That doesn’t mean anything, and you know it.
I do. Because they did die.
I thought they’d capture Malik. I thought I could free my brother.
“Eve?”
I blink. It’s Devon.
“I’m sorry, I guess I’m not quite myself today.”
“I can wrap up here, why don’t you go home and get some rest?” he says, excusing me from the dinner meeting.
“If you don’t mind, I would appreciate that.”
“Go. Check in with me tomorrow.”
“Thanks, Devon.”
I’m anxious when I arrive home, but don’t see the truck anywhere on my street. I’m not sure if it’s disappointment or relief I feel. It’s dark as I walk up the drive and get inside. I’m not sure what I’m expecting, honestly, but the house is empty. He isn’t here. Did I think he would be? Did I want him to be?
It’s hot inside, the windows have been closed up all day, but I don’t like running the AC—it’s too dry as it is here—so I open the windows instead. Denver cools down in the evenings anyway, but this summer has been weird. Global warming, I guess.
The house is small, just a single bedroom, a reasonably-sized living room and a kitchen with a breakfast nook. I like it though. I like small and cozy, and the backyard is great. Completely private. I rent the place from Devon, actually. It’s how I met him and eventually got the job at the office.
In the bedroom, I strip off my suit and hang it up, then make my way into the bathroom for a cool shower. My hair is so thick, I have to wash it at night for it to be dry by morning. I’m not about to blowdry it in this heat and don’t like spending time on styling it anyway.
Once I’m done, I switch off the water and push the curtain aside to grab a towel off the rack. I squeeze the moisture from my hair, wrap the towel around my body and step into the hallway.
A gasp catches in my throat when I do, and I stop dead in my tracks. He’s here. He’s sitting in the middle of my couch, legs spread wide, one arm resting over the back of the sofa, the other holding a beer. I hadn’t switched on any lamps, so I only see him from the light of the bathroom and I can’t quite make out his eyes.
“How did you get in here?”
He reaches out to switch on a lamp. It’s dim though, and casts an eerie glow on his face. He only answers me after taking a long drag of beer. “Front door.”
“I locked it.” I know it’s stupid as I say it. He’s been inside before. He’s been coming and going for I don’t know how long. He took my passport. He’s been through my things.
“I already told you that you need better locks.” He drains his beer and sets the empty bottle down on the coffee table before standing.
I swallow as he rises to his full height, everything looking almost comically miniature around him. He’s too big for this house and when he moves around the coffee table, I think he’s going to stub his shin, but he sidesteps it. He moves quietly, stealthily. It’s the military training he’s had. He was taught to move like a ghost. His eyes are set on me as he makes his way down the hallway. I clutch the towel tight to my chest and take a step backward, but my back hits the wall. He only stops when he’s a few inches from me.
“Have you been drinking all day?” I ask, craning my neck to look up at him. He’s a foot taller than me and I’m not wearing shoes, so I feel even smaller. More vulnerable.
He searches my face, then his eyes drop to my chest, moving up to my mouth before returning to meet my stare.
“You look good. The same.”
He’s drunk. He has to be. “What are you doing here?”
He looks me over again, and he’s too close. But when I try to scoot away, he puts one hand on the wall beside my head so I can’t.
“We have unfinished business,” he says. He doesn’t slur his words. He’s so big that maybe he just doesn’t get drunk no matter how much he drinks. His eyes have a look inside them that unnerves me. That makes my belly feel funny. Makes me very aware the only thing between us is the towel I’m holding. All it would take would be one tug from him, and…
“Zach?” I say, before I go down that road.
“Eve,” he replies, his voice a deep contrast to mine.
We stay like that a little longer, neither of us saying another word. He leans in closer, too close, our faces almost touching.
“You better go put some clothes on,” he says in a low rumble, but makes no move to release me from the cage he’s made with his body. I just stare up at him, my heart pounding so hard, I can hear the blood and adrenaline pumping through me.
Then, as quietly as he’d crowded me, he steps back. I exhale the breath I’ve been holding, and I notice he’s not wearing the dress shirt he had on earlier. He’s wearing a black T-shirt which he’s pulling over his head. I stand there watching, my mouth dry. He doesn’t make a move to shield himself from me. My gaze travels over his torso, thick and muscular, one half of him tattooed, the other…
Oh my God, the other half.
His skin, it’s badly damaged. Monstrous, almost. Burned flesh healed into bumpy, hideous scar tissue.
I remember what he asked me earlier today. If I knew what it felt like to have fire lick your skin. If I had ever smelled human flesh burn. How much pain had he been in? How had he survived at all?
As if he’s given me all he’s willing to share, he walks into the bathroom.
And…I gasp in shock at what I see there. My stomach turns. My hand moves to cover my mouth.
I didn’t think anything could be worse than what I saw on the front of his body, but what’s on his back makes the front pale in comparison. Partially burned flesh gives way to tattoos. More of them. Words this time. Words inked in a neat script.
Names.
Names I know.
He switches on the shower and when he turns to face me, he looks stone-cold sober.
“You going to join me?” he asks in that rumble of his, reaching to unbutton his pants.
My eyes drop to his hand as he unzips and I quickly shake myself out of it. Force my gaze back up to his.
He gives me a grin. No, it’s more of a smirk. Then he raises his eyebrows as if still waiting for an answer. I quickly turn away and practically run to my bedroom, hearing his laughter behind me before I slam the bedroom door shut and stand with my forehead leaning against it, trying to catch my breath.
His back. What I saw there, it’s a graveyard. The names of his men, those who died that night. Six rows of ink immortalizing his friends.
All those names.
All those lives.
My heart is racing and I think I’m going to be sick, but I force myself to take deep breaths in. Tell myself to calm down. I knew the past would catch up with me, didn’t I? All along, didn’t I know it? Here it is. In my house. Having a shower.
Hurrying, I put on my pajamas—a pair of shorts and a tank top which seem entirely inappropriate now that he’s here. But before I can think, I hear the shower switch off.
There’s no lock on my bedroom door, but even if there were, he’d probably have the key. I consider calling the police. Calling Devon. But my cell phone is in the living room and besides, how would I explain this?
“Knock-knock,” Zach says just before opening the bedroom door.
I stare at him like a deer in headlights, frozen to the spot, not sure what to say, to do. Not sure about anything at all.
His hair is wet and all he’s wearing is a towel slung low on his hips. He’s dripping water on the hardwood floors, but I know he doesn’t care.
He looks me over, but his expression doesn’t change and I can’t tell what he’s thinking.
“What do you want with me?” I ask stupidly.
He walks into the room and I instinctively back up when he approaches me. One side of his mouth curves upward and when he stops, he’s so close that water drips off his hair and onto my shoulder. What I see in his eyes makes my mouth go dry.
Desire. Want. Need. Lust. All those th
ings are there, and some part of me shares those things. Those feelings.
Only there’s one difference.
In his eyes, fear is absent. And I do feel afraid. This man whom I once trusted with my life scares the crap out of me right now.
“I bought you,” he whispers.
I can’t breathe. I can’t think. And the sound of blood pumping through my veins, pulsing inside my ears, is almost louder than his words.
“To save you from all those men.”
I don’t know if I’m disappointed by that.
“I wanted to kill him when he stripped you,” he continues.
I’m breathing again, short and choppy. His chest touches mine with every inhale he takes, and I can smell alcohol on his breath.
“If he hadn’t pulled you up on that stage, everything would have been different. We would have attacked.”
I know that. I know.
“But he did, and I failed to give the signal. And then there was the explosion and I thought you died anyway.”
“Zach—” I reach out a hand and touch his face, but he gives a shake of his head. My hand drops when he steps back and when he looks at me again, his eyes have gone hard.
“Get on the bed, Eve.”
I shrink backward, not sure I’ve heard correctly.
“Don’t stand there like you don’t hear me. Get on the goddamned bed.”
I’m trembling as I slide along the wall and to the bed. My hand shakes when I reach out to find the headboard. My belly heaves like I’m on a roller coaster. Never taking my eyes off him, I sit, hearing the familiar creak of the old box spring.
“Lie down.” He’s watching me, but he hasn’t moved any closer.
“Why?” I ask and my voice breaks. Every hair on my body is standing on end.
“Because I’m fucking drunk and I need to get some sleep.”
I wait.
He understands my hesitation, what I’m thinking.
“Don’t worry, I’m not going to collect on that night,” he says.
I exhale.
“Not now,” he adds.
I swallow, unable to speak. He’s staying here. With me. In my bed. It goes without saying. I draw back the blankets and lie down, my eyes never leaving his.
“I know you sleep on the other side, Eve.”
God. He’s been here when I was sleeping?
I scoot to my side and he nods, then takes a step toward the bed, sits, lies down. His weight has me rolling toward him—the mattress is old and I never bought a new one. He stretches out and turns to me before I have a chance to pull away so we’re lying on our sides, eye to eye for the first time. Neither of us speaks. I look at his face. Rugged, good-looking. Rough. Like he’s been through hell and back. And I guess he has.
“How did you survive?” I ask in a quiet voice.
“Local doctor found me. Carried me to his home. Took care of me. Hid me.”
For the first time, I reach out a hand and touch the scar on his face, the one that splits his eyebrow in half, then put my hand on his shoulder, on the bumpy skin. He tenses, but a moment later relaxes, and he doesn’t even blink. He lets me feel it, lets me run my fingertips over scar tissue, but when I reach his hand, he abruptly catches my wrist.
I gasp and we lie there for a minute, my heart racing, his eyes dark and intense. He then rolls me over so my back is to him and draws me into his chest. He’s still got my wrist and he keeps hold of it, his arm heavy across my middle. I feel him at my back then—feel his hardness—and I realize he’s naked. He’d only had on a towel and it must have fallen away because now he’s naked behind me. His thick cock is pressing against my ass, my lower back.
“Don’t worry,” he whispers huskily, his voice hoarse. “I told you I won’t collect. Not tonight.”
4
Zach
I don’t know what the hell I’m doing.
She’s asleep, but barely. Her sweet ass is glued to me, and the only thing keeping my rock-hard dick from sliding into her pussy is a flimsy pair of shorts she calls pajamas. And all I can do is lie here and hold her, and with every fucking inhale, I smell her, her hair, her skin, the heat coming off her.
The acrid scent of fear is gone. It dissipated when she finally fell asleep. I like knowing I scare her though. It’s fucked up, I know, but some twisted part of me likes having that power over her. Years ago, it hadn’t been fear she felt around me. She got anxious. Nervous. Like a girl with a crush. Now, things are different between us.
At the house today, I’d meant to interrogate her. To sit her down and get the answers I needed. But those questions, they got confused, everything got muddled. What happened that night two years ago was cut and dry. We’d been betrayed. She’d been a traitor. She’d set us up to save her brother. I believed that for the last year and a half when I’d learned she’d survived. Hell, I’d fucking mourned her death, only to find out she was living in the US. It didn’t fit. She’d cut some kind of deal, but with whom?
We’d been watching Armen El-Amin for years. He came into the picture after their parents died several years earlier. Shot down coming out of a restaurant. After that, their two other brothers, Rafi and Seth, disappeared. Fucking vanished into thin air. Eve was the only girl in the family, and the youngest sibling. When she’d come to us, she hadn’t been quite twenty. She’d been scared as hell. Fucking trembling. But she’d been desperate to save her brother Armen—the only family she had left.
I still remember the first day, seeing her sitting in that stark office after being questioned, waiting while we figured out if what she was telling us was true. To have El-Amin’s sister turn up and give us information just seemed too unbelievable. Too good to be true.
I watched from behind a one-way mirror. She’d sat there picking at her fingernails, and looking so fucking pretty. Innocent. Like she needed protecting. And she would once her brother found out what she’d done.
I was assigned to work with her. Well, I volunteered. It was foolish, I know, but I had to. I still remember how some of my soldiers would look at her. I had words with a few of them. She never knew it.
She came to trust me—at least I thought so—fairly quickly. That should have been a red flag right there. The intelligence she gave us was good though, and that’s why, the final night, the night we were supposed to take Armen down, I didn’t take enough care with things. I should have asked more questions.
The reason she came to us at all was to save Armen. She foolishly believed he could be saved, but her brother was a piece of shit. An assassin, essentially. But he wasn’t the big fish. We wanted the man he worked for. Malik, or as the locals called him, the Butcher.
A flash of memory from that night brings up the image I can’t seem to forget. A face. Eyes. Eyes I know, but can’t place.
I truly did believe she was part of the setup. Part of me still does, maybe. But seeing her today, seeing how she reacted to my questions, I’m not sure. No, I’m confused as fuck. Could it be that she wasn’t involved? That her brother had set her up? Or that he’d found out what she’d done and was willing to punish her the way he did? Stripping her naked in front of all those men. Selling her.
Thing is though, it doesn’t matter.
The names inked on my skin burn as I turn over to stare at the ceiling, as if calling me traitor for forgetting them.
Again.
It doesn’t matter because they died. And the reason they died is because I got distracted. I put the mission second. Second to her.
I failed them.
But that night, I couldn’t let what was happening to her go down. And I couldn’t open fire when she was in the room either, up on that fucking block, an easy target.
I turn back over to touch the small scar on her upper arm. I’d saved her from a bullet once. If I’d done my job that last night, given the order, she would have died. But my failure to do so killed six men loyal to me.
Fuck.
I wish I could sleep. Have some relief from the
guilt, the regret. I haven’t slept a full night through in years. And now, it’s because I’m doubting.
Again.
Was I wrong to come after her?
Is she innocent?
Will she be able to lead me to the true villains?
Suddenly irritated, I toss the sheet back and get out of the bed. I won’t be getting any sleep tonight. I grab a pair of sweats, a T-shirt, and running shoes out of my bag and go into the living room to get dressed. It’s almost dawn and I need to sweat. Run, and for one hour, empty my mind.
I go over that night again and again, and I need a fucking break.
When I get back to the house, the sun is breaking through the few clouds in the sky, coloring them a deep orange. The neighborhood is still quiet but when I open the front door, I smell coffee.
Eve turns to face me. She’s sitting at the kitchen table with a steaming mug in her hands. She isn’t wearing any makeup, her hair is in a ponytail and she’s still wearing that little pajama set. I’m not sure she realizes how much of her it leaves exposed, but I decide not to mention it. I’ll enjoy the view instead.
“Morning,” I say as I close the door behind me and walk into the kitchen.
“How long are you going to be here?”
I give her a lopsided grin and help myself to a cup of coffee, opening the fridge as I sip and taking out the bacon and eggs.
“Help yourself,” she says.
“I will. Have been.” I get a frying pan and set it on a burner. I know where everything is, and I wonder if she realizes how many times I’ve been in here the last few weeks. I slide six strips of bacon into the pan and crack four eggs before turning to her.
She shrinks back a little when I do.
“I have to go to work,” she says, but she hasn’t made a move to rise.
“Tell your boss you’re taking me to see the other houses on your list and that I’m picking you up at home.”
“I don’t want to lie to him.”
“Fine, then tell him I slept over.”
She looks scandalized. “I can’t do that.”
I shrug. “That’s really not my problem.” I drain the coffee from my cup before pouring a second one, and flipping the bacon over. Her chair scrapes across the floor as she rises. I don’t bother turning around.
Unhinged Page 4
