A Girl Scorned

by Rachel Rust

  I wrapped my arms around his neck and whispered the words that had been building inside me all summer. “I love you, Eddie.”

  He squeezed me tight, but said nothing in return, perhaps in anticipation of having to ditch me for my own good. Or maybe the moment was just too much for anything good like love, or hope, or talk of futures.

  The end was near, we could both feel it, but without a clue on how it would end, neither of us slept well.

  Chapter Twenty

  In the morning, I woke with a stiff neck and remnants of a bad dream. Eddie was at the small table in the corner, cleaning a gun.

  Different motel, same Eddie.

  “Morning,” he said without even looking up.

  “What time is it?” I asked, brushing my hair from my face.

  “Almost eleven.”

  My eyes widened. “Why’d you let me sleep so late?”

  “You needed the rest.” He glanced at the end of the bed where a small brown paper bag sat. “You should eat. It’s not much, just what I could find at the gas station next door. I didn’t want to venture too far.”

  From inside the bag, I pulled out a bottle of orange juice, and a smaller white bag containing two croissants. I held a croissant out to Eddie, but he shook his head.

  “I already ate. Those are both for you.”

  The next half hour was spent slowly chewing stale pastries as I stared out the window at the street traffic. There was road construction just in front of the motel entrance, forcing the two southbound lanes into one. Horns honked, an unseen jackhammer rattled on, and one guy stuck his middle finger out at someone who probably never even saw it.

  After chasing my breakfast with juice, I showered and then watched Eddie continue to fiddle with his guns. And that was all I think he did—fiddle. They were clean. They were loaded. He just needed something to occupy his hands while his mind worked overtime trying to figure out how the hell we were going to do the impossible. How we were going to take down Sergei Romanov—a man not even the FBI had managed to snag yet.

  “We need to make a plan,” I said, sitting back down on the bed.

  “After what happened at the club, we have to assume Sergei knows you and I are together and on the run. And he probably knows we’re in Rapid City, too. I need to get in contact with Krissy.”

  “Luke said we shouldn’t contact her.”

  “In case she’s compromised, I know, but with Luke gone…” His gaze drifted from the gun for a moment as he spoke his late friend’s name. “We have no other choice. Even if Krissy has been captured, or is working with Sergei, at least that’d be a sure ticket to finding him.”

  “So, Gunnar is out and Krissy supposedly has Toby tied up. That’s two of the three legs you need to bring down Sergei. We just need to find that nerdy guy, Sean.”

  Eddie nodded. “Sean will be wherever Sergei is. Though with him the mission is capture not kill. He has computer files on all of Sergei’s businesses, including the people who work for him. He needs to be able to talk to help me clear my name.”

  “How much time do we have on the deadline, before my mom’s dead?” The D word tasted vile in my mouth.

  “About three hours.”

  “We need to figure out a plan. You shouldn’t have let me sleep so late.”

  “Doesn’t matter, you’re staying here,” he said.

  “No, I’m not. I didn’t come all the way to Rapid just to sit in another damn hotel room.”

  Eddie placed the gun he was working on onto the table. He closed his eyes and pinched the bridge between his nose, brow furrowing. “Natalie, I’m sick of arguing with you about this. You can’t go meet up with Sergei. I know you want to save the day, but you’re not ready for that kind of confrontation.”

  “But he has my mom.”

  “All the more reason for you to stay behind. You’re too emotionally involved.”

  I glared at him. “No shit, Sherlock. And that’s exactly why I’m involved. I’m more motivated than anyone to save her.”

  Eddie stood and shoved a gun into the waist of his pants. He crossed the room and grabbed my Glock from the nightstand, and then shoved it into my hand. “I’ll be back in a few minutes. Engage the deadbolt after I leave. If anyone but me comes in through that door, shoot ’em.”

  “Where are you going?”

  He walked to the door without answering me.

  “Dammit, Eddie,” I yelled, standing up. “You don’t get to make all the decisions and do whatever the hell you want, whenever you want, just because you’re an FBI agent.”

  He spun around to face me. “Actually? That’s exactly why I call the shots, because I’m trained. And if you think I get off on ordering you around, I don’t. I hate our situation just as much as you do. Yes, your mother’s life is on the line, but my father is already dead because of Sergei Romanov, and now one of my best friends is dead! So don’t tell me you’re more motivated than me to bring Sergei down, because that’s bullshit and you know it!”

  I reached out to touch his arm, but he yanked it away before my fingertips could even brush against it.

  “Here’s the other thing,” he continued. “I’m not trying to control you, I’m trying to protect you. Not just from flying bullets, but from life-long regret. Have you ever taken another person’s life?”

  He paused, even though I was quite sure the question was rhetorical.

  Eddie pointed to his forehead. “Taking a life sticks, right up here. Permanently. Even if legally justified, that sort of thing doesn’t go away. Some might say the end always justifies the means, but I’m not one of those people. Putting a bullet into someone never feels right, no matter who it is, even if it complies with the mission. And you don’t want the weight of someone’s death on your mind for the rest of your life. It’s not your burden to carry. I chose my career, let me carry it.”

  “Or, here’s a twenty-first century idea, let me choose for myself exactly what I am and am not willing to do.”

  Eddie scoffed. “You don’t know what you’re saying. You’re just…”

  “Young and dumb?”

  “I wasn’t going to say that.”

  “Then what were you going to say?” I demanded. “And why the hell are you always here and there with us? One second you’re kissing me, the next you’re keeping me at arm’s length, ordering me around like I’m some damn burden you begrudgingly need to protect.” I drew in a deep breath. “What do you want from me?”

  Eddie’s hands went to his hips. He stared at the ceiling, and then the floor. Everywhere but me. “What I want and what’s best for you are two different things.”

  “What do you think is best for me?”

  He looked directly at me. “To stay as far from me as possible. Even if we both manage to survive and get this shit cleaned up, there’s no guarantee that my job isn’t going to drop something like this on us again.”

  “But this whole situation with Sergei and fighting for our lives has nothing to do with your job. It’s about our parents—my mom, your dad. The chances of it happening again are next to zero and you know it.”

  He shook his head with impatience. “Except my job will always make me a target to people like Romanov and you don’t need to be around anything like that.”

  My fingers twisted together and I forced my gaze to stay on him. “But, do you want me around after all this?” My stomach twisted, waiting for an answer.

  He avoided my gaze and when he spoke, his voice was soft. “Like I said, what I want and what is best for you are two different things.” He turned to the door and opened it. “Deadlock,” was all he said before disappearing into the late-morning sun.

  ****

  Eddie returned nearly an hour later. He didn’t say anything as he reentered the room, but the stench of cigarette smoke communicated plenty about his level of stress.

  “Where did you go?” I asked from my spot on the bed, scooted up by the headboard, arms wrapped around bent knees. I had sat in silence the
entire time he had been gone. Afraid to turn on the TV, for fear that I wouldn’t hear if unwanted people came to the door.

  “I had to make some phone calls.”

  “You have a phone, you could have done that here.”

  “I needed a phone book and there’s not one in the room.”

  “Who’d you call?”

  “Krissy.”

  “Did you tell her about Luke?”

  Eddie nodded. “That didn’t go so well.”

  “What did she say?”

  He shrugged, as if speaking of Luke’s death would make it real, like it wasn’t already. “Krissy definitely has Toby—that she’s not lying about. She put him on the phone. He hurled a bunch of fucked-up insults at me, so I know it was him. But I’m still not sure if she’s got him all on her own, or if she’s under Sergei’s watch right now—willingly or unwillingly.”

  “Does she have Toby out at that old cabin in the hills?”

  Eddie’s silence answered for him. He never wanted me to know too many details, but sometimes I didn’t think he realized how much I actually knew about him and his FBI colleagues.

  Unlike Eddie, Luke had looser lips. All summer he had blabbed during our breaks at the mall, telling me things that maybe I wasn’t supposed to know. Like the fact that the old cabin in the woods had belonged to Krissy’s drug-dealing great-grandfather who passed away several years ago. The cabin was passed down to her because the rest of her family had disowned him. I also knew that Thatcher had an estranged daughter in her hometown in Texas whom she hadn’t spoken to in nearly ten years. And I learned that every year on his mom’s birthday, Eddie went home to Ohio and baked her a cake. This had made me smile—one more brick in the Who-is-Eddie wall. He knew how to bake.

  After having spent so much time with Luke and his gossipy ways, I wondered if Eddie keeping me in the dark on even the mundane details about himself was not just a professional calculation, but one of overprotectiveness. If he kept me at arm’s length, I wouldn’t be close enough to get burned should something bad happen.

  It was hard to figure out where exactly his protectiveness came from. Was it my age? Because he had slept with me? Did he have a guilty conscience over the fact that I had been dragged into this mess, even though it wasn’t his fault? Whatever it was, it was annoying as hell and the fact that he shut me out whenever he wanted, whenever it was convenient for him, made me feel about two inches tall and five years old.

  “You didn’t need a phone book to call Krissy,” I said. “You know her number, so who else did you call?”

  Eddie sighed. “I was gonna call Mary, to see if she’d stay with you.”

  “Mason’s mom?”

  “Yeah, but I didn’t call her. She and I have a good relationship, but she’s fiercely loyal to The Bureau and I can’t be sure she wouldn’t rat me out to them if she knew our location.”

  “Makes sense,” I said, feeling a surge of relief over not having to have a babysitter. “You called someone else, too. You were gone a long time.”

  Eddie sat in one of the small chairs and the wood creaked under his weight. “I called my mom.”

  From my spot on the bed, I had a clear view of him. He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, and lowered his head, staring at the floor. He didn’t elaborate on his phone call to his mom, but he didn’t need to. A son reaching out to his mother for what might be the last time, if nothing went right with Sergei. But my guess was that she had no idea that it was a farewell call. She had perhaps rattled on about the weather or food or the next holiday—whatever it was that normal moms talked about. Mine had never made time for small talk. But Eddie’s mom probably did. Maybe she had asked if he was eating healthy and staying away from the cigarettes. He had probably lied, cigarette in-hand, just to make her feel better, knowing he may never hear her voice again.

  Eddie’s hands rose up, fingers intertwining over the back of his head as he continued to stare at the floor, saying nothing. He had been through so much in the past few months, that when I actually thought about it, it was surprising he was still fully functional. Narrowly escaping death, being stripped of his FBI badge, losing his father again. And now his friend was dead, too. And in a matter of hours he might lose me … or even his own life.

  A twinge of guilt spread through me over my irritation of him and his protective, stubborn ways. He was human, dealing with this crisis the best way he knew how.

  I slipped off the bed and my bare feet were silent on the carpet as I walked toward him. I waited with bated breath for him to tell me to leave him alone. I made it a few more steps.

  He looked up.

  Our eyes locked, but neither of us said anything. My small steps continued his direction. As I neared him, his head hung back down and his gaze went to the floor between his feet. I didn’t expect him to stay seated. Any moment now he was liable to stand up and walk away—unable or unwilling to engage in any emotional exchange.

  But he didn’t move. I invaded his space, shuffling forward until my stomach ran into his forehead. I expected him to duck away—to be annoyed with my interference. Instead, his arms reached around my hips and drew me in tighter. With his forehead against my stomach, I rested my hands along the sides of his head.

  At first, I didn’t even realize he was crying—he was so still. Then gentle reverberations quivered into my stomach. His cries became audible as his fingers grasped at my waist and the material of my shirt. He was literally clinging to me—clinging to anything within reach as to not lose all sense of the world around him. I stood silent as he wept openly against the black fabric of my shirt. Tears welled up in my own eyes, yet I forced them from proceeding any further. It wasn’t my time to cry.

  I wrapped my arms around his head and nuzzled in closer to him. I simply didn’t know what else to do. I wanted to reassure him that he’d see his mom again and that he’d avenge his father’s death. But I couldn’t make such a guarantee. No one could.

  Just as quick as the crying had started, it stopped as he pulled back and flicked away the tears clinging to his dark lashes. “Fuck,” he muttered.

  “It’s okay.”

  He gave a stern shake of his head in disagreement and moved to stand, but I sat on his lap before he could get up.

  “You’re only human, Eddie. You’ve lost your dad—twice. And it doesn’t matter what career you have or how much training you’ve had, your mom is still your mom and you have every right to be upset right now.”

  A rogue tear fell from his eye and my finger got to it before his could.

  “None of this is fair to her,” he said. “Not my situation, and not what happened to my dad. But she’s the one who suffers the most, especially if I don’t make it back.” His chest heaved with a deep inhalation. The breath escaped with a stern sigh as he wiped his eyes again. “I just wish there had been another option for my dad, besides leaving and letting us think he was dead. That was the most difficult thing I’ve ever been through—losing him at such a young age. And now that I know he was alive, I can’t help but wonder why he didn’t even attempt to reach out at some point, to let us know the truth.”

  “He couldn’t,” I said. “Not without putting you in danger.”

  “He could have tried.”

  “You don’t know that he didn’t. He told my mom that he watched you. He probably saw a lot of things from a distance … your Little League games, your graduations. He didn’t just leave and never look back. He knew what was going on in your life, and I bet he was really proud of you.”

  Fresh tears welled in Eddie’s eyes and he chuckled, wiping them away. “I think I’m too emotionally involved.”

  I hugged him tight. “We both are.”

  The room went quiet as we sat, arms around one another. My mind fell heavy with thoughts of family ties, what-if scenarios, and death. Four months ago, Eddie and I had never even spoken before, barely knowing each other’s faces, seeing one another only occasionally in the halls of Kennedy High School. Now, our li
ves were forever entwined, brought together by a criminal, by an entire underworld of greed and corruption that had infiltrated into our families.

  A rogue FBI agent and a college kid, clinging to one another because we were all that we had in that moment.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Eddie’s phone on the table buzzed, vibrating against one of the guns, filling the room with loud, rhythmic hums. We both turned to stare at it as my stomach flip-flopped.

  “Is it Krissy?” I asked, assuming not many people had his phone number.

  Eddie picked up the small phone. “Let’s find out.” He flipped it open, put it to his ear and waited a couple of seconds before saying, “Yeah.”

  The voice that spoke on the other end of the call was not Krissy. It was not female.

  “Good to hear your voice, Mister Martinez.” Each word was enunciated, pushed through the thick Russian accent of its speaker.

  “Sergei Romanov,” Eddie said. The steadiness of his voice was in sharp contrast to the sudden shaking of my own body. “How’d you get this number?”

  A soft chuckle wafted from the ear piece. Sitting next to Eddie, I could hear the other end of the conversation, though muddled.

  “Do not worry about that,” Sergei said. “I would worry more about your friend, Ms. Krissy.”

  “Why should I worry about her?” Eddie asked. “From what I hear, she’s got your lapdog Toby McCoy all tied up.”

  “Ah, yes, indeed she does. And that is a problem for me … but not for long.”

  Eddie paused. “What do you mean?”

  “Her little cabin in the woods is not as secret as she would like,” Sergei replied. “My men are on their way there now. And once they are there, I fear it will not end well for your friend.”