“I love watching you work,” he continued, playing with a strand of my hair. “I love seeing into your very clever mind. I love when you lose yourself in a puzzle you can’t solve. And I love when you wrap yourself around me in our bed or in the bath and just let go. I love waking next to you and falling asleep with you in my arms. I love that you wake up with bed-messy hair and sleep in your eyes and suddenly have an epiphany about something that no one else could. I love the way you smell, the way you move, the way you talk, the way you think. I love every little thing about you; even those little things that you believe I shouldn’t or couldn’t possibly love.”
“Damon,” I whispered.
“I love that I’m not sure which Lara I’ll get when you answer my phone calls,” he went on, playing my hair through his fingers. He was determined to set me right, I thought bemusedly. “I love that you still surprise me. I love that you care, that you feel, that you’re not always sure you should and therefore hide those emotions and I have to go digging. I love that your job hasn’t broken you, but that you are human enough to be a little broken. We all are. I love that you love me; that despite what you see on a daily basis, you still have the capacity to love.”
He moved closer, ignored all the sights and sounds around us, and wrapped his arms around me. Leaning down, his forehead met mine, and he just breathed.
“Never stop being you, love,” he whispered. “CIB detective. Complex and clever human being. Beautiful and capable woman. Sometimes unsure, sometimes determined, sometimes infuriatingly calm and sometimes an emotional mess. Life is to be lived, Lara. It might not be easy. It might not be perfect. But it is life, and we’re meant to live it. There’s no rule book on how. It just is.”
He kissed my forehead and pulled back, looking down at me with deep, unfathomable, warm chocolate-coloured eyes.
“And I want to live it with you and no other.”
“Wow,” I finally whispered; my voice stolen by the sounds and vibrancy of the city. But he read my lips; he knew what I was feeling. He understood me.
He grinned; proud of himself.
I rolled my eyes and just like that I was back on an even keel.
Carl was dead. Yes. He was. But I was alive. Damon was alive. And if I wanted it to stay that way, I had to start moving, thinking, feeling. Outwitting a lunatic who was capable of manipulating the world around him.
Eagle. Carole. The CIB traitor. They’d all been manipulated by Weston to get at Damon, either directly or through me. Blackmail. Abduction. Murder. All of it had been designed to bring Damon to his knees.
But Weston hadn’t counted on Auckland Central CIB.
We’d not rushed into the halfway house, despite Jones checking it out; he wasn’t Damon or me. Weston would have ignored him. But by not rushing in, we were playing the game in a way Weston could not predict; using Stretch as bait to trap the spider in its own web. I wasn’t proud of it, but I was proud of Pierce and Hart and by extension CIB.
It was coming up on twenty-four hours since Stretch had been taken. The first twenty-four hours were the most crucial. I knew Damon knew that. I knew he was frantic to save his HEAT brother. And yet he’d let us lead; let me lead. And managed to contain himself enough to allow the hours to tick by without losing it completely.
He’d come close. But not quite crossed over.
He knew just how dangerous Weston was. Rushing into anything with the man could be suicidal.
I was proud of Damon, too.
And despite the delay, despite the danger, Damon could still love me; let me see how much he loved me. Damon could still open up and bare himself to me and pick me up off the ground where I’d stumbled and fallen to, bringing me back across that line to stand beside him in safety.
It was a realisation that rocked me.
But I am me, and he knows this, so when I spoke again, returning us to the business at hand and not spouting love letter type promises in return, he simply smiled benignly.
“Are you ready for this?” I asked as I looked toward Eagle’s alley.
“Isn’t that my line?” Damon queried.
“I think you’ve said enough, Casanova,” I told him, patting him on the chest.
“Clearly not quite enough if that’s all you’re going to give me.”
I winked at him. He huffed out a laugh.
“Think Cardrona,” I said, offering him a bone. “And using body heat to get warm after a vigorous day on the ski slopes.”
“Oh, now you’re talking,” he drawled, grinning widely.
How had I got so lucky? To find this man out of all the men in the city? To have fallen for him and have him fall for me? Stay with me? I was not an easy girlfriend, and yet Damon thrived on the challenge. I realised then that I’d have to challenge him daily for the rest of our lives to keep his interest.
Damon didn’t do easy. He was a fireman, for crying out loud. His career. His love life. All of it was not what you would call easy. And yet, Damon thrived on it. He came alive when faced with a challenge.
Weston hadn’t figured that out. It was a glaringly big hole in his profile of Damon. If only he’d realised that pitting himself against Damon was like pitting yourself against a brick wall. But not just any brick wall; a brick wall that rubbed its hands together and said ‘bring it.’
It was pockmarked, and parts had broken away, tumbling down into dust coated piles of mortar and bricks. But Damon was still standing, still ready to fight; stretched to his limit, yes. But still standing.
And I realised, so was I. We were fighters, Damon and I. We didn’t give up easily.
Weston had underestimated us completely.
I walked slowly into Eagle’s alley, keeping my wits about me. I felt more focused than I had for some time now. Carl was still in the back of my mind; but I didn’t push him away, I just let him be. I’d grieve properly when this was all over. I’d bury my mentor and be thankful that his pain had finally ended. The Carl I knew would not have wanted to be a murderer. Would not have wanted to be crazy.
So I let him be inside my mind, where his voice had gone ominously silent, and I kept my attention on my surroundings — looking up at the roofline for any shadows, looking into corners and tilting my head to listen for any sounds out of the ordinary.
Eagle was working; which made me feel both relieved and cautious. Who had the Carl imposter been? Weston?
I hadn’t got a good look at Weston since Sweet Hell. Not a single glimpse in a crowd full of faces. If he was behind the spanking scene in this alley, he could have been manipulating it from a distance.
Was he keeping his distance in all things?
We had no idea where he was, but he’d been watching us closely. He would know we’d called in Charlie’s spook friends. I was certain they were good at what they did but were they better than the PSYOPS agent who made them so clearly worried?
I wasn’t sure, so I kept my wits about me and silently made my way towards Eagle and his current john.
“That’s it, baby, let go,” he told him. “I gots ya.” At least he wasn’t the one receiving the pleasure this time. Somehow that one-eighty had made me uncomfortable. It was one thing for Eagle to make his tricks come; it was a whole other when the trick became the street worker.
His john, a male by the sounds of it, let out a groan that echoed in the alley and bounced off the high brick walls. I glanced up to the roofline again, but nothing shifted. I couldn’t help feeling, though, that we were being watched. Or Eagle was.
Coming here was a risk I had been prepared to take. But even so, I was on tenterhooks, waiting for something to happen.
All that happened was the john let go in a spectacular show of virility and Eagle took a pounding.
I peered around the corner and took in the scene in a split second glance. Eagle’s chest pressed against the wall of a premises, his head turned to the side as the large framed male behind him kissed him soundly. The trick had his pants down, his bare arse on display. Eagle’s b
oxers were tucked beneath his butt cheeks, his baggy pants around his ankles.
They were still connected, and I thought the john had started rocking his hips again, or maybe he hadn’t stopped yet.
“Yous only get one,” Eagle told him. “But it was a good one, baby.”
The words were spoken breathlessly, but I detected little feeling behind them. Eagle was going through the motions. It might have been good for the john, but for Eagle, it had been lacking. Not necessarily an unusual thing for this type of liaison. But Eagle had always enjoyed his work.
That was before Sweet Hell and Rhys Kyle Weston.
A part of me felt sad at that. And then I realised that a part of me was feeling again.
I glanced over my shoulder at Damon. He stood in the shadows at my side, keeping an eye on the entrance to the alley. Watching my back.
He watched my back in so many different ways; I could never express how much it meant to me.
This had to end. We needed our happily ever after.
The sound of clothes being righted and pleasantries being exchanged - the payment for services would have been settled prior to the commencement of activities - met my ears, and then Eagle’s latest customer sauntered out of the alley. He whistled a tuneless tune, walked ‘round the corner of the building, and found Damon and me waiting. He turned a bright shade of red.
“I ain’t done nothing wrong,” he said, raising his hands dramatically.
I might not be a cop right now, but clearly, I still looked like one.
“Keep walking,” I said.
“It’s not illegal to seek a little comfort,” the guy protested.
I looked toward the corner of the building and where I knew Eagle was. Where he hopefully still was. This guy was delaying things unnecessarily.
“Get out of here,” I ordered.
“No need to get all uppity ‘bout it,” the guy said.
“She needs a good fuck,” Eagle announced, appearing around the side of the building, cigarette hanging out of his mouth.
“She’s come to the right place, then,” the guy said, giving Eagle a five-star rating with his appreciative words and satiated grin. “But what’s the dude here for?”
“None of your business. Now, move along,” I said as Eagle flicked ash off his cigarette casually and murmured, “He gets off on watchin’.”
“Kinky,” the guy said. “How much to stay and watch, too?”
I stepped forward, placing my hand inside my jacket as if reaching for a gun.
“If you don’t move your sexed-up arse out of this alley in the next thirty seconds, I’ll throw it in the cells at Central.”
“Easy, Keen. I wouldn’t let him watch ya,” Eagle drawled. “Michaels would beat him to a pulp, and I’d lose business.”
The guy looked at Damon and saw something that suddenly made him desperately want to be somewhere else. He shot out of the alley as if his pants were on fire.
Eagle started laughing. “Best bit of entertainment all night.”
And I didn’t think he was lying. Eagle looked bored.
No. Not bored. Empty. Numb.
Oh, Eagle.
“How are you, Eagle?” I asked.
“Just got my butthole creamed, I’m doing fine, Keen. Yous? Had ya butthole creamed lately?”
Eagle could be crass, and he liked to press all my buttons, but this was a new low for him.
“When did you last see your shrink?” I asked carefully.
He turned on his heel and marched back into his ‘office’.
“Missed a couple of appointments,” he told me over his shoulder. Then he turned his attention to lighting a second cigarette. A distraction technique if ever I saw one.
The scent of tobacco wafted on the air, as swirls of smoke slowly rose above him.
“We had an agreement,” I said quietly.
“Yeah, well, life ain’t always goin’ the way ya wants it.”
Not for Eagle, that was for sure.
I decided to drop the caring routine; he was unreceptive. Eagle would be a slow moving and longterm project. And I could only really expect any success once Weston had been put away forever. I was fairly sure the bastard still had his claws in my informant.
Just how deep were they?
“Seen Carl lately?” I asked.
Eagle sucked in a deep draw of nicotine and then blew it out in rings that floated toward me.
“He ain’t who you thought he was,” he said, and I realised it was a repeat of his earlier words.
Words he’d spoken when I was last here, and he’d received a spanking.
Eagle had been warning me, the only way he could while the imposter was near.
Pay attention, Sport. Don't fucking fall asleep on the job.
I was finally waking up from a very long sleep.
I’m awake, Old Man. I’m awake.
But Carl was dead and didn’t answer.
Chapter Twenty-Three
“If You Can’t See The Wood For The Trees, Then Get The Fuck Out Of The Forest.”
“Can you tell me more?” I asked Eagle, forcing myself to lean against the brick wall opposite him and appear casual.
Damon had hung back by the corner of the building, so he could watch us and watch the little alley that led back onto K Road itself. As far as partners went, he was one of the best I’d ever had.
Barring Carl.
“Not much to tell,” Eagle said, puffing away on his cigarette.
His hands shook. Sweat clung to his hairline. The whites of his eyes were too big, and his pupils were too small; it wasn’t bright in Eagle’s ‘office.’ He was on something. We’d been working to get him off it, but it was an uphill battle for someone who worked the streets.
“Why do you say Carl’s not who I thought he was?” I pressed.
“Did I say that?” He seemed genuinely puzzled.
Was the message part of Weston’s hypnosis? Or was the hypnosis what made Eagle forget that he’d said it?
“You don’t remember saying that?” I asked.
He stared at me, head cocked to the side, eyes blinking rapidly.
“Yous on somfin’, Keen?”
It was a blow to the stomach that I actually felt physically. First Carl. Now, this. Damon was right; I wasn’t sure how much more I could take of this. But we were survivors, and I couldn’t help feeling we were making progress.
Not here. Not now. But with the halfway house and visiting Rachel. We’d forced Weston’s hand. Unfortunately, forcing his hand had led to Carl’s death.
I refused to feel guilty about that. Carl had been on borrowed time anyway. And it was better this way. For Rachel. For him. For all of us.
I shifted tactics. It was clear Eagle was not himself, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t get something out of him. His statement about Carl not being who I thought he was could have been a crack in Weston’s mind manipulation.
Or it could be a trap, but I was going with crack. I needed to follow up with the spooks and ask them if this PSYOPS shit could be counteracted. Eagle was a determined young man when he wanted to be; his will against Weston’s? Maybe.
But drugged? Probably not. I was clutching at straws.
Still, I had to try at least.
“When did you last see Carl, Eagle?” I asked.
“Carl? I sees him all the time; don’t I?”
“Do you? When did you last see him?”
“This mornin’,” he said, thinking hard. His cigarette had burned down, but he hadn’t replaced it. Eagle always smoked when speaking to me. One after the other after the other if our conversation went on too long.
“This morning,” I said. Carl hadn’t been home to Rachel for a week.
But had he been in Weston’s clutches already? Doing his bidding?
“What did you talk about?”
“Not much talkin’,” Eagle said, smirking. “Lots of heavy breathin’. If yous know what I mean.”
Not Carl then. I refused to believ
e that Carl, even Crazy Carl, would start spanking young men to get whatever it was he needed.
“How many times have you and Carl had these little get-togethers?” I asked.
“Come on, Keen. Yous can say it: Carl’s my daddy. He spanks me.”
“How many times?” I repeated, drawing on a little of my father’s chilliness to not show a reaction.
Eagle was unimpressed. He shrugged. “Seen him every day this week.”
Carl had not been home for a week.
“And before that?” I pressed.
Eagle finally pulled a cigarette out of his half-empty packet. His hands shook, and his movements seemed jerky, and when he lit it, he didn’t blow the obligatory smoke rings. I tilted my head to the side and studied him. This was a marionette, not the young man I knew.
“Been a while, eh?” he said, between rapid puffs.
Eagle was one of those slow smokers. Savour the moment. Blow a few rings. Entertain, distract, provide cover. This was a rapid inhale, followed by a rapid exhale, and it did nothing. The nicotine would hardly affect him; it was barely in his lungs long enough.
“Month or two,” he said, stubbing out the ciggie before it was finished.
I let out a slow breath of air and decided treading carefully would get me nowhere; whatever Weston had done, Eagle’s responses were triggered by what I was saying. If I said it fast enough, would it make a difference? Could the trigger keep up?
“So, when I saw you the other day, that wasn’t the first time?”
“Nope. Been spanking my butt for ages, see?”
“And when I saw you the week before last, on the Friday? You remember you’d just serviced that businessman and told him his tie was nice? Had it been going on long then?”
“Liked that tie. Fisted it like I fisted his bum.”
“Nice,” I muttered. “And Carl?”
“Never fisted his bum and he wouldn’t fist mine.”
“When did you ask him to do that?”
“When he suggested he could help me.”
“When was that?”
“Last week.”
And there it was — my Eagle. The cigarette slipped out of the packet with ease, the lighter flared, and he inhaled slowly. Smoke rings. One. Two. Three. Four. He rarely made it to five, but he kept trying.
A Lick Of Heat: H.E.A.T. Book Four Page 20
