Troubleshooters 09 Hot Target

by Suzanne Brockmann

  “You don’t do anything without an argument, do you?” he asked, his disgust more than apparent. “Come on.” He pulled her up and moved her swiftly toward the bathroom, carefully keeping himself between her and the bedroom windows—so that if someone were shooting at the house, any bullets that came through the glass would hit him instead.

  Of course, he knew as well as she did that no one at all was shooting at either her or her house.

  “I don’t appreciate this,” Jane told him icily.

  “Yeah, no kidding,” Cosmo said, closing the bathroom door behind them.

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  CHAPTER

  SIX

  “S o what’s Mercedes Chadwick really like?” Adam asked.

  Dinner was over. Throughout most of it, as well as their thirty-minute wait at the bar for a table, they’d talked about—what else?—Adam. The stage play he was auditioning for, the student film he’d done that had recently wrapped, the acting classes he’d enrolled in to try to make industry contacts, his sister, his mother, his brother the “fucking Nazi,” the modeling job he did that he still hadn’t been paid for . . .

  Jules shrugged. “I don’t know. She seems nice. Funny. I liked her brother. Good sense of humor—both of them.”

  “What’s his name?” Adam asked. “Robert?”

  “Robin.”

  “Right.” He flagged down the waiter. “Bring us another round.”

  “No,” Jules said. “Not for me. I’m all set, thanks.”

  “Are you afraid if you drink too much you’ll lose your inhibitions?” Adam teased.

  Yes. It was amazing how quickly the past two years had just seemed to melt away. It was amazing how it all came rushing back—old feelings, old hopes.

  God save him from old hopes.

  “Just the check, please,” Jules told the waiter.

  “So dish more on Mercedes.” Adam rested his chin in his hand. With his hair long and artfully mussed, he probably got carded all the time. He looked about as young as he’d actually been when Jules had first met him. “Is this death threat thing real?”

  “I really can’t talk about that,” Jules said.

  “What’s it like on set?” Adam asked. “The grapevine says she’s feuding with her director—that he’s HeartBeat’s boy and that she’s not all too thrilled with some of his choices.”

  “I haven’t met the director,” Jules said. “And the time I spent talking to Mercedes—it was all about making sure she remained safe.” The waiter returned with Adam’s drink and the check.

  The check.

  Jules let him put it on the table between them, waited to see if Adam would pick it up—he had, after all, made the dinner invitation. But it was a stupid test, a ridiculous game. He knew it was stupid, particularly since the outcome was obvious.

  What, had he actually thought Adam might have changed?

  While he’d talked about a lot of different things going on in his life, his lack of mention of a day job had been pretty noticeable.

  “How’s the cowboy—sexy Sam?” he asked now. “You turn him yet?”

  “Not even remotely funny,” Jules shot back in pure disgust. “He’s a friend of mine and a far better man than you’ll ever be. If you speak his name, scumbag, you better speak it with the respect he deserves.”

  Former Navy SEAL Sam Starrett—undeniably straight and formerly homophobic—had recently married Jules’ last partner in the FBI, Alyssa Locke. Both were working now for Tom Paoletti’s Troubleshooters, although they were currently out of the country on another assignment.

  Didn’t it figure? Jules considered the two of them to be his best friends in the entire world. It would’ve been beyond nice to work with them again.

  Instead, he got Lawrence Decker.

  “Jesus, relax,” Adam said. “It was a joke.”

  “You think perpetuating that myth is a joke?” The myth that gays had a constant agenda to “turn” straight men.

  “What myth? It’s no myth,” Adam countered.

  “God damn it, is everything a game to you? Do you have any idea what it’s like to work in a world where—”

  “J., J., J. . . .” Adam interrupted. “What just happened here? When did you lose your sense of humor?”

  Part of it had vanished two years ago, when Adam had packed up and left and hadn’t come back.

  The rest of it had taken a serious hit two minutes ago, when all of that same old longing and self-esteem-crushing wishful thinking had grabbed Jules once again around the throat and made him dare to hope . . .

  That maybe this time it would be different.

  How many times would it take for him to learn that, where Adam was concerned, it was never going to be different?

  Jules took out his wallet, flipped open the check. With a generous tip, sixty dollars would cover it. He pulled three twenties and slipped them in with the bill, put it back on the table. “I have to go.”

  “Jules, come on. I’m not done with my drink.”

  “I have to go.” He pushed his chair back, picked up his briefcase. “I’m glad things are going well for you.”

  “Jules . . .”

  He was about to turn, to walk away, but on second thought, he picked the check up off the table. He’d hand it to the waiter on his way out.

  Because, just like old hopes that constantly bobbed back to the surface even after being scuttled in the most devastating emotional shipwreck, some things just never changed.

  Patty had taken a cab over to the Tropicana so that she could drive Robin’s car back to her place, so it would be here for him in the morning.

  He was a mess, spending the entire trip home either apologizing or telling her how beautiful she looked and how much he loved her.

  She had to help him out of the car and up the steps to her apartment. He tripped on the threshold and nearly managed to take them both to the floor of her living room. As it was, she lost her grip and he went down, his backpack flying.

  But, typical Robin, it made him laugh. He was—if such a thing was possible—an adorable drunk.

  “Do you really live here?” he asked from his vantage point on the floor. His speech was slurred. “Shit, this place is depressing. Look at this carpeting. God damn . . .”

  “I don’t get paid very much, remember?” she told him as she stepped over him. “It came furnished and it’s in a decent enough part of town, so—”

  She shrieked with laughter as he grabbed her legs and toppled her to the floor beside him. But then she couldn’t laugh because he was kissing her, his tongue filling her mouth, tasting of whiskey, not that she cared. It was that whiskey that had gotten him here.

  All of the anger and hurt she’d felt as eight thirty had rolled into nine and then into nine thirty had made her not only take a call from that extra, Wayne with the funny last name, but accept an invitation to have drinks with him tomorrow night. Why not? Robin had obviously forgotten about her.

  Except he hadn’t. He’d stayed away—or tried to, anyway—because he loved her.

  “Oh, baby,” he was mumbling now. “Oh, God . . .” He’d pushed his way between her legs and was rocking against her as he kissed her again and again. “Don’t make me wait,” he pleaded. “I need you right now. . . .”

  This was it. It was finally happening. She and Robin were going to make love.

  She helped him pull off her shirt and unhooked her bra, sliding the straps down her arms. But he was far more interested in the button on her jeans, so she unfastened that for him as she kicked off her sneakers, and he grabbed the bottom edges of her pant legs and pulled hard, sending her sliding across the rug on her bare butt. She struggled to sit up, laughing. “Robin!”

  “Jesus,” he said, “Jesus!” as he somehow managed to get one of her legs out of her tight-fitting jeans, and then he was kissing her again, pushing her shoulders back down on the floor, his mouth hot and wet and hungry as he reached bet
ween them, fumbling with his own pants.

  Patty pulled at his T-shirt, loving the feel of his taut muscular shoulders beneath the cotton but wanting to touch the smoothness of his beautiful skin. Except he didn’t stop kissing her to help her pull it off. He just pushed between her legs and—

  She gasped her surprise as he thrust deeply inside of her. It didn’t hurt. On the contrary, what she felt didn’t come close to pain. She was ready for him—but she just wasn’t ready for him, with one leg still in her jeans, him still fully clothed, and them lying here on her living room floor instead of in her bed with her pretty-patterned sheets and romantic throw pillows.

  “Robin!” My God, had he put on a condom?

  “Oh, yes, baby,” he said. Harder and faster, each thrust pushed her back along the floor until her head bumped the wall, and still he kept coming. “Yes, baby, oh God, oh God, I love you, too, baby—”

  How could he have had time to put one on? “Oh, my God!” she said, reaching between them, trying to check to see if he’d covered himself and encountering only him. “Robin!”

  “Oh, yes,” he cried, “oh, me, too—baby, yes!” as her head hit the wall again and again, bang, bang, bang. Bang.

  He collapsed on top of her. “Holy shit, that was great,” he muttered. “Holy shit, holy shit . . .”

  His voice was fading—he was, too.

  “Robin!” she said, trying not to cry.

  He didn’t lift his head. “Wha . . . ?”

  She wasn’t sure what to say, what to do. “We can’t sleep on the floor.”

  “Oh, yeah,” he said, rousing slightly. “Yeah.” He pushed himself up, off of her, out of her. “You got a bathroom? I should get cleaned up, get rid of this . . . uh-oh.”

  If Patty lived to be two hundred, she would forever remember the look of pure panic in Robin Chadwick’s eyes as he’d realized they’d just had unprotected sex.

  “I think I’m going to be sick,” he said.

  One leg still in her jeans, she scrambled to her feet and helped him hurry into the bathroom where she lifted the seat of the toilet.

  If any small part of the evening’s romantic potential was still alive, that clank of the toilet seat snuffed it out completely.

  “Shit,” Robin said, rubbing his forehead as he knelt there on her bathroom floor, as she grabbed her robe from the back of the door and slipped it on. She shook her jeans off and kicked them over toward the laundry pile in the hall.

  Robin was trying not to cry, but the alcohol in his system was making it hard for him. She hadn’t had anything to drink at all, and she was having some serious trouble herself. “Shit,” he said again. “I always fuck things up.”

  Patty sat next to him on the floor and put her arms around him. “No,” she said. “Shhh, Robin, that’s not true.”

  “It was supposed to be different with you,” he said, then lunged for the toilet, leaving her to wonder, This wasn’t different . . . ?

  “I’ve done a second circuit of the house,” Murphy’s voice came over Cosmo’s radio, “and everything still looks quiet. PJ’s on his way back—ETA ten minutes from now.”

  “Have him come directly inside,” Cosmo ordered as he ran the water in the sink, testing it periodically with one finger, waiting for it to heat up. “Tell him to do a quick walk-through before he comes upstairs. And keep an eye on the street. I want model, make, and plate numbers for every car that goes past tonight.”

  “This is a total waste of time,” Jane said. “You’re taking this too far.”

  Standing there, on the verge of getting pissed off all over again, in nightwear that was radically different from the Victoria’s Secret fantasy gown and robe she’d had on the other night, Jane looked nothing like the woman who’d charmed the reporters at that press conference this afternoon. Hair back in a ponytail, makeup scrubbed from her face, oversized T-shirt almost making her look skinny, elbow rug-burned and raw—she looked like her own very distant cousin, the family tomboy.

  “Why do you do it?” he asked. “The bimbo slut thing?”

  “Fuck. You!”

  Oh, yeah. He was the one who’d cooled down, whose temper was back under control. She was still pissed off.

  She’d latched on to the idea that his reaction to the gunshot they’d both heard—and it was a gunshot—was some kind of practical joke he was playing on her. “I have half a mind to call Tom Paoletti about this,” she said icily. She had that ultra-chilling attitude down cold—like each word she spoke was a complete sentence. “Right. Now.”

  “He usually doesn’t stay up this late—and his wife, Kelly, is pregnant. You’d wake them both.” The water was finally warm enough, so Cos soaked one of her fancy washcloths and wrung it out before crossing the room and handing it to her.

  This was some bathroom—almost larger than the bedroom in his apartment in San Diego. Jane was sitting on a chair near some kind of antique writing desk. A writing desk—in a bathroom. Oddly enough, it looked good there. It matched the old-style tile and fixtures.

  Jane took the wet cloth from him, resentment radiating from her as she dabbed gingerly at her elbow.

  “Besides,” Cosmo added, “I’ll be calling Tom about this tomorrow. As well as writing a report. God help me.”

  “Not a writer, huh?”

  “No,” he told her.

  “Figures.”

  He let her hostility roll off his back as he sat down on the edge of the claw-footed tub. “Look, PJ’s going to be here in a few minutes. I have a few things I still need to say, so—”

  “Tough. I’m not interested in listening to you,” she said. “I have no intention of apologizing, so—”

  “My father—my biological father—ran when he found out my mother was pregnant,” Cosmo interrupted her.

  She laughed. Scoffed, really. “What does that have to do—”

  “Her parents kicked her out. Even the pastor of her church stopped being friendly when she refused to give me up for adoption,” he continued. “Only person who stood by her, who made sure she had food to eat and a place to sleep, was this guy Billy Richter who worked as the town photographer—you know, he did all the weddings and school pictures. His full name was Cosmo William Richter. He went by Billy—he was named after his father who died in the war, in Guadalcanal. Everyone whispered about Billy, said that he’d been kicked out of college because he was homosexual, which in Findlay, Ohio, in 1972 was worse than being a serial killer. But Mom was always kind to him, and he repaid her first by giving her a job in his camera shop, and then by marrying her, because, well, it was Ohio, in 1972. But they were husband and wife only in name. Separate bedrooms, you know? In 1982 we packed up and went to California, where Dad met Uncle Riley, who moved in with us. We all shared a house, right up until I was a senior in high school, when Dad died from a car accident.”

  Jane had stopped her sputtering and now sat there silently, just looking at him.

  So Cosmo held out his hand to her. “How do you do? I’m Chief Petty Officer Cosmo William Richter the third—named after my adopted father, the kindest man I ever had the honor of knowing. You ever get the urge to talk about gay rights or gay activism, I’m well versed in the subject—I’m straight, but not narrow. I’m a card-carrying member of PFLAG. I also have quite an extensive knowledge of musical theater and Bette Midler movies, and oh yeah, I can name every Barbra Streisand album ever made, in order of release date. I can also kill with my bare hands.” He smiled at her. “In case you were wondering.”

  She didn’t take his hand, so he pulled it back in. But she was definitely listening, so he kept going.

  “PJ’s going to be here in just a minute,” he told her. “I’m going out to check the house, take a look at the road down where Murph said he saw that car. But first I have to clear up something that’s kind of important to me. You implied back when we were, you know, both shouting and not really listening to each other that you believed your, um, actions during the press conference would benefit Troub
leshooters Incorporated. You’re dead wrong.”

  She opened her mouth, about to speak, but he stopped her. “Wait. Hear me out. I heard you out.”

  She waited.

  “When I’m out there, working to protect you, the way I was at the press conference, I’m a personal representative of both Tommy Paoletti and his company. When you did what you did—using me as a prop like that—you implied that I’m engaging in unprofessional behavior.”