Baited Truth

by Hype, Jenn

  "What did you find at the house?" I asked no one in particular.

  "What house?" Alice snorted. Alice was our investigator, the one who did most of the covert onsite recon. No one could tail someone without getting noticed like Alice, and her abilities with a long range photo lens were invaluable to our missions. She sat straddling a chair, her arms wrapped around the back while Hunter, our weapon's specialist, pulled shards of glass out of her back.

  "The only parts left standing look like swiss cheese from all the bullets, and the rest was blown to bits," Nick added with a mouth full of sandwich, giving me a big-ass grin when I scowled at his lack of manners. Most of the time I think Nick would intentionally be obnoxious around us just to get it all out of his system. As annoying as he could be, if that's what he needed to do in order to be on point when the time came, it was something we'd all have to put up with.

  Trent walked over to me and handed me a plate with two sandwiches. Though Trent had hacker skills that would put Julian Assange to shame, he was also our resident chef. Since he wasn't always active in the field, he got pretty bored hanging out around HQ - short for headquarters - all the time, and since the rest of us couldn't cook worth a shit, he took it upon himself to keep us nourished.

  "Thanks man, but I don't think I can put down two of these."

  He shook his head when I tried to hand him one back and pointed his thumb over his shoulder. "Other is for her. She's more likely to talk with a full stomach."

  "How do you know she isn't talking?"

  "Because you're acting like a little bitch, and you only do that when something isn't going your way," Hunter grunted. His back was to me, but I flipped him off anyway. From my angle I could see Alice's back wasn't in too bad of shape, but I still had to bite my tongue to keep from asking if she was okay. Nothing pissed her off more than feeling like we were trying to baby her.

  "Any other injuries?"

  "Minor," Nick answered, tossing his plate into the soapy basin where Trent was washing dishes.

  "Watch it, asshole!" Trent yelled when Nick flicked water from the sink onto Trent's shirt. In retaliation, Trent grabbed the sprayer from the sink and aimed at Nick. Nick barked out a laugh and grabbed Trent's MacBook, using it to shield himself from the water. "You prick!" I dove out of the way just in time, otherwise I would have gone down with them both when Trent tackled Nick to the ground, narrowly saving his laptop from certain death.

  "The fuck, guys! I'm going to take this food in there to our pain in the ass guest. When I come back out here you all better have calmed your shit so someone can tell me what happened back there."

  "Chill out, boss. I've got this." Nick swiped the plate out of my hand and had the door to the other room open before I could protest. Of all the people I did not want in there with Brooke, Nick was at the top of the list. No doubt he planned to try and charm her into acquiescing, and acknowledging the surge of bitter jealousy that coursed through me at the thought of Brooke opening up to him and not me wasn't something I had the time - or patience - to deal with.

  "Oh, there you are!" Brooke greeted me happily. For a moment I was stunned by her chipper demeanor. "I assume you're my competition? Of course, you'll have to get your hands tied up too, otherwise it won't be fair."

  I glanced at Nick, his arm still outstretched, holding the plate out to her, wearing the same confused expression as me.

  "Oh, there's no eating contest going on in here? I just figured that was the plan when Nick here pushed a plate of food into my face, knowing I couldn't take it from him. You know, seeing as how I'm still tied up and all."

  Brooke shifted in her seat, and though she kept that fake smile plastered on her face, I still noticed the slight wincing in her eyes when she tried to adjust her arms.

  I didn't feel guilty, not one fucking bit.

  Okay, maybe I felt a little shitty for letting her continue to be in pain, but she was the one being stubborn and not talking. If she would just cooperate, I wouldn't have to keep her tied up. Besides, if the pain was bad enough, she'd be complaining, not trying to hide it behind a tough facade.

  "Guys, get in here!"

  Alice, Trent and Hunter all came running into the room like we were under attack.

  "What the fuck, Nick?" Hunter punched Nick in the shoulder for the feigned urgency, Trent and Alice following behind, taking a shot at him too.

  "Sorry!" Nick said on a laugh. "I thought you guys would want to see Grant getting his ass handed to him."

  "Well, since our host is being rude and not introducing me to everyone, I'll just do it myself." Everyone's reaction to Brooke's sarcasm was to dart their eyes back and forth between myself and Brooke with their mouths gaping open. "My name is Brooke Jackson. Earlier tonight I got a strange phone call from my mom while out at a bar. Shortly thereafter, some guy with scars on his face and a neck tattoo tried to drug my drink. After macing his ass, I booked it out of there and went straight to my mom's. There I found a guy practically beating the shit out of her, so I took out his kneecap with my revolver. Unfortunately, by the time I was able to call for help, men had arrived and tossed her into a car and drove off. Not before she took out one of their guys, though." Brooke grinned slyly. "I was told to go to the address of the house - that I assume is no longer standing - if I were ever in trouble. I didn't know what, or who, I would find when I got there, but I didn't have many other options."

  Brooke paused and looked around the room, taking in all of our faces. "Should I keep going?"

  Trent, Hunter, Nick and Alice were all glued to Brooke, captivated by her crazy ramblings. Am I the only sane one left around here?

  "Well, hell. That was easy. Thought she wasn't talking, Grant?"

  No one missed the wink Nick gave Brooke. The little shit was just egging her on.

  Suddenly everyone started shouting questions at the same time. To Brooke, to each other, just in general. Putting my thumb and forefinger in my mouth, I blew out a high-pitched whistle, shutting everyone up at once.

  "Let's start from the beginning." The question was directed at Brooke, but my eyes were narrowed on the four clowns crowded next to each other on the couch.

  "That was the beginning. Unless you want me to start from my birth and recount every memory I have of growing up. Doesn't seem pertinent though."

  Brooke shrugged and Alice snickered, probably appreciating Brooke's smart mouth. They had that in common.

  "Okay, then let's start with you breaking into the house. We checked out your keys. Saw that lock picking tool you've got, which tells me you've done this before. How'd you learn to do that?"

  "I grew up in a shitty neighborhood and when I was younger I fell in with a bad crowd for a while. Learned a lot of shady stuff like that from them. Never put it to use until today though other than when I'd lock myself out of my apartment."

  "I call bullshit." I crossed my arms and glared at her. "If you never pick locks, then why go through the effort of making your own tool to keep on your keychain?"

  Brooke shrugged again. The shrugging was starting to get on my nerves.

  "I was pretty much raised by a retired police officer. He said they teach things like that when you're training for law enforcement and that it wasn't a bad skill to have, so long as I only ever used it for good. He was the one who showed me how to make the tool to begin with."

  The admission that she'd been raised by a retired police officer shocked me. I couldn't imagine someone that had spent their life on the force being able to put up with her back talking and sarcasm.

  "He teach you how to shoot?" She nodded, but didn't offer up anything more. "Must have spent a lot of time at the range for you to be able to hit a guy between his eyes. In the dark. In the middle of an ambush. Most people can't make that shot even with no distractions, clear visibility and a target to aim at. You took him out like it was second nature."

  "He was big on gun safety and wanted me to be able to protect myself. Since he wasn't into typical girl-bonding time,
we did the stuff he wanted to do. Most of the time was shooting, self defense, and other stuff he learned on the job. Said I could take the information and use it to become a decent criminal or use it to help make society better. I never used it at all until today."

  "You've never killed someone?" I didn't even try to hide my surprise. If she were telling the truth, she was keeping it together like a soldier. Your first kill was a total mind fuck, even to the toughest of men. Being a good shot doesn't make you a trained killer, and it definitely doesn't prepare you for the damage it inflicts on your psyche knowing you ended someone's life.

  She shook her head and pulled her lips into a tight grimace. Oh, she was definitely feeling something, she was just really fighting it. Though I didn't see any signs of her cracking in the immediate future, the fissures in her armor showed enough to know it was definitely coming at some point. It was only a matter of time.

  "Even if that's true," I stated, knowing full well I believed her but not wanting her to know it. "You took that shot with no hesitation. Yet you shot to kill. And-"

  "They were going to shoot you," she interrupted. Stunning me into silence. I hadn't seen them approach, but when the gun went off right behind me, I turned in time to see the man fall to his knees before slumping to the ground. I assumed she was protecting herself, in which case her instinct to kill him would make sense. But taking a life to save a man you didn't know? What was I supposed to make of that?

  As if she could read my thoughts, she continued. "He came around the corner, his gun already pointed at you. Something tells me that he wasn't going to hesitate to shoot you. So if I had, you wouldn't be here. There was no decision to be made. I did what needed to be done."

  So confident, so sure. So sexy as hell.

  Chapter Seven

  Can I Get A Little Privacy

  Brooke

  "I need to tinkle."

  Okay, so I was starting to feel a little bad about giving Grant such a hard time. Especially once his friends arrived. But until he stopped acting like such a dick, I just couldn't bring myself to back off.

  "Seriously," I whined when he didn't respond to me. "Unless you want to clean up a puddle of urine off the floor, then you need to let me use the bathroom."

  Groaning, Grant yanked me to my feet by my elbow, dragging me behind him through a kitchen, a sitting area and then down a short hallway.

  "You know, I like it rough as much as the next girl, but the whole one-sided thing really isn't doing it for me. When do I get to push you around for a while?"

  "Do you ever shut up?" There's no way he would have known he'd just hit me in a weak spot, but those five words had been yelled, muttered and pleaded in my direction by almost everyone my whole life. Growing up an only child with no father and a mom that was always working meant a lot of lonely hours. My mom and I were close now as adults, but growing up, I hardly saw her. Even my time spent with Officer Knowles was mostly educational, teaching me about weapons and hand to hand combat. And though I still chatted away about school and boys and other girly crap he couldn't care less about, he was the only person who had never told me to be quiet. He sat quietly while I rambled, never contributing, but never hushing me. It had been enough.

  The pain that lanced through me from his rhetorical question stung like a brutal slap to the face, but the effects of the pain lingered much longer. Like getting doused with a bucket of ice water, the memory of that rejection stripped away the humor I'd been clinging to. I was well aware of how much denial I was in, and I was willingly immersing myself in that denial, because falling apart sure as hell wasn't going to bring my mom home or keep me from getting killed.

  Space. Privacy. A minute alone without brooding, attempted murderers and a group of strangers all treating me like a caged animal. If I didn't get a chance to just take a few deep breaths and gather myself, then the fear threatening to consume me would finally get to sink its angry talons into me.

  The tight restraints broke loose, and my wrists and muscles cried out in relief and pain.

  "Thanks, I'll be out in a minute."

  Grant's hand shot out, preventing me from closing the door behind me.

  "I don't think so, sweet cheeks. You don't leave my sight until we figure out if you're telling the truth and what's really going on here."

  It shouldn't have surprised me that he intended to stay in the bathroom while I did my business, but despite my lack of inhibitions and brazen approach to life, part of me was still mortified at the thought of peeing in front of him. Sitting around in my bra that covered as much as a bathing suit top was no biggie, but popping a squat in front of a man who after only knowing him a few hours could simultaneously make me want to wring his neck and jump his bones was about the most humiliating thing to happen to me to date.

  "I'm not peeing in front of you. There's fetish porn for that stuff online if that's your thing, but you are not getting a live show today."

  That wasn't entirely true. I really did have to go to the bathroom really bad, and if he didn't get out soon and let me empty my overflowing bladder, then he'd have a front row seat to me wetting myself for the first time in twenty-odd years.

  "I'll stand right outside this door with my back to you, but the door stays cracked. You try to pull anything, and I'll make things a lot more uncomfortable for you than just bound wrists."

  True to his word, he put his back to me when the door eased to only an inch of the frame. "Eventually you're going to have to follow through with these promises or I'm going to think you're all talk." Pulling down my shorts with shaky hands, I started when the backs of my thighs hit the cold porcelain of the seat. "Can you like, hum a song or something? You hearing me go is just about as bad as you watching."

  "Just hurry up, I'm not going to stand out here all day."

  His voice still held that brusque tone he used with me, but I could have sworn I heard a hint of a smile. The flurry of hope that filled my chest at the possibility of Grant warming up to me quickly took a back seat to the bliss of finally relaxing enough to do my business. I may have even moaned, no longer feeling the least bit shy. Not even when Grant chuckled before trying to cover the laugh with a cough.

  "Any chance of you letting me take a shower?" My eyes looked at the closed curtain longingly as I worked the soap in my hands into a lather. The grime of the day felt heavy on my skin, and even just cleaning my hands made me yearn to do the same with the rest of my body. To just let hot water stream down my face and neck, washing away the worry for my mom, the fear for my life and the uncertainty of where to go from here.

  "You get one minute in the shower for every question you answer."

  After shutting off the water, I faced Grant, crossing my arms. I had already decided to just tell them everything, but if it meant I'd get a shower out of it and give Grant the illusion of having the upper hand, then I'd play along.

  "Fair enough. Ask away."

  He hesitated. Apparently he hadn't expected me to agree.

  "Who gave you the address to Wilson? You said friend."

  "The retired police officer who helped raise me."

  "Name?"

  "Jerry Knowles. He was pretty private, so I don't know much about his life before I knew him other than stories he told me from the force."

  "He never mentioned Wilson to you before then?"

  I shook my head. I wasn't kidding - Officer K was like a human vault. He was young and retired early after an injury. Every time I tried to pester him to go out and date and meet someone he changed the subject. As a kid I tried to set him up with my mom several times in several very disastrous ways. One of which happened when I was eight when I tried to plan a romantic dinner for the two of them. The night ended with them spending a stressful evening at the hospital while I got stitches in my foot when I dropped a steak knife on it.

  "How long ago was it that he gave it to you?"

  "Right before I left for college freshman year, so about ten years ago."

  "You d
idn't ask for more details?"

  I looked away, but not quick enough. When I met his gaze again, I knew he'd seen the sadness I tried to hide. Damn him for being so freaking observant.

  "He died shortly after I left for college. Car crash."

  Remorse flickered in his eyes, but he didn't linger on the subject. Thank God. "And you were never tempted to go to the address he gave you and find out what it was?"

  "To be honest I kind of forgot about it. If it hadn't been for my mom discreetly instructing me to go there, I wouldn't have even thought about it."

  "Why not go straight to the police? Why drive to some random place when your mom's life could be on the line?"

  I felt my shoulders tense. He noticed it, too, but didn't say anything. I refused to entertain the idea of my mom's life being in danger, so I ignored that part of the question.

  "She told me specifically to go to that address. Not call the police. I trusted her to have a reason, so I listened."

  "Ahh, so you are capable of doing as you're told."

  How could I do anything but smirk at that? Grant teasing me? Pleasantly surprising.

  "When I'm not being talked down to by an overbearing asshole, then sure," I deadpanned, earning a smile myself.

  "Okay, you've earned your shower. I'm going to have Trent do some searching on Officer Knowles and see if we can dig up his connection to Wilson."

  While he typed away on his phone - texting Trent, I assumed - I worked up the courage to ask the question I'd been avoiding.

  "The um, the men who shot at us. What happened to them?"

  Grant's eyes met mine. The grim look on his face said it all.