by Edie Harris
Vick murmured an excuse and followed her down the hall. “How are you holding up?” His voice was a low rumble at her ear, the heat from his body buffeting her back.
“I’m up.” What other choice did she have? Crumpling into a sobbing ball of snot and tears wasn’t exactly an option. The logical side of her brain knew this wasn’t as simple as Tobias and Vick had made it out to be—she couldn’t just take some personal time off from work, handle this mess and then go back to her utterly false “normal” life. A small corner of her psyche already mourned the loss of everything she’d spent the last year working toward, but the rest of her was on pause. No thinking, no reflection. Nothing until she wasn’t a dead woman walking.
Pushing open the door to her bedroom, she saw why Gavin hadn’t been standing with the rest of the guys when she and Vick arrived. Her ex-partner had been hard at work tidying up her space. Broken canvases had been removed from their hooks and stacked against one wall, a large pile of torn clothing in the far corner. Her bed had been stripped of linens, and shoes with snapped heels and torn-out linings had been piled at the foot of the bed. The picture frames with photos of her siblings and parents were gone, no trace of them anywhere, but she could tell the room had been much, much worse before Gavin got his hands on it, and she was thankful he’d spared her the jarring shock of this particularly intimate invasion. “Your people did this.”
“Yes.”
She looked at the closed French doors to her balcony. “Check the handles. Is the piece of fishing line still intact?” Stepping out of her Louboutins, she placed them gently on the mattress, then rolled down her stockings.
Vick moved to the doors. “It’s been snapped. So this was either an entrance or exit.” He made as if to turn, but froze at the sight of her undressing. Pale blue eyes—and she wondered if that was truly their color or another of his disguises, distinctive as the hue was—razed her, sending liquid heat spiraling through her limbs.
Not a good time, libido. She glared at him, irritation at her entire situation returning full force. “This ain’t a show, pal. Turn around and give me some goddamn privacy.”
His lips twitched, but he turned, apparently unconcerned with her waspish behavior. “I saw you looking at your bag.” He waited a beat, gaze fixed on the view through her balcony doors, big body blocking much of the light. “You wanted your Beretta, didn’t you?”
“It’s my version of a security blanket. Also, I don’t particularly enjoy being the only unarmed person in a room.” She tossed her bloody blouse in the corner with the rest of her shredded wardrobe, determined not to delve too deeply into how the damage to her home made her feel, knowing she wouldn’t like the answer. “Especially when I’m better with a gun than all of you combined.”
“Now you’re just being mean.”
“Funny thing, Vick—I’m not always a nice person, even on the days when I haven’t been shot.” The skirt was next, and, as she might as well go for fresh all the way down to the skin, she let her lingerie fly before turning to collect new clothes better suited for, well, running and jumping and climbing.
If Tobias said as much, she would junk-punch him.
“Can I please look at your wound now?”
With a fatigued sigh, she lifted her bare arm, examining the thin gash crusted in dried blood. One more scar to go with all the others she’d collected over the years. “Let me put some clothes on first, and then...yes. You can look at it.”
She thought she heard him mumble something about her clothes ruining all his fun, and bit back a helpless smile as she tugged on a no-fuss sports bra, cotton panties and skinny black jeans with a good bit of stretch to them. She stepped into the bathroom, risking opening a drawer to pull out a makeup-remover cloth and a hair tie. Face clean and hair tidied, she pulled a small, secondary first-aid kit from under the sink and reentered her room.
Setting the kit on the stripped mattress, she perched on the end of the bed. “Ready.”
To Vick’s credit, he immediately got down to business, his clenched jaw the only hint to the tension gripping him. Disinfectant wipes cleaned away the blood surrounding the injury before he set the kit in her lap and lowered himself to the bed, his attention fully focused on her wound. “Looks like the bullet just grazed you. I don’t think you’ll need stitches.” After treating the area with an antibacterial, he gently placed an adhesive gauze bandage over her upper arm, pressing the edges lightly to secure it to her skin as she struggled not to wince. “Take a couple of anti-inflammatories, and you should be fine.”
“Yes, doctor,” she teased before setting the kit aside and rising to her feet. Gingerly, she donned a white T-shirt and gray cashmere pullover before realizing he hadn’t moved from his spot on the end of the bed. Fingers curled around the hem of her sweater, she turned. “Vick?”
Bandage wrapper clutched in one fist, he stared up at her with an almost bleak expression in his eyes. “You’re so damn beautiful.” The wrapper crinkled as his grip tightened. “Being here with you is...surreal. I never—” He broke off, shaking his head.
Beth understood. Different reasons, same wonderment, but she, too, had never expected to be with this man again. No lies between them, just possibilities. Perhaps a few days from now, when this situation concerning the hit on her was resolved, they could discover those possibilities together, endlessly.
Then again, Vick might have other plans for when his self-imposed protection detail ended. Maybe returning to England was number one on his to-do list. As much as she wanted to ask him about his plans, now wasn’t the time. But later...definitely later.
Making a spot for herself between his knees, she settled her hands on his shoulders and let her thumbs brush the exposed skin above the band of his collar. “You know, you were rather rude to Detective Rossi.”
He tossed aside the wrapper and banded his arms around her waist, holding her in place. “You were staring at his tattoos.”
“It’s your fault, you know,” she whispered, leaning down until her lips brushed his ear. “You never should have fucked me with that ink on your shoulders. I’ve had years to imagine what it’d be like to trace every line and curve. With my tongue.”
“Jesus.” He shuddered before swiftly tugging her to him. Her arms looped around his neck while his hands roamed the length of her spine, petting, stroking. Licking his lips, he lowered his head, gaze slumberous and sexy as hell. “Come here, love. Give me a taste of what’s mine.”
“Elisabeth!”
Uh-oh. A hair’s-breadth away from being kissed out of her freaking mind was really not the right time to be reminded she had “guests.”
“Elisabeth Faraday.” Tobias’s sharp voice came again, drawing her—and a groaning Vick—quickly back to the crowded front room. “Did you get shot this morning and fail to mention it?”
Beth cringed at the sight of her brother’s thunderous expression, his cell gripped in a white-knuckled hand. “Um, yes?” When it looked as though he intended to yell at her some more, she rushed on. “But it’s not a big deal, I swear. How did you find out?”
Tobias lifted his phone. “Local news report of a ‘failed’ sniper shooting on the steps of the Art Institute. No intended targets identified, but come on, Beth. It’s got to be you.” He glared at her, fire in his gray eyes.
She cautiously shifted backward until she collided with the hard wall of Vick’s body. “Can we please not involve the FBI this time, or at least not mention me being there? The last thing I want is for word that I was shot to get back to Gillian through Rochon, because you know he’s bros with Special Agent Tight-Ass here in Chicago.”
At her mention of the FBI—and the agent Beth would forever consider her personal nemesis—Tobias sighed, Harding winced and Rossi hissed out a breath. Good to know I’m not the only one, she thought smugly.
Vick’s hand tightened on her hip.
“Special Agent Tight-Ass?”
“It’s what he is.” Crossing her arms over her chest, Beth turned to level him with an even stare. “Believe me, I’m doing you a favor by not introducing you.”
“I’ll try to remember to thank you later.” He paused, considering. “And what do you mean, ‘this time?’”
Nervously flipping her ponytail over her shoulder, she shifted her bare feet away from a few shards of broken dishware. “Um. Let’s just say there were some...growing pains when I first moved to town.”
Now it was Vick’s turn to look rage-y. “Growing pains that involved you getting shot?”
“Uh...”
Gavin cleared his throat. “I’m going out for a smoke.” Shooting her a pointed glance, he headed for the door.
“Wait a sec, I’ll join you.” Relieved to escape her spy’s interrogation, she grabbed her coat from the hook and dug in the undisturbed front closet for a pair of shoes—which happened to be a pair of ballet flats, utterly useless against the slush and cold. No matter, though; Beth was happy to tolerate icicle toes if it meant Gavin intended to talk to her. Really talk, that is.
She shivered when they breached the front door to the building, cautiously settling herself on the top-most step, thankfully clear of any snow or ice. Her jeans offered little protection against the cold of the concrete, but she ignored it, focusing instead on the metallic flick of her former partner’s lighter and the crisp sting of cigarette smoke in her nostrils as he settled his brawny body on the step next to her.
They sat in silence for long moments, nothing but the occasional drag followed by a relieved exhalation coming from Gavin. Beth stared unseeingly past the gate into the street, for once not bothering to look across the way at the now forever-dark window of Vick’s apartment. “When did you take up smoking again?” she finally asked.
“Needed a way to keep my mouth shut over in Moscow. Trained myself to pick up a cancer stick every time I was tempted to break cover.”
She shoved her chilled hands into the pockets of her coat, watching her clouded breath mingle with the wisps of smoke floating around their heads. “Smart. Stupid, because I remember how annoying you were when you quit the first time, but smart.” His chuckle forced a smile from her before she turned serious again. “You probably don’t like me asking, but...are you okay? Over there?”
“You mean now that I don’t have you watching my back anymore?” He bumped his shoulder against hers in a friendly tease. “Yeah, I’m good. Are you?”
She huffed out a wry laugh. “When the British government isn’t trying to off me, yes, life here is pretty good.”
“You don’t miss the old days at all?”
“Funny, this is the second time someone’s asked me that today.” Striving for patience, she tapped her stupid shoes against the lower step. “No. I don’t miss it. Doing what I did—what we did—fucked me up, and I was so immersed in the family and the business and the life that I didn’t see what it was doing to me.” There was a pang in her chest as her mind flashed back over the ten years she’d spent with a sniper rifle in hand. “I can’t claim brainwashing, because it’s so much more complicated than that, but I felt like it was just...embedded in me, you know? I’m a Faraday, and Faradays, for the last two hundred and forty-five years, always join the family business.” She sensed Gavin turned to look at her, but hell if she could face him—her ex-partner, her best friend—in this vulnerable moment, so she kept her gaze trained on the snow-covered cars parked along the curb. “I wasn’t smart like Gillian or Adam, or tough like Mom and Casey. And Tobias...he’s got that ice, like Dad does, that allows him to get shit done, no matter what. I was an atypical normal in a family of specials, so once I stumbled upon this one tiny talent—good aim, of all fucking things—I clung to it. I made it my thing. I made it impossible for them to ignore me.”
“You never told me any of this before.”
“Like I said, I was still immersed in it. I didn’t realize...but none of it matters now.”
“It matters if you keep shutting us out.”
Anger and guilt mixed sharply beneath her sternum. “I needed a change, Gav. No more family business.”
“Interesting how that translated into no more family, period.” The cigarette dangled limply between two large fingers, the knuckles busted from his early years boxing in the Navy. Cyrillic tattoos she’d never seen before had been inked into the skin immediately above, bleeding into the first joints in his fingers, seeming to highlight the long-healed bones and lingering scar tissue.
He caught her looking, fingers flexing convulsively under her regard. “I needed a change too. It’s why I took the assignment in Moscow after...after we got home.”
“Those look real.”
“They are real.”
Beth bit her lip against the instinctive urge to pry, chest tight with the need to know. But she’d given up both the right and the privilege to ask when she dropped her last name like so much garbage and fled to the Windy City. “Tell me why you’re really here.”
Another smoky exhalation. “The great thing about having dual citizenship,” he said quietly, “is no one ever stops you in Customs when you fly back into the country. My sweet Southern accent doesn’t hurt, either.”
Oh, God. “You’re a mule?”
“Fuck no. I’m helping to broker this deal with Pipe Marin for Polnoch’ Pulya.” His expression grim, he flicked some ash off the end of his cigarette. “And then I’m going to fucking bury every last one of them.”
So it wasn’t just that he’d needed a change after what they’d been through; Gavin needed to...atone. And he was doing it by letting one of the world’s most dangerous terrorist organizations turn him into their own personal tin-can telephone. Unable to find anything suitable to say in response, she rose.
“Hey.” Using the toe of his boot to stomp out his cigarette, Gavin captured her elbow in a firm grasp. “There’s something you need to know about Kabul.”
Temper and fear spiked in tandem, and she used the burst of adrenaline to twist out of his grip—a move he’d taught her during the first year of their partnership, during some downtime they’d had on assignment outside of Cairo. “Gavin, I’m glad to see you, and you know I love you like family, but I cannot talk about K-Kabul. Not with you.” God, she hated hearing her voice break, but she was triggering, hard, and that particular word was the detonator.
His expression was momentarily sympathetic before hardening again with determination. “I get that, but it’s important. Kedrov—”
She shook her head vehemently. “Don’t tell me. Don’t tell me a goddamn thing.” Anger mounting, she permitted herself to poke a pissed-off finger into Gavin’s unyielding chest. “No matter what’s going on upstairs, or whether or not I can ever come back here again, I am out of that life for good.” She might ache to hold her weapon where fear assailed her, or when she needed a touch of the familiar, but never again would she be a killer. “There’s no point in reading me in with intel I’ll never need.”
More than that, Beth wasn’t sure she could take knowing details of the political aftermath of that day. She’d managed to keep her ears closed to international news outlets reporting on the incident, not wanting to see the snapshots of either the smiling girls before their deaths or the gruesome rubble that snuffed out their lives.
If only she’d taken out Rawad al-Fariq before he’d entered the building, before the children had congregated beneath the first-floor awning. If only.
He studied her speculatively before nodding. “All right.” But his next words, leaving his lips in a rush, wiped all thought of anything but the here and now from her mind. “It was never babysitting, you know. We were partners.”
“Partners,” she repeated warily, hating that she feared this was a final goodbye for them yet hoping she would never see him again. Look
ing at him hurt in ways looking at her family never would, because he’d been there that day. Gavin had been there, in her ear, as her world fell apart.
His world, too, it seemed. She would do well to remember that.
“Best I ever had, B.” His throat worked, breath fogging the air as he glanced away from her. “Best friend I ever had, too, come to think of it.” He coughed lightly. “I can’t call or text because...you know...undercover and shit...but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to.” He lifted his gaze to hers. “So try not to get yourself offed, okay? At least not while I’m dark, because I’d hate to miss the funeral.”
Surrendering to impulse, she wrapped her arms around him in a ferocious hug, and this time, in her flat shoes, he had a couple of inches on her. “Copy that.”
“Attagirl.” A quick squeeze and he released her, and they climbed the stairs to her apartment in comfortable, comforting silence. It felt good having her friend back in her life, no matter for how brief a moment. It felt right.
As they reached the door, the detectives emerged, obviously having finished their discussion with Tobias. Harding merely nodded to her, but Rossi gave her a warm smile as he produced his card, handing it to her as they passed. “If you ever want a closer look at my tattoos, corazón.”
Shaking her head at his sass, she glanced at the card—Diego Rossi, Detective, Counterterrorism and Intelligence, Chicago Police Department—before pocketing it. “Diego, huh?”
Rossi grinned. “For what it’s worth, my name sounds even better when you scream it.”
Grinning helplessly, she shook her head as the flirtatious detective vanished around the corner. She could hear Tobias and Vick talking from the other side of the door, their words indistinct, but her attention was caught on Gavin.
He lingered on the landing. “I’ve got to go.”
She swallowed around the lump in her throat. “So soon?”
