by Tiffany Snow
“Who?”
“Taggert and Williams,” I said. “Taggert a month ago. Williams two weeks ago.”
“How?”
“Taggert was a car wreck. Williams drowned.”
“He drowned? That makes no sense. He was a Navy SEAL.”
“It’s what the police report said.” The cannoli was nearly gone.
“What about the other two?” he asked.
I shoved the last of the cannoli in my mouth, then dug in my backpack, pulling out the stack of papers. “One is still in the service and currently deployed. One, William Buckton, runs a security firm.” I spread the papers on the table.
“Where is he?” he asked, picking up a stack and flipping through it.
“Omaha.”
“And what about the operation?”
“There’s nothing about any kind of infiltration into Bab al-Azizia,” I said. “It’s nonexistent. There was nothing anywhere, not even a whisper or trace. If there are any records, they’re on paper only, or very well hidden.”
Clark grimaced. “That’s unfortunate.”
The waitress arrived with our pizza, and I cleared a place for it. It was half-and-half, with my half being just pepperoni and Clark’s half being every meat they had in the place.
“What’s the other news?” he asked.
I slid a dripping slice onto my plate. “The Secret Service has video footage and thinks you’re the sniper who tried to kill the president.”
That got a reaction. He’d been reaching for his own slice and stopped.
“Excuse me? What did you say?”
“I don’t know how, but your face is on security footage of the building the sniper fired from.”
“I’m not a sniper.”
“I guess they think otherwise,” I said through a mouthful of cheese. “The footage has probably been doctored, but he wouldn’t let us examine it. Apparently, I’m under suspicion, too. If I find you, I’m to turn you over to them.”
“Is that what you’re planning to do?”
I took another bite. “Of course not,” I mumbled. “Proving your innocence after they already have you in custody would be pretty difficult.”
Leaving the edge of crust on my plate, I reached for more, then noticed Clark still wasn’t eating. “Did they make it incorrectly?” I asked. “We can have them make it again. I only ate one slice.”
He shook his head, his lips twitching in an odd sort of smile. “Sometimes you surprise me, that’s all.” Finally, he took a slice of pizza and bit off a chunk.
“Because I don’t meet your expectations of my behavior?”
“Because you exceed them.”
I wasn’t sure what to say to that. It sounded like a compliment . . . but Clark didn’t give compliments. I decided a change of subject was the best response and the one I was most comfortable with.
“Do you think one of the other members of the team is after you?” I asked. “It can’t be a coincidence that two of the names you gave me are deceased so recently.”
“I don’t know. Maybe. Though why they’d wait until now is a mystery. It’s been six years.” He picked up a second slice and demolished half of it with two bites.
My cell buzzed. Jackson was calling.
“Where are you?” he asked when I answered.
“Eating pizza,” I replied. “You still at work?”
“It’s not pizza night,” he said. “And, yes, I need to work late tonight, but I didn’t want you stranded at work.”
I sucked down some Coke before replying. “It’s fine. I’ll have Mia come get me.” I’d finally allowed her to start driving my Mustang occasionally. So long as I wasn’t with her at the time, I could handle it.
“So why the break from routine?” Jackson asked. “You never have pizza on a Friday.”
“Uh . . .” The reason was something I couldn’t tell him—that I was with Clark and he’d been the one to choose the restaurant. “I guess I was just craving pizza.” I winced. It didn’t matter if I was craving something. My nightly dinner schedule was printed on card stock and laminated. For real. Luckily, Jackson seemed to accept that.
“Okay, well, I’ll call you later. Text me when you get home, please. I want to make sure you get home safe.”
“Will do. Bye.” I ended the call, going back to my pizza. Clark was studying me.
“What?” I asked. “Do I have sauce on my chin?” I dabbed my mouth with a napkin.
He shook his head. “I thought you would’ve told him.”
“About you?” I frowned. “You told me not to. Why would I tell him?”
“Loyalty.”
“I don’t understand,” I said, a bit exasperated. “You think I’m being disloyal to Jackson because I’m keeping my promise to you? That makes no sense.”
“I don’t mean it as a bad thing,” he said, reaching for more pizza. “I just didn’t think you’d pick loyalty to me over loyalty to Coop.”
I started on my third slice, mulling over what he’d said. This wasn’t my usual pizza place, but it was pretty good. “The consequences of disloyalty are much higher for you at the moment. My decisions are logical.”
“Yeah, that’s what I was thinking,” he said, deadpan.
I studied him as I chewed, trying to figure out what he was thinking, and failed. “Shouldn’t you be in hiding or something? Especially if someone is after you and already knows you’re here in Raleigh. And now the government is after you, too.”
“Thought you might need a ride home from work. And I’ve left a false trail out of here, heading west.”
“So now what? You’re just going to run forever, hiding?”
He looked at me as though I’d just asked him to wear a miniskirt and hula hoop. “Of course not,” he said. “I’m buying time. I need to speak to the guy you found, see what he knows. I’ll head to Omaha tonight.”
Alarm shot through me and I put down the pizza I was about to take a bite out of. “By yourself?”
“I work alone. You know that.” He sat back in his chair, apparently finished eating.
“I don’t think you should go by yourself,” I said, shaking my head.
“You offering to ride shotgun?”
I wiped my hands on my napkin. “It’s not a bad idea.”
“I’d be hard-pressed to think of a worse one.”
I glared at him. “Listen, I just helped you out. And chances are, I could help you more if you take me with you. I’m not asking to be Robin to your Batman. Just that it’s not always best to work alone. Maybe you should rethink your policy.”
“My policy keeps you safe,” he said.
“Unless you’re planning on locking me inside a bubble, I’m not safe. No one is. Not really. I have a higher likelihood of a heart attack than being killed just because I’m with you.”
“That’s debatable,” he argued, picking up the check the waitress dropped off and reaching for his wallet.
“Here,” I said, digging in my backpack and handing him a twenty. But he didn’t take it, instead focusing on my wallet.
“What does that say? Slayer?”
I looked at my black-and-white wallet. “Yeah. I got it off Etsy. See? The zipper pouches inside have Spike’s image all over, and it says Slayer everywhere else. Cool, right?”
Clark’s expression was pained.
“What? Are you okay? Do you need some Tums or something? Sometimes the tomato sauce gives me heartburn, too.”
But he just waved my concern aside. “Never mind. And keep your money. I can at least buy you dinner after you let me crash at your place last night.”
“Oh.” That made sense. “Okay, then.” I stuffed the money back into my wallet, and wallet back into my backpack. “Take me home?” We could argue there about my going with him.
I followed Clark outside, where he led me to a motorcycle. I looked at him.
“You’ve got to be kidding.”
He grabbed a helmet and tried to hand it to me. “Am I laughing?�
��
“Listen, I’ll just take an Uber home—”
“You’re scared of riding a motorcycle?”
“Absolutely. Anyone in their right mind would be. The fatality rate of motorcycle crashes compared to passenger vehicles is over five times higher.” I’d planted my feet on the ground and grabbed onto the light pole just for good measure.
“I’m not letting you out of my sight, so you have no choice,” Clark said, taking off my glasses.
I grabbed for them, but missed. “What are you doing? You know I can’t see.”
He slid them inside his jacket. “It’ll be better this way.”
“No. Clark, I do not want to ride a motorcycle.” I latched onto the pole with both hands now, which he began peeling away, finger by finger.
“You’ll be fine. I promise. You just hang on to me and close your eyes.”
I was breathing too fast and spots started appearing in my blurry vision. “No, Clark, I can’t. Please.” All I could see was an image of my body being thrown from the back of his bike onto the hard asphalt, which would rip through my clothes and skin like cheese through a grater.
“Okay, okay, calm down. Look, I’m not touching you, okay?” He’d suddenly stepped back, away from me, putting his hands in the air as if I were arresting him. “It’s cool.”
Something zinged past me, hitting the brick wall of the restaurant, then my cheek suddenly stung. I couldn’t see anything but Clark right in front of me, who plucked me from that pole as if I were the size of a toddler. A moment later, we were on his bike and he’d fired up the engine.
“Hold on to me,” he said, pulling my arms around his chest. “And don’t let go.”
5
Terror streaked through me, and I screamed as the bike leaped forward. My hold on him seemed desperately inadequate as the street sped by. Fear took my breath, and I couldn’t scream anymore, could only pray for this to be over.
It went on forever. The longest ride of my life, and that was counting when my brother had tricked me into getting on the Mummy ride at Universal Studios theme park. I tried to recite the periodic table in my head so I wouldn’t think about it . . . but it was impossible not to think about it. The wind pulled at my clothes, and I could hear other cars as we passed them.
I focused on Clark instead. He was warm and solid and didn’t move, unlike everything else around me. His jacket was soft and I could just smell a bit of his aftershave mixed with the leather scent of his coat. It was a comforting smell. One I associated with him.
I breathed deeply and calmed somewhat. At least I didn’t feel as though my heart was about to leap from my chest and run off screaming in the opposite direction. Anatomically impossible, I knew, but the image struck me as appropriate to my previous level of panic.
We were slowing, but I didn’t dare look up from where my head was buried against Clark’s back. I was holding him so tightly, my fingers were beginning to cramp, but I didn’t care. I wanted solid ground underneath my feet more than I wanted my next breath.
Finally, we stopped. Clark turned off the engine, and the sudden quiet left my ears ringing. Much as he had done earlier, he had to pry my fingers one by one from the death grip I had on his jacket, then he lifted me from the back of the bike and set me on my unsteady feet. I glanced around, vaguely recognizing the surroundings. My neighborhood. My house. My driveway.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
The question hit me like a slap, and the wave of rage that washed over me had me actually seeing red for the first time in my life. I’d thought that was just an idiom, too, but apparently it was based on a real anatomical reaction to overwhelming fury.
“How could you do that?” I yelled at him. My vision was blurry and it wasn’t just because I didn’t have on my glasses. “How could you do that to me? I told you I didn’t want to ride that thing and you . . . you . . . forced me to!”
“China—”
“Without even a helmet!” I kept going. “I was terrified! And I could have fallen off and been . . . been torn apart on the asphalt!”
He stepped closer to me and grasped my arm. “China—”
“Don’t touch me!” I jerked my arm out of his grip. “Just-just . . . get away from me.” I shoved him and he stumbled back a half step. “Go on, go!” I shoved again, harder. “You could’ve killed—”
Clark suddenly grabbed me by both arms and hauled me into him. Then he was kissing me, cutting me off midtirade. He wrapped both arms around me, and I couldn’t move a muscle. His mouth pressed hard against mine, almost bruising.
It shocked me, blanking every thought from my mind except that . . . Clark was back, when I thought he’d be gone forever, and he was kissing me.
So I kissed him back.
It wasn’t an elegant kiss, or sweet, but messy and wet and bumping noses and nothing like the movies. But it didn’t change how I felt. How it felt for him to kiss me the way he was . . . as though we could be standing in the middle of a freeway and neither of us would notice the cars careening around our locked bodies.
He tasted just like I remembered, dark and forbidden. Harlequin would have a field day describing how Clark tasted. My feet weren’t even on the ground anymore. He’d lifted me up, loosened his grip enough so I could wiggle my arms free and wrap them around his neck.
We’d learned each other by now, and the kiss turned from frantic and fumbling to deep and intense. Time passed, and for once I had not even a remote idea of how long it had been. I memorized each second, each touch. The feel, taste, and smell of him.
He ended the kiss sweetly, with long, lingering kisses on my lips that moved to my cheeks. He rubbed his nose alongside mine, and I heard him inhale deeply, squeezing me tighter in what was now closer to a hug than a restraining hold. Finally, he pulled back enough that I could see his eyes.
I didn’t have the faintest clue as to what to say, and even as the seconds ticked by, reality was crashing in around me. I’d just kissed another man. Perhaps the kiss months ago I could ignore because I’d been so taken aback and Clark had left right afterward . . . I’d never thought to see him again, so I’d convinced myself it didn’t matter.
This. Mattered.
I’d just cheated on . . . my . . . my fiancé. On Jackson. The man I loved. I could feel myself get light-headed as the blood drained from my face. I was a liar and a cheat—
“Jesus, China,” Clark said, his lips twisting. “I just wanted to shut you up for a second.”
I gasped in dismay, the meaning of his words sinking in like knives. Pain lanced my chest, and for a moment I couldn’t breathe. I found myself back on my feet, Clark studying me. His lips were still in that infuriating smirk, but his eyes . . . I couldn’t read what was in his eyes. But the smirk was enough.
I hadn’t even realized I’d slapped him until I felt the nasty sting on my palm. The crack of the strike echoed, but I’d achieved my aim. When he looked back around at me, the smirk was gone.
“I don’t ever,” I said, my voice trembling, “ever want to speak of this again. Do you understand?”
“Yeah.”
His mumbled reply sent my fury spiking again. “I said, do you underst—”
“I got it,” he bit out, cutting me off. This time I could definitely read the look in his eyes, and under any other circumstances, I’d take a step back. But I was too angry to care.
I headed for the front door. When I got there, I realized that he hadn’t followed me. I turned in irritation. “Are you coming, or what?”
Without a word, he followed me inside.
Mia was sprawled on the couch, watching TV. She looked at me when I walked in, then did a double take.
“Oh my God, what happened to you?”
I stopped, confused. Could she tell I’d just kissed Clark? She bounced off the sofa and hurried to me. “You have blood all over your cheek.”
Lifting my hand, I touched my face, then looked at my fingers. They were stained red. I glanced at Clark, conf
used.
“Someone shot at us,” he said. “I’d just stepped back or it would’ve hit me. Instead, it hit the wall. Bits of brick flew and cut you.”
Oh. That was why he’d grabbed me and put me on the Machine of Death. He’d been running. And he’d tried to tell me, but I’d been so angry, I’d just yelled and yelled at him . . .
“I—”
“Get the first-aid kit, Mia,” Clark interrupted. “Your aunt needs tending.”
Mia jerked a quick nod and ran off. I was left staring at Clark. Neither of us spoke. His eyes were blue, so very blue. And gave away nothing. Not for the first time did I curse my lack of insight into human interactions.
“I don’t understand,” I whispered.
“I know.”
Mia was back, fumbling with the first-aid kit, and began dabbing alcohol on my face. It stung and I winced.
“Come sit down,” she said, pulling me toward the couch.
I saw Clark head upstairs out of the side of my eye but didn’t question it. I was just glad that he was out of the room for the moment.
Mia tended me in silence. After she’d cleaned the scrapes and applied ointment and tiny bandages, she spoke.
“I saw you, you know. Kissing Clark.”
I sucked in my breath, her face inches from mine as she placed the bandages. She carefully avoided my gaze.
“I didn’t mean to,” she said. “I just heard the motorcycle outside and went to the window . . .”
I didn’t know what to say. I was . . . embarrassed . . . I realized.
“It . . . I didn’t mean . . .” I stammered.
“You don’t need to explain,” Mia said. Finally, she looked at me. “I just think that . . . if you can kiss a man like that . . . then maybe you’re not as in love as you think you are.” She shrugged. “I’m not judging, Aunt Chi. I just want you to be happy. With . . . whoever can make you happiest.”
I gave a short nod, looking away from her gaze that was too penetrating.
“I love you,” she said, giving me a quick hug. “No matter what you decide.”
Decide? There was nothing to decide. Clark had offered me nothing but shame and regret. His words still echoed inside my head. “I just wanted to shut you up.”
