by Holley Trent
“Wait,” she said. “Not here.”
He looked up at her, his expression quizzical.
The small room had filled. There were already eight people standing about waiting to serve themselves.
Felipe didn’t seem bothered by it, but to Sarah, it was as if she’d been dropped into the middle of a stampede. She didn’t know these people. Didn’t trust them.
An older woman smiled as she walked past and said, “Glad this heat wave is letting up a bit, aren’t you?”
Sarah returned her smile, weakly, and managed a high-pitched “Mm-hmm,” in response, nodding her head too fast, too franticly.
An elderly man followed the woman, saying, “She’s never been much for the heat.” He winked at Sarah and rested a hand on her shoulder.
She flinched, but fixed her face before the man could take offense. She could see Felipe in her peripheral vision, moving closer.
Good. A buffer.
She shifted her weight to the other hip and flexed her tired wrists, which had become stressed from the weight of the dinner plates.
The man droned on, his hand still on her shoulder, squeezing. “I remember when I was kid and it was hot like this—”
Felipe stepped in and grabbed the plates. “Querida, estás cansada. Vamos.”
Her mouth opened then closed without a word as she fixed on Felipe’s gaze.
What’s wrong with me? Brain is like cotton.
She knew. Tired. Hungry. Her Shrew body didn’t like that. It wanted its due.
Felipe’s lips parted once more. “¿Querida, estás bien?”
She could hardly make sense of the words. The only things that seemed significant in the universe at that particular moment were Felipe’s lips. His mouth. Tongue.
She swallowed the lump in her throat.
“¿Querida?” He nudged, now insinuating himself so close, the older man dropped his hand.
She gave a long blink and blew out a ragged exhale. Play along. Smiling at the stranger, she apologized. “Uh. Lo siento.”
The man covered his belly with his hands and chuckled. “Honey, you don’t speak English? Just as well. My wife says I don’t half speak English, either.”
He laughed again at his own joke, damn near wheezing.
His wife intervened. “Lord, don’t talk those folks to death. Come on and fix your plate.”
Sarah offered the stranger an apologetic little smile as she backed away, and pried the utensil rolls from beneath Felipe’s arm. Still playing along, she wrapped her arm around his waist and he guided her to the staircase. They climbed the stairs without her paying much attention to the rises and runs, and then they were in front of a room that must have been theirs. Felipe’s backpack hung on the knob.
Sarah grabbed the bag, and tried the knob. The doors were usually unlocked when guests weren’t in their rooms. The old locks didn’t work well with their keys anymore. Most guests, fortunately, were civilized enough not to steal.
She pushed. The door swung inward. She let Felipe walk ahead and set the dishes on the small table.
Sarah lingered in the doorway holding Felipe’s bag, taking account of the mauve shag carpet she hadn’t paid much attention to before. The walls were a dusky pink color plucked from the floral-print wallpaper border’s 1980’s palette. That had been the last update to the décor, and Eric knew a makeover was overdue. He claimed he had one planned for that very summer.
There was no overhead light, only a thirty-year-old bronze floor lamp that leaned precariously into the far corner behind the single wingback chair.
Seeing it, Felipe strode over and clicked it on. He next sat on the chair and made quick work of removing his shoes.
She hadn’t noticed how dated the place was before. She probably shouldn’t have been paying too much attention to it, but Felipe’s presence was giving her pause where she normally would have had action. Normally, she would have sat and ate, décor be damned. But him being there made her watch and wait for his next move.
“Come in, querida.” He tossed his shoes beside the chair and made a come here gesture with his hands.
“You don’t have to call me that. I know it was just a front for that guy.”
She nudged their bags inside and pushed the door closed over the carpet’s high pile. She wondered what Eric planned to replace the shag with as she locked the door. Hopefully, something that created less friction.
“You think I can stop now that I’ve started? It just slips off my tongue. If it offends you, I’ll try harder.”
“No, not offended…”
“Estupendo.” He stood, loped to the dresser, grabbed one of the plates, and sat with it on the edge of the bed.
She figured she might as well follow in suit. She felt dumb standing there by the door as if he was going to do her some harm.
She pulled back the old flannel curtains and took stock of their position in the inn. A relieved sigh escaped her lips. They faced the front lot, and not the woods. She’d never been afraid of the dark and the thoughts of bogeymen didn’t scare her. After all, she was one of those monsters, in a way. But, she’d been on high alert for so many weeks on end, she was having a hard time coming down from it. Everything was putting her on edge. Sleeping with the woods, teeming with unknown threats, abutting their room would be too much for her.
She jiggled the locks, testing them once, then twice, ensuring there’d be no threat from outside before she let the curtains fall.
When she turned, Felipe was twirling his fork between his long fingers and watching her.
“You must think I’m neurotic.” She moved from the window, stopping halfway between the food on the dresser and the bed. Which did she want more? Her hand flitted over her belly, idly, as she took stock of her body. Am I hungry? Or more tired?
Tired seemed to be winning the battle, but she should eat a little something. While undercover, she hadn’t been eating well or sleeping much. There hadn’t been time, and she couldn’t have been everywhere at once. She’d spent more hours at the club than she’d she technically been on schedule to work. It was a solo gig, so that meant if she left, there would have been no one else to watch over those girls and women.
And when she wasn’t at the club, she had infrequent meetings with her FBI contact, or she’d gone out to talk to people in the community, trying to extract information that would help convict the club owners.
She’d been a perpetual motion machine, and now she felt like she could hardly move at all.
She blew out a breath and dragged her tongue over dry lips.
Eat. Then sleep.
She grabbed the edge of the second plate and sat next to Felipe on the queen-sized bed.
He’d already eaten half of what was on his plate in that short time.
She stared at her full plate, and found nothing appetizing about it.
Felipe reached across his body and nudged some hair back from her face. He said in Spanish, “You know, this is the longest I’ve ever been apart from my brother.”
Oh, yes. Fabian.
The cause of them being there in that room together in the first place. She heeled off her boots as she pulled the tines of her fork through her sweet potatoes. “Are you frightened?”
“That something will happen to him?” Felipe shrugged. “Yes and no. Like me, he’s pretty adaptable. He can take care of himself, but he’s got a soft heart. He’ll go down in flames tending to everyone around him. Chances are good if he has the opportunity to flee, he might not take it if he thinks there’s someone he can rescue.”
“Is that disgust I hear in your voice?” She picked up her chicken breast and took a small bite, watching him watch her.
His eyebrows shot up. “No, not in the least. Yes, I think he’s nuts, but I think it’s just something built into his constitution. He’s very generous in that way. I am not.”
She didn’t agree. Her psychic abilities were generally limited to making people want to talk to her—apparently sometimes when s
he wasn’t even trying—but like Dana, she had a good gut. She could read people, and her gut said Felipe was just as likely to go down in a blaze of glory as Fabian. Her gut also informed her that she didn’t like that idea one bit.
Maybe it’s because he was too much like Sarah.
The realization settled into her core like a block of ice, and she set down her fork. Bold and reckless at the expense of herself. That was Sarah to a tee.
Change the subject.
“How isn’t that you and Fabian haven’t mastered fluency in English?” she asked in Spanish.
He reached over and plucked her roll off her plate, correctly assuming she wasn’t going to eat it. “It’s just one of the ways Jacques makes it difficult for troupe members to seek independence. If you don’t know the language, it’s hard for you to get help. To blend in. We learned what we could from books and magazines, and whenever a native English speaker joined the troupe, we’d try to practice with them, but not so much to rouse suspicion. I can read English well, and write in it, but I’m slow with translating it as natives speak it. I’m always a beat behind.”
As was Sarah with Spanish.
“If I ever see that Jacques guy, the very least I’ll do is punch him in the throat.” And she meant it, and not just because Jacques had thrown a monkey wrench in the Shrews’ plans. It was because she honestly hated people who made a business of exploiting and demeaning others. Who knew what Felipe and Fabian could have been if they’d had a normal life? Maybe they’d never know their true capacities, and that was a damned shame.
“You and me both, but I think it’d probably be a better idea if I kept my distance for the moment. He’s holding too much over my head, and I need to be careful.”
Upon hearing that, she startled slightly, but managed a quick recovery. Fabian had said Jacques was responsible for their parents’ demise and that Felipe didn’t know. Sarah didn’t necessarily agree with Fabian that they should let the system handle Jacques—to try and convict him when it was his time—but Fabian seemed to have a good, rational head on his shoulders. She trusted his judgment on it. If Fabian had a plan held in reserve, she didn’t want to give his brother information that could potentially compromise it.
“Anyway, why don’t you tell me why your Spanish is so shitty?”
She rolled her eyes. “You should be thankful I speak any at all. Most Americans aren’t bilingual, you know.”
“Fabian and I—our parents…they spoke Spanish and French. My mother was French. I remember her singing to us. We don’t speak French as much because it’s Jacques’ native tongue.”
“Oh.” She fluffed a bit of sweet potatoes onto her fork and slid them into her mouth. While she itemized the flavors on her tongue—sweet and a bit spicy from nutmeg—she thought of what it must have been like to have her parents taken away from her. Yeah, they gave her a hard time about some things, but they were good parents. Supportive, even after so many people had abandoned her. After that damned research study that had turned her into a, well, mutant for lack of a better word—had nearly killed her. Changed her from the inside out. She’d been through a lot of crap in her life, but she still had her parents.
Maybe that was the hardest part of working at that strip club. Seeing all those girls and knowing that some of them were there because they had no one. Sarah had always had someone. And now she wanted Felipe to have someone, too.
She set down her fork once more.
“My mother was born in Puerto Rico,” she said. “My father met her when he was vacationing there with his family. We spoke Spanish at home until I started school, and then it was all English. I’ve lost my fluency. It’s not exactly like getting back on a bicycle.”
“Well, we can help each other.”
“Sounds like you’re getting the better end of that deal. The only time I’ve needed Spanish in the past twenty-five years or so is during the last job I took for the Shrews. All those girls…they spoke Spanish. I had to pretend I didn’t know any when other people were around.”
He smiled and took her neglected plate, stacking it on top of his own. “Are you going to take off your gun? You’re giving me a complex with you still wearing it.”
“Soon.” She stood and stretched her arms high over her head, yawning. Her back gave a crack as she arched her spine, and she cringed, feeling every one of her thirty years at that moment. She had a thought. “Felipe, how old are you?”
“Why?”
“Just curious.” There was a bit of curiosity, yes, but what really prompted her to ask was her long-standing rule that she couldn’t be involved with a man younger than her—not even by a day. It was a mental thing, but one she’d never been able to surpass. Maybe it could be her out.
“Too old to be working as an acrobat.”
“That’s plenty vague.”
He shrugged and stood. “I’m thirty-three, I think. Maybe thirty-four. Birthday is in October.”
He thinks?
Her expression must have been readable as an open book, because he added, “I think Fabian and I were around four when we were taken from our aunt. Hard to keep track.”
“Don’t you have a passport? Legal documents?”
“Jacques has them. Keeps them until our contracts expire, but of course, they never do.”
Oh. That would be a problem—him not being legally allowed in the United States. Maybe Dana can get his paperwork in order. Patrick would know what to do. He’d emigrated from Ireland.
She blew out a breath and strode to the bathroom. She turned the water on full blast and grabbed the little paper-covered bar of soap.
What are you thinking? His immigration status is his own problem. He can deal with it himself once this mess is over.
He leaned against the bathroom doorway, plates in hand, watching her. “Do you want a drink from the hall? Coffee?”
“No, I’m okay with water. I don’t want anything to keep me up.”
“Be right back, then.”
He slipped out, and once the door shut, she dried her hands and quickly shimmied out of her jacket. She finally removed her holster and the knife sheath at her back, honestly surprised Felipe hadn’t noticed it during his fondling. It was good that it was so sleek.
Normally when she travelled, she didn’t bother with pajamas and slept in her underwear. She usually shared a room with another Shrew or slept alone, so it didn’t matter. This scenario hadn’t been planned. Felipe had changed the game, the ballsy bastard, and there was nothing in her overnight bag fit to sleep in.
Worrying her bottom lip between her teeth, she padded to the door and turned the flimsy lock. Felipe had left the key. She knelt in front of his bag and hesitated for just a moment before pinching the zipper between her thumb and forefinger.
What she was doing felt somehow immoral, the brazen breech of privacy, but what choice did she have beyond sleeping in her grubby street clothes?
She spread the edges wider and pulled out a clean white tank top that looked long enough to cover her rear. As she unfurled it, something cold and heavy spilled out and fell onto her foot. It bounced into the gap between his backpack and the dresser.
“Shit.”
Dropping to her knees, she patted the space blindly until her fingers curled over the hard metal object. Her brain took only a second to identify the worn, gold figure on the pendant. She didn’t even need to study the faint lettering arching at the bottom.
San Felipe. Saint Philip—Felipe’s namesake saint. She may not have been particularly religious nowadays, but she knew her saints, thanks to her mother. The medallion and the chain it hung from looked very old, possibly heirloom.
She squeezed it harder, the metal now warming in her palm, and turned it over. The back was a smooth blank oval with no engraving, no maker’s mark, though she could tell it had once been very fine. With some cleaning it would probably sparkle. Felipe had probably grown attached to the dirt, though.
She wondered where he’d gotten it and if it was
special to him.
She wrapped the chain around the pendant so it wouldn’t tangle and nestled it into the side of the bag. She changed her clothes right there, hurrying when she thought she heard footsteps approaching in the hallway, but they continued past.
She folded her clothes neatly and laid them on top of the dresser along with her knife. The knife she changed her mind about. She unsheathed it and carried it and her loaded gun to the left bedside table.
The Glock, she laid on its side with the barrel pointed toward the wall. The knife, she left beneath her pillow once she’d gotten rid of the useless decorative pillow that’d been on top of the smaller one. She pulled back the covers, and sat on the edge of the bed gripping the edge of the sheets before popping back up. She’d forgotten to unlock the door. She remedied that, then padded to the lamp and clicked it off.
When she eased into the bed, her body seemed to melt into the mattress a bit. Boneless. So tired. Too long without good sleep. She didn’t even care that she was sharing her bed with a handsome stranger. She didn’t have the energy to care, and that was a sad thing indeed.
Felipe deserved a woman who cared.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Felipe’s plan had been to take the plates to the kitchen, get a drink from the fountain machine in the dining room, and hurry back to Sarah before she passed out. She had that look about her. It was the same look Fabian tended to acquire on the rare occasion he’d had too many beers.
He wanted to talk to her—pick her brain. Ask her about her life and where she saw it going while they had the quiet time. Once she got on her feet in the morning and steered that pickup truck toward Patrick’s cabin again, she’d become more and more agitated as the day grew long. She’d been the opposite there at the lodge. Although he could tell she was worried about her separation from the Shrews—from the action she perceived she was missing out on—the longer they stayed away, the less ferocious she was.
It wasn’t that he didn’t like ferocious Sarah a great deal, but ferocious Sarah was hard to have a conversation with. The language barrier and her goddamned awful accent made it all that much harder. Tired Sarah—Sarah with nowhere to run—was far more tolerant.
