I wasn’t getting out of the ring.
I sprang forward and delivered a series of rapid hits that had him shaking his head to clear his vision. I pounced again, dropping him to the mat but still punching, still delivering blows. It took two guys to pull me off. It wasn’t until they literally tossed me out of the ring that I snapped back to reality. I stood up, wiping at the blood on my face and peering into the ring.
The guy was unconscious. He had a split lip and it looked like a broken nose. The way he lay so still, I wondered if he was dead. Is that what I looked like the night I died? Was I that still and pale with blood on my face?
I realized the room was entirely too quiet. I glanced around. People were staring. Everyone was staring. Except for the men who were bent over the man I pummeled.
I hadn’t been trying to kill him. I was just trying to forget.
And then I realized if he were dead, I would have broken yet another one of G.R.’s rules: kill no one but a Target.
I’d gotten away with it once… many years ago. Something else I really didn’t want to remember. Afterward I’d walked around in a state of panic thinking G.R. would find out and Recall me. But he never did.
I didn’t think I would get that lucky twice.
The man in the ring moaned and relief poured through me. He wasn’t dead. It wasn’t really that I valued his life so much—I had no value for life at all.
I just didn’t want to make this job any harder than it already was.
Chapter Twelve
“Bandage - a strip of material such as gauze used to protect, immobilize, compress, or support a wound or injured body part.”
Frankie
The best part about today? It was almost over. The lines at the DMV today had been longer and more hellacious than usual. Or maybe my mood was just more hellacious that usual. Starting my day with a demanding, self-important moron banging on my door at the crack of dawn just set me off on the wrong path.
On my way out the door, I rummaged through my endless bag of things I might need but never actually used, searching for my keys. When I couldn’t find them, a little tingle of panic shot through me, the kind of panic I always felt when I thought I lost something important.
Except I didn’t lose my keys.
I didn’t have them because I didn’t drive to work today.
“Ugh!” I burst out, stomping my foot on the pavement, and turned to go back into the building. A flash of red caught my eye. I did a double take over my shoulder and sure enough, my Jeep was sitting in the parking lot.
I had no idea how it got there, but I wasn’t about to complain. Now I didn’t have to call a cab. I hurried over to the driver’s side and opened the door; my keys were in the ignition.
Charming had to have done this. He’s the only one that knew I hadn’t driven to work. He’s also the only idiot I knew that would park my Jeep in the parking lot and leave the keys in the ignition.
“Well, I guess that’s better than him actually walking inside. Then I would’ve had to see him again,” I said out loud, disgust lacing my tone.
“Are you referring to me?” someone said from the back seat.
“Agh!” I practically fell out of the Jeep as I was climbing in.
“What are you doing?” I demanded, swinging my purse behind me to whack him on the leg.
He dodged the blow and sat up. “Well, I’ll tell you what I’m not doing and that’s being comfortable. The back seat in this thing is worse than a Porta Potty on a hot day.”
I snorted. “Like you ever use a Porta Potty.”
“I brought your Jeep here because I knew you didn’t have a way home. I was trying to be nice.”
“Please. You aren’t nice. What do you want?”
“Can we go now?” he asked, sitting up from his reclined position. “I left my car at your apartment.”
I turned around to glare at him, but my glare fell away. “What happened to your face?”
“Nothing.”
It wasn’t nothing. He had an angry red gash on his eye that was starting to blacken. “You need to put some ice on that.”
“I’ll do that. Just as soon as I get out of this torture chamber.”
I started up the Jeep and pulled out of the parking lot. “Let me guess, you treated someone else to your winning personality and they punched you in the face?”
He grunted but otherwise said nothing else.
At my apartment, I pulled up behind his Porsche and parked, moving the seat so he could climb out of the back. I started to walk away but then stopped. “Thanks for bringing my Jeep. The cabs around here take forever.”
“Did you make that phone call yet?”
Ahh, and there it was. The real reason he brought my Jeep. It was just an excuse to check up on me.
I sighed. “No.”
“I’m not leaving until you make the call.”
“Fine. Come upstairs. I’ll call her inside.”
At my door, I used my keys to unlock it and let us in, pausing once the door was open. “You left the door unlocked this morning when we left.”
“You locked it when you left, then?”
He nodded. “Leaving your doors unlocked isn’t safe.”
I almost made a quip about him not caring about whether or not I was safe, but I didn’t bother. I was tired.
He sat down in the nearby club chair and dabbed at his eye.
I went in the kitchen and grabbed an icepack and towel. “Here,” I said, jabbing it in front of his face. “That looks like it hurts.”
“I’ve had worse.”
I leaned in and looked at it. It was still oozing. “Did you even clean it?”
“I rinsed it out. You gonna make that call?” he asked, holding the ice up to his face. He didn’t even wince when the pack made contact with his wound.
I grabbed up my phone and dialed Rosalyn’s number. I was aware of Charming’s brooding stare as the phone rang. Rosalyn answered on the third ring.
“Hello?” Her voice was a little questioning, probably because my number was new.
“Hi, Rosalyn. This is Frankie. We met the other night…”
“Oh, yes! How are you?”
“I’m great. How are you?”
“Nothing wrong that a greasy slice of pizza can’t fix.”
I laughed. “I don’t think there is anything pizza can’t fix.”
“Hey, you wouldn’t want to grab some in a bit would you?”
“Oh. Well…” Charming appeared next to me and nodded. “I’m just getting off work—” Before I could finish my sentence, he snatched the phone out of my hand.
“Rosalyn,” he purred into the line. “This is Charming. We met the other night.” He grinned at whatever she was saying. “Yes, I’m here with Frankie. She was having some car trouble so I picked her up from work.”
I wondered if he would like a gash on his left eye to match the one on his right.
“Pizza?” he was saying. “Sure, we’d love to.” His eyes slid to mine and he smirked. I walked into the kitchen and grabbed a soda out of the fridge and sat down at the table. This day just kept on getting better.
A few minutes later he pulled out a chair across from me and sat down. “Hope you like pizza, sister dear, because we have plans.”
“Can’t you just tell her I’m sick?”
He shook his head. “Nope.”
“I don’t want to go.”
“Too bad. You’re the one who told her we were related. Then you told her I was gay. You’re going to come tonight and tell her I’m not. That you were just being an overprotective sister and didn’t want your only brother to get hurt.”
“And why would I do that?”
“Because once she knows I’m not gay, I can start dating her and then I won’t have to use my ‘sister’ as an excuse to see her.”
Well, at least then I wouldn’t have to see him every five minutes. Maybe once he wasn’t watching my every move, I could actually come up with a plan to get r
id of him.
I got up and pulled out a small first-aid kit near the sink and returned to the table, pulling my chair directly in front of his. “At least let me clean up that eye. I don’t want to have to look at it while I’m eating.”
When he didn’t protest or make some nasty comment, I tore open a small cleansing wipe and reached up to dab at the corner of his eye. I expected him to wince or suck in a breath, but he didn’t do either. He just sat there staring at me without blinking as I worked.
“It really does look like someone punched you.”
He grunted.
“Was that a yes?”
“It was a ‘you should have seen the other guy.’”
I paused, wondering if he was being serious and deciding I really didn’t want to know, then finished dabbing at the cut and dropped the wipe on the table. “So, the other night… when I was in your apartment—”
“You mean the night you broke into my house?” he interrupted.
“Yeah, that one.” I said, opening up a butterfly bandage and reaching for the antibiotic cream. “You moved really fast. How’d you do that?”
I dabbed a little ointment around the edges of the cut. His shoulder’s tightened, but he made no other acknowledgement about my movements.
“It’s one of my abilities.”
“Moving fast?”
“Sort of. It’s called kinetic absorption. It’s the ability to absorb energy from other people and things around me. My body then can use the extra power by converting it to extra strength, super speed, or even sometimes using it to create power blasts.”
“Like from your hands?” I asked, forgetting I was cleaning his eye and just sitting there listening to him.
He nodded.
“Wow. I never heard of that before.” It might even be unbelievable if I hadn’t seen him do it. Or if I didn’t know the Grim Reaper existed.
“So is that all you can do?”
“I have super hearing too.”
“So that’s how you knew I was in the house.”
He shook his head. “The energy level in the house changed. You have lots of energy.”
I glared at him. “You used my energy that night?”
He shrugged.
“But I didn’t feel tired.”
“It doesn’t work that way. I take the extra energy; I don’t suck all of yours away.”
“Oh.” I picked up the bandage.
“Actually, that ability pretty much is the only one I have beyond the hearing. But it allows me to do a lot. It pretty much turns me into a super-powered human.”
“Human is debatable,” I muttered.
His shoulders began to shake with his laugh.
“Hold still,” I commanded and leaned closer to apply the bandage.
He smelled good. Like really expensive cologne. I knew it was expensive because all the cheap ones were overpowering; they smelled too strong. But this one wasn’t like that. It was light and clean with just a hint of spice.
I cleared my throat and sat back. “It’s actually not that bad. The cut, I mean. Those kinds of things always look worse than they are. The swelling will probably be gone in the morning.”
I began gathering up the supplies and wrappers. When I turned from the trashcan, he was inches from me. I gasped. “Just because you can move that fast and apparently silently doesn’t mean you should.”
“Frankie,” he said. He leaned down close, so close I could see the different shades of green that all worked together to create the vibrant shade that made up his eyes. I swallowed; my stupid heart began to race with his closeness.
“What?”
“Don’t forget what you’re supposed to do tonight. At dinner.”
I made a sound of disgust and shoved him away. I swear he laughed beneath his breath. “Oh, I won’t forget.” I promised, leaving the room.
At this point I would tell her anything he wanted just so I could get a little space.
Chapter Thirteen
“Fiber - the parts of grains, fruits, and vegetables that contain cellulose and are not digested by the body. Fiber helps the intestines absorb water, which increases the bulk of the stool and causes it to move more quickly through the colon.”
Charming
We met at a small local pizza place that specialized in wood-fired pizza. Frankie refused to ride with me and I wasn’t going to argue. I had enough of her already to last me an entire lifetime.
I don’t know what I’d been thinking telling her about my abilities. Talk about giving away the home court advantage. One minute she was putting that shit that burned like hell on my face and the next I was answering her questions without even thinking about it.
It had to be the head injury.
It was making me behave foolishly.
But after tonight I wouldn’t have to see her as much. My sister could just be a topic of conversation between the Target and me while we were out on dates. I wasn’t fool enough to think that the minute I announced I wasn’t actually gay she would jump into my wholly available and waiting arms.
I had no doubt that her people would be running background check after background check on me. It didn’t matter. They wouldn’t find anything other than what I wanted them to see. To her I was just a businessman who worked in real estate and property development. I went to an Ivy League college and worked my way up to the self-made millionaire that I was today. I was divorced (because a guy like me would have to be damaged goods to never have been married before) and I had no kids.
In fact, on paper I looked like the perfect guy for a senator’s daughter to date. I would even look good in the family photo.
It was going to be tricky to insert myself in her life so quickly, but I knew I could do it. The key was to move slowly at first, gain her trust, pass all the checks they wanted to do, and appear uninterested in the fact that she was a senator’s daughter and worth a lot of money.
Acting uninterested in her money wouldn’t be hard at all. They would never know it, but I had way more money that she would ever have.
I parked my car in a spot in the back of the lot beneath a streetlight and cut the engine. I sat there and watched as Frankie pulled in and parked that tin can of a Jeep on the other side of the lot. That thing was hideous. It had vinyl seats a basic interior.
I frowned.
It probably wasn’t safe at all.
I shook off the stray thought (I wasn’t hit that hard, but my brain sure was acting scrambled) and got back to business. The hardest thing about this job was going to be acting interested in the Target. She was attractive and I was sure she was well educated and all, but she wasn’t my type. She was one of those girls that people built a glass house around because everyone thought she was important. She probably never had an ounce of fun because of the duties that had been bestowed upon her just because her father chose the career he did.
Maybe that was it. Maybe the key to getting to her heart fast wasn’t romance. Maybe it was fun. Excitement. Maybe I should break down that glass house and show her what life on the outside was all about.
I sighed. I didn’t really know what life was about either. All I did was plot and kill.
I watched Frankie walk across the parking lot. She was wearing a pair of loose-fitting black cotton pants and a pair of heels. The red pea coat she wore flared out around her waist and swung around as she stepped. She would know all about how to have fun. Like I told her before, she was brimming with energy.
But I wasn’t going to involve her any more than necessary. Not like she would cooperate anyway. She was more stubborn than a mule’s ass.
A black BMW pulled into the lot and parked in the row right in front of me. I caught a flash of long dark hair and knew it was the Target. Time to get to work.
I waited until she pushed open her door, and then got out of my car, pressing the lock button on my key fob. The SUV beeped and just like I hoped, she looked over her shoulder at me.
I smiled and held up my hand. “Fancy
meeting you here.”
“Charming, glad you could make it.” Her eyes swept over me quickly and then settled on my face, or rather the injury that was unnoticeable.
“What on earth happened to you?” she asked just as I fell into step beside her.
“I was at the grocery store earlier and I saw this little old lady trying to reach onto the top shelf for the last box of cereal. I reached up to get it for her and would you believe she thought I was taking it for myself and she clobbered me.”
She laughed. “Actually, I don’t believe that.”
I shook my head. “I had no idea how serious old people were about their fiber.”
She laughed again as we approached the entrance. I stepped ahead to pull open the door and hold it for her. The scent of wood-fired pizza and bread wafted out onto the sidewalk.
“That smells so good,” she said.
We stepped in and my eyes found Frankie immediately. She was sitting in a booth toward the back. She saw us and waved.
When we arrived at the table, the Target slid into the booth, opposite of Frankie, and I wasn’t sure what she would think if I slid in next to her so I gave Frankie a light shove and sat down beside her.
“So that’s your story, huh?” the Target asked, picking up her menu. “Black eye by old lady?”
Frankie gave me a look.
I smiled sheepishly at the Target. “Actually, no. I was at the gym earlier. I do some boxing and some guy got in a lucky shot.”
“You box?” Frankie said, surprised.
“Been boxing since I was a kid. You know that,” I told her. She was a lousy con.
“Right. Sorry. I didn’t realize you still did it.”
I nodded. “When work allows me to get away.”
“Oh, I know how that is. I was in meetings all day.”
“What do you do, Rosalyn?” Frankie asked.
“Mostly I just head up some of my father’s foundations and causes. I wanted to go to law school, but my father needed me.” She shrugged.
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