Under Her Skin

by Adriana Anders

  Get that shit off your face, Navarro, the assistant U.S. attorney had said at their last meeting. You’ve got seven months to prep, and all you’ve gotta do is get your goddamned story straight, stay the hell outta sight, and get rid of the ink. I don’t wanna see a hint of that shit in the courtroom, you got it? At Clay’s resentful nod, the suit had headed to the conference room door before turning around and barking his last order. And for God’s sake, stop talking like a fucking biker.

  I am a biker, he’d thought at the time. Although he didn’t feel quite so much like one without his chopper thrumming between his legs.

  The laser skimmed over the knuckle of Clay’s middle finger, and he held back a groan, forcing his body to stay seated. Not an easy task, despite his claims of immunity to pain.

  Not immune. He just knew there were worse things in life than physical suffering.

  “Need a break?” the doctor asked, focusing the numbing blast of cool air on his hand.

  “No,” he managed. “Don’t stop.” I’ll keep it together.

  “I’ve got the levels low for today. But it’s still going to burn. That’s inevitable. You’ll blister before scabbing up. And I can’t guarantee you won’t scar, especially with the hands. We wash them and work with them. They’re the most painful, usually. Well, besides those eyelids. I don’t know what kind of work you do, but it could be a handicap. At least temporarily. Let me know if you need a note or—”

  “Off the books, Doc.”

  “Right.”

  Two more knuckles, then the clock face on his wrist before she stopped and leaned over to shut down the machine. Silence, as loud as the buzzing had been, engulfed the room.

  “You got good aim,” he said.

  “Excuse me?”

  “You never miss your mark.”

  Although he couldn’t see her eyes behind the dark, protective glasses they both wore, he noted how her brows lowered briefly before they lifted, understanding dawning. “Oh, you mean the laser? No, no. This is an Nd:YAG laser. It follows the ink. Kind of…ah…hunts it down.”

  “So what happens if you accidentally get yourself?”

  “Nothing,” she said with a smile, tugging off her glasses and revealing those eyes again. “And the treatment gets easier as we go. The less ink you have, the less pain. Next time, it won’t hurt as much.”

  “Good deal,” he said before she tightened her lips in a smile and moved on to his face—the numbers on his lids that weighed on him the most, that made him a target, that meant he could no longer do his job.

  The ink he hadn’t agreed to.

  “How’s it feel?”

  The air was thick with the stench of singed hair and maybe burning flesh, too. He swallowed and stretched out his fingers. “Burns, I guess.” Understatement of the year. But better than Ape doing it. Anything was better than Ape with his tattoo machine.

  “Okay. Let’s do the eyes now, Mr. Blane.”

  “Sounds good.”

  “This is dangerous. And without the anesthesia, it won’t be easy.”

  “I get that, Doc. But I was told you’re the only one around who’ll do the eyes.”

  “That’s true.”

  “It’s why I came to you,” he said with a big, fake grin. Anything to put them on even footing. What was it about this woman that made him so off-kilter?

  “Good.” Her smile echoed his, only it looked real. It shamed him with its warmth.

  When the doctor slid the eye shield things in, they were uncomfortable and almost impossible not to blink out. His eyeballs felt strange—thick and paralyzed and blind. Worst of all, it reminded him of corpses, those cotton balls morticians slid under the lids to make the eyes look full and alive again.

  Full and alive. With a detached, self-deprecating sort of humor, he wondered how that would feel.

  * * *

  In the short time it took to do the eyelids, the man on George’s examination table transformed…or went somewhere. She could see the moment it happened. The moment his soul left his body, she thought, before realizing how absolutely odd that was. He wasn’t dead after all. He was just…gone. Narcoleptic, perhaps? She’d gone to school with a man who suffered from that.

  Narcoleptic or not, she couldn’t imagine falling asleep mid-treatment. She’d undergone it herself and knew exactly how painful that laser could be. And on the eyelid… Not something she could imagine sitting through without proper numbing.

  After finishing up, George applied a thick layer of petroleum jelly to his eyes and hands, up to his wrists. After a brief hesitation, she cleaned up around him, ignoring the strange brew of feelings that had replaced her initial wave of fear: curiosity, empathy, and attraction that worked away inside of her as she wondered how on earth she was going to get this big, slumbering man out of her clinic.

  Finally, she laid a palm to the warm flesh of his shoulder with some notion that she’d shake him awake. Fast and hard, his hand gripped hers, squeezed, held her there, and his eyes opened, cold and unfocused but violent. Oh, she could feel the violence in that hard, shaking grasp, see it in those cloudy eyes.

  For a split second, she froze, eyes glued to his unseeing ones, adrenaline coursing through her.

  “What the fu—”

  Her squeak interrupted that no-nonsense snarl, brought his hard gaze to hers, and as she watched, the man came back, his return as clear as his leaving had been.

  His eyes took a quick inventory of the room before landing on his hand trapping hers. Finally, his hold loosened, his confusion disappeared.

  “I…I’m sorry I frightened you. I’ll give you a minute to…” She let her words trail off, extricating her hand from his before rushing out of the room, her heart too big for her chest, her skin hot where he’d squeezed her. What if he hadn’t let go? A man like that—so big and rough, his body packed full of muscle—could do whatever he wanted to someone like George. What had she been thinking coming back here alone with him? She stopped in the hall and leaned against the wall, working to catch her breath.

  He could have hurt her badly. He hadn’t looked like someone who wanted to hurt her, though. More desperate, like that initial instinctive response that made dogs or bears attack at the first hint of a threat. What kind of life made a man react like that?

  By the time he emerged, Andrew Blane appeared to have recovered.

  “I’m sorry” was all he said before she led him out to the reception area, turning lights off as she went.

  “You’ll need petroleum jelly. Thick layers, reapplied often. Like I said, it’ll blister and then scab, but whatever you do, don’t pick at it. You don’t want to scar.”

  “Right. Don’t need any more of those.”

  “For the…” She swallowed, remembering the skin of his back. “For the rest, I recommend that patients purchase a pack of cheap, breathable cotton T-shirts, because you’ll need the jelly all over, and you don’t want to ruin your clothes.”

  Night had almost descended when they finally made it outside, Andrew Blane holding the front door open for her and waiting as she locked it behind them.

  “Have to pay you,” he said.

  “No need.”

  “No way, Doc. You’ve gotta let me pay for your services. I’m not a—”

  “You wanted this off the books?” she cut through.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “If you’re off the books, then you’re pro bono, which means—”

  “On the books, then. I’m not a charity case.”

  “Look, Mr. Blane, I can’t accept money from you and not include it in my accounting. It’s just not ethical.”

  He looked to the side, shook his head, and shut his eyes hard on a sigh. “I appreciate it, Doctor. And I apologize for scaring you earlier.”

  “You didn’t—”

  “You were a woman alone
and I pushed you to take care of me. I appreciate that.”

  “You’re welcome, Mr. Blane. Look, if there’s anything you need, anything else I can do…”

  “Just need the tats gone.”

  “That I can do.”

  “That’s it.”

  She wanted to argue, wanted to ask him if he had a place to stay, give him dinner, make sure he was okay, but he clearly wasn’t the sort of man who accepted help. Besides, he was big and he could be frightening—she shouldn’t want to be around him, no matter how attractive he might be.

  “So, you’d like to come in again, I imagine?” she forced herself to ask.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Why don’t you call the office on Monday, and Cindy can—” She stopped herself, remembering. “Actually…we need to get you in after hours, don’t we?” And something about that idea had her pulse picking up.

  “Whatever you can give me,” he said, sounding so eager that she had to flush. What on earth is wrong with me? “The sooner the better.”

  “Monday?” she offered. “Five p.m.?” She pictured Mrs. Venable running into him in the waiting room and amended her offer. “Actually, make that closer to six.” She’d do paperwork while she waited. “Oh. Wait.” She pulled out a card and found a pen, then scribbled her cell on it. “I give my cell to after-hours patients. It’s easier to call me directly, once the answering service is in place.”

  “Monday. Great.” He took the card, and when he reached out with his other hand, she thought he meant to grab her arm. The few seconds he waited were awkward before she finally understood.

  Gently, avoiding his gel-covered knuckles, she clasped it. Warm and firm around hers, his grip reminded her of why she did this, why she’d gone into medicine, why she offered these services: to help people.

  And more than almost anybody she’d ever treated, George knew this man was in trouble.

  The other thing she felt, the shimmer of excitement, she chose to ignore.

  * * *

  Clay watched the doctor’s Subaru disappear down Main Street. He was tempted to follow her, which made no sense whatsoever. Then he dug a little deeper and recognized the urge: protectiveness. Curiosity. Maybe a little something else thrown into the mix.

  Instead of tailing her, he slid her business card into his pocket and swung his rental car out of its parking spot and onto the road. Traffic was nonexistent here, but what vehicles he saw were mostly trucks, dusty and old. And everyone went slow. Man, he couldn’t imagine a life where you didn’t run around all the time, where nobody was in a hurry, and—

  From somewhere close by came the low thrum of a motorcycle, and every hair on Clay’s body pricked up in response. Oh, Christ, they’d found him—the MC members that had gotten away. How could they have found him when he hadn’t even known where he was headed?

  A shitty Tempo pulled out in front of him, yanking him from his rising panic before cutting him off. He turned the wheel and came to a grinding halt on the side of the road as the asshole drove away in a loud, aggressive burst of exhaust. With an effort, he battled the urge to take off after it. Not his problem, not his business. And also not the best way to handle the stress of these…episodes or whatever they were. Because that’s what this was, right? Just him getting lost in his head again.

  He sucked in a long, painful breath and waited just to be sure. No Harley. No sound of bikes at all. Just the ridiculous grind of the Tempo’s engine, still audible in an otherwise quiet country night.

  It was nice to know there were tweakers everywhere, even in this perfectly sleepy little town. Felt right at home.

  Now he just needed to find a place to crash—preferably far from everyone else, because he didn’t think he could stand too many more wakeful nights waiting for another bike to rumble toward him.

  Even before he’d left Baltimore, he’d had this urge to disappear, alone—like some fucking hermit—into the wild. Not, he thought looking around, to a painfully quaint, little town like this, but to someplace more savage.

  Yeah, well, Alaska was a little far, so the wilds of Virginia would have to do.

  Crisscrossing the small downtown area, he thought about the other option he’d been given—WITSEC—and the trapped feeling he’d had ever since he’d awakened to find himself heavy and unmoving in that hospital bed.

  Three shots, one to the leg and two to the back, the doctors had told him when he’d been lucid enough to understand. Lucky to be alive, they’d said over and over and over. Tyler had said the same thing when he’d come to visit. Then Hecker, that lawyer, and the special agent in charge, McGovern, had woven in and out of his spotty memory. Tyler had brought the wife, Jayda, with their kids, lugging huge bouquets of flowers. Even McGovern had brought him flowers, which was weird, getting flowers from your boss. Fucking flowers and goddamned teddy bears, every time he’d pulled himself out of the drug-induced stupor, as if all that crap was supposed to cheer him up. He’d lain there, incapacitated, as the Sultans were indicted, one by one—almost two dozen in all.

  But more were out there—guys like Jam and monsters like Ape, who’d fallen off the map before the Feds could catch up with them.

  Driving around the deserted town, Clay thought of all the other places he could have gone. Places like Richmond or DC. But he couldn’t go anywhere he’d worked. At this point, there was hardly a place in the eastern United States where he could disappear.

  Jesus, where were the goddamned motels?

  Just his luck to have landed in a tiny little nothing of a town with a library the size of Tyler Olson’s three-car garage, a skin clinic, and possibly no motel? Anxiety tightened his chest as he wondered what the hell he’d do without a place to stay. Sleep outdoors, under the stars. No walls, no bed. No protection.

  It wasn’t until he turned off the main drag, with its antique shops, frilly B&Bs, and fancy coffee places, into a shittier area, that Clay started to breathe again. There, a sputtering neon motel sign advertised vacancies, its blue jarring against the lush green backdrop of the sleepy mountain town.

  In his room, there was almost nothing to unpack, since his belongings had been destroyed in yesterday’s fire. Not that he’d acquired much in the manner of personal junk over the past few years. Just his bike, which the Sultans had also destroyed in a big, final fuck you. Bastards knew how he felt about his bike.

  Just one more lesson in letting go, wasn’t it? Now, his entire existence was pared down to the wad of cash he’d withdrawn before leaving Baltimore, toiletries, underwear, and a bottle or two to help him get through the night. That and the rental car he’d have to return at some point. And, of course, the thick sheaf of papers he’d grabbed at the office before leaving town. A bunch of legal shit he’d need to look at before heading to court.

  Twisting open the first bottle of vodka, he went to the window, pulled back the curtain, and looked out at the blue-washed parking lot. He should eat, but he wasn’t hungry. He glanced back at the papers and thought about going through them.

  Fuck that. He took in a painful slug of vodka and thought about the day he’d first walked into the Sultans’ watering hole, sporting his freshly inked prison tats—the clock and spider web. They’d ignored him at first, had treated him like nothing, until he’d brought them some valuable intel on a rival club’s drug shipment. They’d accepted him after that, had taken him on as a prospect, treated him like one of their own.

  Just one big happy family, he thought, missing them and hating them and wondering how the hell he’d pass as regular Joe Citizen down here in Rednecksville, Virginia.

  He took another swig and threw another glance at the stupid legal brief.

  Get your goddamned story straight, that lawyer, Hecker, had said, which almost made Clay laugh, because every little thing that had happened since the first day he’d ridden his Harley into Naglestown, Maryland, was imprinted on his brai
n, as indelibly as their club emblem was emblazoned on his back.

  Not that indelible, he realized with a jolt of surprise. The perfectly pristine Dr. Hadley would be removing all traces of the Sultans from Clay’s back and face and hands. Despite the pain involved, it was good to have something to look forward to for a change. With his third pull of booze, he squinted out at the parking lot and let his vision blur, trying to get back that image he’d conjured of the woman wearing next to nothing. Instead, his weird-ass mind fixated on the lab coat, the horn-rimmed glasses, and the way those green eyes had looked past all the ink to the person beneath. He remembered the feel of her hand on his skin, so careful, as if he were fragile, and he felt something other than empty. Something other than the pain in his back and the tweak of his thigh and the burn of his eyes and knuckles.

  He felt alive, unexpectedly, after all these months—even years—of surviving. And it was almost too much to bear.

  4

  Independence Day dawned hot and humid, like every other day in recent memory. And like every other morning, George rose, showered, and went down to the kitchen, where Leonard tried his best to herd her toward the food bowl. She doled out a quarter cup of pellets with a metallic rattle, set a pan of water to boil, slid her feet into her rubber boots, and tromped straight out back to the henhouse. Feathers flew at her arrival—her ladies just as excited to see her as the cat had been. Feed and caresses dispensed in a flurry of clucking, she returned to the house just in time to drop two fresh eggs into the water and slice a miniature battalion of perfectly straight soldiers to dip into the yolks in the three minutes it took to soft boil them.

  These rituals were the bones of George’s life. No, perhaps not the bones, but the ligaments, holding the bones of work and sleep together.

  Today, sparks of something else peppered what would otherwise have been a normal morning. A heaviness in her belly, a shortness of breath. It felt like excitement, but she couldn’t pinpoint its origin.