by Kara Parker
“Director Ship,” Garrison interrupted the man’s musings.
The director turned around, a wide smile on his face, and regarded Garrison then me. “I heard we arrested Lennon Price. Well done, Garrison m’boy.”
I cast a superstitious glance at Garrison and watched his chest puff out and pride gleam in his eyes. “That’s right, Sir. Hardell asked for him specifically because he thought he was going to hand me over as a present to the Alfonso head.” A dark smile flitted across his lips. “We were in luck.”
A cunning canary smile twisted the director’s lips, and his entire face shadowed to display a dark side I was sure I never wanted to be on the receiving end of. “It was careful planning, m’boy. Carefully plotting points, extracting information and catching them in the act.” The man’s pointer fingers spasmed as if pulling a trigger. “Perfect execution.”
An uncomfortable second passed before I shifted my feet and the oppressive air in the office lifted. The clouds outside the windows parted and let light shine through and bounce off the glossy wood. The director smoothed his hands down his front and gestured to the chairs adjacent the large desk, and moved behind the piece of furniture.
“But where are my manners. Please—Chelsie was it?” I nodded, and he smiled warmly, showing laugh lines I hadn’t noticed. “Have a seat. You to Garrison.”
We both sat. I felt warm hand slide over my shoulders and jumped before relaxing into Garrison’s touch. It felt nice to be touched. I’d forgotten what it was like. Somehow, a few seconds in Hardell’s grasp brought up all the feelings Yannik had forced into me, insecurities and fears I’d thought buried. With a comforting touch, they were banished. I wondered if Garrison even knew the effect he had on me.
“Chelsie,” Director Ship interrupted briskly, “We are indebted to you. And though you may not have known it at the time, your life was never in any danger.”
I felt Garrison’s arm nudge my shoulder as if to say that the director was lying. I smiled and brushed my hair away from my face. “I knew the risks I was taking…” I peaked at the gold placard on his desk and added an extra watt to my smile “... Richard.”
A vein in his head popped, smoothed, popped again. It was the only display of anger he showed at me using his fist name. “All’s well that ends well, right? We’re glad that both you and Garrison are safe. However, knowing that Hardell escaped doesn’t ensure your safety.”
Ship bridged his fingers and placed his elbows on his desk. “We’d like to place you in the witness protection program, Chelsie.”
I knew this was coming, how could I not? No doubt even if Hardell hadn’t limped away with his tail between his legs, I’d still be in witness protection. I sighed. It wasn’t like I was a superhero that could blend in with a pair of sunglasses or go back to my lair. I’d taken down a large section of a very dangerous organization, and if the shows and books taught me anything, it was that there was always someone informing the bad guys. The Alfanso head, or whomever I’d stopped from peddling their drugs already knew about me, I was sure of that.
I sighed again, long and gustily. “I have a bar and a house. What am I going to do with them?”
No one spoke for a second, letting me decided what I wanted. It was Garrison who broke it. “You could give it to your friend. Lisa?”
I crossed my legs and winced at my stiff muscles. The skin around my throat still felt tender, and there was a darkening bruise at my waist where Hardell had jabbed his gun. I thought long and hard about Lisa, everything she’d faced, everything she would have to face. Running a bar wasn’t easy, and I worried that the gentle natured girl wouldn’t be able to do it. But then I remembered what she came from, the horrible things she suffered at the hands of Hardell’s men, and how I was the pot in an overused analogy.
“Can you arrange it?” I glanced at Garrison and then the director. “For Lisa to take over my property. All of it.”
Garrison and Ship exchanged a brief look before the director nodded and leaned back in his chair. “We’ll do everything we can.”
For the next several hours we talked about the witness protection process, what I could and couldn’t do, and how far the protection actually extended. Director Ship explained that the main point of the program was to blend me into society seamlessly. People always look for Waldo, but they can never find him once he’s in regular clothes. That was witness protection.
The day wore on, shadows moved like the hands of a clock down the wall, and cups of thick, hot coffee had me going to the bathroom at least three times an hour. I was exhausted, and a little irritated by the time the FBI was completely done for the day. Garrison picked me up in one of the interrogation rooms I’d told, retold and the re-re-told my accounts of the shoot out.
He leaned against the door jamb, dark smudges under his eyes, but a content smile on his face. “Ready?”
I shot up but swayed. I caught myself, laughed softly and nodded. “Thought you’d never ask. I’m ready to just about fall dead.”
He swaggered over, wrapped a hand around my waist and kissed my messy hair. “Can’t have that, Sugar. I need you alive for all the things I want to do to you.”
“Oh?” I raised a brow and bumped his hip as we left the room.
He leaned down and warm lips skirted my ear. “Yes.”
One word. I was needy, ready, alive and awake. I wanted Garrison quicker than a light bulb illuminating a room. A spark, quicker than I can catch, and my nipples were tight, sex clenching desperately, breath coming out in short gasps. I wanted him that night in the hotel, but my past demons interfere.
They wouldn’t now.
I could feel it. The shift in my mind and body. My baby girl would never come back, but Yannik wouldn’t haunt me either. The open wound I’d carried was closed, stitched up neat with only a dull ache now and then. All the scars Yannik had inflicted weren’t turning my skin into a Starry Night.
All the things that held me back where memories, ones I’d tried to hold onto. But that’s all they ever were, and ever would be.
Garrison and I stepped into the elevator leading down, and I twisted in his arms and yanked his head down for a slow melting kiss. I didn’t care that we were at his work, or that the elevator was only half closed and the low whistle I heard let me know we had an audience, I was happy.
Warm lips brushed against mine before firming. Gentle hands encircled my waist and pulled me into the shelter of Garrison’s body. I drew in air through my nostrils, tilted my head, and opened my mouth to his tongue. It wasn’t an innocent kiss, and Disney would never show it in a princess movie.
It was life expressed through wet, sliding tongues and desperately grasping fingers. It was an affirmation of everything I’d overcome. I didn’t flinch as Garrison bent me back and fitted his hands to the curves of my ass. Didn’t protest when the elevator wall hit my back and my feet left the floor to circle his waist. My trauma was always with me, a dark friend I’d never be totally rid of, but at that moment I didn’t care about him.
“Well, I’ll never need to buy another porno. I just have to swipe the elevator footage from today,” Agent Carter said, interrupting our make out session.
Garrison pulled up, looked over his shoulders, and growled. “Never thought I’d have to kill my best friend.”
Carter laughed and took the comment in stride. He held the elevator open for us, and I scrambled out of Garrison’s hold, a little mortified by my actions. “Thanks,” I mumbled as I hurried out of the building and into the waiting car.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Five weeks and three days later, I would be happy if I never dealt with the FBI again. Chinese food and temporary safe houses had run their courses. I’d been able to give my bar and everything to Lisa and her son. The FBI had packed up my life and placed everything of value that I wanted to keep in boxes.
I’d been sort of amazed to find that my entire life fit into five boxes. That was all I’d had in my house beside furniture that I didn’t need
to keep. The only thing I cared about was my bar, so all my money had gone into that. Now that I wouldn’t have it, I wasn’t sure what I was going to do.
“Worried?” Garrison asked from the driver’s seat, scratching at his shaved head. He’d taken leave off of work, changed his appearance, and escorted me to my new home. Director Ship had said something about Garrison not starting a relationship with me, but the damage was done, and aside from a few muttered words, the FBI wouldn’t interfere.
I leaned back as much as I could in the uncomfortable moving van seats. Desert sand moved in small gusts of wind beside our van as we drove to Texas. Given that Garrison and I were both Southern, the South seemed like the best place to blend and relax. At least for a while.
“What’s wrong?” I turned my head against the headrest and looked at Garrison. His eyes were firmly fixed on the road ahead, but his eyebrow rose in a silent question.
“Nothing. Just thinking.”
“You’ve been thinking for the best of ten hours.”
I smiled and closed my eyes. “A lot's happened. I’m not sure how to react.” I shifted, stretched my arms out in front of me, and wiggled my fingers. “I’m just trying to process it all.”
“It that good or bad?”
I laughed. “Curious kitty, aren’t you?”
I didn’t know how to answer that. My thought was all good but tinged with something dark. It was like I was waiting for a cloud to rain on my parade. The dark spot on my new life. There always was one.
Garrison reached over and placed his hand on my knee, squeezing gently. “Nothing’s ever going to be perfect, Sugar. The best it’ll be is nice. Not good or bad, but just nice.”
I squeezed his hand. “I don’t want ‘just nice’.” I unbuckled my seatbelt and wiggled so I could lean over to Garrison. I ducked my head and smiled at the obvious erection tenting his dark wash jeans. “I want everything. Nothing’s ever all bad or all good. I want to feel the spectrum of it all. I’ve been through the ringer, I want to taste the sweet things life has to offer.”
I bent lower, captured his zipper pull between my teeth and lowered it. His thighs hardened beneath my hands, as I pressed a hot, wet kiss into the fabric of his boxers. “Don’t you want that too, Garrison?”
I gently pulled him out of his jeans and stroked the hard length of him. He groaned and gripped the steering wheel tighter, “Sugar, anything you want, I’ll want. I’m damn sure of that.”
***
We arrived at the ranch around sunset. It was picturesque. The sun blended into the horizon red and orange and purple and blue. But even the pretty colors couldn’t make the sad decay of the ranch look any better.
Garrison whistled as he parked and hopped out of the van. “It was a beauty at one time.”
I stepped out slowly and sneezed as sand tickled my nose. “Just not this one.”
He tossed a smile over his shoulder. “It’s not all that bad. And I have a couple weeks to help you fix it up.”
I moved around the van to his side and leaned my head against his shoulder. “I hope you’re right.”
First things first, we went into the house and dusted off everything. A few mice and a garden snake later, the place was clean enough. I leaned on the broom and pushed my hair out of my face. “Hungry?” I called up the stairs.
Garrison popped his head out and smiled broadly. “Starvin’. Just a sec, Sugar.”
It was another couple of minutes before his Ram truck was unhooked from the moving van. We climbed in and I routed us to a nearby restaurant using the new phone the FBI had given me. “Sublime Sunset seems to be the closest restaurant.”
“What’s the food?”
“Bar.”
Garrison groaned. “It’ll do. After that, we can stop at the grocery store and pick up some more supplies. I was also thinking of swinging by a shelter and looking at a cat and dog. We got a mice problem, and the dog would be a good guard.”
He was always thinking two steps ahead. “That’s sounds wonderful.”
I liked animals. My family had always had a few cats and dogs around when I’d been growing up, but Yannik had been allergic to anything that wasn’t human or under his control.
I mentally stopped. No. No more talking about the past. This is the present.
“We’re here,” I said and blinked at the row of motorcycles in the driveway.
Garrison stopped the truck but didn’t cut the engine. “Want to go somewhere else?”
I shook my head as my skirted around the bar. It wasn’t giving off the same vibe my place had, danger disguised as friendly, so I couldn’t see the harm in giving it a shot. I wouldn’t go through life fearing every biker, there were too many of them anyway. “Bikers are everywhere, Garrison. Might as well get used to them.”
“Suppose you're right.”
We climbed out of the truck and hustled inside, the humid air frizzing my hair to resemble a prickly grizzly bear. It was a nice bar, clean and well worn with the smell of Pine Sol and cheap beer in the air. Furnished in dark wood and checkered table cloths, the bar would never win any awards for decor but something about the place made it warm and inviting. The atmosphere is friendly, if a little wild. Pool tables were at one side with booths and table at the other. Children running around mixing with the gruff bikers throwing back amber liquid at the bar.
A waitress in a sunny yellow dress and white apron came up to us, rubbing her wet hands down the front of her. “Hey, ya’ll. We don’t get a lot of strangers ‘round here. You are strangers, right? Are ya driving through? Moving here? Where’re ya from? Is there—”
“Tiff,” A dark-haired man with caramel skin called out from a corner table, laughter lacing the word, “Get the people a table before you interrogate them.”
The girl blushed hard, making me think she was in her early twenties. “Sorry. Table, booth or bar?”
Garrison looked at me. “Booth?”
I nodded.
In no time, we were seated with a warm bread basket in front of us, laughter all around us. Garrison swiveled his head around, the move deceptively curious. Only I could see the cool assessment he gave the place as if he expected killers to start crawling out of the woodwork. “Nice place.”
I took a sip of my sweet tea, relishing the familiar taste. “Mh-hmm. I like it. Reminds me of a place back home.”
“Mountain Groove?”
I shook my head and placed my elbows on the table, cupping my chin in my palm. “Clam Tree. It’s where I grew up. Small little place in Louisiana, backwoods, middle of nowhere.”
Garrison leaned forward and nodded for me to continue. I paused, wracked a glance around the bar, stopping on a little girl with a tuft of platinum blonde hair that hadn’t started to darken yet. I held my breath, waiting for the minute she’d turn around, smile wide and call our, “Mama!” But that moment never came, and I knew I needed to stop thinking it ever would.
“What’d your parents do there?” Garrison asked, prying gently at the stitches around my heart. I wondered if enough time had passed for me to start taking out things. Or would I still bleed when the only defense holding me together was gone?
“My daddy worked in a factory that specialized in making this one tiny part for Ford cars. My mama was a seamstress, one of only three in town that were any good. She made all the debutante dresses, and everything and anything under the sun for me.” I sighed, remembering a time when I’d been the prettiest girl in school, and all the boys had sworn they would marry me. It was all anyone ever wanted to do, get married and have children.
I couldn’t even imagine doing that now.
“Something happen, Chels?” Another stitch popped. “You look… sad.”
“Ford stopped needing the part my dad made. The factory went under, almost every man in the town lost his job, and… It was just like everything shattered. No one could afford a seamstress anymore, they all had to learn to sew. And my dad didn’t have any other jobs or even prospects. We had to move.
And we just kept moving, until one day I was in college then I was in Yugoslavia before the war, and then I was married. It’s hard to stop when you start moving.”
I stopped, bit my tongue and continued to people-watch. I never talked about myself like this. I was closed, protective of my secrets. It’s how I’d always had to be. I was the queen of avoidance, the empress of brushing stuff aside and playing things off. But since that weight had been lifted, it was like I was a different person.
Bikers—the type of people who had terrorized me for months—didn’t seem so scary. There were good people, bad people, and just plain people in the world. No fingerprint was exactly the same, so why should people be?
