Beyond the Fire

by Cheryl Pierson

  Kendi turned away from Jack and slid off the bed. She needed to be alone, to sort things out. She’d brought a strange man into her home—the first man to sleep under her roof since she’d given Tal the boot. Jackson Taylor—a man she knew nothing about. She could feel her heart beginning to turn traitor; slowly, but oh, so surely. She knew that familiar feeling, and she knew she had to put a stop to it. She was not going to lose another piece of herself—she couldn’t afford it so soon.

  “I’ll go make something to eat.” Her voice sounded abrupt, and she looked at Jack just as his eyes became hooded, the concern for her vanishing as though it had never been. She tried to soften her words by adding, “Anything you’d like, in particular?”

  Jack watched her for a few seconds before he answered. “Don’t put yourself out. I’ve caused you enough trouble already.”

  Kendi started to deny it, but clamped her lips shut. Damn him. He had caused her enough trouble! If she hadn’t witnessed his “execution” and followed her annoyingly bad habit of bringing home yet another stray to take care of—

  She turned away, angry at herself as well as Jack, the friendly neighborhood DEA agent who just happened to end up on her property—and in her bed.

  “I’ll be back in a minute.” She stepped into the hallway pushing the door almost shut behind her.

  Jack’s eyes drifted shut, and Kendi realized what an effort he’d been making for her benefit. “I’ll still be here,” he muttered. “At least, for one more day.”

  Chapter Five

  “Let’s go for a ride, Bull.” Benito Sanchez spoke softly, a command under the quiet tone.

  “Where to?”

  Sanchez’s thin lips curved upward, his dark eyes glittering with a feral warning. “You have...other plans?”

  Bull swallowed hard and shook his head quickly. “No.”

  “Jackson Taylor... I want to hear the details of his death.” Sanchez strode to the coffeemaker and poured himself another cup, taking care to add two packets of sugar and a generous helping of the fresh cream he insisted on. He stirred it all together, then picking up the cup, he turned back to face Bull. “How did Rivers handle it?”

  Bull shrugged and started back toward his boss. He pulled a chair out and sat down again at the conference table. “Fine. We pulled Taylor out of the pickup; Rivers shot him in the head. Then, we rolled him down the creek bank there in the woods.” He chuckled. “Yeah, one day we’ll see it on the news. ‘Hunters discover remains of adult male by Boggy Creek’.”

  Sanchez wasn’t smiling. “You left out a part.” He pulled a chair out across from Bull and sat down, his short body squeezing into the space as he watched the other man.

  “What’s that?”

  “The shallow grave. Which, evidently, you never took time to dig.”

  “Hell, no.” Bull rubbed the back of his neck uncomfortably. “It was startin’ to rain like a cow pissin’ on a flat rock, and colder ’n fuck out there.”

  Sanchez sat, unmoving, staring at Bull’s reddening face and neck. He raised the coffee cup and blew on the top of the liquid, then took a sip. “So, in other words, you were not prepared to finish the job you started. And, it was...too cold...for you to properly perform your duties. Duties that I pay you well to see through.”

  Bull’s sheepish look hardened, deepening to an edgy glare. “Wasn’t no need, Boss. Out there in the middle of hell’s half-acre and we was freezin’ our asses off—”

  “Hell’s half-acre may not prove vast enough to hold the secret of Taylor’s death as long as need be.” Sanchez’s tone was cool, clipped, and Bull watched him warily. “So today, you and I are going to drive out there and make sure the job is completed.”

  “But, I told you—”

  In one movement, Sanchez dashed the scalding coffee into Bull’s face and came to his feet. Bull gasped in shock and pain, pushing his chair back, wiping his face with his sleeve. By the time he stood up, Sanchez had his gun drawn and pointed at Bull’s chest.

  “You don’t tell me anything, stupid gringo!” Sanchez’s temper raged beyond the boiling point. He could feel his face mottle. “I have a fucking shipment coming in a few short days. We don’t need any unwanted attention. The death of a DEA man will bring the entire organization down on us like a hornet’s nest. So he is going to go missing—in case anyone wonders—instead of being discovered dead at an inopportune time.”

  For a long moment, the two men stood, watching one another. Finally, Sanchez holstered his gun, fitting it inside the leather shoulder harness he wore beneath his sport coat.

  “Let’s go take care of it,” he murmured, ignoring Bull’s residual anger. “It won’t take long.”

  “It was fuckin’ dark,” Bull grumbled. “I’m not even sure I can find it again.”

  Sanchez reached behind him for a handful of napkins, tossing them onto the table. “Clean up this mess, Bull, then meet me downstairs. We’ll take my truck. I’ve got shovels.” He started for the door once more as Bull swiped at the coffee on his neck and face. “I’ll help you remedy this mistake, Bull. But don’t make another one.” He turned and waited for Bull to look at him, to meet his eyes so there would be no misunderstanding. “If you do, you’ll end up alongside Taylor.”

  ****

  Kendi stood in front of the open refrigerator where she had been for the past three minutes, staring unseeingly. The cartons, bottles, and other containers blurred into a rainbow of colors, nothing standing out distinctly. The motor turned on, pumping cool air into her face.

  She was aware of the basic question of what to fix, but couldn’t shut her mind off to the rest of what was going on. Can I trust Jack? He has been honest with me so far, hasn’t he? She sighed. How can I tell? She knew her shortcomings, if you could call them that. Taking in stray and wounded animals was something she had always done, much to the dismay of her parents and her ex-husband. She was too trusting. She always had been. But despite her parents’ dire warning against handling the wild, wounded animals she cared for, despite Tal’s petty jealousy of the homeless hungry beings she took in, she had never been bitten or had her heart broken by any of them.

  Jack wasn’t a wild animal, though. She forced herself to focus on what she needed from the refrigerator, reaching to take the tray of eggs from the door. He was perfectly capable of hurting her—physically and emotionally—if she allowed it.

  She turned on the oven to heat, then put her best skillet on the stove burner. She hadn’t asked him if he preferred fried or scrambled. It had been so long since she’d cooked, she decided that scrambled would be the best way to go. Save herself the embarrassment of turning out less-than-perfect sunny-side-up. She’d never been great at that anyhow, as Tal had always reminded her.

  There wasn’t much butter left since Kendi hadn’t made it to the grocery store this week. She took out the last half stick and cut some off, putting it in the pan and turning on the heat. She cracked six eggs in a bowl, poured in a small amount of milk, and whipped them with a fork. Realizing she was stirring them with an unnecessary amount of force, she stopped, her eyes looking past the mixture in the bowl as she became lost in thought once more.

  She was haunted by a pair of dark brown eyes, barely visible through pummeled slits of flesh. Eyes that were as expressive—or as veiled—as the man allowed them to be. She remembered every emotion she had glimpsed in his battered face, filtered through those smoky dark eyes of his—the hurt, the desperation, the exhaustion, even the humor. But above all, there had been a truthfulness, an honesty, that Kendi couldn’t deny. And that was why she had felt no fear, she realized.

  The skillet popped, recalling her to the present. She poured in the eggs and took out the package of bologna. She placed another skillet on the stove and put four slices of the meat into it, turning it on low, then reached for the bread.

  Why did any of it matter? He’d be leaving in the next day or two. Maybe a month down the road she’d get a thank-you note with a set of sheets. At tha
t point, it wouldn’t matter if she had served Jack fried eggs, or scrambled, on a dreary, cold November morning.

  But, it did matter. She stirred the eggs and laid the unbuttered slices of bread onto a cookie sheet, then popped it into the oven to toast. Jack’s earlier confession about running drugs had been quite a surprise. He obviously wasn’t used to sharing information about himself, especially something so personal.

  She sighed, turning the bologna, then cutting a slice in each piece as it rose up in the center. That confession had been honest, though totally unexpected. There were only two choices—to trust him, or not. If not, she needed to find him one of Tal’s old shirts and send him packing no later than tomorrow morning.

  If she did trust him, that was a bit stickier. That meant more doctoring, more talking, more caring...and letting him stay until he recovered enough to...to what? Go back and get himself killed trying to rescue this partner of his?

  Kendi gave a caustic chuckle as she pulled the toasted bread from the oven. Some partner. She’d never forget the way Clint Rivers had bent and put the gun close to Jack’s head. That he’d shot to the side is beside the point, she thought indignantly. Logically, she realized if the man had wanted to, he could have killed Jack. But in her heart, she was angry he hadn’t killed the shorter man with him and driven Jack to a hospital for the care he needed. Didn’t partners take care of each other?

  She lifted the eggs up from the pan to the plate, then the bologna, which she cut up. Even that small task would be too much for Jack to manage with his wounded hands.

  Somehow, she realized her dilemma was solved. She couldn’t say how or why, but looking at the tray she’d put together, she knew Jack would be staying. No matter what happened, her life was already entwined with his. It had happened the moment she witnessed his “murder”—and it might very well end with her own.

  Oddly, that was why Kendi trusted him. She had brought him into her home, and she had not called for help. She had cleaned and bandaged his wounds and sat up with him through the rest of the night. She had even lain down beside him to give him her own warmth.

  She wanted to laugh at herself. Her fate had been decided the minute she stepped out of the house last night, intending to scare the high school kids off her property. She tried to tell herself there wasn’t room on the tray for two plates, and that was why she’d put the food on one common dish for both of them. But in her heart, she knew it was more.

  She put the coffee carafe on the tray then slowly opened the silverware drawer and took out two forks. Eating separately from the shared plate was a lot like living individually in the same, suddenly small universe. She started toward the stairs with mingled fear and wonder, knowing there was nothing she could do to stop this world of theirs from turning, toward whatever end Fate dealt them. She wondered if Jack knew it, too.

  ****

  Jack hated to sleep, even for five minutes. He never knew what it held—the oblivion he needed to heal, or the dreams he knew he’d never be free of. The blackness always beckoned...at first. Sometimes, it pulled him close and held him, light and near, as if the midnight velvet skies wrapped him in a haven of safe, dark comfort.

  Then, there were the other times, when he’d trusted, given himself to the relief of sleep, only to have the tables turned on him so swiftly, so realistically, he would have sworn he was still hanging from the meat hook in that warehouse with Bull’s whip slicing the skin and muscle from his back with a methodical precision he knew could not be duplicated in a dream.

  But when the pain would become so great he couldn’t fight the screams down any longer, his shoulder sockets aching unbearably with strain and his torn flesh burning as if it were literally afire, he would awaken with a start, sweating and breathing hard.

  Jack would be glad it was only those nightmares that haunted him, this time, rather than those others that were even more terrible.

  His eyes were bruised and sensitive to any light that was too steady. The firelight didn’t bother him, with its soft flickering patterns and changeable colors. He let his slitted gaze guardedly move to the flames and then away, time and again. Eventually, he’d become brave enough, or exhausted enough, to let sleep come once more, not knowing if it would bring him deliverance or agony. There was no stopping it, in any case.

  The familiar sound of careful footsteps woke him this time, and he knew it was no dream. He opened his eyes slowly, the gray light filtering his view of his world—this one room. Kendi Morgan’s bedroom.

  He watched as she shouldered the door open, the coffee carafe tipping precariously. She grabbed it and resettled it on the tray. She set the tray on the dresser, then turned almost shyly to look at him.

  “Nice catch,” he said huskily. He moved to sit up, instantly realizing what a mistake he’d made. His hands were wounded too badly to try to lever himself up, and his side protested with a sharp shiver of pain that he recognized immediately as a cracked rib. The slight movement had caused his back to burn as intensely as if Bull had just finished wielding the whip, his shoulder muscles throbbing with familiar torment.

  Kendi hurried to the bed and sat beside him, gently placing her hands on his bandaged wrists. “No, don’t move!”

  Jack let his breath out slowly, his eyes closed against the agony. Even his face hurt. He pushed the thought away when he realized what he must look like if his face felt that bad. It was a wonder Kendi didn’t turn tail and run, seeing him like this by daylight.

  “I wish...you’d said that...ten seconds earlier.”

  Kendi’s fingers loosened a little when she saw he was going to lie still.

  He looked up into her emerald eyes and tried to smile, but it hurt too much. When Kendi’s hands lifted from his wrists, he felt the loss keenly—enough to wonder about his awareness of her. And enough to wonder why she mattered so much.

  The bed shifted as she rose, and he wanted to ask where she was going. But right now, he had to hang on to the only shred of sanity left to him—the one that reminded him he was human, a man, a DEA agent.

  Jack would not let Kendi see his pain any more than he would have allowed Benito Sanchez and his men to witness it. But it wasn’t just pride that kept his spine stiff, his lips pressed together. It was the fact it worried Kendi to see him suffer like this. He’d seen it in her eyes every time he looked at her. He’d caught her grimacing when he did, gasping when he jerked under her careful ministrations, and had felt the warm splash of tears against his skin that she hadn’t managed to wipe away quickly enough.

  “Can you turn just a little—toward the window?” Kendi was gently fluffing a row of pillows behind him as he tried to do as she asked, very slowly. She came around to the opposite side of the bed and brought the plate and forks, setting them on the nightstand. “What’re you doing?” His tone was more abrupt than he intended.

  Kendi sat down on the bed and took the plate in one hand, his fork in the other. “I’m going to have to feed you.”

  “Huh-uh. No way.”

  Kendi peered at him. “Pretty stubborn, Taylor.” She set the plate down on the bed between them, laying his fork within his reach. “Okay. You don’t want my help. Go for it.” She picked up the other fork, stabbed a piece of bologna, and ate it. “Well? What’re you waiting for?”

  His right hand was pretty useless right now, with a pencil-sized hole through the palm. He flexed it surreptitiously and bit back a groan. Kendi took her second bite of eggs, not meeting his eyes.

  “You know, everyone needs help sometimes. I just suspect you’ve always been the helper and not the helpee.”

  “Never needed—a woman to feed me,” he growled.

  “Oh, well, by all means, don’t let me break your record, Jack.”

  His stomach rumbled as she bit into a piece of toast and finally let her glance touch his. But it wasn’t what he’d expected to see. She wasn’t mad...she was hurt. She looked away quickly but not fast enough to hide the brightness in her eyes.

  “Kendi�
�” Unthinking, he reached for her, his left hand grasping her wrist as he muttered an oath at the pain.

  “D-don’t hurt yourself.” But she didn’t move to shake off his grip.

  “I’m sorry. You’ve been—nothing but kind.”

  When their eyes met again, her gaze seared him every bit as painfully as the hot metal and cigarettes Sanchez’s men had pressed against his flesh. He slowly released her. Kind. Wrong word. It was so much more than kind. But putting any sort of name to what was developing between them was dangerous.

  Kendi didn’t respond. She reached for his fork and speared a bite of bologna, laying it back down on the edge of the plate. “It’s getting cold.” She waited until he looked up at her again before adding, “Unless you don’t care for it?”

  He shook his head and gingerly brought his right hand down to grasp the silver handle and put it to his mouth. “No. It’s one of my favorites. Growing up, it was all we had a lot of times.” He reached for a bite of eggs, chewing the meat slowly, waiting to see if his stomach would rebel.

  The tension eased between them, as he drew up short, reaching for the toast, and Kendi handed him a piece with no comment.

  ****

  “Shoulder hurting?” she asked after a moment.

  He nodded. “Yeah, but I guess that’s to be expected...hanging from the ceiling for the better part of three days.”

  Kendi squeezed her eyes shut briefly, unable to rid herself of the picture his words conjured. She could almost smell the blood, fresh and plentiful, running in rivers from the wounds in his flesh, feel the ungodly pain he had to hide from them.

  “What’s wrong? You stopped eating.”

  “You say it like it was nothing. Hanging from the ceiling, being tortured for three days.”

  “Well...” He looked back at the plate, forking some more eggs to his mouth. “It has to be. Nothing, I mean.”

  Kendi moved off the bed carefully, remembering the coffee carafe. “Why? I mean, doesn’t it scare you to think you could’ve been killed? And going through the torture they...” Her voice broke, her hands trembling as she reached for the carafe and her cup. She fiddled with the carafe a few seconds, giving herself time to get control of her emotions.