Baited Truth

by Hype, Jenn

  And thoughts of comforting Brooke were more dangerous than thoughts of fucking her.

  Less than twelve hours I'd known her, and really, using the word known was a gross exaggeration. What did I really even know about her?

  She was brave - or rather, stupid - enough to break into a house she hadn't scoped out prior, entering with no clue as to what waited for her on the other side.

  Her keys had a homemade lock picking tool, which alluded to her being experienced, yet she really didn't look like a seasoned criminal.

  Shooting a bullet between the eyes of an armed man during a heated, high risk situation was a cake walk for her. Only she'd fallen apart in the bathroom, and while she didn't say why, I knew. I'd seen that look of horror, regret and anguish in the eyes of too many men to count. I'd be willing to bet a year's salary that it was the first time she'd actually fired a gun at an actual person.

  If that were true, then her getting emotional before was only a prelude to a much more significant melt down. Between worrying about her mom, an attempt to kill her and then me forcing her to stay with me without giving her any answers, it was probably enough to keep her mind occupied. But in the quiet, dark, stillness of the night, that's when the demons came out to play. I knew that all too well.

  So despite my distrust of her, I wanted - needed - to help her. Without knowing more about her, without feeling like she could be trusted, I couldn't tell her anything more about me, the team or what we do. But I could help her find her mom. I could keep her safe. I could comfort her if/when the time came. And I could play along with her games, let her think she's winning, grant her the illusion of having control over the situation. My pride would have to take a backseat until I found a way to safely remove her from my life.

  Which, for so many reasons, couldn't come soon enough.

  Chapter Nine

  Tag, You're It

  Brooke

  This was not how I wanted to win. I fucking knew my emotional display back there was going to skew everything.

  I had him. I was so close to wearing him down, but something changed. The heat in his eyes dissipated. I watched as it slowly faded before disappearing entirely, only to be replaced by...pity? Maybe not pity, but close enough. It didn't matter. Whatever the hell it was, he could keep it. I didn't need his sympathy, pity, or anything else. What I needed was to get the hell out of here so I could find my mom and the assholes who kept trying to kill me. Even entertaining the idea of my mom not being okay was never something I would be willing to do. Alone, I probably would never find her. I needed to get Grant and everyone else on my side. They were probably my only hope.

  I freaking hated that.

  Shortly after my shower, Grant left me with Alice, who apparently had been given the obligation of babysitting me. She was actually pretty cool, so I didn't really mind, even though we didn't have a whole lot in common. Alice had your pretty typical All-American upbringing, including the white picket fence and golden retriever. At one point in my life I would have hated her for that. For having everything I didn't. Maybe I'd grown up enough to realize you couldn't resent others for your own past, but mostly I think it was the sadness in her eyes. Her smile never slipped, and her voice was perky as hell, but there was something there. Something that had taken that happy childhood and turned it dark.

  It wasn't my business, so I didn't pry. What was alarming about it all was me hoping to find out later. As if there would be a later with her. Or the rest of the team. Or Grant. Which made me terribly sad.

  Crap. Am I getting Stockholm syndrome already?

  Grant came back from his chat with Nick looking murderous. It wasn't until he was in my face that I realized his murderous glare was aimed at me. I was up and moving before I even saw it coming.

  "Get your hands off of me!" I yelled, trying - and failing - to tear my arm out of his grip. He was holding my elbow tight enough to leave bruises.

  "Sit your ass down and don't even think about acting up or I will be a lot less friendly than last time," he barked, shoving me down onto the chair. The same chair I'd been tied to the first time he treated me like a piece of shit prisoner only twelve hours ago. Wow. Had it really only been twelve hours? Felt like I'd been trapped there for a freaking month.

  "Shit!" Grant's left knee buckled when the heel of my foot connected with the back of his leg. Before he could recover, I swung my leg around, taking out his other leg at the ankle. My small hands gripped his wrists and pulled. My knee dug into his back at the base of his spine. He tried to stifle a groan, but I still heard it. Maybe even took a little too much pleasure out of it.

  "I don't know what crawled up your ass in the five minutes you were away from me, but whatever it is does not give you the right to push me around and treat me like shit. You want to push around a woman? Does that make you feel big and powerful? You get your rocks off on controlling and humiliating those weaker than you?" Vitriol and fury radiated off of me as I dug my knee in harder. "I've got fucking news for you, asshole. I may be small, but I'm not weak. You put your hands on me again, and not even your friends will be able to stop me from cutting off your dick and shoving it down your throat. Got it?"

  Face smashed against the tile, his 'got it' came out muffled and almost unintelligible.

  I let go of his arms and climbed off of him. Snickering came from the doorway. Didn't have to look up to know it was Nick. The other guys might give Grant shit, but from what I'd seen, Nick was the only one who would intentionally poke the bear with laughter.

  "Dude. That was the best thing I've seen all year. This is totally going on YouTube." Grant lunged for Nick's phone. Nick swerved right, making Grant stumble past him.

  "You're such an asshole, Nick."

  "Hey. You better be nice to me or I'm going to have Brooke kick your ass again."

  Hunter stepped between them when Grant tried to lunge for Nick again. "Settle down, guys. We don't have time for this."

  Hunter's stern command had Grant turning his attention back to me. "When were you going to tell me?" He growled at me through clenched teeth.

  "Um... what?" My confusion only seemed to make him angrier.

  "Jack Krieman."

  He said Jack's name like it was supposed to mean something. All it did was confuse me more. Then he opened his hand and the dog tags Officer K gave me dangled from his fingers. When I reached for them, he flicked them back up into his palm.

  "Where did you find those?" I'd totally forgotten about them with all the chaos. They must have fallen off of me at some point.

  "The team found them back at the house when they were searching for evidence or anything the assholes who shot at us might have left behind. Wasn't sure they belonged to you until just now."

  "Um, I'm sorry?" I had no freaking clue why I was apologizing, but the way Grant was talking to me made me feel like I was being chastised.

  "How do you know Jack?"

  "I don't."

  Grant barked out a harsh laugh. The confusing conversation was becoming tedious.

  "You expect me to believe that when you have his dog tags? With his real name on them." No time to process what the hell that meant. Grant just kept right on yelling. "Do you really think we're going to buy that it's just coincidence that you show up at his house right after he goes missing with something so valuable and potentially detrimental to him?"

  He leaned down, his hands gripping the sides of my chair, caging me in. Somewhere behind me I heard Alice say his name like a warning. The stupid exhaustion and stress of the day was taking too much of a toll on my body, so I didn't have much fight left in me. He probably mistook my confusion and passivity as a sign of fear. Which it wasn't. More than anything else, I was annoyed and in desperate need of some sleep.

  "Where is he? What did you do to him?"

  Using up the little space left between myself and Grant, I cross my arms and narrow my eyes at him. "What does it matter to you? How do you know him?"

  "I'm the one asking the fu
cking questions!"

  Hunter walked up behind Grant and put a firm hand on his shoulder. If Grant noticed, he didn't show it. His chest was heaving up and down violently, his eyes wide and angry. I couldn't say for certain, but I'm fairly sure that if I were a dude, he would have punched me just then.

  "I honestly have no idea who he is. When Officer K gave me those, along with that address, he just said they belonged to someone important to him. He made kind of a big deal about not losing them, saying he wanted me to have something of his with me at all times." I could feel the room grow tense and it was starting to freak me the hell out how they were reacting. "Wait - you said that was his house?"

  Grant looked like he wasn't going to respond, so he surprised me by answering. "He doesn't live there, no, but he owns the property. One of many that he owns, but that one has some sort of sentimental value to him. Well, not anymore since it's been destroyed."

  "I didn't go snooping through drawers and crap, but I didn't see anything that would indicate the house belonged to any one person. It almost felt like a model home, intentionally staged to look cozy."

  "Like I said, he doesn't live there."

  "O-kay," I drawled. There was obviously more that he wasn't telling me, but I wasn't going to push it. At least he didn't look like he was about to kill me anymore. "Wait. You asked if I knew where he was. You seriously think I have something to do with Jack's disappearance? I was in that house with you, remember? You don't want to believe anything else I tell you? Fine. But you can't deny that."

  Some of the tension drained from his body, his expression turning wary. "I know. There are just too many coincidences. Too many questions and not enough answers. Whether you know what's going on or not, you are connected to this, Brooke."

  "Is it possible Jack is behind all of this? It was his house that I was told to go to for safety, which was then destroyed with me in it. Couldn't-"

  Grant was shaking his head no before I finished my question.

  "No way. Jack's moral code is solid. He'd take his own life before harming an innocent. And if you really are innocent like you say, then he would never harm you."

  So damn sure of himself. Not even a flicker of doubt. How could I not believe him when he was that certain?

  "Listen," Trent chimed in. "Let me do some more digging around online. I've got a couple queries I'm waiting on that should kick back results any minute. We can talk this out once we have more information."

  Grant's eyes never left mine. The team dispersed after Grant gave them a curt nod. I wanted to hop up and beg one of them to take me with them. Being stuck with stubborn and annoying Grant was bad enough. This angry and impatient Grant was making me nervous as hell. No way I would be able to sleep with him near.

  Almost like he could read my thoughts, he grabbed my elbow and tugged me to my feet.

  "You're staying with me."

  #

  ~

  Everyone accept Trent, Grant and myself went home. Trent holed up in another room with his laptop. Grant stayed close by, but kept enough distance between us that I didn't feel smothered. He didn't acknowledge it, but I could feel the shift in him. He believed me. Part of me wanted to ask why, needing to hear that he was wrong for jumping to conclusions. Only I was exhausted and too drained to fight, which is what would have happened when he refused to apologize or admit fault. No way someone as stubborn as him ever handed out apologies unless it were absolutely necessary.

  Though I spent about a half hour with Trent after the rest of the team left going over every detail I could possibly think of from Officer K and the day's events, Grant hadn't been around. You would think he'd want to hear all those little details himself with how he freaked out a couple hours earlier.

  He must have used that time to shower, because when he came to retrieve me from Trent, he was wearing different clothes and his hair was wet. His worn jeans and simple tee were nothing to drool over. But the body underneath of them definitely was. Every time he got within three feet of me, I could smell his body wash. All woodsy and manly smelling. It made me want to rip his clothes off and sniff his skin like a wacko.

  I managed to refrain from acting like a puppy, keeping my nose and hands to myself for the next hour. He, like Trent, was typing away on his computer. He didn't so much as glance in my direction. It was making me freaking nuts. Being in a room with him in complete silence, feeling too uncomfortable to talk was enough to make me want to pick a fight with him again just so he'd acknowledge me. Judging by his constant smug-as-sin grin, he could sense my discomfort and appeared to be taking great pleasure from it.

  Asshole.

  Outwardly I tried really hard to not let it show how much he was getting to me. Inside I was dying a slow, painful death at the hands of boredom and weariness. Time alone with my thoughts was the last thing I needed - or wanted. Distraction. That's what I needed.

  Which meant putting an end to the quiet. Fighting really didn't sound enticing, so I went with dramatics instead.

  "Okay you win, I can't take it anymore. No one has said a word for forever and I'm going crazy. My thoughts are literally trying to kill me. There's a rebellion taking place upstairs. Full scale war happening. I'm talking multiple casualties. If I want to make it out alive, then I've got to find a way to bring peace. My limbic system is trying to stage a coup against my neocortex and no amount of reasoning from my frontal lobe makes a damn bit of difference. My poor little medulla oblongata is just trying to hold up the fort and keep everything going while my amygdala is too busy crying in the corner to be any help, and-"

  "What the hell are you talking about?" Grant interrupted.

  "Aren't you listening!? Total anarchy happening here!" I swirled my fingers next to my head. "Make it stop, Grant! Do something!"

  Fear. Eyes wide, mouth open, frozen in place. Grant was scared.

  I couldn't hold it in anymore. It started deep in my belly, rumbled up my chest and exploded out of my mouth. Bent over, arms clutching my stomach, sharp stabs of pain in my sides, I expelled all the air from my lungs. Tears streamed down my cheeks, my abdominal muscles begging for a reprieve. I couldn't breathe, couldn't calm down enough to speak.

  Then Grant joined in. Minutes, hours, days passed. By the time we stopped, I was utterly exhausted.

  "Oh my God, I needed that," I croaked, my throat sore and hoarse. "I haven't laughed that hard in years. Or maybe ever."

  "Shit, you scared me there for a minute. I really thought you were losing it."

  I snorted. "I was losing it. I hate the quiet. Even when my mom isn't missing and people aren't trying to kill me or hold me captive, I can't stand the silence. I'd listen to Mmmbop on an endless loop for the rest of eternity if it meant avoiding the silence."

  We'd collapsed to the floor, trying to catch our breath. His arm was inches from mine as we lay on our backs, eyes trained to the ceiling. For several minutes that stupid quiet I was just complaining about lingered between us. I hadn't meant to make such a personal admission. He might not realize it, but that little slip was a rarity. Something about him made me feel vulnerable, exposed. Being near him made me feel like I'd been pricked, the hole too minute and obscure to be seen, but still big enough to let my demons slowly seep out like a deflating balloon.

  "Mmmbop. Ba duba dop ba du bop."

  "No. Don't do it, Grant. If you sing it, we'll never get it out. Like an earworm on crack. It won't stop until it destroys our will to live."

  "Ba duba dop ba du bop, ba dop ba du."

  He sang horribly off-key, but his wide grin and teasing eyes just made it all the more charming. And when I leaped up and tried to run away from him covering my ears, he only sang louder, chasing me around the living room.

  "Mmmbop! Duba dop ba du-"

  I squeaked out a high-pitched squeal as he leapt over the back of the couch I was using as a barrier, tackling me back to the ground. My cheeks hurt from smiling, and a dangerous flicker of hope sparked to life in my chest. Hope for more of this
. Less fear, worry and stress. More fun, laughter and carefree moments where I actually got to enjoy life instead of just...living it.

  His forearms had broken our fall, and to my surprise, Grant didn't move off of me once our laughter died down once again. Instead he brushed his knuckles across my cheek, nimble fingers tucking a strand of hair behind my ear. Nothing, not a damn thing, could have prepared me for the tenderness I saw when my eyes met his. Stark blue and full of affection, looking down at me like...like I mattered.

  Absurd, foolish, just plain laughable. I didn't matter to him. I couldn't. We'd known each other less than a day and spent most of that time fighting. So whatever emotion I thought I was seeing, it was obviously wrong. I was just reading into it, seeing what I wanted to see.

  Shit. Did I want that? To mean something to him?

  He was an uptight asshole with control issues. Or at least, he had been. Up until he'd held me while I cried, wiping away my tears. Then he relinquished some of that control by giving me space. And someone uptight wouldn't chase someone around a room singing Hanson, would they?

  Something long and hard digging into my abdomen pulled me back into the present. A reminder that a strong, sexy and apparently very well endowed man was on top of me. Warmth flooded my cheeks as I remembered the clothes I was in; Grant's t-shirt and a pair of his boxers. I'd never worn a man's clothes before, and something about knowing the forbidden parts of him had touched the places they were now touching me had felt.... naughty. Ridiculous, I know, because they were obviously clean. Didn't keep me from pulling the fabric to my nose and inhaling deeply, basking in the scent of detergent and a hint of his cologne.

  My nipples grew stiff, and with no bra on underneath the flimsy shirt, there was no doubt he'd felt it. Two layers of thin cotton between us did little to hide my arousal. Only inches from me, I watched his pupils dilating. The black circles slowly expanding until the sky blue was almost completely covered. Like a dark, powerful storm cloud rolling in. All signs of the playful Grant were gone, replaced by an intense, almost predatory gleam.