Hard to Forget

by Incy Black

  Looking up, she watched his eyes narrow, his lips tighten. Black cotton stretched as the muscles in his chest expanded. She curled her fingers around the edge of the counter. Would he believe her?

  “Forget “think”; I trained you better than that. You either recognized someone, or you didn’t. Which is it?”

  As unhesitant as a master surgeon’s scalpel, and just as unsympathetic, this was the Jack she remembered. She curled her fingers tighter, the edge of the counter cutting into her palm. “The former. And you can stop looking at me like that. You asked for an explanation, that’s it. Now drink up and leave.”

  “This person, I presume it was a man, describe him.”

  “I can’t, not precisely. Noting details wasn’t exactly my priority at the time.” That seemed almost reasonable. Rational. Calm. Pity she sounded as if someone was strangling her.

  He was staring into the depths of his mug. She relaxed her fingers a smidgen to ease the cut of the counter. She was handling him just fine.

  “So, describe him from the night at the warehouse.”

  She blinked wildly and retightened her grip on the counter. One of her fingernails, already moderately short, split.

  Chapter Three

  “You know full well I can’t describe him. As I told you at the time, the man who got away…he wore a mask, a balaclava…tonight…I…I recognized his eyes.” Hideous eyes. Empty eyes. Windows to the soul, only he didn’t have one.

  She looked up in time to catch Jack’s eye-roll. She didn’t blame his lack of belief. Her words sounded fanciful even to her ears.

  “Why do you do this to yourself, Lowry?”

  She hated when his voice took on that soft, placating tone. It didn’t suit the hard, ruthless man she knew him to be. He epitomized loyalty and integrity to the extreme when it came to just causes, a.k.a. the Service and defending the realm. But when it came to people and their messy emotions, he faked like a shiny Rolex watch for sale on the streets of Hong Kong for five dollars.

  He pinched the bridge of his nose, then shifted his stare to the high skylight, as if the very sight of her—strung out and disheveled, emotionally and physically—offended him.

  “Sooner or later, Lowry, you are going to have to come to terms with the fact that there was no other man. The violence you witnessed, the trauma of being shot¸ the doctors said—”

  She held up a hand, palm facing Jack. “I know what they said. That to deal with the trauma of that night, I created a new reality, someone to blame because I couldn’t handle the guilt of failing those girls. They were wrong; so are you.” She accepted her share of the blame for those poor women dying. Someone stronger might have saved them. But she didn’t deserve the undying fear. And she hadn’t deserved that animal ripping her hymen.

  Jack’s silence was more condemning than any words he could have found to denigrate her. Not helped by the fact that he had to be the only man alive able to control the blink reflex.

  The mean-as-all-hell butterflies colonizing her stomach took flight once again. “There was someone else there that night,” she insisted. “Someone whose sole purpose was to ensure no member of the cartel survived to finger those selling them information, and providing protection for their operation. The whole thing was a setup. Pre-arranged and supremely well-orchestrated pest control, with you and your team the unwitting exterminators. You allowed yourself to be played, Jack.”

  From his expression, he looked like he wanted to hurl his mug against a wall. “So how come you didn’t warn us? Good agents died that night. A single shot would have been enough to put us on alert.”

  “I. Wasn’t. Armed.” The short red and silver beaded cocktail dress she’d worn that night to fit in as one of the stolen glory girls hadn’t allowed for the secreting of a weapon.

  “You’ve got a voice haven’t you? You could have yelled. A single scream would have sufficed. Trust me, I’d have recognized your voice.”

  Except she’d exhausted all capability of making sound a half hour before the team arrived, having screamed her larynx raw during the rape.

  The inner lining of her throat corrugated at the memory, just as it had done that night. She raised a hand to cover her mouth and choked discreetly to ease the dry constriction. “Ever felt helpless, Ballentyne, so raw and frightened, you disconnect from your own body?” She hadn’t meant to whisper, but that’s what emerged.

  “Shooting you wasn’t much fun. Before that, only when my brother, Richard lay smashed up and…” he stopped abruptly, took a gulp of coffee, then subjected her to another punishing glare. The fierce cobalt of his eyes looked sharp enough to slice veins. “Aside from the fact that you had no right to be there in the first place, hand-to-hand combat was your forte. What went wrong?”

  “I froze, just as you always said I would.” Not true. She’d fought for her life, initially. But guns had been pointing, and the laughter had been raucous. The filthy comments of what should be done to her had been the foulest she’d ever heard. And, dear God, no matter what, she’d wanted to live. But she wasn’t sharing that with Jack. Some things were too horrendously shaming to share. Better to let him think she’d messed up. He wouldn’t find that too hard to believe.

  “Uh-uh. No way. I’d trained you myself. Tell me, Lowry…” his voice softened to the texture of warm honey, putting her on immediate alert. “Tell me what really happened that night.”

  Thanks to her confinement in that cage and her fear that the bastard who had raped her might one day reappear out of the shadows, she favored space and unobstructed views, but she now regretted insisting all the internal walls and ceilings of her home be removed. She had nowhere to run. “You’ve seen my statement; you took the bloody thing. If you need a reminder, contact Data Retrieval. They’ll forward a copy.”

  “When I want fiction, I’d buy a book. So, let’s try cold, hard facts for a change. Every member of the cartel died that night. No one survived. No one.”

  “Because they weren’t supposed to!” Yelling would only reinforce her reputation as a hysteric, but years of resentment at not being believed lent extra power to her straining vocal cords. “What about the men behind the cartel? Those in control? The bastards who covered and provided protection for the drug- and flesh-trafficking operation? Did you get them, too? Or did their undoubted connection with the Service put you off?”

  “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  She swiped the back of her wrist across her eyes, not to dry tears—of which she’d long stopped being capable—but to clear the dancing dots disrupting her vision. “It means the Service was, and most likely still is, dirty. I tried to warn you, Ballentyne, but you wouldn’t listen. No one would. You were too busy laughing at me. But I knew something was wrong, and I would have proven it, too, except not content with half killing me, you got me kicked out of the Service before I could do so.”

  The sudden silence was suffocating, the temperature in her home crawling slowly into the red. Her attack on his precious Service had stirred the cobra in him. She winced as she felt the sacrifice of another nail as she retightened her fingers around the edge of the kitchen counter in her fight not to retreat out of strike range.

  “You got yourself kicked out, Lowry. How the hell you kept passing the mandatory psych tests, I don’t know. I’ve never come across anyone less suited to tackling violence and danger head on. I can only assume your father used his influence.”

  This time, she did step back. She’d fought harder than anyone to prove her worth. She’d rejected the offer of a place at the prestigious Slade School of Art for the rigors of the special, fast-track program designed more to break Service recruits than to progress them. Eighteen candidates started; only she and one other had successfully completed the brutal training. “If my father did, which I doubt, he soon regretted it. I was the Service’s embarrassment, remember?”

  “Pain in the butt, not embarrassment,” Jack corrected.

  She wanted to swipe his sudden smirk
right off his face. “Either way, I was hung out to dry…along with the truth.”

  “So, the exhibition? All the publicity? That your way of thumbing your nose at the Service?”

  She cocked her chin an inch higher. “Maybe. Though I prefer to think of it as proof of survival.” And boy, had that little vanity just come back to kick her butt.

  “Stupid though,” he said, never shy about stating the obvious. “If you genuinely believed someone would deem you a threat and come after you. Why not just keep your head down?”

  “Hope, the one thing neither he nor you could take from me. Hope, that because you and your team hushed up my involvement in the raid, he wouldn’t remember and recognize me. Hope, because he’d never known my name and wouldn’t associate me with the woman he…” She swallowed thickly and turned away to fiddle with the kettle. She’d come too close to telling him the truth.

  Jack’s voice dropped to a growl. “What exactly did he do to you, Lowry?”

  Struck dumb by the sudden wave of simmering aggression he was throwing, she shrugged helplessly.

  “What the hell are you hiding, Lowry?

  She swung back around to face him. Hiding the truth was probably the only reason she was still alive. Now, she’d have to disappear and start all over again—if she wanted to live, that is. “Get out. Or I’ll call the police. No, I can do better than that, I’ll call the press.”

  Public exposure. The one thing Jack Ballentyne couldn’t afford. With his cover blown, he’d never work in the field again. He’d be tied to a desk, and the slow rot of redundancy while he watched others risk their lives would set in. She ought to know; it’s what Jack had done to her.

  Without warning, he was there, right beside her. He leaned in close, his stubble rough as his chin brushed her cheek on route to her ear. “Don’t. Ever. Threaten. Me. Little girl.”

  Instantly, it struck her. What it must feel like to have this lethal man as a foe. The promise of violence straining at the leash should have terrified her. Instead, a painful longing unfurled. He’d keep her safe. If she begged.

  The hell she would. Palms flat against his chest, she pushed and stumbled back, her lungs clawing for oxygen. She daren’t trust him. He worked for the Service. He was the enemy.

  With controlled deliberation, he set his coffee mug on the counter, turned, and crossed to retrieve his jacket. His aura of suppressed violence was gone, replaced by a brutally emphatic sense of I’m done here. She wasn’t sure which was more chilling.

  But when her front door clicked shut leaving her on her all alone, she knew.

  She sprinted after him—even used her sofa as a springboard to add to her speed—and slapped the locks home. She threaded the titanium security chain in place.

  She wasn’t locking him out. She was locking herself in. To stop herself from following him.

  Dear God, and she’d thought herself immune to bone-numbing loneliness, the complete absence of friends, save for Adrian. Damn it, now she’d have to add deluded to her list of little ailments. It would slot in quite nicely between acute anxiety and paranoia. Oh, and let’s not forget deep self-loathing.

  Burying her fingers into her hair, she slid slowly to the floor, the steel of the front door hard and cold against her back. She tucked her knees to her chest and, arms wrapped around them, hung on tight.

  What the bloody hell had gotten into her?

  Jack, the professional, so hard he made granite seem like putty, she’d always been able to handle. But Jack the man? Not a chance. She ought to know; he’d sucker punched her enough times in the past. She’d do something wrong. He’d rant and threaten, all the while, his eyes promising he’d protect her back. Always.

  Liar!

  One day, out of the blue, he’d abruptly stopped yelling and, instead, had made it his mission to get her to quit the Service. Which had only made her more determined to stay. Their battle of wills had become the stuff of legends. To Jack, her refusal to concede had been an insult too far. He’d had her court marshaled for gross insubordination.

  The day she’d found out he’d actually made good on his threat to secure her discharge, something inside her had died. Torn and battered as she had been by the rape, what Jack and his team had stolen from her—her faith in them—was far worse. She hated them for that.

  And, right now, she hated him enough to pull herself upright and cross to her sculpture of dented, paint-worn, metal trunks. He deserved to suffer. To feel what it was like to torment yourself with questions of “what if” and “if only.” Most likely, the bastard had never tasted guilt. It was time someone introduced him to the possibility.

  Now, where the hell was her old voice recorder?

  …

  When sleep had finally come, she’d fallen off a cliff into its nothingness clutch. Now, damn it, the incessant trill of the intercom buzzer was interrupting one of her few moments of peace.

  Through weighted eyelids, she tried to make sense of the image pixilated on the screen of the television that doubled as a front-door security monitor, easily viewable from her sunken bed. Jack-bloody-Ballentyne, blowing vigorously into his cupped hands, and stamping his boots on her doorstep.

  She’d suspected he’d be back. With her luck, it had been inevitable. But so soon? No matter, she’d made her decision. He wasn’t running her off. Nor was the psycho bastard she’d recognized at the gallery. She’d prove her silence to both and hope that would be enough for them to leave her the hell alone.

  A shiver racked her to the bone. She put it down to the morning chill. It was easier than admitting she dreaded another run in with the man on her doorstep. She shot a glance at the pyramid of lemons standing proud against the steel of her kitchen counter. Christ, she’d been embarrassingly intoxicated on hostility and the need for him to hurt last night. Once she got rid of Jack, best she destroy the recording she’d made.

  The electronic demand for attention started up again.

  She hauled herself upright with a groan and stumbled to her front door. She propped her forehead against the cool concrete just to the side of the intercom. “What do you want, Ballentyne?”

  “More hot coffee. It’s been a nippy night. Balls and brass monkeys spring to mind.”

  Her blood started to fizz in a most disconcerting way. Balls, right! Why, could she never catch a break? Even distorted through the intercom, his voice sounded dangerously tempting. Its rasp, deep, warm, and undeniably…something. Sexy?

  A mortifying heat flushed every inch of her skin. She didn’t want to know what the hell the muscles of her womb thought they were doing. She flapped her hands frantically in front of her face to cool down. Ohmygod, ohmygod, ohmygod. She didn’t have thoughts like that. Not anymore. She really was losing her mind. No way was she opening the door to Jack now. No way.

  With her heart beating triple time, she stepped back from the intercom.

  The hideous buzzing started over.

  She damn near exited her skin. Bugger, Jack Ballentyne wouldn’t recognize “no” if it bit him on the ass. If she didn’t let him in, he’d likely shoot the door down.

  She slammed her hand against the intercom. “For Christ’s sake, is a moment too much to ask for?”

  Closing her eyes, she pictured a ripening field of wheat awash with swathes of scarlet poppies. Her happy place. Maybe, if she played this just right, convinced Jack that she wouldn’t share her suspicions about the Service with anyone, he’d leave her alone.

  She unhooked the security chain and spun the multitude of metal grips to release the deadlocks, gritting her teeth at the too-loud sound of steel grinding on steel.

  She hoped she wouldn’t live to regret this.

  Leaving the door very slightly ajar, she retreated fast. Back to her bed, the safest place she could think of. She ducked under the covers and pulled a pillow over her face. Suicide by self-smothering struck her as remarkably appealing.

  His boots thudded against the concrete floor. Getting closer. “I taught you bett
er than that. Anyone could be standing here, and you’d now have a gun to your head.”

  God, did his every comment have to be a reprimand? “No one half as annoying as you, Ballentyne. What’s the time?”

  “Five-thirty.”

  She groaned. “If you’ve a gun handy, shoot me. This time, it would be a kindness.”

  “I guess you’re not a morning person. I need coffee.”

  It wasn’t the morning. For her, it was the middle of the bloody night. Pillow still to her face, she waved an arm in the rough direction of her kitchen area. “Help yourself, and when you’ve finished…” Wait a minute, had he stood sentry all night? And why, if he hadn’t believed her wild claims? She wanted to ask, but refused to give him the satisfaction of doing so. By refusing to engage with him and pretending full command of her senses, she trusted he’d get the message and leave.

  Which was just wistful thinking. He’d switched her wide screen from security mode to entertainment. Insufferably chirpy voices trilled with enthusiasm, discussing the simply marvelous day ahead.

  She groaned again. What in a previous life had she done so terrible, it merited a punishment as horrendous as Jack Ballentyne?

  She threw the pillow aside, sat up, and scrunched her fingers into the tangle of her hair. Jack had tossed his jacket. The muscles of his back flexed as he reached for a mug. Black cotton hugged and defined his shoulders. Lower down, black denim hugged too. Hot damn, but did he have a butt to tempt a nun—which was a wholly unimaginable observation for her to make.

  Prickly heat seared her skin. She’d no doubt pay in spades for the creeping dereliction of her mind. In fact, she was as already paying. He’d started whistling. Bloody terrific.

  She drilled her frustration into the back of the man making himself at home in her space, then flicked a glimpse at the TV screen, her attention caught by the news program’s change in tone from insufferably light and breezy to measured seriousness.