Текст книги "Hard Beat"
Автор книги: K. Bromberg
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Текущая страница: 4 (всего у книги 23 страниц)
I take the paper as she walks past me. Out of habit, I turn to watch her and curse myself when I want to tell her she can’t go that way. That there’s nothing but a maze of alleys and a few unsavory characters I’ve been warned about by my own sources. I squeeze my eyes shut momentarily with my hands fisted at my side, telling myself it’s none of my business where she goes or what she does.
So why in the flying fuck am I walking back toward her? I guess babysitting mode is in full effect, and I hate that I’m playing the part of nanny and putting the baby gate around her.
“Beaux!” Even when I say her name, I’m cursing myself for it. “Beaux!” She just keeps walking, causing my better judgment to win out over my obstinacy.
“I said stay away… and it’s BJ to you.” She stops and turns around, but a passerby on the sidewalk bumps harshly against her shoulder. Her small frame sways from the contact, and I’m beside her in two strides.
“You can’t go that way unless you’re looking for trouble.” I decide to ignore her comment.
She just shakes her head and starts walking away from me, but at least she’s moving in the direction of the hotel. I swear I hear her mutter something about always looking for trouble, but I miss the rest of it when a car passes in between us, the sound drowning out her voice.
My feet kick up the dirt on the street as I try to catch up to her. I lie to myself that I want to talk to her to establish some kind of ground rules about how we’ll work together, try to restore a professional level, but I know I’m just making sure she gets back into the confines of the hotel safely.
The barely chilled air-conditioned lobby of the hotel meets us as we enter, but it feels like heaven in contrast to the stifling heat outside. If she knows I’m beside her, she doesn’t acknowledge it, and that’s fine with me. I just want to make sure she’s nice and tucked away in her room where I don’t have to worry about her for a bit while I try to drum up some leads.
The elevator doors open on cue as we approach. I step in right behind her, lean against the rear wall, and fold my arms across my chest to mimic her posture. The doors close, but neither of us moves in a game of chicken. Just when the doors start to open up again without the car ascending, Beaux steps forward and presses the button for the twelfth floor. She looks over to me and raises her eyebrows in question.
“My room, please. You remember where that is, right?” I angle my head, stare at her, and enjoy watching her cheeks flush with anger.
I wait for the snide comment to come, but she just turns and faces the doors of the elevator without pushing the button for the eighth floor. Tension is so thick in the car, you can all but see it.
“I don’t trust you,” I say evenly, but it cuts through the silence.
“Good,” she says matter-of-factly as the car alerts our arrival on the twelfth floor. “Be careful whom you trust – the devil was once an angel, you know.”
And with that she walks off the elevator without another word, her comment already replaying in my mind.
Chapter 5
The shrieks of mass chaos and the sound of desperate and injured people suffering ring in my ears, the scent of gunpowder and blood haunts my psyche as my own shout dies on my lips.
The nightmare slowly fades into the darkness of my hotel room as I wake, leaving me with nothing but the thundering of my pulse in my ears, along with memories I wish I could erase and a chest damp with sweat.
“Just a dream,” I mutter into the silence, hoping the sound of my voice chases away the ghosts still lurking.
But it’s no use. No matter how much time has passed, I can still hear that unsteady thread in her breath. The one I fixated on as fear and pain contorted her face because regardless of the false hope I clung to, that sound told me the truth I couldn’t run from.
That Stella was going to die.
“Fucking hell.” The words do nothing to abate the pressure in my chest, and frankly, I’m sick of feeling it. That’s why I had to get back here. Get back to the one thing I can focus on. Ironic really, considering this is where it happened, but at the same time, I need this, need to be back in the thick of it all so I’m not scared by it. Because when nightmares and reality are the same, it’s harder to fear them.
And you sure as hell can’t outrun them.
I lie back on the bed and scrub my hand over my face. When I open my eyes again, they’re drawn to the spiderweb of cracks in the ceiling above me. As I will myself back to sleep to no avail, I try to quiet my head by tracing the cracks along their broken path through the darkened room. I know that the jet lag is going to kick my ass in the coming days and I need the sleep, but no matter how much I try, I’m wide awake. Sleep doesn’t come.
The sounds of a drowsy city slowly stirring to life begin to float up to my room, and when I look over at the clock, I realize it is five a.m. and I’ve been staring at the damn ceiling for way too long. I give up hope that I’m going to fall asleep. Feeling restless despite the exhaustion deep in my bones, I shove up out of bed, knowing what to do to clear my head.
The clank of weights keeps me company. The cinder-block room is cramped and has two lightbulbs hanging by wires from the ceiling, but I don’t care about the ambience because the physical exertion is exactly what I need right now.
The burn of my muscles as I squat down with the bar on my shoulder and focus on the proper form forces me to clear my head. I swear my laser-honed concentration on what I’m doing makes me feel every single rivulet of sweat that runs down my bare chest. And that’s a good thing because if I’m concentrating on that, there’s no room for anything else. Music blares in my earbuds, but my own grunt of strength to rise back to standing interrupts the sound.
I puff out a breath as I rack the weight bar, having completed my reps and then some, before I drop to sit on a bench against the far wall of the room. My muscles are liquid fire, but God it feels good to work out the anger churning inside me. I rub my T-shirt over my face and hair to wipe the sweat away as I catch my breath for a moment, my body exhausted but in such a productive way.
The cold concrete wall feels hella good as I lean my shoulders against it and close my eyes. Beaux’s face flashes in my mind, and I wonder if she’s why I feel so restless. Maybe I just need to see her, set some guidelines for this fucked-up situation I’ve been forced into, and then maybe I’ll get back into my groove a little quicker. What the fuck kind of way is it to start a working relationship when you’ve seen the other person naked and heard that sound they make as they climax? Talk about stepping out on the wrong foot.
I don’t like her. Plain and simple. I had a moment of bad judgment, a lot of alcohol, and wanted some sex. Little did I know the woman I chose would be the new partner I don’t want.
Fuck.
The quicker I rectify the situation the better. I need structure in my life – I thrive on it – to function in this tumultuous country where every day is something different and yet the exact same. But having Beaux here adds an unpredictability element, and so the quicker I let her know how I operate, the better off we’ll be in the long run.
Maybe I’ll even suck it up for the sake of calming the churning waters and apologize for the one-night stand.
Nah. Fuck it. She came with me willingly, left on her own accord. No need to set the precedent that I’m in the wrong when I know I’ve done nothing of the sort. Now I just need to decide whether I believe that she purposefully slept with me or whether it was purely a coincidence.
The jury’s still out on that one.
I glance at my watch and figure it’s okay to go knocking on her door since it is seven thirty. Maybe that’s a little dick-ish, but at least I’ll learn if she’s a morning person or not; I can play it off like I want to make sure she can be up and ready if we get a call on a lead.
I’m winded by the time I leave the hotel’s basement where the makeshift gym is located and jog up the thirteen flights of steps to the twelfth floor. Once I walk into the hallway, I realize I have no clue which room is Beaux’s. Only one way to find out.
I grab my cell phone from my pocket and pull up her number, walking the short distance of the hallway as the ring fills my ear. It takes a few moments, but I hear the faint ring on my right-hand side and follow it until I’m standing outside room twelve thirteen.
My hesitation over having the wrong room is fleeting as my knock resonates through the empty corridor. Beaux’s voice mail picks up, her throaty voice filling my ear at the same time the ringing on the other side of the door I’m standing at ceases. At least I know I have the right room.
I rap on the door again and listen for any sign of movement behind the door but hear nothing. I call again, almost determined to wake her up now, prove a point that she thinks she can handle this job but that she can’t. Fuck yeah, I’m being a prick, but I don’t care.
Her voice mail picks up again. I pound one more time and press my ear to the door. I tell myself I just want to wake her up, but unease begins to creep up on me. Why isn’t she answering? Is she that dead-to-the-world tired?
Or is something wrong?
I fist my hand against the door to prevent myself from pounding it down as the same worries I always had over Stella’s safety in this godforsaken land come back with a vengeance.
She has to be asleep. No one leaves their cell behind anymore these days. Maybe she sleeps with earplugs in or music on or some other lame excuse for being unable to hear me. I accept the attempt at rationalization but can’t ignore that feeling in my gut that tells me otherwise.
“Let it go, Thomas,” I mutter as I turn away and head into the stairwell, despite all of the horrible images flashing through my mind of what could be wrong. And then I become angry. I’m not a worrier. I’m not some overdramatic guy who worries about people I don’t care about. If I were, I wouldn’t be able to do my job. I see death and destruction all the time in all sorts of unfathomable ways, so I’ve learned to not think about those possibilities.
So why the fuck am I thinking along those lines when it comes to Beaux? The last thing I want is to be thinking about her.
Shit. This whole thing with Stella has affected me. The thought pisses me off even further because that means the brass at work might just be right. And I won’t let them be right. Now I’m pissed both at Beaux and myself, so it seems my little venture to set things right just put me back on the goddamn Tilt-A-Whirl.
I’m so lost in my thoughts that when I fling open the stairwell door to my floor, I collide solidly with another person going just as fast as I am. We both cry out as we stumble backward, and I know before I even look down whose biceps my hands are gripping. I push Beaux away like she’s a hot coal.
We stare at each other, chests heaving, eyes guarded. Her hair is a mess and her makeup is smudged under her eyes, lips nude, but Christ she’s still absolutely beautiful. I shove the unwelcome thought away and manage to drag my eyes from hers to notice she has on the same clothes as yesterday, camera bag dropped on the ground behind her from our collision.
“Where the hell have you been?” She looks at me like I’m crazy for asking. Maybe I am, but I still want an answer.
“None of your damn business.”
“Actually, it is.” Still, I ask myself, why the fuck do I care? I shouldn’t. I don’t want to. But damn it to hell, this woman calls to me on all kinds of levels.
“Screw you.” She pins me with a nasty look as she steps to one side, and I mirror her motions to prevent her from leaving. The truth is I’m looking for a fight, and she just walked headfirst into one.
“Well, you got the screwing part down pat.” I make a show of looking up and down her body, connecting the dots I don’t want to connect: same clothes, different floor of the hotel, a tired woman. She spent the night with someone else. “It seems you like to play with all the boys on the block, huh?” The words are out of my mouth before I can see through my disregard for her. Sure, I don’t want anything more from her, but at the same time, my ego is bruised to think she didn’t think more of me – or any other man for that matter – to at least wait a day before moving to the next warm bed.
I’m such an asshat. I was sitting up at her door worried that something was wrong with her because she wasn’t answering, when instead she was busy ringing up her own bedpost tally. Serves me goddamn right for caring. Lesson learned.
Beaux stares me down, blatant derision mixed with embarrassment playing out all over her flushed cheeks, while my disbelief at my earlier concern skyrockets.
“I don’t believe it’s any of your business what I do or don’t do, Tanner. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m exhausted and want some sleep.” Her gaze flickers down to my bare chest and the T-shirt bundled in my hand before reaching my eyes again. She raises her eyebrows as she waits for me to move, and the irony isn’t lost on me how the positions were reversed just yesterday.
“What if we had a lead? What if I was just up at your room pounding on your door because you didn’t answer your phone? How would you handle it then, huh?” Honestly I know I’m being a prick by baiting her with my questions, but I’m past the point of caring. “This isn’t sorority row. It’s best you start acting like the professional you claim to be instead of some two-bit —”
She’s in my face so fast, the rest of the words don’t have a chance to leave my mouth. “Who and what I am is none of your goddamn business so long as I do my job properly! It’s best you start remembering that as well.”
The heat of her body is pressed against my bare skin, and I hate the ache that stirs deep in my lower belly. Her breath mingles with mine from our proximity, and I want to step back from her, give us the distance I most definitely need to keep this on the professional level, but somehow I can’t make my feet move.
“Good to know. I’ll believe it when I see it.” My gaze travels down to her lips and then back up to her eyes, a half-cocked smirk on my lips. “But I think you’ve forgotten one important thing.”
“What’s that?” she huffs out, and I love that I’m irritating her. Serves her right.
“If I can’t get hold of you, then you can’t do your job properly. It’s best you start remembering that as well,” I say, throwing her words back in her face.
“How long are you going to play the asshole card, Tanner?”
My only response is to raise my eyebrows and purse my lips. “Long as it takes.”
“Lucky me.” Her green eyes blaze into mine, but I just look back at her like I don’t give two fucks. “This conversation has been absolutely scintillating, but I’m sure watching the back of my eyelids is much more exciting. If you’ll excuse me…”
And there she goes again walking away from me, taunting me with what I most definitely don’t want, but what man wouldn’t enjoy watching her ass as it goes?
I’m dialing Rafe before she’s up the first flight of stairs.
“Hey.” He answers just as I unlock the door to my room, and I wait until I close it behind me before I respond.
“What gives? Where are all of the embed missions you said you were setting up for me?” I’m antsy as fuck to get out in the field, get that buzz again.
“It’s only been forty-eight hours since wheels down, Thomas. Cool your jets.” Rafe tries to placate me with exasperation.
“It may be only two days, but you had a few months to set shit up for me while you were making me jump through your circus hoops to get back here.” He was so adamant that he be the ringmaster.
“Our military liaison is working on it, and —”
“Don’t give me any bullshit lines, Rafe. You’ve got me fucking handcuffed. I know I’m being watched here like a goddamn dog to make sure I play by the rules… and I am, I assure you… but if you don’t throw me a bone soon, I’m going to find one on my own, protocol be damned,” I say, lying to him with ease.
“How’s it going with you and Beaux?” The subtle change of subject tells me he heard me loud and clear and that he knows if he can’t make something happen for me, I’ll make it happen myself. We’ve worked together long enough that I know he can’t consent to my going against company policy by entering the danger zone on my own accord.
It’s my ass on the line. And I’m good with that. Too bad now my ass means Beaux’s too.
I grunt a nonresponse. “Don’t think I don’t see the setup here. The babysitting job you guys dropped on me because you think I’m unstable. I’ll do my job, Rafe, and I’ll do it damn well.”
“I never said that you wouldn’t.”
“You didn’t have to say it. I’ll be waiting for your call… and for your sake, she’d better be able to do her job.” I hang up before giving him a chance to respond, the range of emotions from this morning making me more bitter than normal.
Tossing my phone onto my unmade bed, I strip down, the hot water of my shower calling to my sore muscles. When I enter the bathroom, I look in the mirror and flex out of habit to see whether this morning made any difference in the definition of my abs and biceps. But when I draw my eyes up from the lines in my torso, I take in my dark hair, worn a little long, and the stubble I sport when on assignment so that I can fit in as much as possible with the locals. I’m already missing my clean-shaven face and hair trimmed off my ears like I prefer when I’m at home. When in Rome…
I look like shit. My violet eyes are bloodshot from lack of sleep with dark smudges that look like bruises beneath them. I scrub a hand over my face and blow out a breath to shake away the ghosts I see hiding in the mirror and head for the shower. Productivity is my number one priority.
Chapter 6
“It’s driving you crazy, isn’t it?”
I look at Pauly through the steam of my coffee before answering him because his words are more true than I’d like to admit. “Of course it is… but isn’t that how it is here, always feast or famine? Weeks on end of waiting for something to happen and then riding that high when it does only for the boredom to hit tenfold until the next time. It’s just taking a bit of time for all of my sources to know I’m back.”
Pauly rolls his eyes and laughs. “Only you could think that you’ll return to this shithole and things will start happening.” When I raise my eyebrows with an unabashed shrug to remind him of all the times this has happened, he holds up his hands in surrender. “Forgive me, wonder boy. We all know you walk into a room and shit happens that only you know about.”
“It’s good to be me.” I flash a smirk his way before taking another sip of coffee. We’re sitting by the front windows of the hotel where we can watch life outside to pass time, but on the far left of us are some makeshift desks where a few reporters work on their laptops. To the right is the reception counter, and at the opposite end of the room, across from where we sit, is the bar. We’ve kind of commandeered that too – all sixty of us reporters and photographers from various agencies – and made it our second home since our rooms are so small and nothing beats boredom better than company.
There’s a crappy pool table a few of the guys found abandoned somewhere in the early days of the conflict. It was broken and battered, but in between air raid sirens and being confined in here for safety’s sake, they made it a mission to repair it with whatever they could find. It’s a patchwork quilt at best, but it works, and we’ve all spent endless hours playing on it, trying to pass time during lulls.
Pool’s not really my thing, though. Not enough action, enough adrenaline, not enough of anything really, but when I glance over to the table at the right of the bar, my pulse jumps. Because bending over the table, lining up a shot with her spectacular ass directed my way, is Beaux.
And even if I didn’t have firsthand knowledge of how those curves look without those ass-hugging jeans on, I’d still guess it was her from a mile away because bodies like hers are few and far between.
The crack of the rack of balls breaking up rings out across the lobby, and it’s only when she stands up to full height that her long mane of hair falls down her back. Damn it. I’m a sucker for women with long hair so when all of it falls to rest above the swell of her ass, I curse under my breath.
Visions of wrapping that hair around my hand and pulling her head back as I’m burying myself into her from behind fill my head instantly. It’s one thing to push a woman out of your head when you wonder what someone feels and tastes like, but it’s almost impossible to do that when you know those truths from personal experience. Images from that night flash through my mind: her tits bouncing with each thrust, her lips parted with want, that small strawberry birthmark on her hip bone.
When Pauly clears his throat, the sound pulls me from my thoughts to realize I’m blatantly staring at Beaux. I turn my head toward him to find his eyebrows raised and tongue tucked in his cheek. “Must be a pain in the ass to look at that sight all day.”
And fuck, I can deny it all I want, but Pauly will think I’m full of shit and assume more, so I might as well tell partial truths. “It’s brutal, I tell you,” I say as he groans when she positions herself perfectly in his line of sight across the table for a shot.
“I mean the lengths you go to for your job, Nanny Tanny…” His voice fades off as we turn our heads to watch her maneuver around the table.
I choke on my sip of water. There’s no way I heard him correctly. “What did you just say?”
“Nanny. Babysitting…” He shrugs. “Nanny Tanny.”
“Dude, that’s so wrong.” I laugh.
“You can be all kinds of wrong because I bet with a body like that, she’d fix it with all of her kinds of right. Man, I’d tap that in a heartbeat.” He’s all talk, but I laugh with him anyway. “On our next supply run, you should probably stock up on lube… Wouldn’t want you getting calluses unnecessarily now, would we?”
I just shake my head and laugh, grateful for the camaraderie but not willing to go into detail about how complicated the situation already is between the two of us. “Perfect in theory, my friend, but I don’t quite trust her yet.” And of course now I have his interest piqued. I should have kept my mouth shut.
“Why’s that?”
“I don’t understand why she came here telling everyone she was freelance when she had the job. Why not just tell the truth?” I hope my quick thinking pays off and Pauly doesn’t sniff out my lie. What was I supposed to tell him? Oh I slept with her and she didn’t tell me she was my new partner, but she denies that she knew?
He nods his head as he mulls over my comment. “Yeah but you weren’t here yet. Wouldn’t you have been pissed if you showed up and she was buddy-buddy with everyone and used your name as a way to get in with everybody?”
“You’ve got a point there,” I murmur, hoping the resignation in my tone helps bring the topic to a close.
“But you’re still going to tell me you don’t like her, right?”
He knows me too well. When I glance over to the pool table, Beaux’s chalking up her cue stick, but her eyes are on me. Her ears must be burning over the discussion I’m having. She stares for a moment, brow furrowed, but the minute she realizes I’ve caught her staring, she looks away.
“It’s not that I don’t like her per se, but it’s the babysitting job Rafe’s assigned to me that I hate. Since when does he get to judge if I’m okay or not?”
“So long as you do your job, it shouldn’t matter.”
“Mmm-hmm.” I take another drink of my coffee. The scalding liquid burns a path down my throat at the same time my phone buzzes on the table in front of me. In a move so practiced it looks natural, I slide my cell off the table and rest it on my thigh just below the line of sight.
I comment to Pauly about something random, keep the conversation going so that he forgets the little vibration my phone gave, while at the same time it feels like an ember burning a hole in my goddamn leg. If there’s a lead sitting here and I react, he’ll know and want me to share it. We may be friends, but all’s fair in friendship and getting the first wind of a breaking story.
Shifting in my seat, I glance down and see Omid’s name on my screen. The ember becomes a damn wildfire at the sight of my most elusive but most trusted source’s name. It takes everything I have to keep myself from pumping my fist in the air, because I feared he had disappeared on me while I was gone.
Or even worse in this land where someone who is your ally one day may turn on you the next, pledging his loyalty and allegiance to the terrorist just to save his own life. The possibility that Omid has been found out and turned against me is never far from my mind.
The familiar adrenaline rush hits me like a first fix to an addict. The rest of the message consumes my thoughts as Pauly drones on about nothing of importance.
“Ah, shit,” I say as I make a show of looking at my watch, causing him to narrow his eyebrows. “I’m gonna get my ass chewed. I missed a conference call with Rafe.” I scoot the chair back as Pauly laughs.
“Man, the jet lag fucks with your head.”
“Catch up with you in a bit,” I say as I start to walk away from the table.
“Not like I’m going anywhere.”
The minute I turn the corner and walk into the conveniently open elevator car to go up to my room, I enter the pass code to my phone. The message lights up my screen: Meet me at five. The usual place.
I let out the fist pump I’d held back downstairs as the doors open at my floor. I reply to Omid that I’ll be there, excitement ruling my thoughts and trepidation bringing me back down to Earth.
The last time I was out and about in everyday life here was the day of Stella’s death. The fractured images of the events of that day move through my mind like a kaleidoscope, never far from the surface, and of course my discomfort clears the path for me to worry that Omid is setting me up somehow. It’s a possibility with any meet, but I know his hatred runs deep for the terrorist faction that continually reasserts its stronghold in this country after losing his children to their brutality, so I try to shrug away the notion.
Stuck with the lie I told Pauly, I can’t return too quickly to the lobby, so I decide to head up to my room and reward myself with some sleep. Yet within seconds of closing my hotel room door and stripping off my shirt, a knock sounds at my back.
Shit. Pauly caught on somehow. Before I respond, though, he knocks again.
“Dude, hold your horses!” I walk over to the door. Just as my hand grips the handle, I hear Beaux’s muffled voice from the other side, and it surprises the shit out of me.
“Don’t even think you’re heading out without me.”
How in the hell did she know something came up?
When I turn the handle and let the door fall open, we stand motionless as she stares at me with her green, assessing eyes. The damn woman is observant, and I’m not sure if I love that or hate that yet, but I have a feeling I’m going to find out one way or another because she doesn’t seem to be a wilting flower in any sense of the word.
She enters when I take a step backward, and I like that the hard glint in her eyes goes hazy for just a moment when she takes notice of my bare chest. She stares a bit longer than is professional before dragging her eyes over my torso and back up to my face. Can’t say it doesn’t give me a small thrill of satisfaction to know she likes what she sees. Except there’s no way in hell I’m letting her touch me again.
And then of course she opens her mouth and ruins it all. “Going somewhere, Pulitzer?” She stands with her hands on her hips and her head angled to the side.
“You stalking me or something?” I prop my shoulder against the wall and shove my hands deep in the pockets of my cargos.
“You didn’t answer my question.”
“Last time I checked, I didn’t have to.” I could volley like this all day if she wants to.
“So where are you off to?” she asks again, this time with a bit more impatience.
I gesture toward my bed. “I’m about to take a nap, actually. You’re welcome to join me if you’d like, but for some reason I don’t take you for the type who likes to spoon.” I raise my eyebrows in a taunt as I wait for her rebuttal.
But she says nothing. She just stands there with arms akimbo, eyes reflecting her inner struggle over whether to believe me or not.
“I don’t trust you,” she says, throwing my own words at me as she steps backward into the hall.
“Good to know,” I tell her as I shut the door in her face. Feeling like an ass, I stand there for a moment with one hand pressed flat against the door, the other on the handle, and indecision clouding my thoughts.
I’m not sure how long we both stand on opposite sides of the slab of wood waiting the other out, but eventually, I hear her feet shuffle away and the ding of the elevator. I run a hand through my hair and flop on the bed on my back, set my alarm on my phone, and find myself staring at the cracks in the ceiling again.
I can’t help but question myself – technically she is my partner, so why am I keeping the information about the meet from her? For one thing, I’m not ready to have a partner again, not ready for some fresh-faced rookie to come waltzing into this position and fill Stella’s shoes like she never existed.
But I signed up for this, right? Begged to get back here. How can I keep shutting Beaux out when I need to let her the fuck in so I can do my job to what the brass considers the best of my ability?
Add to that this is going to be my first time out in the field since the day Stella died. Do I really want to be so preoccupied with making sure that Beaux’s okay when the last time I tried that, I failed miserably? Stella’s blood still stains my hands.
Even with all of my reasoning, my justifications keep missing the mark. I doze off, still trying to grasp the concept that if I let Beaux come along, she’s not replacing Stella.
And I’m not forgetting her either.
