’t like.
“Sounds like a woman scorned and all,” Adams says, smoothly coming to my defense, though I don’t deserve it. I’ve been a class-A prick the past week.
“Fucking please,” she says, moving toward the door. “I just wanted to come see all this unravel everyone’s talking about.”
“What?” I ask, stepping forward.
She turns, thrilled to deliver her next words. “Y’know, the agent who’s got his dick in the guillotine.”
“The dick you want,” Clearwater says in an insightful twist, and Carmichael stiffens, walking through the door and slamming it. The noise reverberates in the strange acoustics of the room.
Adams laughs, then gives a low whistle. “Well, fuck me. She’s steaming pissed.”
Clearwater doesn’t laugh. Neither do I.
“What?” Adams shrugs. “It was bound to catch up with you, Steel.” His eyes catch mine as Clearwater and I grab towels and rub them over the chilled sweat of our bodies.
“You can’t just . . . fake-bang twenty-five percent of the female agents to set the stage for your rep and not have one of them offended.”
I turn. “Can’t they just behave like professionals?” I say in exasperation.
“Ah . . . no. They’re female.”
“What, females can’t be professional?” Clearwater asks.
“Not that one,” I say, squeezing my water bottle. The stream hits the back of my throat and the chill convulses my pipe automatically, taking half the bottle in about five seconds.
“Emotions get in the way at some point, it’s just the way they’re hardwired,” Adams says in explanation.
“Except you.”
I look at Dec, who slowly nods. “You’re letting emotions you’ve never even acknowledged fuck with you.” He taps his temple.
We’ve come full circle to the same tired conversation.
Adams looks at the door Carmichael just stormed through. “Probably not that great she’s backup primary,” he says thoughtfully.
Yeah.
Clearwater gives a grunt, shades of Brad leaking forward. “I don’t need backup. If I can’t handle Thad, then I deserve to die.”
A chill sweeps over me at his words, and I sit, letting the water bottle dangle between my knees.
I don’t like Clearwater’s words. I don’t like the direction of my thoughts.
I don’t like Carmichael on backup primary or that everyone’s made me on Jewell.
“Where is she?” I say to the floor, defeated over my obsession.
“Classes,” Clearwater says, then adds, “she’s sort of intuitive.” Clearwater gives Adams a look.
“What?”
He looks back at me. “She doesn’t believe that ‘Brock’ is the one.”
“Ha!” Adams yells. “I was grade-A convincing. I’m hurt,” he says, hand to his chest.
“Don’t be a fucking girl, Adams,” I say, and he frowns.
“Why doesn’t she?”
Dec answers Luke, “I don’t know, man. I’m busy playing Brad, and Brad doesn’t ask deep questions.”
“Decatur Clearwater of the Navajo does,” I say.
He turns ebony eyes on mine, eyes that pierce the bone and marrow, marching through your body and spitting out your spirit for dissection.
“Yeah, for you”—he points at me—“that is what you need.” He palms his chin, sucking some water from a canteen that he brings with him everywhere, the large turquoise stone embedded in the dull silver winking at me as he continues. “For Jewell, she needs something else.”
“What?” I ask, standing.
He looks at me. “You will know when the time is right.”
“Well, that’s some cryptic bullshit if I ever heard it,” Adams mutters, and we look at him.
My mike beeps. “Steel.”
Beltaine says, “Subject on the move with Maverick.”
My stomach rolls with tension and the agents look at me.
I can’t stand it . . . the role-play is so tiring to me. So maybe I won’t.
“Careful, Steel,” Adams says, his hand on my forearm.
I look at it and he lifts it.
“Yeah,” I say, heading to take a quick shower. I wash the sweat and blood off my body; the healing wounds of my face sing as I lather and rinse, while Clearwater’s words ping around in my head.
I just want to wipe it—all of it—and start new.
I can’t.
I put clothes on my body, sore from fighting, my mind tired from a mental battle I can’t win.
I think about Jewell the entire way to the school, and when I come upon her and Maverick in the hub of traffic of the courtyard and see his hands on her, a veil descends like red pulsating blood and I can’t think.
It’s in that moment that I question my sanity. I’m here to catch a monster who preys on women, and I can only think of Jewell.
Who’s the sane one?
Thaddeus MacLeod
“Why did you approach her?” Thad shakes his head in disgust and Ben scowls. “I just wanted her to squirm, put the screws to the little slut.”
“Don’t derail our objective because you can’t keep your prick in your pants. Timing is everything, Benjamin.”
Ben paces, his arms stiff and tense by his sides, the miserable lacrosse is good for one thing: stamina. He needs it, this fucking theater troupe he and Thad have put on is getting on his last fucking nerve. “I want to break her.” His voice shakes as he tries to contain his rage.
“I know,” Thad agrees quietly.
He puts his hand on Ben’s back.
“Don’t fucking placate me, brother,” Ben warns.
“I’m not, I’m here for you.” Thad’s eyes, the same shade as Ben’s but darker, stare unnervingly at him.
“Then why the ‘talk’?” Ben asks, shrugging off the big palm.
Thad sighs. His patience is being put to the test with his volatile half sibling. How will he ever temper him when they finally have his Jewell in hand? He shakes his head. “You have just muddied the waters, Benjamin.” His eyes search Ben’s face. “You could have shown your ‘hurt’ at her actions with the fed in a myriad of different ways. Instead, she’s seen a glimpse of the monster, and even someone as naïve as Jewell will notice that.”
Thad shrugs and lets his brother think through his behavior. As each piece of logic fits together, Thad watches him puzzle it out.
Finally, Ben lifts his head, taking a deep breath. “Fine, now what?”
“How do you fix this?” Thad quizzes.
Silence. Then, �
��Fuck!” Ben yells, grabbing the hair on his head with both hands and fisting it. “Yes,” he seethes.
Thad smiles. “Apologize,” he states simply.
“You didn’t hear them in that fucking closet, Thad,” Ben says in a low voice. “He was drilling her against the wall and she liked it.” Thad’s face darkens at the information, he isn’t beyond rage himself. “Liked it a lot,” Ben repeats softly.
They stand together in uncomfortable silence, thinking about the woman they both want to end—slowly.
The one that got away, Thad thinks, without his usual selfcongratulatory amusement.
Ben looks at Thad. “He made her beg for it . . . beg.”
Thad’s fists squeeze and release, squeeze again. “She’ll beg with us too,” he promises.
“Yes,” Ben whispers, his cock growing hard while he imagines her degradation and his own blood lust.
Soon, he promises himself, soon.
17
Cas It’s been two weeks.
Of not sleeping.
Eating only what I need for sustenance.
Of watching Jewell dance and protecting her from afar
while I slowly die like a plant without the sun . . . without the cool mist of water . . . my eyes train on her like a starving sunflower that seeks the sun.
Throwing myself under the truck with self-abuse works as a keen distracter.
But finally, I can no longer stand it. I go to Jewell.
Carmichael’s half-truths come to fruition. Yeah, I’m fucking it up. But I’m going to do it royally this time. I’m not a halfway guy.
Thad isn’t coming for her. All this patience and careful planning is coming apart. And I’m a huge part of it.
I know it, can’t stop it.
I enter her dorm and employ my natural stealth, slanting against walls and sinking into nooks and crevices when the buzz and laughter of co-eds reach my hearing. Finally, I am at her door, frowning when my burglar kit is not necessary.
The knob comes off in my hand. I frown, entering her small room, little more than a closet within a closet. I attach the knob, tightening the setscrew with my five-in-one. The thing is cross-threaded and spins from my attentions. Great, it’s like inviting Thad in.