Locke and Key (Titan Book 12)

by Cristin Harber

  “Are you mad at me?” she asked.

  He had no idea. “I’m not sure.”

  And that answer sucked to give because he could see the innocent hurt in her beautiful eyes. It was as though the blue-green sea of her irises wilted and died.

  They didn’t know each other very well, and they hadn’t spent much time together. But their interactions were intense. He wasn’t even sure how he felt about that word. Intense…

  “Well, get over yourself.” She took a giant step back and slammed the door.

  His jaw fell. “What?”

  Nothing about what Cassidy Noble did was ever as he expected. Locke used the back of his fist and banged on the door three times. “Damn it, Cassidy, open the door.”

  “Go away,” she yelled.

  “You’re ridiculous.” He turned for his truck, but two steps down the steep length of stairs, he heard her door fly open and the sound of charging steps.

  “Wait.” She poked him in the back with a talon-like finger.

  He turned around, and they were eye level.

  “No, sir.” Her red hair fell over her shoulders, framing her face wildly. “You don’t get to call me ridiculous. You don’t get to be like you were at Red Star and then act like that.”

  He took two steps onto the front porch and reclaimed his height advantage. “And how is that?” Though he knew exactly how hot and heavy they were, and it was one of the best nights he’d had in so long—until he screwed it up.

  “And you don’t get to call me ridiculous when you’re the king of mood swings.”

  Her words reeled through his mind. The two of them stepped from her porch and crossed the threshold into her house. “If I’m the king of mood swings, Cass, you’re the queen of evasion.”

  “You’re out of your mind.” Cheeks flushed, she scoffed. “All I’ve wanted to do was tell you everything. But you don’t listen.”

  “I don’t listen?” His lip pulled up, and he looked away before leveling her with the truth. “All you do is wait to talk.”

  “I do not!”

  He stepped closer. “Whatever it is that you’re so hell-bent to report on, that’s all you care about.”

  “Bull!” She poked him in the chest.

  He pushed the poking hand aside and came closer. “And you give no fucks what anybody else says.”

  “For someone who never has much to say, that’s a whole lot of bullshit.”

  The lights were dim in her foyer, and his breathing was heavy just like hers. He looked down. There wasn’t much room between them. She did the same. Neither stepped away. He couldn’t tear himself from her, even when they were fighting.

  “Cassidy.” Her name shook in his throat and rumbled in his ears.

  “What do you want?” she pleaded quietly. “Because you said I was killing you. But you killed me.”

  His eyelids sank shut. He didn’t know what he wanted to say. He wanted everything to go back to the way it was before. He wanted to take the pressure away and make them a good thing.

  “I took it too far in the club,” he lied. “All right? I shouldn’t have… we shouldn’t have. I don’t know. Maybe that was too much.”

  Her chin dropped an inch, but worse, the spirit in her eyes seemed to extinguish. “Yeah, sure. That makes things easier.”

  She pulled away under the immense pounding of disappointment.

  “Fucking hell.” He couldn’t handle that bullshit. “Beauty, wait.”

  “No.” She wouldn’t turn back, shaking her head as though that were the last thing she could handle between them. “Don’t you dare say ‘Beauty.’ That was a sweet thing. I liked it. I loved it. You can’t ruin it now.”

  “Beauty.” He sidestepped and put his hands on her soft cheeks. “I’m broken.”

  Pain covered her face, fluttering her eyelashes shut. “No, you’re not.”

  “I promise I am.” He leaned forward and put his lips on her forehead. “I don’t want to be.”

  “Then don’t be.”

  “It isn’t that easy,” he murmured, dragging his lips into her hair.

  “No,” she murmured, draping her arms around him, holding him in a loose hug.

  “I want to try. I missed you even before I got down the stairs.”

  She sniffled and tightened the hug.

  “Cass, don’t cry. Okay?”

  Holding him tighter, she muttered an agreement, and when he was sure he wouldn’t see tears, because he couldn’t handle them, Locke tipped her head back and sweetly kissed her lips.

  He’d bitten her. He’d taken her mouth, hot and heavy in a club. But when this sweet, sad, damn-near-tears Cassidy kissed him, Sadr City didn’t matter. The lights and sounds he wanted to run from didn’t matter either, only every fresh start he’d ever dreamed might be possible.

  As much as he’d been running from her as the villain, maybe she was the key to his future without the nightmares.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  The front door shut, and Cassidy kept her hands splayed on the wood.

  One sweet kiss, and then he left without a word. Locke seemed almost strangled in thought. Scared and hopeful, apprehensive and needy.

  But he’d left after a kiss so beautiful and careful he might’ve restored her belief in fairy tales. She wasn’t giddy or beside herself, but the sadness was gone, and there was hope. Silly how a heartfelt lip-lock could remedy such a strange night, but it did.

  He hadn’t been gone for more than five seconds when Cassidy pressed her eye against the peephole and watched Locke walk down the path until he was out of sight. Her forehead fell forward and tapped against the wood, where she let it rest.

  This night had just happened. Locke kissed her, finally, and then they somehow fought and made up, ending with a kiss again. But that was more than a kiss, more than an emotional moment they’d had. It was straightforward and surreal. It reaffirmed her belief that there was such thing as a “best” kiss, and the best one didn’t have to end in toe-curling orgasms. Just a belief that happiness was possible.

  She pressed her fingers to her forehead where his lips had rested and let them slide to her lips. He hadn’t said much either, but it seemed as though he’d confided in her.

  She let out a sigh that left a reassured smile on her face and deflated as she gave herself a hug, leaning against the door. Slowly, Cassidy slid down until she was squatting at the base of her front door as his voice danced in her head.

  Beauty.

  Cassidy wrapped her arms around her knees and squeezed into a hug. Nothing had ever felt like that before. “Oh boy.”

  She ran her tongue over her bottom lip, which was slightly swollen from how deeply Locke had kissed her that night—

  Knock, Knock.

  She shot straight from the floor, her heart racing and her hands trembling from the adrenaline of the surprise. She peered back to the peephole—Locke.

  Her stomach somersaulted. A smile that she didn’t think could get any bigger went straight to her ears. She tried to calm down but couldn’t. She took a deep breath and failed at subtlety when she opened the door, blushing. “Hey, hi.”

  With one sweeping step, Locke came back into her house. “Hey, hi.”

  He had her back in his thick arms, her head tilted back and his devouring mouth on hers. His greedy tongue touched hers, and it was fire. Flames burned, hungry hands groped, and Locke’s sugar lips melted her in the right places. If she could’ve flown, it would’ve happened.

  “Locke…” Cassidy whispered her favorite word as he slowed the strong slip of his kiss. “Mmm.”

  They parted, and he barely let her take a deep breath. Still, she swooned at how careful and all-consuming he could he be at once.

  “I didn’t know how addictive goodnight kisses were.” He dropped his mouth to her ear, gently breathing and teasing. “Beauty.”

  Swirls of sensation spiraled through her as she shuddered. “That word does dangerous things to me.”

  “Good to know.”<
br />
  “I like goodnight kisses from you.” Her eyelashes fluttered, and she focused on him. His intensity bore down. “I like a lot about you, Locke.”

  He swiped his thumb over her cheek, letting it run over her lips, pulling down the bottom one slightly. “I’ll call you tomorrow. Sleep tight.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  The day had started early at Titan HQ, yet he was nowhere near the first person onsite that Sunday morning. Locke wondered if some people ever left. The likely answer was no, as long as there were people who worked odd schedules and came off and on jobs, debriefing and rotating with other teams.

  He needed to return the earpiece to Parker and find his boss in order to make a bigger request for resources and further assistance for Cassidy, but the wording hadn’t come to him yet. Maybe Locke could throw ideas to Parker and get his thoughts.

  Though… Locke was already up shit creek with Titan. What did it matter if his requests seemed nuts? Jared and Rocco had coined the term intel-therapy, and the entire company had decided that he needed to make peace with it, and by it, they meant her. Locke didn’t even want to know what their thoughts on that were.

  So, yeah, Parker was the best bet for hashing out the conversation on how to help Cassidy because, at the very least, he’d already given Locke some techy gadgets without asking many questions. Though if push came to shove, Locke could explain that not only had he made peace with it, he had kissed the ever-loving shit out of it and then gone back for more. How fast would that travel through Titan? The guys talked more than the girls.

  What did Locke care? Since he woke up, Cassidy had been on his mind. But also, so had Alex and the Mikhailovs. Something was up, especially with the bits of conversation he had picked up. Senators. Banking. All in all, sketchy. But it also proved nothing.

  Cassidy had one hell of a journalistic nose, though. His interest was piqued enough that as he entered Parker’s office, Locke decided to hang tight for the guy who always looked far too busy to bother.

  “I see you hovering,” Parker muttered from a keyboard across the dark room. “Get in here, or get out. You’re distracting me at the periphery.”

  Several flat screens had a replay of an old job from a few weeks prior. They were getting ready to do a very similar job. Locke guessed that Parker was autopsying the footage for what could be done better.

  “If you have a minute.”

  Parker lifted a shoulder. “I never have a minute, but I always do. If it makes sense.”

  “Thanks for the comm piece.” Locke stuck his hands in his pockets. “If I wanted to get more… involved in a project, how would I go about doing that?”

  “More involved how?” Parker’s hands stilled over the keyboard, and he twisted in his chair, rolling back from the desk.

  “I have other Russians, and they’re talking about members of Congress. Cassidy is onto something, and—”

  “Cassidy?”

  Locke nodded casually.

  Parker, mockingly casual, nodded as well. “More intel and profiles would be doable.”

  Locke shrugged, not exactly sure what he was asking for. “Sounds like a start.”

  Pushing back in his rolling chair, Parker scooted across the office area to a table, where he leaned over and pressed his thumb against a lock on a filing cabinet and, after a beep, proceeded to put in a long series of numbers on a numeric keypad. A red light next to the keypad flashed to green, and Parker opened what looked like a filing cabinet. Only Titan would have a filing cabinet with thumbprint recognition. Parker pulled out a folder and opened it up, and Locke stepped forward enough to look interested but not to be a jackass and read over Parker’s shoulder.

  “Here you go. Your Russian assholes.”

  Locke’s gaze dropped to the folder and then back to Parker. “How?”

  “You think I couldn’t hear what you could?”

  His stomach dropped. How much of the conversation with Cassidy had Parker heard?

  “Relax. I picked up what you mic’ed. Not your conversations.” Parker gave him a sly glance. “Though you have me curious about what else you were up to. There was voice confirmation on Ivan and two other former KGB—now FSB—officials.”

  “Damn…” Titan had insane capabilities that Locke didn’t know existed. “I didn’t expect this.” He took the folder Parker shoved into his hand.

  “You should have. This is Titan. It’s what we do.”

  This is Titan. Fuck yeah. And there was his opening. “About that. What’s the next level when it comes to an off-the-books job?”

  Parker leaned back in his chair, bouncing back and forth slowly, and studied Locke. “We don’t have a company policy on doing what’s right. I’ll just leave it at that.”

  Not exactly the answer he was going after. “And resources? Say I want to know more about what these three are up to.” Titan had every security clearance known to man, even ones that boiled all the way down to the basic state-level private-investigation clearances, and up to the White House. They could get to just about anybody. “The partnership between Alex Gaev and the Mikhailovs—there’s something there.”

  “What is it?” Parker rubbed his chin and then unhurriedly pulled his arm away in thought.

  Locke shrugged his shoulders. “Maybe something to do with Congress. I have no clue.”

  “You’re gonna have to run it up the chain. If that’s what you want, you’ll get it. But you can’t just ask me.”

  “Yeah, I’ll talk to Roc. He was next on my list. I just wanted to feel you out, to see if it was a thing.”

  “It’s a thing. I’ll do it. They’ll let you do it. But Roc has to tell you.”

  “I read you. Thanks.” He turned toward the door. One step away, and Parker cleared his throat in a way that said the conversation wasn’t over.

  “Connect the dots for me,” Parker said. “You sat in my office, not too long ago, and got a huge helping of in-your-face-intel on Cassidy Noble.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Then you started working something with her on Alex Gaev. That has you jumping from hating her to working with her?”

  “Pretty much. She’s onto something and didn’t know who the Mikhailovs were.” Locke shrugged. “I did.”

  “I’m still missing something.” Parker’s eyebrows went up.

  Locke mimicked Parker’s expression. “Maybe you are. I’m off to talk to Rocco.”

  As Locke left, he heard Parker’s quiet laugh and a deliberate clap. “Fucking A. Score one for intel-therapy.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Locke pulled out his phone and texted a quick message to Rocco, asking where he was. A few short seconds later, the response popped through on his phone’s screen.

  ROCCO: I need to talk to you. War room. Now.

  Hustling to meet his boss, Locke passed checkpoints and found the door already open and Rocco waiting. The table was covered with papers and open folders. A tablet and a laptop sat in front of Rocco as though he had been working there for hours, and a trashcan sat close by with remnants of fast food. On a Sunday morning. People never went home from HQ. Until they did, and then Titan had tons of time off. But for the moment, an abandoned coffee cup and a fresh cup of coffee sat by Rocco’s right hand.

  Locke took in what could’ve been a college all-nighter. “Working hard, boss?”

  “We had a couple of contracts come in, and I’m trying to see who’s best to farm out to.”

  Locke pulled up a seat and sat down.

  “This one”—he tapped the tablet—“Delta team is all over. What’s written here should never see the light of day. Anything that has human traffickers, that team can’t get there fast enough.”

  Locke had heard that about Delta and knew them in passing. He hadn’t worked a job with them in person. A few of them had come through the building or been to Titan gatherings, but nothing official. Delta did “ghost” work, but this new team had quickly become renowned in the intel community for knocking out traffickers. N
ot a bad reputation to have.

  “Then we have a small job that I think Cash and Roman will go knock out.”

  He nodded. “Those two are amazing to watch.”

  “Yeah, they’ll be fast, in and out.” Rocco leaned back in his chair. “Then we have you. What’s going on with you?” He crossed his arms over his chest.

  “Me?” Locke blanched, not expecting that.

  “Do you have your act together? Because if you do, I can take on some of these jobs. If you don’t, I’m going to be a man down because I don’t have time for your bullshit.”

  “That’s why I’m here.”

  “No, asshole.” Rocco’s brows furrowed. “You’re here because I told you where I was.”

  Well… true. He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees, and rubbed his hands over his face. As someone who had made his name within Titan as a man of few words, and those words being the right ones, Locke had not done a good job of articulating his thoughts lately. “I have a favor to ask.”

  Rocco tipped back and roared with laughter. “Try again.”

  Locke pinched the bridge of his nose. “I’m serious. I need to run this crazy shit by you.”

  His boss stopped laughing. “Yeah, yeah. All right, Ballsy McGee. I’ll listen.”

  He then took the next two minutes to explain everything: Alex Gaev, Ivan Mikhailov, and the odd, chummy meeting where they mentioned US senators while clubbing—after Ivan had so recently wanted Alex six feet under. Locke tried his to best to describe Alex’s encounters with that woman in Russia, which Cassidy had witnessed and the teacher had denied. The entire oddly unconnected situation just stank.

  Rocco had completely sobered, and his expression said he agreed that it stank. When enough odd-ass things didn’t make sense, people needed to start asking questions.

  Locke pursed his lips. “I don’t know what I’m asking you for, because frankly, conspiracy-bullshit crap is not my specialty. But something’s up.” He shook his head. “I’m a little lost, but I’m smart, and Cassidy Noble? She’s on point.”