Before You

by Jenna Bennett

  “Yes.”

  “Leave it in the car. I’ll get it to the lab.”

  I left it on the seat. “Can you tell me anything about the girl in the hospital?”

  He looked at me in the mirror, and I added, “Jeanine said she was found this morning. Did he grab her after he lost me last night?”

  Fuentes hesitated. “So it seems.”

  Oh, God.

  “Stay safe,” Fuentes said. “It looks like you’re on this guy’s radar. Don’t give him another opportunity.”

  “I’m having dinner with Ty tonight.”

  Fuentes nodded. “Stay in the hotel until he picks you up. Don’t go anywhere on your own.”

  I promised I wouldn’t. “Detective...”

  He nodded.

  “Why do you think he beat her? He didn’t hurt any of the others, did he?”

  “Not beyond the sexual assault,” Fuentes said. “They didn’t fight back. Maybe she did. Maybe he didn’t have enough of the drug left to give her a full dose, and so she realized what was happening and fought him.”

  Gah. Bad enough to get raped while you’re unconscious or mostly unaware, but to be awake and aware and unable to stop it...

  “Or maybe he was angry,” Fuentes added. “If he’d chosen you, and then he lost you... he could have taken it out on her.”

  “You don’t know?”

  He shook his head. “You saw her. She’s not in a position to tell me. I’m going back there after I drop your clothes off at the lab. Maybe by then I’ll learn something.”

  I nodded. Time to go. He had places to go and people to see. “Thanks again.”

  “You have my card? Let me know if you remember anything else, or think of something you haven’t told me.”

  I said I would, and then I got out of the car and watched him drive away before I went inside and up to my room to while away the rest of the afternoon with a book. Maybe I’d see if Mackenzie or Quinn were around. A little girl-time sounded like just the ticket right now.

  MACKENZIE WAS around, and I ended up in her room for part of the afternoon, talking about boys and clothes. Everything nice and normal, as if there wasn’t a girl who looked like me lying in a hospital bed on the other side of town.

  Unfortunately, things were not going all that well for Mackenzie and Mr. Tat. Things had started out great, but then they’d had a falling out, Mackenzie said, over some girl named Rachel. Someone Austin had feelings for, or still had feelings for, or maybe used to have feelings for—if he’d ever had feelings for her.

  It was confusing. I’m not sure Mackenzie understood it, either. But she was upset. Didn’t want to admit it, and kept telling me—and I’m sure herself, too—that it was for the best, that this way she could quit while she was ahead, before she fell for him... when it was painfully obvious she’d already fallen, and hard.

  This vacation wasn’t working out according to plan for any of us.

  She perked up when I asked for help with an outfit for tonight, though. Although when I accidentally let it slip about having gotten myself drugged last night, I had to talk her out of calling Quinn and bundling us all onto a plane for home tonight. Quinn was out somewhere with Ivy League Dude, actually having fun, and she needed that, after the year she’d had. I wasn’t going to be the one to deprive her.

  “I’m fine,” I told Mackenzie, not for the first time. “I swear. Don’t bug her.”

  She put the phone down. “All right. I won’t call her. But I need details, please. Every. Single. One.”

  No problem. She was a blonde, too, the rest of the time. And she was America’s Sweetheart, so someone might know that and make an exception for her. It certainly wouldn’t hurt her to know what was going on, so she could look out for herself. Especially now that Austin wasn’t around to do it.

  TY WAS in the lobby when I came downstairs at seven, and the look on his face when he saw me was pretty damn gratifying.

  Granted, the last time he’d seen me, I’d just woken up from sleeping for twelve plus hours, with bed hair, a drug-induced hangover, and bad breath, so anything would have been an improvement. But I hadn’t had much to do upstairs while I waited for seven o’clock to roll around, so I’d taken a little extra time with my hair and makeup.

  And then, of course, there was Mackenzie’s dress and shoes. She wears cowboy boots a lot of the time, but she cleans up well when she wants to, and this was a pair of strappy silver sandals that she’d probably worn to some award show or other sometime. The dress, meanwhile, was little and black and elegant, which makes Mackenzie look sexy as hell. I couldn’t quite pull that off—sweet, remember?—but at least I was pretty sure I didn’t look like a virgin.

  Ty’s eyes widened when he saw me. “Wow. You look... different.”

  I tried to bat my eyelashes at him, but they stuck together. Stupid mascara.

  “Is that good or bad?” I asked instead.

  He smiled. “It isn’t either. You look great, but you always look great.”

  “I didn’t look great this morning.” Or afternoon. Whenever I’d woken up.

  “You looked fine this morning. Although you look better now.” He offered his arm and I took it. He was wearing a button-down tonight, instead of the usual T-shirt, and I could feel the warmth of his skin through the thin fabric.

  He walked me—not toward the doors, but toward the back of the lobby. “I hope you don’t mind, but I made reservations at a restaurant in the hotel. I’m afraid to let you go outside.”

  He looked a little embarrassed to admit it.

  “That’s fine,” I said, “although I’m not worried.”

  “I am. You seem to have attracted the attention of this guy. And since it’s my job to keep you safe...”

  I glanced at him. “What do you mean, it’s your job?”

  “We have to talk.”

  Ah.

  We passed through the door into one of the several restaurants Mackenzie’s five-star hotel could boast. The hostess dimpled at Ty.

  “Reservation for McKenna,” he told her. “Somewhere out of the way?”

  She nodded. “Follow me, please.”

  The way she filled out her own LBD made me green with envy, and she didn’t seem to have a problem walking on the heels, either. I was already wishing for my flip-flops. They may not be as pretty as the silver sandals, but they’re a lot easier to get around in.

  We ended up at a table for two in a dark corner, behind some sort of potted fern. Ty held my chair and then seated himself, with his back to the wall. I’m not sure how much of the room he could see, what with the fern and all, but he kept an eye out.

  “Job?” I said again when we were seated.

  He sighed. “Let’s get the orders out of the way, OK? Then I’ll tell you everything.”

  “Everything?” Even the stuff he’d told me he couldn’t tell me, when I’d asked him why he was lying to me?

  He nodded. “Yeah. Everything.”

  OK. I could wait a few minutes for that.

  So we ordered drinks, and then we ordered food, and then the waiter deposited a plate of bread and a dish of some sort of olive oil on the table, and withdrew.

  “Talk,” I told Ty.

  He nodded, but he didn’t actually say anything until he’d broken off a piece of the bread and had dragged it through the olive oil and put it in his mouth and chewed... When he’d swallowed, he said, “I owe you an apology.”

  “OK.” I was busy crumbling my own piece of bread. My stomach was churning, so it wasn’t like I could eat it, but I needed something to do with my hands. “What for?”

  “I’ve been lying to you since the first time we met.”

  “I know that,” I said, looking at my pile of crumbs.

  He shook his head. “You have no idea. I’ve been lying about everything.”

  “Everything?” Even that seemingly sincere, ‘I like you too’?

  Maybe he could read my mind, because his lips twitched. “Almost everything.”
>
  There was still hope, then. “OK...” I said.

  “My name isn’t Tyler Jackson McKenna. It’s Ty Connor.”

  “But...” I’d seen his driver’s license.

  Granted, it isn’t that hard to get a fake ID, but why bother? He couldn’t possibly be younger than twenty-one.

  Could he?

  “And I’m not twenty-two.”

  Uh-oh.

  “I’m twenty-five.”

  “Twenty-five?” It was better than nineteen, but four years older than me...?

  “I’d show you my real ID, but I don’t have it on me.”

  “I’ll take your word for it,” I said, which was probably stupid, when he’d been lying all along.

  The way he smiled told me he knew it, too. “I don’t go to Georgetown,” he said. “I never did.”

  I had already sort of figured that out, or at least I had suspected it. From the moment when he’d told me that Georgetown probably had a pharmacology program. If he went there, he’d know. Right?

  “I went to the University of Florida. Psych major. And when I was twenty-three, I applied to the FBI.”

  My mouth opened, but nothing came out.

  He waited while the pieces realigned themselves in my head. It was uncomfortable, but things started to make sense, finally. “So...” I said when I thought I had caught up, “you’re here because of the girls? The... rapes.”

  He nodded. But before he could go on, the waiter came back with our salad plates.

  “There was a problem during spring break last year,” he told me when the waiter had deposited the plates and left again. “Not as organized as this, but a couple of girls were drugged and sexually assaulted. The Key West cops never figured out who did it. But just in case the same thing happened this year, they wanted someone on-scene. So they called the FBI.”

  “And the FBI sent you.”

  He nodded. “I look younger than I am, so they’ve been sending me on a lot of undercover assignments in high schools and colleges and gangs and places like that.”

  “Isn’t it dangerous?” Man, if I’d felt like he was out of reach before, he was as far away as the moon right now. Twenty-five and an FBI agent. He probably had a gun and a badge and everything.

  He went undercover in gangs, for God’s sake.

  He shrugged. “Sometimes. But someone’s gotta do it.”

  Sure, but... did it have to be him?

  Then again, if it hadn’t been him, I wouldn’t have met him. And if he hadn’t been doing it yesterday, it might be me in the hospital today, screaming, with bruises all over my face and my virginity stolen by someone I probably wouldn’t have given it to willingly.

  “So... does Detective Fuentes know who you are? And Carmen?”

  He nodded. “Carmen’s sort of my liaison with the police. She passes on anything I need to know from Fuentes. Nobody thinks anything of it if I’m talking to her.”

  I could totally see why. Plenty of reasons why any normal guy would spend time talking to Carmen.

  “And Fuentes is the one who insisted on calling in the FBI. He didn’t want a repeat of last year. He’s beyond pissed that we can’t get a handle on this guy.”

  I didn’t blame him. “Do you seriously have no idea who it is? If it was going on last year too, it has to be someone who was here then as well, right?”

  “If it’s the same guy. Or guys. Like I said, it wasn’t as organized then. And it isn’t like this kind of thing is rare. Unfortunately.” He chased a cherry tomato around his salad plate before spearing it with his fork and looking at it instead of at me. “Fuentes wants to think it’s a visitor. Someone who was here for spring break last year, and who’s back now.”

  “That makes sense.” And it reminded me that I hadn’t told him my theory about the Ivy League Dudes.

  When I was finished, he nodded. “That’s a possibility. Are you sure you aren’t a psych major yourself?”

  I shook my head. “English Lit. But I’ve read a lot of thrillers. And Quinn’s studying to be a counselor. She talks about cause and effect and trauma and stuff like that.”

  He tilted his head. “So is she trying to save this guy? James?”

  “I have no idea.” Although it wasn’t impossible. She does seem to gravitate to the walking wounded. The guys who need her. “But I know he’s been here before. The family has a house, or he rents a house, or something.”

  “Last year, one girl was a brunette and the other a blonde. Just two. This year, they’ve all been blondes. And the way they’ve been left in public places almost makes it feel...”

  He hesitated.

  “Like he’s thumbing his nose at you?” I suggested.

  He nodded. “I was gonna say it feels personal, but yeah. Something like that. Or like he doesn’t care that we know what he’s doing. He’s not trying to hide it. Last year, both girls woke up in their own rooms and went to the police when they realized what had happened. This year, he’s almost putting them on display.”

  “Like he wants you to catch him.”

  “Or like he wants to play,” Ty said and ate his tomato.

  I picked at my own salad. This conversation had robbed me of what little appetite I’d had. “There could have been more girls last year. I’m sure you’ve thought of that. Girls who didn’t realize what had happened, or didn’t want to go to the police, or didn’t want to admit that they’d been drugged and raped. And if they didn’t report it, or think about it, it was like it hadn’t happened.”

  He nodded grimly.

  “This year, there’s been a girl every morning so far, right?”

  “Since Monday. There wasn’t one on Sunday. Or Saturday night, I should say. Not sure what that means. If it means anything at all.”

  “If he’s from out of town, it could mean he didn’t get here until Sunday.”

  Ty nodded. “It could mean that.”

  We sat in silence for a moment.

  “Why do you think there are only blondes this year?”

  “Could be a different guy,” Ty said. “Or could be he decided he liked blondes better. Maybe he enjoyed raping the blonde more last year.”

  He pushed his salad plate away. I did the same with mine. This whole conversation was nauseating.

  The waiter came and whisked the plates away as soon as he saw we were done. “The food will be right out,” he told us before walking off.

  I looked at Ty. “What do you think?”

  “About the food?”

  “About the guy. You keep saying ‘could be this’ and ‘could be that,’ and ‘Fuentes wants to believe the guy’s a visitor.’ But what do you think?”

  He hesitated. Looked at me, and chewed on his bottom lip. Hesitated some more. I waited.

  “I think he’s local,” he said eventually. “I think he’s someone who lives here, but who takes advantage of the fact that all of Key West is crazy this week, and that there are so many girls that there’s no way anyone can keep an eye on all of them, and so many suspects, it’s impossible to figure out who might be guilty.”

  I nodded. That made sense. “I can understand why Fuentes doesn’t want to believe that.”

  “Oh, sure. Can’t blame him at all for that.”

  We sat in silence another minute.

  “Can I ask you a question now?” Ty said.

  “Sure.”

  He tilted his head. “Are you really a virgin?”

  “Oh.” I blushed. Not the question I’d been expecting, but... “Yeah. They checked at the clinic this morning.”

  “Why?”

  I’d been asked that question before. Usually it came with a heavy dose of ‘how can someone live to twenty-one without having sex,’ or ‘but you don’t look like a hag.’

  This time he just sounded interested. If he judged me, I couldn’t hear it in his voice. So I told him the truth.

  “I guess I never met anyone who wanted to be my first. Or anyone I wanted to be my first.”

  He nodded.
<
br />   I added, “I’ve never really had a boyfriend. And I’m not the type who goes to parties and picks up strangers.”

  “So when you asked me to come upstairs that first night...”

  Oh. Um... “I was a little bit tipsy. And Mackenzie said that we all needed to get laid while we were here on spring break. But mostly it was because I liked you.”

  “Enough to sleep with me an hour after we met?”

  “I would have probably chickened out,” I admitted. “I wasn’t quite drunk enough for that.”

  That made him smile. “Just as well I couldn’t take you up on it, then.”

  I nodded.

  He twirled his glass around watching the wine swirl. “But for the record...”

  “Yes?”

  “If I hadn’t been working, I would have been tempted to say yes. Even if I don’t usually jump into bed with girls I just met.”

  “Thank you.”

  He shrugged. “I guess I just... wanted you to know the truth. I said I lied about everything, but I didn’t lie about that. I really do like you. And if I hadn’t been here on duty, and you hadn’t been in the middle of my investigation, I would have liked to spend more time with you.”

  That would have sounded better if it hadn’t been for all those ‘ifs.’ “But now you can’t?”

  He shook his head. “Distractions aren’t a good thing right now. If I take the night off, another girl will probably get grabbed tonight. And it’ll be on my head.”

  And mine too, if I kept him with me.

  Not that I thought I stood a chance of doing that. He’d be out there tonight, keeping an eye on things, whether I wanted him to be or not.

  It made me like him even more. He put his own wants aside for the greater good, and what’s not to like about that?

  It was practically heroic, wasn’t it?

  We didn’t talk about anything important again until dinner was over and he was walking me home—back out to the lobby. “So if this guy seems to be focused on me,” I said, “and you said earlier that he was, right?”

  Ty nodded. “Seems to be, yeah.”

  “What’ll happen when I’m not out there somewhere tonight?”

  He shrugged. “I guess we’ll find out. Hopefully he’ll decide to wait for you instead of grabbing someone else.”