Jackson Stiles, Road to Redemption

by Jo Richardson

  For a minute there, I’m convinced she’s gonna make a move. Something that I’ve only seen, to date that is, in the movies.

  Not that I haven’t considered it once or twice.

  I’m not gonna lie. The knee against my dick is a smooth move. Not too aggressive, not too passive.

  “That’s the second time tonight you’ve put your body a little too close to mine, Green.”

  “Too close?” she asks innocently. Almost naïve. It makes me wonder if she’s a good liar after all. But then she backs away with a teasing grin. I notice the side eyeing, though.

  “You can stop eying my dick, Green. It’s not gonna bite you. Much.”

  She lets out a nervous kinda laugh. “I wasn’t staring at your dick. You have something on your crotch. It’s virtually impossible not to stare at it.”

  I look down, then over at her. “Good one.”

  She snorts. “You’re not even my type, Stiles. Sorry.” She says it with what I have to assume is supposed to be some kind of a blow off attitude and a slight wave of her hand.

  Still avoiding eye contact, however.

  “I’m everybody’s type.” I laugh because I’m nobody’s type, which, inevitably is everybody’s type.

  Jesus, this elevator is slow.

  “Not mine,” she insists. The smartphone is her friend. It distracts her from having to confront me. But not for long.

  “Really.”

  “Yes. Really.”

  Oh, it’s on.

  We’ll call this scenario payback.

  “So if I backed you into a corner, for example.” I do it. Not unlike the way she just pinned me, only slightly more, you know, engaged. She looks surprised and nearly trips over her own feet until she finds one of the elevator walls to use for support.

  The smartphone? Forgotten.

  “And trapped you there.” I put my arms up on each side of her so she can’t escape me. I don’t need a fucking wall of buttons to use as an excuse either.

  I lean into one ear and breathe in the perfume she used today. Or maybe it’s lotion. I don’t know. Either way, I nuzzle my nose into her neck to get a better whiff, fully forgetting about the fact that she’s taken. My lips are close to her skin. So close I can see the goosebumps as they form.

  She shivers and it does things to me I wouldn’t have expected.

  I lower my voice. It’s not purposeful. I’m suddenly more into this than I originally thought, is all. “And I muttered dirty, dirty things into your ear.” A few choice words cross my mind.

  Take your clothes off.

  Take my clothes off.

  Let me touch you.

  She tries to keep her stare hardened, but I’m attuned to her reactions.

  The way she swallows down the nerves. How she takes a shaky breath. Nothing compares to the way her legs rub up against each other or how her chest heaves up against me as I wait for her to say something.

  I mentioned I’m an excellent reader of body language, right?

  I whisper next to her ear. “Would I still not be your type?” I can’t help wonder. “Or maybe you prefer a polo shirt and khakis.”

  I pull back to look her in the eyes. They’ll tell me everything I want to know. Every damn time.

  She fucking hates khakis.

  When Green peers into my eyes, I see it. The want. The need. The incredible amount of self-restraint she has that keeps her from acting on her instincts in this cramped ass space.

  I should feel victorious right now. Like I just taught the vixen a lesson on how not to use sex as a weapon on men she barely knows. I should leave her high and dry and be done with it.

  The only problem is, I feel it too.

  The urge to put my mouth on hers. Let our tongues touch. To take that fucking jacket off her so I can slide a hand up under her blouse and feel the heat of her skin.

  Her brow dips quickly, then resumes position. Like she’s confused as to why I’ve stopped.

  Why have I stopped?

  “You—”

  The doors open and an exhausted-looking woman gets on with us as she yawns. Green pushes me off her and composes herself. Or tries to. The woman gives me a look, and I wink at her, insinuating she’s next in line if she’s interested. It deters the staring, and at the next floor, Green nudges me to let me know we’re where we need to be.

  She steps out first and rubs at the back of her neck.

  “Tense?” I don’t get to do much harassing. Green slows to a halt and smacks me in the arm.

  “Shut up, Stiles. This is him.” She points to a door not two feet away, and she knocks before she walks in.

  “Hey, Ken.” She takes a deep breath and it’s shaky when she lets it out.

  Not her type. Bullshit.

  The man behind the desk swings his chair around. “Hey, if it isn’t my favorite reporter. What’s up, Em?”

  Em?

  He can’t get a little more creative than that?

  And P.S., I’m pretty sure she was fucking with me when she described him. There’s no hard ass demeanor in this guy. No flirtatious banter from Green. And definitely no sign of the cunning hacker office I might have been expecting to see. Just a slightly overweight junk food junkie with too many toys in reference to superheroes for an adult to have.

  They laugh at each other's stupid jokes for a few minutes before getting down to business. As that happens, I step into Ken’s view from the other side of his three gigantic monitors. That’s when his expression turns serious.

  “Who’s this?”

  “Ken, this is my friend Jackson Stiles. He’s a private detective in the area.”

  He sits up straighter than before and adjusts his bobble head Superman he just knocked with his elbow. No smiles for me, I guess, but I try and make this friendly with a nod.

  “Sup.”

  As friendly as I fucking can, that is.

  He types a few things into the keyboard sitting in front of him, then another something into one sitting to his left. Both screens go black.

  He never does answer me.

  “Ken,” Green continues. “We’re looking for someone.”

  “And?”

  He folds some papers up and pushes them into his desk drawer.

  How fucking paranoid can you be?

  Seriously.

  “And…” Green looks frustrated. “Hold on.” She turns to me and kind of escorts me out of the office into the sea of cubicles that fill the floor.

  “What?” I didn’t do shit. I swear.

  “I think you make him nervous.”

  “Well, you didn’t exactly have to tell him I’m a private eye. I mean, come on.”

  “Why don’t you wait out here while I talk to him?”

  I laugh. “I don’t fucking think so.”

  “He won’t talk if you’re in there.”

  “Then we move on.”

  She stops with the whisper-screaming when someone walks by. Green smiles. I’m not that fucking polite, though. Once they’re out of earshot, she starts in on me again.

  “Stiles. This is your best bet right now. I promise.”

  “You don’t know that.” I’m done whispering.

  “Yeah, I pretty much do.”

  We could do this shit all night. But because I’m a high-road kinda guy, I digress. Plus, I really don’t see winning this one. She’s ornery, that one.

  “Fine,” I tell her, setting my watch. “You’ve got a hundred and twenty seconds. Then I’m outta here.”

  “Two minutes, gotcha.” She disappears back into the office and closes the door. I hear them talking, laughing, getting angry, but I can’t make out what the fuck they’re saying. When Green emerges, she’s got a grimace spread across her face. I’m guessing that means she got nowhere. Which also means I was right, and now we can move the fuck on.

  No harm, no foul.

  She’s quiet on the way downstairs, giving me time to think. One might assume I put that time to good use. One might be wrong. Mostly because I
can’t stop envisioning her against the elevator wall earlier and how easy it felt.

  Natural.

  Jesus. Shake it off.

  Her cell phone buzzes. She checks it, types something back, and slips it away like I wasn’t gonna notice.

  “Connor worried about you playing this late at night?”

  She huffs and shakes her head at me. “Just checking in.”

  “If you’ve gotta get home, I can—”

  “Nope, all good.” She smiles but doesn’t look at me.

  Did she just lie to her boyfriend about where she is? And if she did, good for her.

  “Hey, you can—”

  “I’m starving. Can we grab something?”

  Um. “To eat? Green, we’ve gotta find this kid.”

  I know, I know. I’m one to talk about staying on point.

  “Stiles, I have low blood sugar.”

  “And?” I know.

  I regret asking as soon as it’s out there.

  “Which means if I don’t eat, I’m going to pass out, and if I pass out, you’re going to have to take me to the hospital, which is undoubtedly going to bring your search to a halt for the rest of the night.”

  “You think—”

  “Because when they do release me, and sometimes that’s not until the next day, you’re going to have to be there to drive me home because I don’t have any way to get there since you drove.”

  “Okay.” Christ. Welcome to crazy town. Did she even breathe during that whole thing there?

  She’s got a slight point, though. Maybe food will help clarify my thought process. Get it off her and back onto the task at hand. But we’re gonna need to be quick about it.

  “Where to?”

  She gives me some directions, and I’m thinking she’s got some pretty fucking picky eating habits. By the time we’re close, we’ve passed about five fast food joints that were perfectly good eating options, but noooo. She has to get something from this specific Chinese food joint, specifically located in the most unspecific location I’ve never fucking heard of in my life.

  Fifteen, maybe twenty minutes later, after she’s texted about ten times with some super-secret person on the other end of the cyber-verse, probably Connor—the douche, she turns her phone off altogether. I’m finally fed the fuck up with her vagueness. I pull over and put the Chevelle into park.

  “I’m not doing this shit any more, Green.”

  “Stiles.”

  “Either you pick a goddamn place on this street—”

  “Stiles.”

  “Or I’m turning us the fuck around, and you can starve yourself stupid sitting right outside the closest walk-in clinic for the next three days for all I fucking care.”

  “STILES.”

  “What?”

  “Check it out.” She nods toward a group of people hanging out by the street corner. It’s not hard to spot the lanky kid, wearing a hoodie, among them. He’s trying to blend in, only at his height that’s kinda fucking impossible.

  My entire body relaxes, and I let out a long, quiet sigh of relief that Stix is okay.

  “Why didn’t you just tell me?”

  “Because I knew you wouldn't believe it was that easy. You’d probably write Ken’s skills off as a hunch and wouldn’t want to waste your time following the lead of a guy you’ve never met and don’t trust.”

  Huh.

  I shrug. “Fair enough.”

  I head over to give old Jimmy a piece of my mind.

  “Kid.”

  My pace quickens just in case he plans on running. Lucky for him, he doesn’t. Lucky for me too because, honestly, I’m tired as shit right now.

  He meets me halfway. “Jackson. Man, am I glad to see you. How’d you find me?” He starts to pat himself down. “Did you put a tracking device on me or something?”

  Right. Because I’m goddamn MacGyver.

  “Not important. You wanna fill me in on what the fuck happened at my place tonight, and why you’re not there?”

  “I─”

  “I mean I did say not to leave the apartment right?”

  Right?

  “Well—”

  “And to call me in case of a fucking emergency?”

  “I had to bail, Jackson.” He blurts it out like he’s gonna lose his shit any minute now. “Those guys were—”

  He hesitates, confirming my gut feeling earlier. “So you did see them.”

  “Yeah, I saw ’em, and I wasn’t sticking around for them to come after me.”

  “How’d you know they were there for you? Coulda just been some random murder. It happens, ya know.”

  He shakes his head. “After you left, I was checking the window like every five minutes. I saw the girl first. She was literally pacing around, glancing up to your apartment every once in a while. She looked like she was biting her nails a lot. And talking to herself.”

  I want to be amused. Lilah was always doing that shit. Even when I first met her. But it’s not funny anymore. She’s dead. Coincidentally, because of yours truly.

  “What’s the matter?” Stix pulls me back to the conversation at hand.

  “Nothing, then what?”

  “The next time I checked the parking lot, this black sedan was there, and the girl was arguing with them. I kept watching because I couldn’t look away. They tried to dismiss her at first, but she wouldn’t let up. That’s when the one guy, he…”

  I know the rest. He doesn’t have to finish.

  “Police?”

  Stix is quiet now. “He didn’t have a uniform on. I don’t know.”

  Doesn’t rule Jim Galley out. But doesn’t mean it was him either.

  “Then what?”

  “I think I screamed or something, I guess, because something made him look up at your apartment. I hid but it was too late. He started for the stairs.”

  He swallows and turns about as pale as the tighty-whities my mom used to make me wear in kindergarten.

  “You get a look at him?”

  Regret fills me up as I ask the ritual of questions I’ve become accustomed to use over the years. Lilah mighta been a little kooky. Maybe even a lot. But she never hurt anyone. Certainly not me. She didn’t deserve that shit. She also didn’t stand a chance.

  Stix’s eyes go distant for a minute.

  Man, I know that look.

  “Go the fuck home, Mikey.

  “Why can’t you just—”

  “Go the fuck home!”

  Memories of watching someone else I once knew die before my very fucking eyes flood in. I shake it off before it can carry me down a river of bad shit.

  This is more important.

  “Kid?”

  He doesn’t answer. He’s getting swept away as we speak.

  “Kid.” I snap my fingers in front of his face to bring him back. His head jerks up, and he searches me for some assistance.

  “Was he big? Small? Stocky? Walked with a limp? Anything you can give me.”

  “I didn’t stick around long enough to pay attention, honestly, Jackson. He was more like a big shadow than anything.”

  “Okay.”

  So, basically nothing to fucking go on.

  Story of my life.

  “I know I shoulda helped her or something, but I freaked out.” The familiar look in his eyes is too much for me right now.

  “You did the right thing. How’d you leave without them seeing you?”

  “I went out that window. The one your cat jumps in and out of.”

  OK, that’s one good thing. There’s no way they followed him. That window leads to a fire escape that leads to an alley, which comes out way down by the street on the other side of my building.

  We’re good. For now.

  I meet Jimmy’s look of worry. “There’s nothing you coulda done, kid. And you might be dead right now, too, if you had tried. So…”

  “Did you know her?”

  I nod. “Yeah, I knew her.”

  “That blows, Jackson. I’m sorry, man.”<
br />
  He’s genuinely sorry. I am too, but that’s something I’ll have to deal with later. I can’t let myself get swept up in any more emotions tonight. I’ve had about all I can deal with for one evening. Thank you very much.

  “Let’s get you outta here.”

  “No offense, dude, but I think I’m staying here for a couple nights.”

  “Excuse me? We don’t know if these guys are—”

  “No one’s gonna come down here. And even if they do, I know how to get low and stay there.”

  There’s nothing but dark alleys and dark windows surrounding us. It’s like no one lives here, despite the number of people crowded around that trash can fire. “I don’t like it.”

  “You don’t have to.”

  “Get in the car, kid.”

  “No.”

  He’s kidding me with this shit, right?

  “Maybe you didn’t fucking hear me. Get in the goddamn car.”

  “No.” Defiant little…

  “What the hell has gotten into you?”

  “I watched that guy kill a girl tonight, that’s what. I’m safer here than at your place.”

  Damn. He’s got a point.

  “Besides, I was talking to some of those guys over there?” The kid nods back toward the group of homeless I found him with.

  “One of them says he knew Donnie. Heard some things. He wouldn't elaborate, but I’m gonna see if he gets drunk enough to share more details.”

  “That’s your plan. Get him drunk?”

  “Yeah.”

  The barrenness of the place tells my gut that maybe Jimmy’s right. The cops probably won’t patrol around here—not tonight anyway. He should be okay, and with any luck, he’ll get something outta his lead. Besides, I can’t force him to come with me.

  Correction: I could, but I won’t. He’d only take off again.

  “Okay, listen. If I don’t hear from you by tomorrow night, I’ll be back looking for you. If you have to leave, give me something I can find you with. Got it?”

  He nods. “Got it.”

  “Don’t go following any rabbit trails by yourself. This guy gives you something concrete, find me.”

  I slip him my card. The one that has all my numbers on it. I pat him on the shoulder and hope to fucking God I’m making the right decision leaving him.