She didn’t say anything when she parked, and they walked into the restaurant and got their table, complete with tortilla chips and salsa and beers. “It’s a hole in the wall, but that’s the best kind of place,” she offered.
He leaned back in the booth. “See, now I’ve learned something about you.”
“You already did when you discovered I work within the confines of the law.”
“So you agree they’re confining.”
She swished a chip in salsa. “Maybe,” she said before taking a crunching bite.
That made him smile a little and there was a comfortable silence while they ate and she tried to think of a way to explain to her superior that this really was business. It just happened to be very pleasurable as well, and that rarely happened in situations like this.
“I’ve done some checking on you,” she said once their food was served, in an attempt to regain the upper hand … any hand, actually. Although she really didn’t get the feeling he was trying to one-up her—he was trying to do a job.
“Really? Find anything good?” he asked and then took a few bites of his food like he was relishing it.
“You barely exist.”
“I tend to travel light.”
“Because you’re in the military?”
He sat back. “Why? Would that turn you on?”
Everything the man did turned her on and he knew it. “I think it’s admirable that you’re trying to help Teddie. But she’s in a lot of trouble and you and I both know it’s in her best interest to turn herself in and let us sort this out together.”
“No clue where she is.”
“I’m supposed to believe that when your friend took her at gunpoint?”
His steel blue eyes pierced hers. “Grier, I’ve got enough shit going on—I don’t need more.”
“Then why are you actively looking for trouble?”
“People have been asking me that for years. I don’t know why it’s taken so long for them to figure it out.”
“So what’s the secret?”
He leaned forward, whispered, “It’s a hell of a lot of fun. You should try it sometime.”
Goddamn, she wanted to try him right that minute.
CHAPTER
12
After they’d made love, Teddie lay in Kell’s arms, and although her needs were sated, her body remained taut, tension spilling over. They were squeezed together on the couch, wrapped in a blanket, the sounds of the generator muffling the storm somewhat.
Still, it was worsening, there was no doubt about it.
“It’s going to be bad for a while, Teddie,” Kell told her. “But we’re going to get through it.”
The storm was keeping her safe. In a brief moment of irony, she understood that. “I wasn’t scared of storms like this until I got caught in one.” The memory of those hours could terrorize her even now, with Kell’s arms protecting her.
“How old were you?”
She didn’t want to go back there, but talking it out could only help. “I was seventeen. We were in Jakarta. We’d been preparing for the hurricane for days. Over the ocean, it was really strong, but it was supposed to come down to a Cat One by the time it made landfall.”
They’d lived through a lot of storms, mudslides, earthquakes. She’d thought she’d seen everything. She’d actually been blithe about it, had planned on going outside with her camera and snapping photos.
It was the day she’d realized she wasn’t going to live forever. That her life could be taken from her at any time. In many ways, that storm had forced her to move on with her life and stop doing the destructive partying path she’d been on.
She had reason to be grateful for that goddamned hurricane, but that night … “We got word that the hurricane had actually gained in strength and was about to hit us as a Cat Four. It became obvious that we wouldn’t be able to stay at our house, which was about fifteen minutes from the embassy on a normal day. We were told to go to the embassy to wait with the other Americans. There were soldiers who came to the door and told us that the area we were living in might not survive the hurricane.” She stared at Kell and thought about the men who’d risked their own lives to help get her and her family to safety.
“I know the area” was all he said, which meant he knew the terrain, the potential for mudslides and nearly complete destruction, which was what had happened that evening.
“The soldiers were from the local military—gave us ten minutes to grab what we needed to take with us. I had a small bag I packed with some clothes and my camera, because there wasn’t a lot of room in the truck for much else. When we left the house, it was already pouring—a horizontal rain—and there were mudslides and flooding and I got into the back of the truck and just prayed. We almost ran off the road countless times. I didn’t want to look out the window but I couldn’t stop myself. My parents sat there, so silently, but I knew they were scared too. They didn’t want to freak me out any worse than I already was, I guess.”
She hadn’t realized her voice had been trembling until it cracked a little. But she swallowed hard and kept talking. “It took two hours to get to the embassy and it was so horrible and the storm had barely started. Just like this one.”
“We’re going to be okay,” he told her, probably for the millionth time, and she wanted to believe him.
“I thought getting to the embassy meant we were all safe. They didn’t tell me that being there gave us only a small chance of survival,” she said softly.
“Small is better than none,” he countered. “And you made it through.”
“We did. And those soldiers were right. We barely survived … the roof of the embassy was torn off … so much damage and destruction. And it was a slow-moving storm—it took a full ten hours to pass. It just sat there, over us, like it would never move.”
The sounds were the most awful part: the creaking of the roof tearing off, the screams of the women, the tears, the crash as the outer walls collapsed onto one another. “It didn’t end after the storm passed. We were together for six days before any help could reach us.” She paused. “There were American military there with us too. Marines, actually. They were nice.”
He snorted. “Yeah, make sure you tell the next Marine you see that he’s nice.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Yeah, I do.” He glanced over at her when she jumped as the wind whistled. “What happened that night?”
“I already told you—the storm.” When he continued to look at her, she averted her gaze and stared down at her hands, which were splayed on her knees. She’d moved off of him during the telling of the story and had created her own space, and he’d let her.
Now her knees were up to her chest, and without even realizing it, she’d curled herself into a tight ball, the way she’d done that night in the embassy, with her mother next to her.
God, she’d nearly forgotten that—or she’d probably pushed it to the back of her mind—because that was the night she’d learned the horrible news. “My mom told me she was dying,” she whispered, her voice cracking. “She had breast cancer and it had spread before she was even diagnosed. She was supposed to go into the hospital for surgery the next morning.”
God, how horrible that had been, learning that as they all prayed to get through the night and the next week, only to be told she’d lose her mother a short month later, right before she was scheduled to leave for college.
“I’m sorry, Teddie.”
“You think it’s that simple—that I hate storms so much because of what my mother told me during one?” she asked and he cocked his head.
“I think that could be part of it. But no, I don’t think that’s all of it. I’m not a shrink, I just know when people are holding something back.”
“Even from themselves,” she murmured. “A handy skill.”
“Sometimes.” He tugged her back to him and she let him.
Teddie had more to tell him. Kell knew it the way he knew this storm wou
ldn’t let up for much longer than the weather service had reported. The pain behind her eyes was heartbreaking, letting him know she’d get there before the hurricane ended.
That would be worth it for him. If nothing else came out of this, that would be enough.
Bullshit.
“Reid told me you used to fish on the Bering Sea,” she said. “You must’ve seen a lot worse weather than this.”
They had. “When we were on the crab boat, we almost died nearly every other day. Seriously, the storms there are not for the faint of heart. I think it desensitized us to danger, and sometimes not for the better,” Kell told her. “Someone was always in trouble—lots of man overboards, near misses. It wasn’t an easy life and I knew I didn’t want to do it forever. But some of those guys did. It made them happy.”
“It didn’t do that for you?”
“I never worried about being happy,” he said. He’d had too many other things to concentrate on. Survival. Not losing himself to his parents’ legacy.
Whether or not it was time to let some happiness in was something he’d honestly never considered.
Until now. Because, despite everything, when he was with Teddie, things were right again, so much so that he’d had trouble recognizing it.
Teddie burrowed against him and although she was toughing it out, he felt her trembling. And the storm had barely started.
It would give Dylan and Reid time to figure things out, and Kell time to keep Teddie safe.
For now, that was enough.
It sounded like the house was coming down. She heard glass shatter behind the shutters as the storm intensified and the generator slowed to a near stop as if it couldn’t handle the brunt of the hurricane.
She understood how it felt.
She curled up, continued to mull over Kell’s last admission, about not worrying about being happy.
“How do you do it?” she asked him finally. “How do you stay emotionless? Because I need to learn that if I’m going to survive.”
“That’s the last thing I would ever want to teach you.” His voice was colder than it had been, but his eyes were fiery, snapping with anger.
She’d meant it as a compliment of sorts, but obviously he’d taken it far differently than she’d intended. But she didn’t let it go. “Everything I’ve ever done from an emotional standpoint has gotten me into major trouble. If I could just learn to shut off my emotions …”
“Then what? You’d hold Chambers hostage and demand your answers? Because you had no problem holding a gun to him the first time—or shooting someone, it seems.”
“That’s not true.”
“Glad to hear it. Once you shut off your feelings, there’s always the risk that they’ll never come back on. And that’s a hell of a way to live.”
Was he talking about himself? She didn’t think his emotions were shut down completely—no, there were more than hints of that, most especially the fact that he’d actually agreed to help her, for no other reason than she’d asked.
“I get why you did it—he set your father up, might have even had him killed; he’s not who you thought he was.”
Through gritted teeth, she said, “He’s exactly who I thought he was. I found that out right after the storm.” In so many ways, the destruction from that night hadn’t ended, even though her mother had died a month later.
“There’s more I need to tell you … about Samuel,” she said. “But I have a feeling you already knew that.”
He didn’t confirm or deny but she could see in his eyes that she was right. He’d seen through her from the start, and she wanted to confess it all to him—her dreams, her sins … everything in between.
“I know I told you I’ve known Samuel my whole life. He went to college with both my parents—they were great friends. Always really tight. Samuel was part of the family, although we didn’t see him very much when he and my father were both active diplomats. And then he retired and he started coming around more often.”
“Don’t stop now,” Kell told her when she hesistated, and then tried to pull away. “I know you want to, but you’ve got to tell me. It can only help in the long run.”
“I went through a wild phase at one point,” she admitted, because starting from there was easier. “I was fifteen, living in a strange country. I rebelled, snuck out … drinking, smoking, boys …”
He watched her, waited patiently for her to continue.
“I got caught a lot. My parents threatened to send me away to boarding school. I wish they had.”
“Did you stop being a bad girl?”
She smiled at that as her naked body rubbed his. “Obviously not.”
“That’s a good thing, in my book.”
“After the hurricane and my mother’s announcement, my party days came to a crashing halt. We had to live in a hotel several cities away while everything was being rebuilt. I was on a separate floor from my parents—I had a suite. And Samuel came to check on us as soon as he could. He was worried sick, between the storm and my mom’s cancer … he just wanted to be there to help.”
She practically spat out the last word.
“Did Samuel … hurt you?”
“Yes.” She raised her eyes to him, defiant, as if waiting for him to blame her, the way she’d blamed herself for so long, but the only thing she saw was his concern. “He tried, but he didn’t succeed.”
She saw relief in his eyes, still masked by the anger that rose when he’d first asked his question.
“He came up to my room in the hotel to talk to me. Wanted to see if I was playing by the rules. Wanted to talk about college—I was headed to the States in time to take summer classes. I’d wanted to get a jump on things—at least that’s what I told my parents. What I really wanted to do was party and get out from under their reach. Typical teenage rebellion, I guess. Looking back, I realize I really had nothing to rebel from.” She took a breath, because the words were coming fast and furious now, she couldn’t have stopped them if she tried.
“He was drunk. He cornered me. Tore my shirt and kissed me.” Even now, she wiped her mouth off on the back of her hand as if she could still feel him on her. “I pushed him off, but he grabbed me again, hard. I had bruises all over my arms the next day. He got me onto the floor and he said …” She paused. Swallowed. Shook her head. “He told me if he couldn’t have my mother anymore, I was the next best thing.”
Jesus. Kell didn’t know what to say so he just listened.
“I mean, he was supposed to be my father’s best friend. He thought so little of him that he could betray him like that? And my mother too. How could she do that to my father … to our family?” She fisted her hands. “All of that got me so angry. I kneed him in the balls and I ran to my bathroom and locked myself inside until he left. I told my parents that I was sick, because how could I face them?”
“I’m sorry, Teddie.”
“I don’t want you to be sorry. I want you to understand why I have to get to the bottom of this, no matter what. It’s so personal. And that’s why I’m all screwed up. I felt so guilty and angry at the same time.”
“You have nothing to feel guilty about—this was his crime, not yours,” Kell told her.
“I’m not going after him because of what he did to me—it’s not revenge for that. It’s for my family, so I can get proof of his guilt … and now my father’s innocence. It was one thing for him to have an affair with my mother—she was complicit. But then to use my father like that … he was devastated. He discovered the affair the same time he found out that Samuel and my stepmom were involved. And I didn’t have the heart to tell him that I’d known about it.”
She pulled away before he could see the tears and wished she could leave, run through the night until her lungs were bursting and her body was exhausted, and even then she knew her mind wouldn’t stop reliving the memories.
It hadn’t since the murders. “I could’ve done more. Should have.”
“What are you talking about?”<
br />
“I knew he wasn’t to be trusted and if I’d just said something back then …”
“You were afraid they wouldn’t believe you about his attack?”
“Maybe. Or maybe I was afraid that they would. Either way, it would’ve been horrible, but my father might still be alive today.”
She could barely face her mother or father after what had happened—but her mother’s health had declined quickly—that month she was ill was still a blur. After the funeral, Teddie had taken off for college as quickly as she could and hadn’t really looked back. She couldn’t bear to spend time with Samuel and thankfully he hadn’t been around when she did have to go home for a holiday here and there.
“You can’t blame yourself.”
“Just because you say it doesn’t mean I’m going to believe it,” she said, more harshly than she intended.
It was simple—when Kell touched her, the craziness in her mind just vanished.
He was close, but not close enough. She needed the contact so she could stop thinking about the past … and the unresolved present problems.
But he was making her deal with it, despite the fact that she didn’t want to.
“If you tell the marshals this—” he started, but she shook her head.
“No. Bad enough I told you.”
“Why?”
“Because saying it out loud makes it true.”
He stroked her cheek. “Yeah, it does. But it happened. And you have to put your trust in someone.”
“Who? You’re the one telling me my own father couldn’t be trusted.”
“I thought you wanted my help.”
“How do you trust anyone when your own family betrays you?” she asked.
“I’m still working on that,” he told her, and then shut that part of the conversation down by saying, “Tell me exactly what happened in the restaurant with Chambers.”
“I met him like he’d asked. He was waiting for me at a big table in the back—they obviously knew him there.”
The look on Samuel’s face when he saw her … there was still lust there, and satisfaction, as if he finally had her where he wanted her. He liked her vulnerable. And she’d played that card to the hilt on the phone and in person. “I didn’t know what else to do but work him like that.”
Night Moves: A Shadow Force Novel Page 18
