Dark Horse

by Jessica Gadziala

  "Alright, alright," Biyen said, sighing, moving to walk past her. "We love you, that's all, Espy."

  "I love you back," she said, grabbing his arm to stop him. "But don't do this again."

  "You might want to wear a cup, man," Biyen said in farewell to Enzo.

  "Didn't mean to interrupt family shit," Enzo said, his way of an apology. "That just didn't look great from inside."

  "For the record," she said, maybe liking it too much that he was protective, which was weird, "I can take care of myself." When he stiffened, she went on. "But I appreciate you trying to deescalate an iffy situation."

  He looked at her for a long moment, then nodded. "I have sisters. And while they can take care of themselves, I know they like feeling like they have backup."

  "So, that's what you are. You're my backup."

  There was a long, almost intolerable pause, the moment weighted, before he nodded. The action seemed forced to her, though.

  "Yeah, honey. I'm your backup."

  FIVE

  Enzo

  Her backup.

  It was maybe the last thing he needed to be.

  He needed to be looking out for himself more than anything right then. But when a woman like her, a woman who could clearly handle her own shit, a woman who didn't want to show any vulnerability whatsoever, asked you if you were her backup, well, you were her fucking backup.

  It was as simple as that.

  Now, if you thought that maybe this agreement would somehow soften her to him, well, you obviously didn't know Espen very well.

  Later that evening, she came back into the office, printing off pictures she had taken with her cell because they hadn't been given access to the locked room yet. Not even to get cameras.

  It was weird as fuck considering Xander kept obscene amounts of cash just laying around.

  They were trusted around money, but not the non-lethal weapons.

  Weird. But okay.

  "So how separate are we keeping this? Will I be seeing you across the construction site all night?" She asked as she fetched her pictures from the printer. "Or are we just going to be adults and do the stake-out together?"

  Everything in him was screaming that being alone with her, especially if an enclosed space was involved, was not a good idea.

  That being said, it was a good idea for them to at least try to get along. And getting in each other's way when they were on the same case was not a good idea.

  The fact of the matter was, they both had very distinct, very different skills. Just like Ra and Kane had specific talents. Kane was young, laid-back, humorous, completely without reservations or embarrassment of any kind. Xander said his first job entailed him dressing up as a giant hotdog and handing out flyers that proclaimed I have the best weiners around! while staking out the place next door that the landlord was sure was working as a drug front.

  Now, of course, there was no fucking way in hell that Ra would have done that job. Which was the beauty in Xander's choice. Where one had to stand down, the other stepped up.

  And, alternately, Ra was reserved, fierce, intimidating, patient, and impossible to get a rise out of. So when Xander needed someone undercover in an underground gambling ring, looking for some stupid kid who was suspected of being heavily indebted to the man running the operation, of course it wasn't loudmouth, can't-sit-still Kane he sent in to sit at the table. It was Ra.

  Enzo wasn't exactly sure what Espen's skill set was yet, and was pretty convinced no one else did either. But that was likely the point of putting them on a case together - to see their strengths and weaknesses.

  He did, thanks to her somewhat teasing cousin Biyen, know a little more about her. Like her black belt, like her family did give a shit about her, like she was too proud to be the one to give in first and reconcile.

  There was a story there, he was sure of it.

  People with close familial bonds didn't just take off and refuse contact.

  Something had set her off. Someone had pissed her off or, judging by the way she seemed so bent to prove herself, underestimated her.

  He tried to convince himself that his interest was purely professional, but he knew himself far too well to even pull that lie off to himself.

  But self-control was not a problem he suffered with.

  He could and would keep that attraction shit to himself.

  "I think we can be adults about it, honey," he said, looking over at some of the pictures she had taken.

  Cigarette butts. Crushed soft drink and beer cans. Food wrappers.

  Any of it could have been from the vandal, but it could have just as easily been from the workers on the construction crew. It would be impossible to tell.

  "How shut down was the site?" he asked, looking up in time to catch her rolling her eyes.

  "A twelve-million dollar project, and the gates around it might blow over in a strong wind. What did you find out about Falco Construction? Do they piss people off regularly?"

  "Well, they build giant, unnecessary monstrosities all over New York, Jersey, and Long Island. So, they piss a lot of people off."

  "Protests?"

  "When the community gets wind of them getting the deal to build. But nothing extreme. It tapers off once they actually get to work. No other reported vandalization."

  "Interesting," she said, brows furrowed as she tapped a pen absentmindedly against her cheek, making a deep blue stripe of ink mark her skin without her realizing. "What is this building? Is that the problem? Are they building like an animal testing center or some crap like that? Because, well, I might need to vandalize it myself if that's the case."

  Enzo chuckled at that, noticing, as he had anytime he laughed since he started, that her lips parted slightly, her eyes went a little dreamy.

  His own desire was hard enough to fight. Knowing she was dealing with her own certainly was not helping the matter, that was for damn sure.

  That being said, even though she was most definitely experiencing it, she did her damnedest to keep that shit to herself. Like that comment about how he would never be in her bed in the first place.

  That was good. Maybe he didn't like hearing it, especially knowing it was a lie, but it worked in his favor that she forced the lie out of herself. She was going to fight it. If they both put effort into that, especially after the warning Xander gave, then everything would be fine.

  His fucking hand was going to get arthritic though.

  If he didn't find a woman, and soon, he was pretty sure he was going to start fucking up on the job. It was hard to focus when you were as frustrated as he was.

  That was an issue for another day, though.

  Right now, they had a case.

  And he was not going to fuck it up.

  The truth was, after finding he had competition, he had went home after work every night since he started and studied. Quite frankly, he was intimidated by Espen. She was too confident not to be skilled. He knew that even before they had a case.

  So he needed to step up his game.

  To do that, he needed to learn the ins and outs of private investigation - what kinds of cases they typically did, how they conducted business, what was and was not legal.

  Though, those legal lines were murky with Xander

  This was evidenced by how Ra came in the first day, covered in blood. The shower in the bathroom started to make a lot more sense when he saw that.

  "Hey," Espen said suddenly, making him start, and look over to find her watching him, dark brows drawn together in confusion.

  Confusion couldn't be a good look on her.

  "Yeah?"

  "What the hell are we supposed to do if we come upon the vandals tonight?"

  That was, well, a fair question.

  Xander hadn't given them a damn bit of instruction on what was to be done, just that they had the case. Was it just surveillance? If they saw the guys, did they call the cops? Did they restrain them themselves? What?

  "I mean, in a normal office," she went
on, shoving the pictures back into the folder, and moving to charge her phone, "we would call the cops. If they took off, follow them, but keep the police up-to-date. But this isn't a normal office. And I don't think it would look good for either of us if we texted him to ask."

  Well, he had to agree with that.

  There were two types of bosses.

  The first type invited questions, mainly because they were anal as fuck and wanted everything done their way.

  The second type just threw work at you, expecting you to figure it out through your own methods. This made you independent, as well as played on your personal strengths.

  Xander, Enzo was sure, was the latter of the two.

  So, essentially, they had to wing it.

  And hope for the best.

  "Well, at least we will be making the decisions together," she mused, seeming to read his mind.

  Neither of them would take the brunt of the blame if Xander was pissed.

  There was a sort of comfort in that.

  "Well, ah... how are we doing this?" she asked, shrugging her shoulders.

  "Pretty self-explanatory, I'd think," Enzo said, smiling when her eyes got small. "We go sit in a car and watch an empty site, hoping we see something."

  "I don't have a car," she replied, shrugging.

  Living in the city all her life, that wasn't exactly surprising.

  "I got a car."

  "Really? Where?"

  "In Gabe's lot," Enzo said, smiling when she looked even more confused.

  "You know Gabe?"

  See, he knew he had something going for him by trying to reach out, trying to get to know all the people not only in Xander's organization, but who he associated with as well.

  Gabe was a street kid along with Xander back in the day. They had grown up, and built their respective businesses side-by-side, making names for themselves. Gabe, being a bail bondsman generally operated almost fully inside the law, needed to keep his record clear if he wanted to continue his business. He was tall, a thin kind of fit, with blond hair, and hazel eyes. Most people saw the pretty boy good looks, and completely underestimated him. The fact of the matter was, Gabe was highly trained, intelligent, controlled, and, as Xander claimed, the only man his size who could get the drop on him in a fight.

  Gabe and Xander were tight.

  Knowing that, and hearing that Gabe had a lot behind his building where he kept his work vehicles, Enzo had decided to reach out under the guise of needing a parking spot, but really because he just wanted to get in good with all Xander's people.

  "Yeah, babe, I know Gabe. He's a solid guy."

  "How long ago did you move to the city?" she asked, tone exasperated.

  "Little over a week."

  "A little over a week?" she snapped, jumping up when she had just sat down. "You somehow got to know Gabe when you've only been here a week?"

  "Figured he might be someone worth knowing," Enzo said, giving her the truth because there was no way for it to damage his standing in this situation.

  The people thing, yeah, that was Espen's definite flaw.

  She turned her head over her shoulder, looking out the quickly darkening front windows. She was trying to hide her eyes, he figured, which were pretty much always easily readable, something she must have known about herself. But even turned away, he could see the firm set of her jaw that must have been putting painful pressure on her molars from clenching so hard.

  He had a feeling she was the type of woman to berate herself for not thinking of that first, for not being the best at every-goddamn-thing.

  For reasons he was choosing not to think about, he didn't like her being that hard on herself.

  "Espen," he called, watching as her entire body jolted, as her head twisted back so fast that her vision must have blurred. What caused that reaction? Fuck if he knew. "You can't expect to think of everything first," he told her, shrugging a shoulder. "You're better at this shit," he said, waving a hand toward the computers and files. "I'm better at that shit. It's not a big deal."

  "It is a big deal if my actual skills at this get trumped because you're more of a people-person."

  "Getting along with people is a skill too, honey."

  "Yeah, whatever," she said, grabbing her phone off the charger, and moving toward the coffee maker, pouring two cups. One black. For him. She paid attention to little shit like that. And one with a sugar and a dash of cream. Hers. He noticed little shit like that too. "Ready?" she asked, impatient.

  He moved over to his desk, getting the rest of the file, his phone, and his keys, then following her to the door. "Yep."

  "This? This is your car?" she asked as soon as he punched the code in for the gate on Gabe's lot.

  "This is my car," he agreed, both of them looking down at his sleek metallic gray Corvette Grand Sport. He got it back when he was still in charge of Third Street, when he had money to burn, when he could walk into the dealership with the seventy-grand in cash to buy it outright.

  It felt like that shit happened in a different lifetime.

  Now he was wondering how long he could make his savings last if this shit with Xander didn't work out.

  "What the hell did you used to do?" she asked, then gave him drawn-together brows when he moved to open her door for her.

  To her questioning look, he shrugged. "I grew up around a lot of women. If I didn't open doors, I got a whack to the back of the head. It stuck. So stop being stubborn, and accept my good manners," he said, lips teasing up at one side.

  And, to his surprise, her lips twitched as well.

  It did fucking amazing things to her dark eyes too.

  She was pretty all the time, but she was fucking beautiful when she let her shields down a little bit.

  "Fine. But I get to control the radio then," she said, sliding in, watching him almost warily as he closed the door for her then rounded the hood. When he moved in, and turned over the car, she flicked through the radio quickly, finding the 90s grunge station, then settling back to fasten her seatbelt. "What?" she asked when he just looked at her.

  "Didn't have you pegged for grunge."

  "Didn't have you pegged for old school R&B, but I'm pretty sure that was Montell Jordan on before I changed it."

  She knew her music.

  That was yet another thing to respect about her.

  He was liking the pieces he was getting of her.

  Quite frankly, it was coming together to be a pretty nice fucking picture.

  He had a feeling that, behind all the bullshit, all the guards, all the things she kept in place to keep people from seeing what was truly underneath, she was the sweetest fucking woman. The guarded ones always were.

  "So... are we going, or are you going to sit here and stare at me all night?"

  Enzo chuckled, turning to throw the car into reverse.

  Sure, what was underneath was probably pretty great, but he liked the guards too.

  And that was the problem.

  It would be easy if he just thought she was hot, if it was just physical, if he just wanted to fuck her out of his system. That was easy to get control of.

  This wasn't just that.

  He liked the woman.

  She was different. Interesting.

  For years, he had been surrounded by easy women who liked that he had money to throw around, liked that he had some power, liked that they could claim to have bagged him.

  It was a new experience for him to realize this woman maybe couldn't help that she was attracted to him - as you often can't - but that she was fighting it, that she was doing everything in her power to not give into it.

  It was refreshing.

  And maybe, just maybe, it activated some weird, primal impulse he wasn't aware he was capable of - because he never had to use it before - to chase, to pounce, to possess.

  Base? Yeah.

  But it was just how it was.

  And he was finding for the first time how hard it was to fight those neanderthal urges.
/>   "This is possibly the least inconspicuous vehicle known to man," Espen said, shaking her head as they pulled down to the side of the street across from the construction site, cutting the lights and engine.

  "I'm going to go ahead and take that as a compliment," Enzo said, rolling down his window.

  It took twenty minutes.

  That was all.

  Not until they saw someone bent on vandalization.

  No, it took twenty minutes before the heat and the silence drove Espen crazy.

  "We can't sit here in stony silence all night," she said, turning in her seat to face him.

  "What do you want to talk about, honey? The weather? The office? Why you left your father's PI firm?"

  Her eyes got small.

  "Ugh," she said, turning away, reaching for her door, and sliding out. "Never mind. I'll go take a walk around the block instead. You watch the building."

  Sore spot.

  And he couldn't seem to fight the urge to press it.

  Because he knew that that little piece of information would give him everything he needed to know about her.

  But then she was gone.

  But not around the block.

  No, suddenly, she was tearing ass across the street toward the building.

  She must have seen someone.

  "Shit."

  SIX

  Espen

  Sometime between seeing the car, and hopping out of it, she had decided there were only a few options for what he had done in his previous life. Because, quite frankly, normal people didn't have seventy-thousand dollar cars... then go to work for a private investigator like Xander Rhodes.

  Who would want the danger, the lack of respect among peers, the scrutiny of the cops... except someone who had maybe experienced all those things before?

  Since he didn't really know much about the business, she could strike PI off that list.

  What did that leave? Well, illegal jobs.

  Drug dealer.

  Gun runner.