CLEAN to the BONE

by Heather R. Blair

He stared into space, rubbing at the sharp stab the thought had sent through his chest. But he couldn’t rub the warning away.

  The question was a chilling one. He had nothing to offer someone like Charlie, nothing beyond a night or two.

  And she deserved a lot more than that. A lot more than him.

  He shifted in his seat and downed the shot. He had been right when he’d left before and Stacia was right now: he should stay the hell away from Charlie.

  For both their sakes.

  When he finally got back to his room, it was late. Very late. He’d been hit on tag-team style for that last half hour by a pair of lookalike blonds at the bar. He had been pleasant, but cool. Not that he hadn’t been tempted. He had, because zoning out and burying himself in something willing and warm and soft would be a far more effective and pleasant escape than the alcohol.

  Unfortunately, Charlie was the only woman he wanted to touch. Anything less wouldn’t do. So he drank until he was semi-okay with going to bed alone. He sank down on the edge of the hotel bed, stripped to his boxers, about to shut off the light.

  Then he heard something over the squeak of his mattress.

  Something soft and broken, like a muffled sob. His whiskey-laden head came up. Then he heard it again. Crying.

  Charlie.

  Chapter Seventeen

  A heartbeat later, Jake was at the door to her room for the second time that night. He rapped sharply. Nothing. He couldn’t tell if she was ignoring him or not, but it didn’t matter. His gaze flicked up and down the hall before Jake turned his body to block his hands from the camera. With any luck, he’d look like some drunk who gotten locked out of his room—if there was even anyone watching. He knew damn well Tomas didn’t employ round-the-clock security.

  While Jake was perfectly capable of taking the door off its hinges as he’d considered earlier, he didn’t need to do anything quite so dramatic or time-consuming. There was a digital sweep for electronic key cards in his bag of tricks. The security companies kept updating the tech, of course, but the black market was nothing if not adaptable. For every update that was released, two ways around it followed soon after—one reason why he always engaged both the dead bolt and the chain in his own rooms. There was no replacement for old-fashioned security. Like he’d told Tomas, a good door and a solid lock—and a dog—were still about the best deterrents for your run-of-the-mill thief.

  He slid the fake card attached to a powerful scanner into the lock. Seconds later, it locked onto the right code. The green light flashed. There was a soft click as the lock released, but the door still wouldn’t budge. He almost smiled. Charlie had set the dead bolt, but he wasn’t a run-of-the-mill thief. And this was a lousy-ass dead bolt. Sliding the keycard in the too-wide gap between the door and the jamb, he shook his head. He’d have to give Tomas another lecture.

  A couple of flicks of the wrist later and the dead bolt slid free.

  He was in.

  If it hadn’t been for the crack in the curtains letting in a smudge of gray light, he wouldn’t have been able to see her. As it was, he almost wished he couldn’t. Charlie was curled into a tight ball in the middle of the bed, shaking, her cheeks wet. The covers lay in a cast-off heap on the floor. He could hear what she was saying now. The same name, over and over. Emily.

  His stomach lurched with unwelcome memories. Stacia used to sound like that, calling out for their mother in the middle of the night at the orphanage.

  He didn’t even think about it. He slid onto the bed, curling his body around Charlie’s. She stiffened and jerked away with a startled cry, but he wrapped an arm around her middle and yanked her back.

  “Charlie, shhh, baby, it’s me.”

  There was a sharp intake of breath. Then she shuddered once more, before going still. “Jake?” The tear-wet whisper tore at him. “How did you— What are you —”

  He ignored the incoherent inquisition, pulling her more firmly against him, tucking her head under his chin. “Tell me. And no bullshit about how it was just a nightmare. I know better. Who is Emily?” But Jake was afraid he already knew. Those drawings in her kitchen. The ones he’d mistakenly thought were hers.

  Charlie said nothing for a long time. There was only the sound of her breathing whistling in and out. When he started to wonder if she’d fallen back asleep, the words came, halting and slow.

  “Emily was my sister.”

  Was. Fucking Christ. He swallowed. But Jake kept silent, letting her work up to it while he held her, his lips against her hair.

  “She was kidnapped when I was seven. It happened right in front of me.” She shivered. “We had separate beds, but I always crawled into hers as soon as the lights went out. Mom and her boyfriends sometimes got really loud with the fighting and . . . you know.”

  His arms tightened reflexively.

  “I heard something scratching against the window. I begged Em go and shut it.” Her lips trembled. “She was scared of the dark, but she did it because I asked her to.” Her voice broke. “I thought it was a spider. But it was much worse. When she reached out to pull the window down, they grabbed her. Yanked her right out of the window. Her nightgown caught on a nail, and they tore it, getting her out. I don’t know how long I lay there, frozen watching that bit of fabric waving back and forth.” Jake closed his eyes. He knew exactly how that felt, the detachment, the blank emptiness of it. Boom. “It didn’t seem real. One second she was there, and then she was gone. Just gone.”

  Charlie started shaking again. “I couldn’t move, I couldn’t do anything, I was frozen stiff.” The disgust in her voice had Jake opening his eyes, frowning down at the crown of her head. Even though this, too, he understood.

  “You were a baby, darl. Just a little girl. What could you have done?”

  “I could’ve screamed, ran out into the other room. Made someone listen. Instead I just laid there. Until I heard a car start up. The lights hit the window and it was like I could move again. But by the time I got my mom and her friends to stop partying and pay attention, it was too late. They were gone.” She bit her lip and looked away, avoiding his gaze. “I was a coward.”

  “Fuck that shit.” Unlike his own, Charlie’s guilt made him angry. Furious that she’d carried such a burden for so long. “The woman who found me bleeding out in her spare room and stood up to a couple of monsters in human form to save my life is no goddamn coward. How many people do you think could have done that? You’re the farthest thing from a coward, love.”

  She laughed helplessly, but it was more a sob. “Why couldn’t I save her then, Jake? Why? She was the only person who really gave a damn about me after my grandparents were gone. Mom wasn’t abusive. Not really, just . . . ambivalent. Dad was never around, but Em, she was my whole world.” The sob worked free, thickening her voice. “I thought she was magic, like a fairy princess. Even her hair was like real gold. You know that story about Rumpelstiltskin?”

  He made a soft noise of assent, but Charlie barely seemed to be talking to him anymore, her words so faint he could hardly catch them.

  “It was my favorite. Em used to read it to me, every night. I’d sit there and play with her hair. I always imagined the straw the miller’s wife spun into gold was her hair. It was part of her magic. Everybody loved Emily. She got all the attention. Half the time no one even noticed me.” She pressed her lips together and for a long time she didn’t speak. When she did, her whisper was thick with self-loathing. “Sometimes it made me so mad. I loved her, but that made me mad. Sick, huh?”

  “Oh darl, no—“

  Charlie cut him off, her voice dull. “They found her dead in a ditch up by the high school a week later. She was only one of three. Pretty little girls the police thought had been targeted because they’d all recently been written up in local papers. Em had won a blue ribbon at the art fair just a couple of weeks before she disappeared. People were terrified. Even my mom woke up. For awhile. She’d never been a good parent, but after what happened to Em, things got better
. Sick.” Charlie said again, choking out a laugh that clawed at Jake’s insides. “My dad showed up for the funeral. I didn’t even know who he was at first, can you believe that? He stayed with us for a month. Mom stopped drinking. Hell, she even read to me sometimes. Then one day we woke up and he was gone. By the end of the week, my mom was drunk again and she stayed drunk or high till the day she died. Twelve years later, she passed out taking a bath and drowned.”

  His arms tightened again, but he said nothing, letting her get it all out.

  “Don’t worry,” she said, trying to comfort him, which struck Jake as slightly obscene given all she’d been through. “I wasn’t the one that found her. She gave me away to her sister about a year after Em was killed.”

  He took a deep breath. “Charlie . . .”

  “They never caught the guy who did it. Nobody ever saw him except me and I didn’t see anything that could help.” She sucked in a breath. “I wish I had. Sometimes in the dreams I think I do.”

  “I know about dreams like that. It’s your mind messing with you, trying to make sense out of something that will never ever make sense. Changing, rearranging. It’ll drive you insane if you let it.”

  Charlie rolled to her side, her eyes on him. “Is that what happens in the nightmares you have? About your mom?”

  He nodded without speaking. He wasn’t always sure what was real and what he’d embellished or blanked out over the years. Her fingers brushed his arm, stroking.

  “She wasn’t like my mom, I take it,” Charlie said softly.

  “From what you said? No. She was pretty much perfect.” He took a breath. The memories had faded over the years, some blessedly, but he still had her smell. The curve of her cheek, the way her eyes would crinkle when she laughed. “I mean, what little boy doesn’t think his mum is perfect, right?” He laughed softly. “But mine really was. Every single memory I have of her is beautiful and sweet and funny and kind. Not that I have many. I was wasn’t even five when she was killed. When she was shot and killed.” He didn’t find it necessary to mention the rest.

  Charlie must have caught something in his tone anyway. “Did you see it?”

  “Yes.” He forced the word out. “So did my dad.”

  Witnessing what happened to his mother had been awful enough for Jake, who hadn’t been old enough to really comprehend what was happening, but for his father . . .

  He shuddered.

  Something in John Harris had broken that day. He’d never been a good person—or a great parent. Even at such a young age, Jake had felt his father’s resentment for him and Stacia. But the love Mum had lavished on them had made up, mostly, for John’s comparative coldness. It wasn’t until the man had returned and stolen Stacia and Jake from their foster home in Longreach that Jake had realized the extent of that detachment. They’d been nothing more than a means to an end for his father, tools to use in his own obsession to take down Darnell. Jake especially.

  John’s idea of good parenting had been to take his outback-raised kids to Sydney, where he pushed Jake to be a better criminal, to look at every person, every store as a mark. Everywhere they went the questions were always the same: How would you toss this place? Where are the weak points? How would you get out?

  That was nothing compared to what John liked to call “conditioning.”

  Is that all you got, boy? John would taunt over and over, slamming a hardened fist into Jake’s skinny eleven-year-old ribs. Hell, he hadn’t been able to breath without pain for over a year. Yet another thing he’d never mentioned to Stacia.

  When John had died on a job gone bad, one more in a string of failed attempts to realize his wild plan to take down Darnell, Jake hadn’t known how to feel. He’d listened to the bloke who brought him the news that his father had been stabbed and tossed in the harbor. Just listened without saying a damn word. Maybe because it hadn’t seemed quite real. John had already been dead to him once and he hadn’t really missed him then either. If that made him a bad son, so be it.

  He sighed, looking down at Charlie. At least he’d had his mother. He’d known that precious sense of safety and warmth, however briefly. “I still have nightmares, too. You know that.”

  She didn’t say anything but shifted closer. Jake lifted his arm and she shocked him by snuggling in, her cheek soft against his chest. He was glad she wasn’t pressing him for details, because he still couldn’t talk about it. He’d never talked about it, not to anyone but Stace.

  Charlie didn’t rush to say she was sorry for him. Strange as it was, that silence comforted him. Words didn’t cover some wounds. That connection he’d felt with her from day one was suddenly making a lot more sense. There was no bond like devastating loss.

  Her hair brushed his lips, silken and warm. Jake watched his breath stir the bright strands, his heart suddenly beating faster. Maybe this is what happened when two broken people came together. Her jagged edges called to his, like a magnet, powerful and insistent, trying to make a whole.

  The possibility both tantalized and terrified him.

  They lay in silence for a long while. Then Charlie stirred. “Jake, you should—”

  “I’m going to stay here tonight, so don’t ask me to leave.” She started, but he only tightened his hold on her, his tone brooking no argument. “I promise I’ll be back in my own room without anyone”—especially his goddamn sister—“being the wiser, but I’m not leaving you right now. Besides, it’s not like we haven’t shared a bed before,” he teased.

  She didn’t respond, but slowly Charlie relaxed against him once more.

  “I don’t want you to go,” she whispered a long while later.

  Jake held very still. “You don’t?”

  “No. Stay.”

  “All right.”

  Minutes later, her breathing deepened. When he looked down again, her eyes were closed, lashes soft and dark against the paleness of her skin. Her lips were parted, the fingers of one hand curled next to her cheek resting on his bare chest.

  Jake closed his eyes, something settling deep inside him. He’d been worried about the possibility of falling for Charlie, but he wasn’t worried anymore.

  It was too late.

  He was already gone.

  Chapter Eighteen

  A stealthy whisper woke him up. Jake had barely closed his eyes, having lain awake thinking about too many things for far too long. Dawn had yet to lighten the curtains. At first, he thought he’d imagined the snick of a lock being coaxed open. Then a breeze snuck into the room, warm and soft.

  Followed by a quiet footfall and the snap of a switchblade. Jake barely had time to register that his Sig was sitting on his nightstand in his room next door before a shadow bent over Charlie’s side of the bed.

  He didn’t know who was more surprised when he lifted his head, Timor or himself. But he damn well knew who reacted first. Jake launched himself at the smaller man without a sound, leaping over Charlie’s sleeping form. His shoulder struck a hard midsection as they both went down with a crash.

  “You fucker,” Timor swore, hitting the hardwood floor hard. The thug managed to hold on to his knife. He swung the blade at Jake’s face, slashing his forearm instead when Jake threw it up to protect his eyes. The burn was immediate but bearable. Jake threw a punch with his other hand, catching Darnell’s goon upside the head.

  With another curse, Timor scrambled back like a spider, the blade winking between his dark fingers. He tore at the curtains, pulling himself upright with one hand, revealing the pink light of dawn breaking over the city.

  Jake stood in a half crouch, keeping himself between the man and the bed. Timor’s dark eyes flicked from Jake to where Charlie had sat up in the bed, her mouth half-open, her hair sticking straight up. “Hey, little piggy. I like the dye job. Can’t wait to stick you.” His smile was evil. “And maybe not just with this knife.” His eyes returned to Jake. “Think she’ll squeal like your mom did?”

  Jake went still. His mind spun Timor’s words over and over
in his head as he stared across the room, his heart pounding in his chest. Timor had to be in his mid to late forties. If he had been there the day their mother died, he’d have been young. Very young. But it was possible.

  “Charlie, get the fuck out of here. Now.”

  His quiet, steely words seemed to snap her out of her daze. She glared at him and then immediately ignored his command to leap for the phone. At the same time, Timor spun and ran out onto the balcony. Silently, Jake followed.

  Had that fucker been there that day or was this another of Darnell’s ploys? He couldn’t remember seeing Timor from the kitchen window. Of course, he hadn’t really gotten a good look at any of the men who had hurt his mother. Only Darnell stood out in his mind. The rest were vague shadows.

  It could be true.

  Had Timor been planning on raping Charlie while Jake slept next door? He ground his teeth together, barely feeling the warm blood trickling down his wrist.

  Head down, shoulders tight, he stalked out into the warm delta sunrise. Timor was still scrambling down the side of the building. He hit the sidewalk seconds later, triumphantly holding up the bloody knife. “I marked you, and soon I’ll mark her, too.”

  Timor laughed, sure he was home free, but the sound turned to a strangled gurgle when Jake took two running steps and vaulted off the balcony.

  It was a good twelve-foot free fall, but he’d managed farther drops before. For Jake, parkour had always been more than a cool pastime to impress his friends. He’d started as a preteen. Not for fun—for the conditioning. He’d kept it up over the years. The skill had come in handy on more than one job.

  Of course, he hadn’t been barefoot for any of those jobs.

  The landing stung, but he was prepared for that, rolling up to the balls of his feet and then over into a forward roll onto the sidewalk. Timor was already running, vanishing around the corner.

  Jake tore off after him, ignoring the trail of blood he left in his wake.