Hyde, an Urban Fantasy

by Lauren Stewart

  “What? I’m thirty-one.”

  “Okay, I believe you.”

  A tight-lipped grin spread onto his face. “Ah-ha. Anyone over thirty is ancient, right?”

  She didn’t comment.

  “I need directions.”

  “I don’t even know where we’re going.” God, why did she trust him? He’d been very clear that would be a mistake.

  “Your house.”

  “Why?”

  He threw the car into reverse and pulled out. “I want to see this tissue-paper door you took apart and take some measurements. I’m going to buy you a present.”

  “What? A strait-jacket? I’d probably take a medium, depending on the cut.”

  He smirked. “No strait-jacket.”

  “Turn right at the light. Some chains? For my wrists?”

  “Thought about it.”

  “A cage?”

  The corner of his mouth twitched. “In a manner of speaking.”

  She gripped the door as he took the corner. “In what manner of speaking?”

  He didn’t answer. Which was not a good sign. Her imagination went into all sorts of nooks and crannies of horrendous plans he might have.

  “I can’t be tied up,” she said. “I don’t want to be tied up.” Never again.

  He watched her, waiting, like a rattlesnake in the grass. Would she hear the warning rattle before he struck? No, he was too smart to give himself away.

  Despite the danger, Eden smiled at the image of him shaking his tail. That might be something worth seeing. She looked out the window. Geez, where were these thoughts coming from?

  “Why doesn’t your boyfriend keep a better eye on you? Keep you so busy at night, you don’t want to leave the house?”

  “Relationships are complicated.”

  “Not all of them. For instance, our relationship is very simple. You are annoying; I am annoyed. See? Totally uncomplicated.”

  “Each time we’re together, I’m shocked at how much easier it’s getting to ignore your rudeness,” she said, turning back to him. “Go left on Federal and then take the first right. If I’m so annoying, why are you helping me?”

  “Aside from the fact that you won’t leave me alone?”

  “Yes, aside from that.”

  “I would have thought you wouldn’t care about why I helped you, just that I did.” Mitch’s eyes never left the road. “Not that it’s any of your business, but I knew the woman who you claim to have murdered.” His knuckles were white on the steering wheel.

  “Oh, I’m sorry.” He knew the woman? She leaned forward to look at him. “Are you . . . emoting?”

  “Hardly.”

  She righted herself in the seat again and faced forward. Of course, he wasn’t. Mitch didn’t have feelings he couldn’t control.

  “Were you in love with her?” she asked.

  “Again, not your business.”

  “It’s the building on the left. Park in front.” She took a breath and prepared to ask a question she wasn’t sure she wanted the answer to. “Mitch, do you think I murdered your friend?” Her heart felt like a dirty napkin someone had wadded up . . .

  “Sister.”

  . . . and tossed in the trash. She didn’t look at him, didn’t touch him. This was Mitch, not anyone else on the face of the planet. His rules were different. “She was your sister?”

  “Indeed.” He put the car in park and slid out.

  She opened her own door, using it to steady her nerves. “Why are you helping someone who might have killed your sister?”

  “I intend to find out if you’re right.”

  Over the top of the car, she asked, “And if I am?”

  “If you are?” He slammed the door and looked right into her eyes. “Don’t worry, Eden. It will happen so fast, you won’t feel a thing.” Then he turned and walked toward the dilapidated apartment building.

  She shuddered. “Yeah. This is totally uncomplicated.”

  CHAPTER XII

  How do you respond to a threat like that? Should I send a ‘thanks for the warning’ card? A fruit basket? Eden was way out of her comfort zone, way out of her discomfort zone, too. Nah, he wouldn’t kill her. He probably wouldn’t even hurt her . . . too badly. She was nice, and, while nice people often end up last, they do not inspire violence in others. It just wouldn’t happen. But maybe she should say something to him. Just to make sure.

  “Mitch, don’t you think we should talk about this a little?” She ran to catch up with him.

  The look on his face hadn’t changed—severe, hollow, dark.

  And so she chickened out. She silently led Mitch to the second floor. He was five steps behind her when she got to the door of her apartment.

  Her shoulders drooped and she turned around. “I have to go downstairs to get the key. Sleepwalkers—or other personalities—don’t like to carry purses, it seems.”

  He stepped to the metal railing, giving her more than ample room to pass. She was at the stairs when she heard Carter’s voice behind her.

  “Hey.”

  “Hey,” Mitch replied.

  She turned back to see them staring at each other—Carter filling the doorway, looking wary, Mitch leaning against the rail, looking bored.

  “Can I help you with something?” Carter asked.

  “It’s me!” She ran back. “I didn’t think you’d still be home. Carter, this is Mitch. He’s the guy I told you about.” Oops, that could have been handled more delicately.

  Carter’s eyes bulged. Then they narrowed. Eden stood between the two men, her body being swayed side to side by the shots of testosterone they were firing at each other. She grabbed Carter’s arm for balance. And to keep him from attacking. Mitch didn’t move.

  With her eyes, she pleaded for help.

  Carter acquiesced. “Boy, have I been dying to meet you, Mitch.”

  Mitch pursed his lips together. “Don’t call me—”

  “Oh, he goes by Mitchell,” Eden said in a rush. Wow, what fun. Why didn’t I do this sooner?

  “What, I can’t call you Mitch?” Carter taunted.

  “Not if you like the way your pretty little head sits on your pretty little shoulders.”

  “Really, boys? I’m not a basketball and this is not the school grounds. Knock it off.” She pushed Carter backwards into the apartment, his body-weight heavy against her palms. “Carter, I told you what happened. There’s no competition here.” After a pause, she felt him relax under her hands.

  “Why are you here?” Carter asked Mitch.

  Mitch sauntered through the door. “I’m buying your girlfriend a present.”

  Carter leaned forward again.

  “I said knock it off!” She glanced at Mitch. “Both of you. Carter, he’s here to help me. I got out again last night.”

  Carter‘s brows came together. “Shit, I thought you’d gone down to the gym. Sorry.”

  She lightly stroked his arm. “It’s not your fault. And Mitch is just here to help. That’s it. Tell him, Mitch.”

  Mitch sighed and looked around the living room. “Yep. I’m just the hired help. Without the hired part. Today I’m just a wallet.” He turned around and knocked on the wooden door, smiling. The area surrounding the knob was still wrapped in duct tape. “You guys know someone busted up your door, don’t you?”

  “I fixed the deadbolt,” Carter said, glaring.”And the new door is getting here either today or tomorrow. I’m not a magician.” He looked down at Eden. “We don’t need his help.”

  “Carter,” she said, “we need all the help we can get. It will be fine.”

  “He’ll help and then he’ll leave, got it?”

  “I swear to you. He’ll leave.” She saw the bag he carried and his uniform—navy blue sweatpants and t-shirt with “FLPD” in white lettering written across his broad chest. “Did you get the internship at the station?”

  His smile was proud. “Yeah, but I don’t start for a few more days. The final exam is on Saturday, so today is just a
study group. Then I’d planned on working out. But I’ll reschedule.”

  “No, you should go. I don’t think we’ll be long. And Mitch knows he’s not my type.” When I’m awake, she added silently. “Right, Mitch?”

  “This keeps getting better and better.” He stuck out his hand to Carter. “I’m not here to screw with your territory, man. Aside from some bars and another door.”

  Carter reached around Eden and shook Mitch’s outstretched hand, holding it a little too long. “You help. And then you leave,” he growled.

  “Great!” Eden brought Carter’s face down to hers and kissed him, almost on the lips. “Have a good day.”

  “We’ll talk soon. Keep your phone handy.” He walked out, twisting to keep his eyes on Mitch until he was walking backwards.

  “Study hard.” Eden shut the door after him with a smile she hoped said, “You can trust me.”

  Mitch laughed as he took off his suit jacket and sat on the couch. “You got one hell of a boyfriend there.”

  “He's a good guy, don't make fun of him.”

  “I'm sure he is.” His smile disappeared. “Are you in love with him?”

  The question he had no right to ask hung in the air between them.

  With each blink of her eyes, she wished she could break the hold Mitch had on her. It didn’t work.

  “I'm . . . with him.” Once spoken, the answer she’d felt compelled to give left her embarrassed and ashamed. She hurried into the kitchen for some water.

  “That's it? You're with him?” he called from the other room, his voice getting louder as he followed her.

  “It's the truth.” Why had she brought Mitch into her home? Her home that had a bed in it.

  He leaned on the fridge, his shirt pulling across his chest. “Fair enough. But he's in love with you.”

  “What?” she asked, refocusing her eyes.

  “He’s in love with you.”

  “Yes. At least, that's what he tells me.”

  “Oh, the poor boy.” His laughter filled the apartment, making her cringe.

  Jerk. “Stop laughing!”

  “I can't.” His carefree smile hid none of the wickedness in his eyes.

  Stupid, gorgeous jerk. “I shouldn't have told you,” she grumbled, filling two glasses from the tap.

  “Why did you?”

  Because that is who I am. “You asked.” She handed him the glass. “And I don't lie.”

  “Everyone lies.”

  “I don't.”

  “Ever?”

  She shook her head. “If I'm not honest, then how can I expect other people to be honest with me?”

  After one last chuckle, his mouth settled into a smirk. “You can't. People lie. Whether you accept it or not makes no difference. It simply makes you a willing participant to your abuse.”

  She set her glass down on the counter, his words stinging her ears. That couldn’t be true. She’d built her entire life around the idea that the only thing she could control was herself—her actions, her words. And, if she did the right thing, other people would somehow treat her with the same respect. But it wasn’t true, now was it? Her decency made no difference at all in anyone’s life but hers. And, oh, what a life it was turning out to be.

  “Okay, let’s get to work.” He left her where she stood and went back into the living room. “You got a tape measure?”

  Amazed how quickly one phone call to Jolie and a Visa card worked, Eden stood in her refurbished prison apartment. Mitch had gotten security bars installed on her windows and a new keyed lock on her new door. In a day. Man, she needed an assistant. And a whole heck of a lot of money.

  “Even your super-human strength can’t get through this one.” Mitch winked at her and knocked on the new metal door. There were two deadbolts, but he handed her only one key. “Call Carter and tell him to come to my office to pick up the other key on his way home.”

  “I don’t get one at all?”

  “That is the point of the bars, Eden. You do understand that, don’t you? You can sleep tight knowing you’d need a crowbar to get outside.” He grimaced. “You don’t have a crowbar, do you?”

  § § §

  After leaving Eden’s apartment, Mitch spent the rest of the day worrying. Not something he was accustomed to doing about someone other than himself. The idea that Eden was like him was unfathomable. Impossible.

  She was pure.

  Fuck, she probably brought sandwiches to the homeless or took in stray animals in her free time. He’d know if she struggled to keep her evil inside. He’d have seen it on her face—the weariness, the pain. Just like he saw in his own eyes every time he looked in a mirror. No, she was nothing like him. She was better.

  After his last client left, Mitch sat down on the edge of Jolie’s desk and watched her work.

  Without lifting her head, she asked, “Do you need something, Mitchell?”

  “Nope.”

  She pushed back from the desk. “Then I’m free to go?”

  “You are. I’m gonna stay awhile.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “What’s going on? I never leave first.”

  “A guy should be dropping by pretty soon to pick something up.”

  “Wow, could you be any more vague?” She picked up her enormous purse and stood. “Who is he?”

  “My new BFF.”

  “Aside from the fact I’m absolutely shocked you even know that expression, I’ll remind you that you don’t have an old BFF.”

  “True. Then he’s my first. I love to try new things.”

  She shook her head as if something had come loose. “No, you don’t.”

  “Also true. I’d love to love trying new things.”

  “I’ll see you tomorrow, Mitchell.” She left, still shaking her head.

  Mitch spent the next twenty minutes trying to decide which kind of asshole he wanted to be to the guy.

  Carter came in, full of the kind of feigned-arrogance Mitch thought of as ‘Rookie Know It All’.

  “So I’m just supposed to lock her in every night. That’s your great idea?”

  “How else do you propose to keep her from leaving the apartment?” Leading him into the office, Mitch didn’t ask him to sit and Carter probably wouldn’t anyway. “Because, obviously, the technique of sleeping next to her, and being aware she’s leaving, hasn’t been successful thus far.”

  “I don’t sleep—” He clamped his lips together and looked around the office. “I’m on meds. They make me sleepy.”

  Mitch raised an eyebrow. “Meds, huh?”

  “I don’t do drugs. They’re for a medical condition.”

  Why he was helping a delusional girl and her sick-and-clueless boyfriend was an utter mystery to him. He gestured to a chair. “She says you’re a good man.”

  Carter skipped the one Mitch had pointed to and sat on the couch, spreading his legs wide. “That’s nice to hear.”

  “That she thinks you are or that she told me?”

  “Both, I guess.”

  “How did you two meet?” When he got a glare instead of an answer, Mitch continued, “If I had an olive branch, I’d offer it to you, but since I’m all out . . .” He held up his palms. “I’m just trying to help. She needs help, you know.”

  Carter nodded, let out a deep breath, and scratched his forehead. “I know. But I don’t think it should come from you.”

  “Fair enough.” Mitch wasn’t good at this kind of shit—getting people to share. Especially people who hated him even before they met him. No, that usually happened right after the introductions. And his technique for life coaching had nothing to do with people opening up emotionally. He taught his clients how to be aggressive, take no prisoners, feel no empathy for others. They paid him well for something that came naturally to him.

  “I was gone,” Carter said. ”You know, when you and she— When it started happening. I was at the Police Tech Academy in the Keys. If I’d known”—Carter shook his head sadly—“I wouldn’t have gone.”

&n
bsp; “Do you believe her when she says she was sleepwalking?”

  “I believe she believes it. Eden doesn’t lie.”

  “She really never lies?”