by Susan Sey
“Everybody knows that.” Erik dropped into the receptionist’s chair, somewhat mollified by Nixie’s pacing. The more anxious she got, the better he felt. Getting her head on straight might be the only thing of any consequence he did tonight. “Everybody with half a brain, anyway.”
“Hey!” She stalked up to him, poked a finger into his deltoid hard enough to hurt. “That’s not fair. I’m new, not stupid.”
“No?” He closed his eyes and hoped she’d back off but she didn’t. He could still smell her, fresh and lemony. How the hell could she smell so good after a full shift, a tree burial and a near abduction? And why on earth would he even notice what she smelled like when his best friend had just been snatched by gang bangers? “Then stop acting like it.”
She hissed in a breath and he braced himself. That had been over the line, and he knew it. She was going to tell him to screw himself and his stupid clinic now, and he deserved it. But she didn’t. He opened his eyes, and found her staring down at him. Her eyes were hazel, he saw. Copper-flecked green and very, very steady.
“Why didn’t you tell the police who your mother is?” she asked softly. “You could’ve had the mayor, the chief of police and the police commissioner down here with one phone call. Why didn’t you do it?”
“I’m a grown man, Nixie. I don’t call in the mom squad to fix my problems.”
“I see. So Mary Jane’s safety ranks lower than preserving your ego?”
He stood up. “What, you’re a psychoanalyst now?”
“I know mommy issues when I see them. What exactly did your mom do to you that was so awful, anyway?” He walked away from her, but she was right at his elbow, nipping like a herding dog. “Are you really going to let your hang ups put your girlfriend at risk?”
“Me?” He huffed out an incredulous laugh. “I put Mary Jane at risk? Jesus, princess, that’s great. Let me run this down for you one more time, okay? You witnessed the abduction. You gave a statement to the police that made it look like Mary Jane ran off for a little fling with Tyrese ‘CPA-to-the-Dark-Side’ Jones while I called the cops like a jealous boyfriend. And suddenly she’s in trouble because I have mommy issues?”
Her pretty mouth snapped shut. She threaded a finger through one of those shiny curls of hers and frowned into the middle distance. “Okay, so there’s enough blame to go around.”
Erik dropped his head. “Jesus.”
“The question is, what are we going to do now?”
“We aren’t going to do anything. You’re going home. I’ll come back in the morning, do some door knocking. Somebody’s bound to know what’s going on.”
She swished her elbow away from his grip. “I want to go with you.”
“Like hell,” he said. “This isn’t exactly Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood.”
“No kidding?”
“You’d be a liability, Nixie. You’d just slow me down.”
“I might surprise you.”
“Yeah, you’re just full of surprises. But no, it’s too dangerous.” He grabbed at her elbow again, got it this time. Damn, it felt fragile. He gentled his grip until he wasn’t worried about her bones. The urge to tuck her away safely was strange and overpowering. She was much taller than Mary Jane, and clearly had some skill in the art of self-defense or else she’d have been the one riding off with a couple of under-aged felons. So why did he want to wrap her in cotton batting and lock her away? Mary Jane traipsed through this neighborhood twice a day and it had never put this kind of knot in his gut.
“I’m a big girl, Erik.” Her eyes were huge and intense, and she was still wearing his extra lab coat. It made her look small, breakable. “I feel responsible. I need to do something.”
“Let me take you home, Nixie. We’ll talk in the morning, okay? Maybe you can go to the police station, revise your statement. That’ll help more than anything.”
“You’ll go with me?”
“Sure,” he lied. He would be back here by first light, and without Nixie in tow. “I’ll call you after we’ve both gotten some sleep.”
He forced himself to meet that steady gaze. She finally nodded. “Okay,” she said. “Okay.”
It was nearly midnight when Nixie climbed out of Erik’s beat up Jeep Cherokee.
“I’ll walk you up,” he said, but Nixie waved him off.
“There’s a doorman,” she said, pointing to the brightly lit awning protecting the entrance to the Watergate. “I’ll be fine.”
The uniformed doorman swept open the doors as she spoke and Erik frowned, but nodded. “Okay.”
“You’ll call me first thing?”
“Yeah, sure.”
Nixie gave him a skeptical look, but he didn’t catch it. He was too busy looking innocent and studying the steering wheel. The man was a terrible liar. She shook her head.
“See you tomorrow, then.” She wanted to leave but worried guilt hung in the air around him like a miasma. She reached over and touched his arm. “She’s fine, Erik. I really think she is.”
“Yeah.” He gave her a crooked smile that clearly cost him an effort. “Of course she is.” Nixie shored up the crumbling walls around her heart. God, she was a sucker for the stiff upper lip.
She squeezed his arm, and it felt so solid and strong under her hand that she took an extra second to bask in the unexpected sense of safety. She was used to giving comfort, not taking it. Funny how she could do both with this man.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” she said again.
He waited until she was safely inside the building before pulling away and Nixie smiled. Wouldn’t his mother be pleased to see her boy showing such a decent set of manners? She glanced toward the Senator’s door as she was fitting her own key into the lock. It was silent and dark. Either nobody was home or nobody was up.
She hesitated a moment, then made a decision.
She rapped smartly on the Senator’s door. It took a few minutes, but eventually a light flipped on and the Senator herself appeared, wrapped in a brilliant blue silk robe.
“This had better be good,” she said.
“It is.” Nixie studied the Senator. “Your son is a terrible liar.”
“You didn’t have to wake me in the middle of the night to tell me that.”
“He’s trying to cut me out of something I need to do. I want you to help me get around him.”
The Senator stepped back, opened the door. “Come in.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Mary Jane hefted the emergency kit onto her shoulder and swallowed a huge lump of terrified rage. She didn’t look at the adolescent goons flanking her, just kept her eyes on her shoes. She didn’t need to look up to know they were marching her deep into the bowels of the Wash.
Washburn Towers was one of the newer projects and as such, its stairwells stank of cheap paint and exposed insulation along with the usual stew of grease, pot smoke and abandoned bodily fluids. Mary Jane was no snob. She handled the rawer elements of the human body all the time. A little puke and piss on the landing didn’t normally faze her. Neither did blood, but they were following fat black blobs of it like it was a trail of bread crumbs and Mary Jane couldn’t deny the little darts of panic streaking through her stomach.
Embrace it, she told herself. Use it. Let it make you stronger, not weaker. But her imagination loaded up horrifying images of Ty sprawled somewhere at the top of the stairs in a pool of his own blood, far beyond her ability to help him.
They turned a corner, started up another flight of stairs. Still following the trail of blood.
“Is it Ty?” she finally asked.
No answer.
She picked up the pace. If he wasn’t dead, she was going to kill him herself. Hippocrates would surely understand. Though at this point, breaking her oath would be the least of her transgressions.
The goon on her left knocked on the door, a specific-sounding combination of raps and pauses. Mary Jane closed her eyes. Boys and their secret codes. God.
The door opened just wide enough
for her and the goon squad to be yanked through.
“All right,” she said, digging into her bag for a pair of rubber gloves. “Where’s the bleeder?” She snapped them on and looked around the circle of painfully young faces gazing at her with such open hostility. They hated her, she realized with a sinking certainty. No, not her. Just her face, her hair, her skin. Her privilege. Her refusal to show fear to a group of heavily armed teenagers. She hardly knew which.
“The bleeder?” she asked again, this time putting a little more authority into her voice. She glanced around the room like she was taking it in, but in reality, she was just avoiding eye contact. It was one thing to be authoritative. It was quite another to issue a direct challenge.
The apartment was small and generic, but clean. There were more bookshelves than anything, each one stuffed to overflowing with everything from economic and political theory to John Grisham’s latest. A laptop hummed gently on a table by the window, another blinked from the kitchen counter. She could see it from the door.
The floors were a dull grey linoleum, but clean except for the blood. There was less here, she saw with a surge of relief. He must have either clotted on his own or done a little first aid. Temper skated in hot after the relief, and she flipped her bag back onto her shoulder.
“Never mind. I’ll just follow the trail.”
The bodies parted silently for her and she didn’t bother to knock. She stepped up to the closed door that presumably led to the bedroom--Ty’s bedroom, God help her--and let herself in. She closed the door against the blank, hateful eyes that followed her, then turned and found him there. Perfectly alive if a little dinged up. Relief was a choking pressure in her throat, so she glared at him.
He smiled back at her from the bed where he sprawled, shirtless, a bloody bandage swathing his left shoulder. In spite of the chilly air, his chest was sheened with sweat and Mary Jane tried not to notice the way his dark skin gleamed. How it threw all those long, lean muscles into gorgeous, touchable relief.
“Dr. Riley,” he said, his voice was as smooth as aged whiskey even if his smile was a little pinched around the edges. “How good of you to come.”
“Did I have a choice?”
He lifted his good shoulder in a lopsided shrug. “I’ve been drilling the boys on their manners but they were a little worked up when they left.”
“First time they’d seen a gunshot?” Mary Jane dropped her bag on the bed next to his shoulder. She smiled when he winced.
“In this neighborhood?” He gave her an amused look. “We see more blood than this before breakfast most days. Nah. They were just worried Marcus P was going to kick their asses.”
“For what?”
“For shooting his money man.”
Mary Jane froze. “Those were the boys who shot you?”
“Accidentally.” He shrugged. “Occupational hazard.”
“Sure. I guess you should expect to get shot when you arm children for a living.”
“Hey, I didn’t give them guns. I just crunch the numbers.”
“So they can make more money to buy more guns.”
“So they can run their business as efficiently as possible, which, yes, results in more money. A great deal of which goes back into the neighborhood.” He slanted her a look, formidable even sprawled across the bed. “I don’t see anybody else lining up to give these folks money or jobs, do you, Mary Jane?”
She glared at him, a familiar helplessness already curling into her belly. “I’m not having this argument again,” she said. They’d had it too many times already and Mary Jane never won. “Just...show me your shoulder, all right?”
He waved a casual hand toward his bandage. “Help yourself, doc.”
She snipped through the gauze wrapping, peeled it back and inspected the wound. If her stomach twisted at the sight of his elegantly powerful shoulder ripped open by a bullet, she didn’t let it show on her face. She eased him forward to have a look at his shoulder blade.
“No exit wound,” she said.
He grinned at her. “If there was, you wouldn’t be here.”
She dropped his shoulder back to the bed without ceremony, took savage satisfaction in his grunt of pain. “You’re lucky I’m here at all. Your boys almost brought you Nixie Leighton-Brace by mistake.”
His dark eyes went wide, then he laughed. “Not that I don’t think you’re beautiful, doc, but how would my boys have mistaken you for a rich, famous celebrity?”
“She was wearing a lab coat, standing outside the clinic. They had instructions to grab the lady doctor, so they were trying to grab her when I happened by.”
“What the hell is Nixie Leighton-Brace doing in Anacostia? I didn’t think we were third world enough for her.”
“She’s on hiatus. She’s experiencing the real world via my receptionist’s desk. It’s a long story. Don’t ask.”
Mary Jane doused a square of gauze with alcohol and dabbed gently at the wound. Ty hissed and she frowned at him. “Serves you right, you jerk.”
“Come on, MJ,” he said, a trace of weariness under his trademark smoothness. “Don’t be like that.”
“Don’t be like what?” She adjusted the latex gloves on hands that wanted to tremble. “Don’t be pissed at you for choosing a life that gets you shot at on a daily basis? Or don’t be pissed because you chose it over me?”
He didn’t answer. Not that she’d expected him to. That was another argument they’d worn out.
Mary Jane ripped open a sterile pair of forceps and went after the bullet. Ty closed his eyes. She could see the muscle in his jaw working and she forced back the tears that wanted to well up. She needed clear eyes if she wanted to work. If she wanted to make right choices. Ty had a way of screwing with her vision.
She finally pulled out the mangled slug and showed it to him. “Nice. You want me to sew it up pretty or do you want a nice scar for the street cred?”
She didn’t expect an answer, nor did she get one. “I’m making it pretty,” she said, threading her needle. “God knows you don’t need any more idol worship.”
He sat up and caught her wrist before she could take the first stitch. “Mary Jane. Look at me.”
She focused on the bedspread between his knees. He took her chin, brought her gaze to his. “I know you don’t understand.”
“Then make me,” she said, her voice fierce and jagged. “Make me understand.”
“I can’t. I wish I could. But you need to know I never meant for this to happen. I never meant to break your heart.”
“God.” She wrenched her chin from his fingers, hating the way every inch of her skin warmed at his touch. “It was years ago, Ty. We were years ago. Back when you wanted to be an executive and I wanted to be a doctor. Back when we both thought we could be more than where we were from.”
“And here we are, working within half a mile of each other.”
Mary Jane made her voice cold. “We’re working worlds apart, Ty. Worlds and worlds.”
He eased his grip on her wrist, slid his fingers through hers. “I tried to live in your world, babe. God knows I tried. You saw how that turned out.”
“I saw you get caught up in the rush of playing with other people’s money. I saw you get sucked into a culture of greed and risk and I saw how it screwed with your moral compass.”
“My moral compass?” He shook his head. “Business is war, babe. Soldiers follow orders, not a moral compass.”
“So, what, you weren’t guilty of anything? You were just a casualty of war?”
“Hell yes.”
“And you think that makes it okay to join a gang?”
“I didn’t join anything. Maybe I’m a mercenary, but I’m an independent mercenary. I don’t do anything but the books.” He pressed her hand between his when she tried to pull it away. “Seriously, MJ. I know you don’t like the people I work for, but how different are they really from the assholes I used to work for when I was legit? You can shoot a man, or you can strip him of
his dreams and ambition. He’s dead either way, so what difference does it make how he got wounded?”
She stared at him. “You can ask me that with the bullet hole in your shoulder still bleeding?”
“Yeah, I can. I’ve been hit both ways now. I preferred the bullet.”
She jerked her hand free of his and applied herself to stitching him up. It cost her to put even one more hole in his beautiful, stubborn hide, but she didn’t let him see that. She focused on her work to the exclusion of all else. It was what she always did.
She snipped off the thread. “I’m not giving you any painkillers.”
“I wouldn’t take them even if you did.” He laid back, closed his eyes. “I may work for pushers, but I don’t sample the merchandise.”
Mary Jane frowned. She didn’t like the way sweat had beaded on his forehead, or the way he’d gone ashen under the rich cocoa of his skin. She shook a couple antibiotics out of a vial and knelt down beside the bed.
“Hey,” she said, tapping a fingernail against his cheek. “Take these.”
He rolled his head to the side, opened clear dark eyes. “What will you give me if I do?”
She recognized that look, that tone. It pulled at her with a traitorous warmth, tempted her to ante up a really excellent bribe. Something that involved lots of skin and heat and rumpled sheets. He must’ve seen it in her face, the wanting that never fully died, because he reached out to finger a lock of her hair.
“Stay with me, MJ. Just tonight.”
She shook her head. She was pretty sure that no wasn’t the first thing she’d say if she risked opening her mouth. He tugged gently on her hair and she bowed under the silent request. God she missed his touch. He leaned forward, as if to whisper something, but it wasn’t words that hit her ear. It was his mouth. His hot, magical, seeking mouth. Time flipped, twisted, stretched, until she couldn’t remember if he’d ever been away. If they’d ever been apart. Had she really denied herself this? Had she really convinced herself she didn’t want it? Didn’t want him?
He nipped at the shell of her ear until she heard herself sigh, half resignation, half desire. She could feel him smiling as he dragged that talented mouth lower, ran a chain of tiny kisses along her throat, her collar bone.
