Burn Out

by Ruthi Kight

  If it was the last thing I did, I was going to find out what it was.

  When Governor Willis left, I made my way back to my bedroom. My body was exhausted and craved the comfort of the soft, warm bed, but I couldn’t shut my brain off. It was running through all of the possibilities, all of the scenarios, digging into the information that had been stored in the depths of my mind for ten years.

  I had spent the past ten years trying to block out what had happened that night, but right then I knew that I would have to let the memories come back. I would have to find out what that man was hiding. And I knew the only person who I could trust to help me. He was the same person that I had sworn I would never talk to again.

  Liam.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Call me a chicken shit if you want, but I couldn’t bring myself to call Liam. Not yet, anyway. I also couldn’t force myself to go to my appointment with Dr. Jenkins. Again, call me all the names you want, because at that point, it was the last thing on my mind.

  Sure, I had the urges, but I fought those bitches and won! The nightmares were even slowing down, so why did I need them? But, I still couldn’t muster the courage to face him just yet. Not after what had happened the last time we were together.

  I went about my day, working with Mike until the early afternoon. When he asked about Willis, and what he was doing there, I filled him in on what had went down. Even the nitty gritty about Liam. Let me tell you, that was one hell of a conversation.

  “Something is definitely fishy. What are you thinking? That Willis was involved somehow?” he asked as we ate dinner that night.

  “It’s a possibility. He wouldn’t give me any details. If he had information that the police didn’t have, then why was he hiring someone to privately look into it? Why not turn that shit in to the authorities? That’s what they get paid for,” I said as I picked at the plate of soggy spaghetti in front of me.

  “Hmmm…” he said, wiping his mouth with a napkin. “Then, you know what we need to do. Dig a little deeper into him.”

  That was exactly what I had wanted to do, but when I told him about my hang ups, he only laughed at me. “It’s not funny! How can I face him after that?”

  “I’ve heard of a little bit of regret after going through with it, but damn, y’all didn’t even make it past second base!” He continued to laugh, tears pouring from his eyes. I let him get it out, sure that when he finally stopped we could figure out what to do next.

  “This is serious. What do I do?” He started laughing, yet again, so I gave up. “Fine, whatever. Laugh, har har har. I thought your ass was grown?” I asked as I slammed my fork down on the table. He held his hand up, stopping me from getting up from the table. When I was good and settled, he finally composed himself fully.

  “First of all, you need to call Liam. That should be step one. Then, together, we can figure out what to do. Where to dig. Maybe even plant some fake information, just enough to throw Willis off his game.” I nodded along, liking where he was going. “But Delia, you need to know that nothing is guaranteed from this. We could end up just screwing more shit up by digging around.”

  I knew that. I wasn’t completely clueless. There were so many things that could backfire at any given moment. If Willis found out what we were doing, he would put an end to it immediately. We had to be smart about it and watch each other’s backs.

  “So we need someone on the inside. But who?”

  We stayed up half the night, plotting and planning. Mike kept reminding me, in a not-so-subtle way that I needed to call Liam. Each time, he was ignored. Tomorrow. I would call him tomorrow. With a semi-decent game plan, and a promise to make a certain fucking call the next day, we both went to bed.

  The pounding in my head was getting worse as I lay there, curled up, in my bed. There were too many questions, too many theories, and not enough hard evidence. I wanted to sleep it off. Rewind the day and pretend that Willis hadn’t just threw my world for a fucking loop. As if the rest of my life had been a walk in the park, right?

  Just one day. That’s all I asked for. Just one day where nothing went terribly wrong. Was that too much to ask?

  ***

  With my tail tucked between my legs, I walked my ass up the short walkway that led to Liam’s door. Just the sight of it twisted my guts. I wasn’t ready to face him, but when I got up this morning, I was basically shoved out the door.

  “Don’t come back until you two have fucked and made up,” Mike said with a cheeky grin.

  Was it weird that my boss was telling me to go have sex with someone? Hell yes it was. Did I care at that point? Maybe a little less than I should have.

  When my fist connected with the door, I heard the sounds of hurried footsteps pounding through the house. A door slammed, a few curses were muttered, and then the door swung open. There, wearing nothing but flannel pajama bottoms, was Liam. Oh, you devious fucking jerk! He was smiling down on me, running his hand through his bed head hair, as I stood there and gaped at his perfect form.

  “Don’t you ever wear clothes?” I asked as I brushed by him and sat down on the couch. When he joined me, he had that shit-eating grin on his face, yet again.

  “I was told that it would be a shame to cover all this,” he said, running his hands up and down his chest, “up. So, I leave it off as much as possible.”

  I snorted, fucking snorted, immediately putting my hand over my mouth to cover the guffaw. “It wasn’t that funny,” he said, walking back into his bedroom. A few minutes later, he came back out fully dressed. While he was still mind-numbingly sexy with all his clothes on, at least I was able to focus a little bit more when I didn’t have to stare at his perfect pecs and rippling abs.

  “So, I’m a little afraid to ask…but what brings you by?” He sat down on the couch and tucked one leg under the other

  “Mike and I need your help,” I replied, settling at the other end of the couch, as far away from him as possible.

  “Mmhmm, okay. So, what is it that you and Mike need help with?”

  He knew I was bullshitting him, but he was going to let me continue the ruse anyway. Something about that made the butterflies in my chest flutter a mile a minute. “Willis came to see me the other day.” I watched his face, as the emotions flittered past.

  “Willis? What the hell did he want?” Suddenly, he was on his feet, pacing in front of me.

  I shook my head, then said “Supposedly, he’s got new information about the night my parents died. But, it seems off to me. He wouldn’t tell me what he knew, which struck me as being kinda odd. He’s hiding something, I’m sure of it.”

  He nodded and stopped pacing, his eyes fixated on mine. “I had a feeling that he was hiding something. He would never tell me exactly what I was supposed to be digging for. Sketchy, I’m telling you.”

  “So what do we do about it?”

  He was pacing again, his mind elsewhere, but when I spoke he stopped and focused on me once again. “What do you mean ‘we’? There is no we, sweetheart.” The wall that had always been around his heart, which had crumbled a few times in my presence, was firmly back in place.

  “Don’t you want to know what your boss has up his sleeve?”

  “Not my boss, but thanks. This isn’t my problem, now is it? You made it clear that you wanted me out of your life, away from you. Why the hell would I want to get involved, yet again?”

  With a quick move, I was standing in front of him, my hands planted firmly on my hips. “This isn’t you, Liam. Let that shit go. This is bigger than the both of us. If you don’t want to help, fine, but don’t stand here and tell me that you don’t care. That’s not you.” I walked past him, to the front door, and waited for him to call me back, to beg me not to leave. But he did nothing but stand there, his head hung in shame.

  “Fine,” I said as I jerked the door open. As soon as I stepped outside I felt like I was about to fall apart. Mike was a great asset to have on my side, but he had no way of getting the information tha
t we needed. There was no “in” for him. Without Liam’s help, there was a possibility that I would never find out the truth.

  But as I walked away from the house, my mind began to clear. Okay, so it was going to be harder. Why the fuck was I letting his childish response shut me down completely? Pathetic, that’s what I was. Relying on someone who had continued to let me down, over and over again.

  “Delia!” His voice called out to me. I wanted to keep going, to prove to him that I didn’t need him, but…my body betrayed me. I didn’t face him though, so ha!

  His footsteps increased, closing the distance between us quickly. “Look, I’m a dick, okay? It’s just…no. Forget it. I’ll help you, no questions asked.” I turned to look at him, my arms crossed again. “But once this is over…I want you to make me a promise.”

  My head cocked to the side, listening, I waited for him to continue. “I want you to stop running from me. Once and for all. I want us to give it a go.”

  He wanted to try to have a relationship with me? Why? Guess he was as stupid as I originally thought. Without another word, I nodded then turned and left. There was a small feeling of triumph coursing through me, leaving me amped and ready. Willis wouldn’t know what hit him once we were done.

  Whatever that man was hiding, it was time for him to give it up. Ashley had told me over and over again that when I latched onto something, I was like a pit bull on a bone. I didn’t let go, didn’t let up until I had gotten what I wanted. If she could’ve seen me then, she would have probably jumped up and down with glee, glad to see that my spark was back.

  I was a fighter, and this time I wasn’t going to slink away to rehab. I was going to face Willis, his secrets, and the rest of this fucking town head on.

  ***

  We agreed to meet that night to go over a game plan. If we went into this halfcocked, there was a big chance that we would fail. Hell, there was a big chance we would fail anyway. We weren’t spies. We had no fucking clue what we were about to dive into. Who knew what kind of information we would find once we opened that can of worms?

  Sitting there, on Mike’s couch, I watched as he and Liam stared at their respective computer screens. For the past hour I had watched them, listening to them chattering back and forth. Words like “surveillance” and “covert” made their way in, but for the most part I had tuned out. My mind was elsewhere.

  Besides, they looked like they had this handled, leaving me time to think. My memories weren’t complete, especially of that night, but I had to find a way to bring them back. To remember what exactly had happened. When I mentioned going into a meditative trance earlier, both of them had just stared at me like I had lost my mind.

  “What? It works on TV,” I said, sticking my tongue out at them.

  After that, I decided to leave them to the technical stuff and just focus on what I could do. I had no experience with computers, so helping there was never going to happen. But being stealthy, unseen, was something that I had mastered in rehab.

  There had been many nights that I had snuck out of my room to raid the kitchen. The staff always hid the good stuff in the same spot in the back of the small fridge, in the furthest corner of the room. If they thought they were being slick, they were sorely mistaken.

  Ashley and I had spent many nights lying awake in our room, our bellies hurting from all of the junk food and sugar that we had made off with. Every time we had woken up praying to the porcelain gods, we had both sworn we would never do it again. And, like a true sugar-holic, we kept going back.

  It wasn’t so much about the sugar though. For me, it was more about proving that we could. Showing them they only had so much control over us. We were not cattle for the slaughter, regardless of how they saw us.

  Liam’s voice brought me back to the present. “What do you think, Delia?” Our eyes locked and he shook his head. “You didn’t hear a word I said, did you?”

  “Sorry,” I replied, my cheeks flaming in embarrassment.

  “I was just telling Mike that we needed to find a way into Willis’ computer. To do that, though, we’d have to get inside his office.” His voice trailed off as he thought about how to go about getting into the governor’s computer.

  While in theory it was a good idea, how the hell would we actually pull it off? “Does he still trust you?” I asked, my mind running a mile a minute.

  This time, it was Mike who answered. “Doubtful. After his meeting with Delia, he probably knows that you’re both onto him. You’d need someone on the inside. Someone he trusts.”

  Liam jumped up, his smile a mile wide. “I’ve got it. His secretary, Angela.” When neither of us spoke up, he shook his head. “She’s been trying to get in my pants for weeks now. If I could convince her that she stood a chance, I could get into that office, easy.”

  “Won’t she be a little suspicious about you showing up like that? All sexy and ready to ravish her?” I asked, trying to tamp down the jealousy that I felt boiling inside of me. I didn’t like the idea, but he had a point. She could be our only chance of getting into that office.

  He smirked at me, turning my insides to jelly once again. “I’ll set it up. Willis goes to lunch every day from eleven thirty til two, so I’ll convince her to go to lunch with me at the same time. I’ll take her somewhere relatively far from the office, while you two break in and get to work on his computer.”

  I had to think about it for a minute, letting the crazy plan work through my mind. It seemed far too easy. There was also the security of the entire building to deal with. Would they just let the two of us waltz in like we owned the place?

  “It’ll work. Trust me,” he said, walking over to me and taking hold of my hand. The sparks were there, never letting either of us forget the attraction we felt for each other. “Please, just this once, do things my way. It’s going to work.”

  I couldn’t say no to him, not when he begged like that. “Fine, but we need to plan this out to the smallest, minute detail. There can be no screw ups. If Mike and I get caught in his office, we’re toast. That’s like a federal offense or something, right?”

  What the fuck was wrong with me? I had just agreed to break into the governor’s office, while the guy I was in ‘like’ with, romanced his secretary. If someone had told me a few months ago that this would be my life, I would have taken them out at the knees. But now…now it felt normal. Like this was how my life was supposed to be.

  With a sigh, I released all the worries that plagued my mind. We agreed that tomorrow, we would begin to put our plan in action. Until then…well, it looked like that night was going to be rather awkward as the three of us got to know each other a little bit better.

  ***

  “No, absolutely not,” I said with a laugh. “There is no way you’re going to get me to do it. Forget it!” Nearly in tears from laughing so hard, I wiped my face with the back of my hand.

  “Aww, come on D! It’ll be fun!” yelled Mike from the kitchen. Moments later he was walking back in, a bowl of popcorn in his hands and a smug look on his face.

  Truth or Dare…was he fucking serious? It was a kid’s game. Something that we did as children to either embarrass our friends, or to just pass the time. Why in the world would I want to engage in such a silly game? Oh yeah, ‘cause I was outnumbered and outvoted.

  “Promise, we won’t make you do anything that might end up on YouTube later.” Liam smiled at me as he wiggled his eyebrows at me. “Unless…you’re chicken?”

  “Sorry, not falling for that lame ass trick. I’m secure enough to be able to say no to something, regardless of how I feel about it.” I grabbed the bowl of popcorn from Mike and flopped down on the couch. It was delicious, covered in melted butter and doused in tons of salt. Just the way I liked it.

  Liam stood up and walked over to me, settling down on the couch right beside me. There was literally only a few inches separating our bodies. When he reached over to snag a handful, his leg brushed against mine. The spot where we connected was on fir
e. Little pinpricks ran up and down my skin, sending the rest of my body into overdrive.

  “You’re in my bubble again,” I said, pushing him away playfully. He didn’t fight it, only smirked and scooted over a tiny bit.

  “All you have to do is agree to the game. It’s not that hard,” said Mike as he sat down on the floor at the end of the couch. Well, weren’t we just a cozy little group.

  I set the bowl of popcorn on the floor beside Mike and leaned back, resting my head on the back of the couch. “Fine. Hit me,” I replied, letting the words fall out of my mouth.

  “Oh, you have to let me go first,” Liam beamed. Great, this was going to end badly, I already knew it. When he turned to face me, he had an impish grin on his face and was ready to settle a score. “Truth or dare, Delia?”

  No matter which I chose, I was in trouble, so I went with what I assumed was the best choice. “Truth.”

  He rubbed his hands together, then said “Okay, truth it is. Are you harboring secret feelings for me?”

  “No.”

  “Liar!”

  “Mike, truth or dare?” I asked, ignoring Liam’s indignant response.

  “Dare,” he replied, obviously ready for some action.

  “Okay. I, umm, dare you…to…oh hell. This is harder than I thought!” I laughed, completely out of my element. “I dare you to go jump in the ocean fully clothed!”

  I thought it was a good dare, but with the way the guys were staring at me, I was wrong. “You could have at least dared him to do it naked! I mean, he goes in the ocean with clothes on every fucking day!” Liam’s protests fell on deaf ears. Mike stood up and walked out of the house, his feet pounding across the road towards the beach.

  “Did you want to see him naked?” I asked Liam, batting my eyes at him.

  “Yes, I sure did,” he responded in a monotone voice. “You figured out my game. Darn you.” He sounded emotionless, like a robot. I couldn’t control the laugh that took over, eventually sending him into a fit of giggling as well. Have you ever heard a grown man giggle before?