Locke and Key (Titan Book 12)

by Cristin Harber

No such luck.

  Ding. As her warning light chimed, the bright-red indicator flashed on her dashboard. There was no question at all. Cassidy had a quickly emptying, nearly flat tire.

  “No! Not right now.” She slapped both hands against the steering wheel, pulled the car over, and parked. With a deep breath, she jumped out to inspect the damage, mentally chanting that the noise had been something stuck on her tire.

  Nope. The indicator light had not lied. Her tire was on its way to pathetically flat.

  And… she no longer had a donut because of that little run-in with a pothole last week. Ugh! She hated DC’s godforsaken potholes.

  Triple A was useless, even if she called them. Cassidy threw her arms in the air and kicked the flat tire. “Why now?”

  A truck slowly pulled next to her, and she flat-out refused to look over. She could sense Locke Oliver’s smirky presence. There were some combinations she couldn’t handle. Him plus a flat tire? No. Not that afternoon. She waved her hand, motioning for the truck to pass. “I’m good. Go away.”

  The window rolled down, and the truck didn’t budge. He honked, and she relented, glancing over.

  Locke’s chiseled face waited patiently, not smugly. Damn, did he live to play hero? “Do you need some help? Or do you just like kicking your car?”

  Saw that, did he? She hated him. Why did he have to be the knight in shining armor? “Don’t worry. Triple A is on its way. You can go.”

  “I just saw your flat tire.” He laughed. “Saw the whole thing. The kick was a nice touch.”

  Awkward…

  “You haven’t called Triple A yet.”

  “Okay, truth warrior.” She waved goodbye. “I’m calling now.”

  “I’ll wait,” he said, shifting into park in the middle of the road.

  She physically braced herself to keep from rolling her eyes. “I don’t need a babysitter. You’re not going to wait.”

  “Do you not have Triple A? Is that what this is? Because I can change your tire.” He put his truck in gear. “Don’t call. I’m faster.”

  Locke pulled over before she could think of some story to stop him. Her mind blanked. How to get out of this? She didn’t have a tire for him to change, and the situation was just getting more complicated by the second because she didn’t want to get caught in another stupid lie.

  As he walked over, she noted that he was not unattractive. Had it been any other day, any other man, any other situation, having a guy like that rescue her would’ve been pretty amazing.

  Her heart was pounding. Oh boy. Okay, he made her nervous in a way that she hated. Did he amble? Saunter? It wasn’t a walk. Maybe she was still on a high from throwing him out of her Jeep.

  “I’m fine. Really—”

  “Open the hatch, Cass.”

  Cass? Like a good deed equaled a nickname? She hated that as much as she hated the way his blond hair hung over his eye just enough that her fingers itched to brush it away. All of it drove her batty. And that made her stabby.

  “Cassidy?” He tucked the stray hair away without her help, thank God.

  Well, hell. “I don’t exactly have a spare tire.”

  Her words visibly played through his head. “So no Triple A?”

  “Yeah, basically.” She tossed her hands. “They can tow me somewhere, I guess.”

  Locke burst out laughing.

  “Would you stop it?” she said.

  “Okay, all right.” He crossed his thick arms, his chest still rumbling. “Kind of funny. But okay.”

  “None of this is funny.” Did laughing make men more attractive? Because she was trying to ignore how he’d laughed. His chuckles died down, but then she noticed the Henley that worked over his muscles like magic. Ugh, his biceps rounded obnoxiously as he folded his arms. It was truly stupid how the cotton hugged the curves of his physique—damn near illegal, honestly.

  “I have a one-time offer.” He smirked, unaware that she’d eyeballed his arms like they were chocolate dangled in front of a girl on a diet. “You’re coming with me.”

  “I am?”

  “Aren’t you?”

  She balked. “No, I’m not. Why would I do that?”

  “To get a new tire, Flamethrower.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Clearly, Locke had lost his mind. It had to be a lethal combo of Titan’s intel-therapy, Cassidy calling him a sexist pig, and his mother reminding him to step in when he didn’t want to, because Cassidy could have called Triple A for a tow. She likely hated him, but still, he wasn’t going to leave her on the side of the road without offering to help.

  “I’ll take you to get a tire and throw the sucker on.” It was almost entertaining to watch her squirm. “Unless you have some other grand plan.”

  “I don’t have a grand plan.”

  “Clearly.” He couldn’t help but grin. “I don’t have anything else to do right now.” Except that he did: Bishop and Ella. Of all the places that Locke thought he might go that afternoon, he never thought he’d be taking Cassidy to a tire store. “Give me a second to see where we should go.”

  “I’ll just have it towed,” she said decisively. “Then metro home.”

  “Okay, then. You want a ride to the station?”

  “It’s only a couple blocks away. Now that I have my grand plan, I’m going to call Triple A.” She grabbed her phone and walked away.

  “Right.” Locke shrugged a shoulder and pulled his phone out to find text messages from Bishop.

  BISHOP: Where you at?

  BISHOP: You alive?

  Locke was an hour late. Not his usual way of doing things.

  LOCKE: Hey. Sorry, something came up. Catch up with you later.

  BISHOP: You doing ok??

  LOCKE: Ran into someone I used to know.

  That was true enough. He put his phone away and returned to find Cassidy far more upset than when she’d left him. “So…”

  Her fingers tapped the edge of her cell. Upset wasn’t the right word. It was more like annoyed. Aggravated. The woman did not hide her emotions well at all. Maybe that was a good thing when it came to deciphering her.

  “So,” she said, drawing out the word. “Three hours for a tow. If I had a freaking spare tire, it would be forty-five minutes. But since I’m just relocating from point A to point B? Apparently”—she wiggled her fingers in a dramatic fashion—“I’m not that important. Ugh. I should never have said I was in a safe spot.”

  Her rant was justifiable. Three hours was a long-ass time. He wondered if she would take him up on the ride. “If my tire would fit, I’d give it to you. Sucks.”

  “Yeah.” She bit her lip, drawing one eyebrow down, then made twisted faces as if the words were stuck on her tongue and she wanted to ask for the help but had drawn a line and was stubbornly figuring out how to cross it.

  “The hell with it,” he mumbled. He wasn’t an asshole. “Let’s go.”

  Locke tipped his head toward his truck and started walking. She’d either join him or not, and he’d change her tire. All Cassidy had to do was cross her stubborn line.

  He opened his door and pulled himself inside, refusing to look in the rearview mirror. “Come on, Cass…”

  He caught her in his peripheral vision, and his chest relaxed. She opened the passenger door and crawled in. He cracked the top of his water bottle and tipped it back to take a sip.

  “Do you know how long this might take?” she asked. “It’s about to be rush hour in DC. You hate me, and we’ll be stuck together forever.”

  “I don’t hate you.” But didn’t he? Locke capped the bottle and put it in the console. “Does anyone do anything nice for you? Or do you let them? I mean, your walls are skyscrapers.”

  “Asks the guy that jumped into my car and yelled at me. After he yelled at me when he was part of the rescue team saving me from a berzerko situation in freaking Russia!”

  Point, Cassidy.

  “Then…” He rubbed a hand over his chin. “It’s an olive branch. I’m of
fering to get you a damn tire in almost rush-hour traffic. I just came off as an asshole—”

  “A sexist asshole.”

  He groaned and rolled his eyes but forced a smile. “In that very small, one-time situation, I came off as a sexist”—he added the same emphasis she did—“asshole, and I’d like to make that up to you.”

  “Let’s go to the tire store. Thank you.”

  Locke grabbed his phone. “Hey, Siri. Where is the closest place to get a tire?”

  On his phone screen, a list of locations came up, and he handed her the phone. “I have no preference. If you don’t, then pick the closest one.”

  Her fingers touched his on the handoff. They were softer than Locke expected. He snapped his hand away as though she’d shocked him.

  Cassidy gave him a crazed side-eye. “Just back out of the offer to help if you think I’m some leper.”

  “I don’t.”

  “Because we can write off earlier. I’ll take this as a crazy-ass, alpha-male Titan Group apology. We’re all good. No need to go tire shopping with me, all right?” She reached for the door.

  Locke grabbed her shoulder. “Wait. No. Chill out. You read that all wrong.”

  “I get that you still hate me.” She held up a finger, bouncing it between the two of them. “Though this makes me think maybe hate isn’t a strong enough word. Your skin won’t dissolve if you touch me.”

  “Ignore that.” Because he planned to ignore his reaction to her—seriously, noticing how soft her skin was? Nope. He didn’t like it.

  “You being nice—this whole tire thing—is throwing me off.”

  “God, would you quit already?” She made him feel awful when his motives were honest. “I don’t hate you.” Maybe he didn’t anymore. “Look, I’m working through some shit. I don’t know. Yes, seeing you brought that up. But I’m trying to make peace with it.”

  She didn’t move, didn’t respond. Cassidy almost wilted. It cut him. He needed to draw the attention away from what he’d just said.

  “What are you working through?” she asked.

  “Nothing.” He stifled the impulse to share his discomfort with her. “Something. I’m not sure. I have to accept something that I don’t even want to deal with.”

  “I had to accept what happened in Sadr City,” she whispered. “Because of how quickly they yanked me back, put me on TV, the hearings—”

  “That’s not what I meant.” His skin prickled with a cold chill. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “I don’t think either one of us will ever be at peace with it.”

  No shit. ‘At peace with it.’ What was up with that phrase?

  Cassidy gave a heavy, sad sigh and seemed to sink deep into her seat under the weight of the tragedy. He had to change the subject for both of them. Never in a million years did he think that the woman he’d watched for hours in Parker’s office would wither under the weight of this kind of conversation. But maybe a private talk was harder than a public hearing.

  “Tell me what you were doing at St. Andrew’s,” Locke said, shifting into drive as the GPS directions began.

  Locke eased off the brake and decided to let the silence hang in the air until she started talking about St. Andrew’s. Minutes ticked by. They were coasting down Route 295, and still, she hadn’t said a word. Maybe this plan of action wasn’t the right one.

  “How’d you end up reporting with the teacher in Russia?”

  He easily handled the heavy flow of traffic. At least it wasn’t bumper-to-bumper.

  A tension that he couldn’t explain filled the cab of his truck. He couldn’t place it, didn’t understand it, didn’t like it, and at the same time, welcomed it. All of it was new and uncomfortable.

  “Locke!”

  “Yeah?”

  Her eyes were wide, as though she had been explaining everything and he had not been listening.

  “Our exit—you’re going to miss it.” Cassidy pointed. “Right there.”

  Shit. He hadn’t heard one thing from his GPS. Quickly, he threw on his turn signal and checked his mirrors, gunning his engine to slip into a small space between two cars. Locke maneuvered tightly to the right and moved down the exit ramp.

  He slowed down before muttering, “Thanks.”

  Cassidy covered her mouth and laughed. “Least we know you can drive.”

  He gave her a side-eye, and then she laughed harder, which was worth a small laugh of his own.

  “Yeah, yeah.” He shook his head. “All right, you made me think far too hard about things that are far too easy.”

  “Obviously,” she said, still giggling.

  “If you’d say what you were doing at St. Andrew’s, we wouldn’t miss the tire store.”

  “But then what fun would that be?” Grinning, she tugged a piece of red hair from behind her ear and twisted it.

  Damn, her smile. He had to do a double take. It might’ve been one of the first times she’d given him any honesty.

  “What’s that look?” she asked.

  He shrugged. Locke preferred to keep his mouth shut. Words were a commodity. They were to be used when necessary. But at the moment… her smile made him painfully aware of her lips. Hell.

  Locke cleared his throat and concentrated on driving. The tension in the truck pressed on his chest. He cracked the window as though a stream of fresh air might alleviate the uncomfortable ache he didn’t know how to explain.

  “I don’t remember you being this quiet in Iraq.” She rubbed her hands on her thighs, pushing them to her knees and back slowly as if she were uncomfortable also. “Did that change after I left?”

  “Something like that.” Though his team would probably say he talked much more since they’d returned from the Krasnaya Polyana Mountains.

  She settled back against her seat as the phone chirped an upcoming turn. “I wanted international experience on my résumé again.”

  He glanced over.

  “You asked earlier about St. Andrew’s. And I have lovers and haters in this town. I keep thinking if I can beef up the international experience, I’ll end up back on air.” She shrugged. “Investigative reporting if primetime never comes back my way.”

  “Why Russia?” he asked.

  “Why not Russia? Or any other hotspot? There’s a list of probably thirty or forty places that I’d go, given our international relations. But Russia is in the top five, particularly considering what’s been happening in the last few years.”

  Locke couldn’t argue with that assessment. It made sense, but other parts didn’t.

  “The school reached out to you randomly and asked if you wanted to go along?” That was where his details were fuzzy, and her behavior made him question the relationship with Alex and the integrity of any reporting she might do.

  “It’s an interesting school,” Cassidy said.

  “I keep hearing.”

  “It’s very elite. It’s private, expensive, and serves an exclusive clientele. I still connect with former colleagues who fall into that category. They support my effort to rebuild my career, and they’re strong advocates for their school.”

  “They send their kids there?”

  She nodded. “When a teacher approached the board of trustees about a teacher exchange, they agreed to it, but there was no way that St. Andrew’s would let a great press opportunity go by without having top-notch reporting.”

  He hummed as he mulled over what she said.

  “And,” Cassidy continued, “whether you choose to admit it or not, I’m a hell of a reporter and a bit controversial. Controversy equals more clicks and reads.”

  “A bit?”

  She didn’t respond to his jab. “They wanted op-eds placed in mainstream media outlets. My name could all but ensure that.”

  “It wasn’t about bringing a Russian teacher to St. Andrew’s for a few weeks?”

  She shook her head. “They didn’t just want to expand educational opportunities for their kids. They wanted to broaden the school’s
visibility. At home and abroad.”

  “Why?” He glanced at her, and judging by the annoyed look on her face, he was missing the point.

  “It’s a golden opportunity for fundraising and name recognition. Continue to establish the school’s reputation as the best of the best, across the globe.”

  “Sounds a bit much.”

  “Have you been in there? It’s all a bit much.”

  Locke grumbled. It seemed like a stretch even as schools went, and he couldn’t wrap his mind around the concept that they would sponsor a media person to travel abroad on what was essentially a fundraising and marketing campaign. But what did he know?

  “I think,” she said, “you’re drastically underestimating the inferiority complex that DC has when they compare themselves to New York City. Some DC schools are internationally known—maybe one or two—and the one where Alex Gaev teaches? They jumped at a chance to have me travel with him faster than you can say, ‘Get an op-ed in the New York Times.’”

  It all came down to perception. Looks could be deceiving, and the school had almost killed Cassidy just to change the inflated opinions of a few snobs about a place that likely already had an excellent reputation.

  “Your destination is on the right,” the phone announced.

  They couldn’t miss the giant tire in front of them. They pulled into the lot, and Locke turned to Cassidy, realizing—not for the first time that day—that maybe he needed to pay attention to the obvious.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Cassidy’s hand rested on the door handle, but she turned back to Locke. “Hey, wait.”

  He looked confused—or seasick. She couldn’t get a good read on him, but either way, his paling face wasn’t what she expected. “You okay?”

  “Yes.” Locke cleared his throat as he shifted his truck into park.

  Again, she tried to understand what his facial expression was, but she came up empty. “If you’re sure.”

  “Positive.” He grabbed his water and chugged a few sips.

  All righty, then. Cassidy didn’t care to owe people favors. It never worked out for her. “If I tell you what I was doing at the school, can we call this even?”