What Doesn't Kill You

by Aimee Hix

  “Finding him will be easier said than done. Getting him to talk will be near to impossible,” I said.

  “This prick tried to hurt you. If our tattoo artist is feeling a little shy then I’ll jack him up if I have to,” Seth said.

  Boyd looked at him, a neutral expression on her face. “I didn’t hear that, Agent Anderson. But if I had heard it, I’d have to remind you that while it’s understandable, it’s important not to cross that line. I’d also be obliged to report it. Since I didn’t hear it, light up whoever you have to in order to get this asshole.” She had lost her neutral expression and her eyes flashed with anger. I was definitely never messing with her.

  She gathered her things and began to leave. She turned back to level another fierce look at Seth. “Whatever you do, you make sure your first priority is to take care of Willa. She’s got great instincts but is too headstrong.”

  I wasn’t even offended that she was talking about me like I wasn’t in the room. I probably would have been if I hadn’t been busy marveling that she admired something about me.

  Seth dropping the phone book on the table brought me back to the task at hand. How old school. I was glad Ben wasn’t around to make fun of us.

  “Where did you even find this monster?” I asked.

  “Nancy always keeps one on the floor of the pantry, in the back.” At my look of confusion, he laughed. “So she can stand on it to get the cookies she hides on the top shelf.”

  Chapter

  20

  “Okay, there are about a dozen tattoo parlors in Fairfax County. If we have to expand outside the county we will, but this list is enough for now. I threw out a few already. We don’t need ones that serve the college crowd. And there’s one in Annandale that’s run by two sisters from the Philippines.”

  I looked at the list he’d printed. I couldn’t argue with his toss outs. I didn’t see the skinheads mixing with the frat boys and girls needing a belly button piercing. The Filipino ladies weren’t even a question. The ones left on the list were unremarkable.

  A quick search of the websites for the shops allowed us to cull two more based on staff diversity. At the end we still had five. Boyd had texted me that she was adding the tattoo to the scans. There were over forty hits for a silver pickup truck registered to anyone named Mark or a variation of Mark. Her team had pulled all the DMV photos.

  “This is maddening,” I said as I scrolled through the photos. I didn’t see anyone that had a tattoo on his neck. The photos could have been ten years old in some instances because of the renewal policies. I was looking for a guy that was maybe a decade older by now, different hair style, maybe having shaved a beard or mustache, added a tattoo. I had no idea how anyone was able to ID a suspect from photos.

  Seth stopped scrolling through the websites. “You’re just looking for possibilities, okay? You don’t have to pick any one guy and you don’t need to be sure of your choice.”

  I pushed away from the table and paced the kitchen floor. “I’ve got to get out of this house, Seth. Let’s hit the nearest places and see what we can shake loose.”

  “Okay, I’ll make you a deal. We’ll head back to my place so I can change back into my cover and while we’re driving you’ll look at the photos. I want you to give Jan at least three possibilities.”

  I gave him the up and down look. “You look ridiculous, you know. Like you’re interviewing for a job as a substitute teacher.”

  “You wound me. I thought I looked debonair and professional.” He covered his heart with his hand.

  “You look like Barbara dressed you.”

  His face dropped. Something was definitely up with him and his parents. Seth had always been more aloof than Michael where their parents were concerned. He had reacted to them the way they’d parented. Like he did his duty and followed the letter of the rules rather than the spirit. As if his heart hadn’t been in it. He hadn’t been that way with Michael. Or me.

  “She’d love that. Me in a suit and tie every day going to some boring day job. An hour commute in a little family box on wheels, a wife like her, two point five kids, a house down the street from them.”

  He sounded more angry than amused. Maybe we’d get to this one sooner rather than later.

  “Outside of how creepy it would be for you to be married to someone like your mother—and seriously, I shudder—it’s not shocking that she’d want you safe.”

  Considering she was down to one son, she probably wasn’t keen on another memorial service. Just because she wasn’t warm like Nancy was with Ben and me didn’t mean she didn’t love her kids.

  He snatched the suit jacket up off the back of the chair. “It’s not her life.”

  And maybe we’d shelve that one for later after all. He sounded pretty hot on the subject and I was not up for getting caught in the crossfire. I needed to save my energy for our own battle. He must have seen the look on my face.

  “Sorry. I guess my parents are not your problem, right?”

  “No, but it’s not as if I don’t understand how your parents are. And have you even met my dad? About five ten, balding, convinced I made the biggest mistake of my life quitting the force before I made chief?”

  “Yeah, sorry, sometimes I forget how much time you’ve spent with the Colonel and Barbara. Shit, we don’t have time for this, Will. We need to get to this list.”

  Which is how I found myself sitting on his couch, flipping through the basic cable channels, while he changed from spit-and-polish federal agent back into on-the-fringes biker with questionable morals and a heart of gold. Or could only hookers have a heart of gold? Daytime talk shows, soap operas, and infomercials flew by as I absentmindedly pressed the button on the remote.

  “Ready?”

  I looked up to find him fully converted back. Jeans clean but stained and a work shirt. I wished I could say it wasn’t appealing but if I was honest, he looked a hell of a lot better than he did in that soulless suit. In the well-cut wool he had been a parody. This was the real Seth, hot as hell—and that was a train of thought that would get me into trouble if I didn’t jump off before it got to the final station, which if I recalled correctly was on the other side of the door he stood in front of. I wondered what he would say if I gave him the fifteen minutes he’d asked for earlier. I wondered why I was bothering to wonder; he’d made himself clear earlier. Me being a fully independent person wasn’t part of the deal for him. It was his way or no way.

  “Yeah, let’s go find us the tattoo artist to the scum.”

  “We’ll take the bike. Showing up in that sedan will shut doors faster than a badge would.”

  I looked down at my t-shirt, jeans, and boots. I was clean and presentable for most occasions barring church or black tie. I could pass for a biker’s babe. A plain one.

  “You look fine, Will. Just let me do the talking, okay?”

  “Um, yeah, I’ll do my best on that one, sparky.” I said it with a straight face, though I was sure I saw doubt in Seth’s eyes.

  The first place was only a few miles from the apartment, tucked into a series of detached buildings in an older complex of shops and businesses. There were only a few cars parked in what could have been termed an alley since it was too narrow to be a road. The half dozen spots in front of the shop were empty. This was one of the shops on our list that didn’t require appointments and since it was the middle of the day, it appeared there wasn’t much drop-in business. The guy at the front desk was, unsurprisingly, heavily covered in ink. It probably made me weird that I felt more comfortable with him than I did with the khakis and polo crowd.

  “Hey, I’m looking for some cover-up work and I heard you guys are a bit more traditional than some of the other shops in the area,” Seth said.

  Cover-up work? Granted, the last time I’d been in a position to see the majority of his skin it had been dark, but I had gotten a good eyeful of
most of it four months ago. He’d been sporting a few tattoos but none looked in need of covering or updating. Frankly, the work had been fantastic and I’d spent some very non-bleary moments touching them.

  He lifted his shirt to show the guy a tattoo on his side that had not been there that night in June. It was terrible. It made me cringe it was so bad. The guy chuckled.

  “I see your girlfriend’s not a fan of it either.”

  Not a fan? I didn’t think hate was a strong enough word for the abomination that was marring Seth’s torso.

  “Yeah, well, she’s the reason I got wasted that night so she’s partly to blame.”

  He turned ever so slightly and winked at me, but I could sense honesty in the statement. I knew his cover, aside from the fake record, was probably based on the truth as much as possible. It would make it easier to remember and easier to believe. He’d gotten inked after that night. I wondered who was to blame for taking him to a tattoo shop and letting him get that hideous thing. I’d like to have a few words with whoever was responsible for that awful mermaid on his beautiful body. A mermaid. Jesus.

  “I mean, it barely looks like her. The eyes are close.”

  It was supposed to be me? Seth looked sheepish, an expression he’d mastered a long time ago. If that hideous thing was supposed to look like me, he had good reason to be embarrassed.

  I snapped my gum and rolled my eyes. If I was playing a part, I was going for broke. Especially since I was positive I was never getting the opportunity to go undercover again. Seth would out me to my dad the second he got home. He’d know if he couldn’t stop me, Dad would. I wasn’t having to act my annoyance. First his heavy-handed insistence that his “woman” wasn’t authorized by him to investigate anything he deemed dangerous and then a permanent commitment to that position on his damn body was a bit more than I was willing to overlook.

  “Serves you right. Who gets wasted and lets their dumbass friends take them to get a tattoo, anyway?”

  “She’s sassy. I like her,” the tattoo artist said.

  I leaned on the counter, pressing my breasts into my arms to give me the illusion of cleavage. I was seriously lacking those kinds of assets but Undercover Seth’s girlfriend was the flirty type. I saw him scowling as I beamed a smile at the guy. Good.

  “Damn straight. Cool ink, by the way,” I said, chewing my gum in a way that I was sure was disturbing my mom’s relaxation somewhere across the Atlantic.

  “Heh. Yeah, she can be a handful sometimes. I was thinking maybe a skull.”

  Seth seemed unamused at my contribution to our interrogation. Probably because I was supposed to keep my mouth shut. I had warned him. I wasn’t backing down just because he had decided I was supposed to.

  “A skull? Yuck. How about something cool, like a phoenix? You know that fiery bird from that movie about the kid who did magic? With the glasses? You know, Harry Potter?”

  Seth blinked at me a few times while the guy laughed. “You want me to get a tattoo from Harry Potter? It’s a kid’s movie.”

  “It was sweet and the bird is totally badass. I like birds.”

  The guy’s attention was totally focused on me now. Seth glared at me.

  “You can do birds, right?” I asked.

  “So about the skull,” Seth said, talking over me. This amused the guy even more. And I was really starting to like Undercover Willa. She was hilarious.

  “Excuse us for a moment.” Seth grabbed my arm, more gently than I know it appeared, and hustled me over to the door. “What’re you doing?”

  “Building a rapport. I’m fun, hot cop and you’re stick-up-his-ass cop who doesn’t know when he’s being overbearing,” I whispered.

  “I’m glad you’re having fun but whatever this is you’re doing is wasting time. We need to get him around to skulls, Willa.”

  “And we will, Seth, just as soon as he trusts us. Besides, he’s so distracted by my quote unquote sassiness, he’ll have no idea you’re interrogating him, okay?” I smiled at him and snapped my gum again. “So what’s it going to be, babe?”

  We turned back to the guy, who I was pretty sure had been ogling my ass, and I tucked myself into Seth’s side. The one not sporting the vilest piece of body art I’d even seen in my life.

  The guy ended up being a bust. As did the next three shops. And my butt had begun to hurt from riding the back of Seth’s motorcycle. He’d blown me off when I briefly whined about how uncomfortable it was. Granted, it wasn’t my best tough-girl moment.

  We walked into the last shop on the list, way the hell out in the farthest suburb in the county. The area was one long main drag with all manner of shops and stores in an eclectic mix of ethnic restaurants and pawn shops. I was sure that it was going to be another waste of time, but Seth thought we were about to get lucky, so to speak. The area had seen a lot of changes in the past twenty years and, while diverse, it was also sharply divided between old-time residents and newcomers. Immigrant newcomers. Making it the kind of place where resentments could fester. And that also made it a place where you were more likely to find a tattoo artist that catered to some specific wishes to create a symbol for a group committed to its right to a lily white, homogenous society.

  Two seconds in the door and I knew Seth was right. I didn’t want to think in terms like “redneck,” but it was the first thing that entered my mind. The shop had way too many people for late afternoon. As if this were where people who leaned to a certain philosophical bent came to hang out, not feeling comfortable at the Starbucks around the corner. Or any of the bodegas, Korean markets, or Indian groceries.

  There was no diversity. And an overload of testosterone and menace. This was what a gazelle feels like when it wanders into a pack of lions. A tendril of fear curled into my stomach and I pressed closer to Seth. I’ve never been more grateful for the ambiguously European melting-pot facial features I saw every morning in the mirror. I had never spent too much time feeling out of place—the neighborhood, my schools, the area was too diverse—and I was never ashamed, but this was definitely not a welcoming environment for someone like me.

  Seth had picked up on my tension. His arm and shoulder muscles were taut, ready to throw a punch. It must have shown on his face that he wasn’t the kind of man to screw with and the tension ratcheted down considerably. The men in the place may have been rough around the edges but they weren’t stupid. And they didn’t like strangers.

  A man stepped forward from the group. “Can I help you folks?”

  “I have a friend that got a nice piece done here and I was looking for something similar. A skull tattoo. I want to get this covered.”

  He lifted his shirt showing the mermaid again. I looked down at the floor when I heard some mutterings about “a nice piece” from the back of the group. The undercover thing had gotten a lot less fun since we’d arrived. Seth’s arm was rock hard as he dropped his shirt and turned toward the group. Clearly, he’d heard the mutterings as well. The guy who’d stepped forward motioned to the group to go into the back of the long, thin room where there was an incongruously flowered loveseat set in front of a flat-screen TV.

  “Whoever did that should find a new line of work. Did you have that done in the area?”

  “Bangkok. I was drunk.”

  “Everything those chinks do is shit.” The yell from the back of the room got everyone’s attention. Right place, indeed.

  Chapter

  21

  After making his excuses that he didn’t feel comfortable with his girl being around, Seth told the man he’d come back later alone. The guy’s nod of assent was absent of any suspicion or annoyance. I think he wanted me out of there as badly as we did. The drive back to the garage had us whipping down the interstate and weaving into tight spaces between the commuters who were distracted with thoughts of home on Friday afternoon.

  I could tell by the way he was slamming
the bike through the gears that Seth was more than pissed off. The contradiction between his apparent feelings about my treatment at the tattoo parlor and his seeming disregard for my safety on the back of the bike was the biggest indicator.

  We pulled into the parking lot and he slid off the seat before letting me get off.

  “Where are your gloves? Your hands have to be freezing.”

  I shrugged. I wasn’t about to raise his hackles any more than they already were. I knew there was a lot tied up in his feelings of anger and possession at that moment and, not too long ago, I might have waded in to set those fireworks off, but I wasn’t interested. He was hurting. His pride was hurting because those idiots had mouthed off about me and he’d had to just stand there. I was willing to take him down a few arrogant pegs when he was being a rigid, controlling ass about my job, but I didn’t enjoy kicking him simply to kick him.

  “Seth, it’s a case. You did the right thing holding back. I know you wanted to beat the crap out of them. And you could have. Rage alone would have taken care of it.”

  He took the helmet from my hands and hung it on the handlebar, fixing the strap. “It scares me. The rage I felt. That I still feel. That they were looking at you and talking about you that way. What I knew they were thinking.”

  I put my hand on his arm, wishing I could feel his skin instead of leather. I was in so much trouble with him. I knew he didn’t get it. I barely got it. The water had been churning between us for so long. When it finally broke on the shore, it had spread too far, too fast.

  “Hey, I get it. I do.” I hoped he could hear everything I wasn’t saying. The stuff I didn’t know how to put into words.

  “But you can’t accept it.”

  I knew that it was a question. I knew what he wanted me to answer. To make it simple. To make it easy. And safe.

  “You wouldn’t want me if I was able to accept it.”