Better When He's Brave

by Jay Crownover

  I was pissed off when I bent my head toward her. I was mad at myself. I was mad at her. More than all of that, though, I was furious that either one of us had to be in this situation in the first place. Every time I turned around, another bad thing or bad person was nipping at my heels. It was getting harder and harder to stay a step ahead. Eventually I was going to trip up and go down and there would be no one left with any kind of conscience in this place, no one left that cared about justice and righteousness.

  That anger had my hands shaking as I reached up and used my thumbs to tilt her head back so her mouth was pointed up at me. I didn’t have much time to date, didn’t have the patience for a woman who didn’t understand that I was trying to save an entire city from itself and that my job took up most of my attention and energy. The women I did date were never the right height, or the perfect size, and they sure as hell never looked as luscious and as tempting as this woman did. No one had ever fit me the way she did and that pissed me off even more.

  Everything about her was a test of my will. The way her dark eyes flashed when I lowered my head toward her parted lips. The way her hand trailed up my chest to curl around my neck as I got closer and closer. The way she breathed out a soft little sigh that tickled my mouth when I finally touched my lips to hers. It was supposed to prove a point. It was supposed to be an act of defiance, and maybe it was for a split second, but then it was nothing but a kiss and I forgot who she was and what it was supposed to be about. After that half a heartbeat I just wanted to kiss her and keep on kissing her until both of us were naked, and I was balls-deep inside of that perfect, traitorous body of hers.

  Her mouth was soft, which was a lie because she was not a soft woman. She tasted sweet, which was also a lie. She might look like a dream and taste like dessert, but I knew there was a lot of tart underneath that pretty outer shell. Her tongue darted out and the very tip of it touched the center of my bottom lip, and before I could consider what I was doing, I was kissing her like I kissed a woman I wanted, not like a woman I was trying to resist.

  I had my hands tangled up in her long hair and was using that leverage to back her against the flimsy door in the hotel room. She hit it with a little gasp of surprise and I took full advantage of the way her lips parted to dive right inside. I wanted to devour her. I wanted to eat her up. I wanted to stay in this moment where all I could feel was her heart thudding against mine and her nipples hard and tight against my chest. The way her mouth moved on mine made it so that there was no world that was falling apart around me. There was no city on the brink of ruin that I felt responsible for, there was just this woman whimpering as I forced her legs apart with my knee and stroked her questing tongue with my own.

  I felt the bite of her fingernails cut into the skin at the base of my neck. I felt her hips arch up to meet mine when the fullness between my legs lined up perfectly with the softness between hers. It was almost scary how well we meshed together. I wasn’t a small guy and often felt like I had to rein myself in when it came to the opposite sex. I didn’t want to intimidate or come across as threatening, but with Reeve I didn’t have to worry about it. She took everything I was throwing at her and returned it in a way that had me letting the leash I kept on all of my frustration and aggression slip a little. Things deep down inside of me roared and awoke from where they typically slumbered. She didn’t even seem fazed that I still had my gun clipped to my belt, where it felt like it permanently lived. She kept her hands up around my shoulders and let me ravish her like she was my last meal and I was a dead man walking. I had never felt starved for anything in my life until my lips touched hers.

  I let my teeth bite into the plush curve of her bottom lip and my hands got really rough in her hair as I jerked her head back farther and dove deeper into the hot and welcoming pull of her mouth. My dick was yelling at me to do something, do anything, and my pulse was thundering in my ears so loud I almost missed the way my cell phone was ringing from where it was shoved in my pocket.

  I let go of her and stumbled back like she was on fire. We were both breathing hard and both flushed. Her eyes were almost black and I was sure my own were burning white hot with everything inside of me churning. I don’t think I had ever felt so good and so bad at the exact same time.

  I yanked the phone out of my pocket and put it to my ear with a barked, “What?”

  I felt like I couldn’t breathe and she just stayed slumped against the door watching me with big eyes. I almost lost it when she darted her tongue out to dab at the moisture and tiny drop of blood I had left on her mouth after my less than gentle kiss. I hadn’t meant to hurt her, to cause her pain like that, but her long lashes dipped down a little when she saw I was watching her and it kicked in that she liked it. She liked the edge. She liked the violence. Of course she would.

  “I know you just went off shift but I got a DB out on the docks that you might want to look at.” I couldn’t place which fellow detective the voice belonged to but it was obviously someone that knew that when someone went down for good in the Point, I was the first call that generally went out.

  DB was short for “dead body” and I absolutely did not want to go look at it. I had seen plenty of them in the last few days. I shoved my hands through my hair and glowered at Reeve as she finally pushed off the door and wandered back over to sit on the bed. I cringed. It really was too disgusting to touch.

  “What makes you think I want to see it?”

  “Because she’s just a kid. No more than eighteen or nineteen.”

  I swore and started to pace back and forth. “Yeah, that’s shitty but not uncommon.”

  “Yeah, well, the reason I called you is because she looks a whole hell of a lot like the bombshell that waltzed into your office yesterday. Long black hair, blue eyes. At first glance it could be her but she’s younger and worked over in a really personal way.”

  “Fuck.”

  “Yeah. Get down here, King, and see what this sick bastard did to this poor girl, and while you’re at it find the one that’s still breathing and tell her to watch her back.”

  I hung up the phone and squeezed it so hard in my hand I was surprised it didn’t break in half. I looked at Reeve, who was watching me solemnly.

  “Grab whatever you brought with you. We’re leaving.” I didn’t ask her.

  She blinked at me slowly and her dark eyebrows pulled together. “I already told you I left in a hurry, and that I don’t have anyplace to go.”

  “I have a place that will do for now. A body just showed up on the docks and apparently she bears an uncanny resemblance to you. That means Roark already knows you’re here and I think he’s letting us know he’s pissed about it. Some poor girl got murdered just because she had the same hair and eye color as you, Reeve. Doesn’t that tell you how dangerous this is for you? This guy is a sociopath.” And I had zero time to figure out what had triggered him, what had started his rampage and how to stop him.

  She climbed to her feet and I saw the way her eyes shifted when I mentioned the dead girl. She was capable of regret and remorse. That was good to know and it made me feel a little less like shit for wanting to push her back up against the wall and continue where we had just left off.

  “Where exactly do you want me to go, Detective?”

  “When Bax got locked up he was staying at this crappy little studio just outside of the District. I didn’t know he bought a house before he got arrested. When he got out of jail and hooked up with Dovie, he left the place in the city and took her out to the burbs. Well, I paid the rent on the studio in advance for a few years so that he would have someplace guaranteed to go back to when he got out. It’s been empty for a while and it’s only about half a step up from this place, but it’ll do until I can figure out something more secure.” I cut her a hard look. “Besides, everyone knows how Bax feels about you, so no one would ever think you would be anywhere near his place.”

  She couldn’t afford to forget that there were enemies around every corner and al
l of them would be happy if she suddenly stopped breathing.

  “Titus . . .” Her voice was quiet and her eyes bored into mine when our gazes locked. “I came back to help you out. I don’t want to be the reason you and Shane end up back at odds. I know how hard it was for you to almost lose him. That’s not what any of this is about for me.”

  Her eyes drifted up to the white spot in my hair that was a constant reminder of how far my little brother was willing to take things. Unlike me, Bax didn’t have a cage he kept his wild side locked away in. He did what he wanted, when he wanted, and that made him unbelievably dangerous. That’s why she needed me. Bax and I might not always be on the same page and there was still an ungodly amount of tension between us and how we viewed the right and wrong of things, but he respected me enough, cared about me enough that if I could sell the act that this woman mattered to me on some deeper level, he would back off. He wouldn’t like it. In fact he would absolutely hate it, but he would still do it.

  “Bax is my problem. He always has been and you probably don’t want to call him Shane to his face.”

  She lifted a shoulder and let it fall. “I watched Dovie fall in love with Shane, not Bax. He seems less scary as Shane.”

  I grunted because Shane and Bax were two parts that made up the entire man. Both were equally scary and equally dangerous but she didn’t need to know that, so I motioned to the dingy room and ordered, “Grab your stuff.”

  She gave me a lopsided smile. “I don’t have any stuff.”

  She had said that but I hadn’t really believed her. What kind of woman could run with literally just the clothes on her back? One that was built to survive no matter what. I answered my own question.

  I sighed and walked over to the door. “All right, let’s get out of here. I need to get down to the docks.”

  She nodded a little and went to move past me as I jerked the paper-thin door open. I stiffened automatically when she paused in front of me and titled her head back so that she could look me in the eyes.

  “For what it’s worth, you are very convincing at pretending to like me, Titus. For a second there before your phone went off, I almost believed you.”

  She slipped past me out the door, leaving her words lying like bricks at my feet.

  IT TOOK A LITTLE bit to get her to the apartment and get her inside with the orders to lay low until she heard from me. Bax’s old studio would work for now but I needed to find someplace I could take her that was safe and still visible enough that Roark would know where she was at—where we were at, pretending to be infatuated with each other. My plan sort of fell apart after that, though. I knew I needed to get Roark to show himself, but after he did, I wasn’t one hundred percent sure how that would play out. I wanted to be confident enough in myself that I could simply arrest him and take him in without any bloodshed on either side, but the guy was violent and he was pissed, so I doubted that would be the case. Once I had Reeve somewhere safe and secure and the charade began, I would hammer out the rest of the details. The devil always hid in those little fuckers.

  The ride to the District was silent and tense. The look on her face when she took in the battered condition of Bax’s old bachelor pad was priceless. I assured her Dovie had scrubbed the place down since they stayed there occasionally when Bax worked late at the garage he owned. I promised she was far less likely to get an STD from the bathroom here than she was from the no-tell motel.

  She didn’t reply and I didn’t bother to tell her good-bye, but I did tell her to keep her head down and try not to attract attention. The only way a girl that looked like her could do that was by not going outside, and by ordering pizza and Chinese food. It was a crappy plan but it would have to do. She gave me a hard look, which reminded me that she had taken off with hardly any money and no real identification. With a sigh I had handed over a few twenties that I could see she wanted to refuse. Reeve didn’t want to rely on me any more than I wanted to be the only one in a position to help her out.

  By the time I got to the docks, I was turned inside out. I was running on fumes and no amount of coffee or fury could fuel me enough to get through the fact that some innocent girl who lost her life for zero reason. The scene was chaotic. There were a lot of cops crawling all over the place and the medical examiner’s office was hovering over the body. Well, they were surveying what was left of the body. The poor girl had been through hell and Roark had made her suffering obvious. There was no mistaking that this was a message.

  He wasn’t just mad at Reeve for turning on him. She was now the enemy and she would be treated as such if he got his hands on her. This guy didn’t care who his victim was. Man, woman, or child, his brutality was growing more and more apparent and targeted. This guy took making his point to another level. He was all about the impact and carnage and it seemed like the targets he chose to leave as calling cards were getting younger and younger.

  The woman had been sliced across her chest much in the way Dovie had been cut the night she was abducted. Only Dovie had survived and had the scars to prove how hard she fought to live. This girl just had the wounds. She also had burns across every surface of exposed skin, a bullet hole in her forehead, and none of that was as gruesome as the things Roark had done to the parts of her that should never be treated with anything but reverence and appreciation. There was rage and hatred acted out upon this girl like I had never seen before and it was eerie because she did bear a remarkable resemblance to Reeve, only much younger and much smaller.

  “Is it okay if we take her now, Detective?”

  I glanced up at the young tech and nodded. I hadn’t been aware that I had zoned out and was just staring at the body like she was going to wake up and give me Conner Roark’s name so I could go arrest him with zero hassle. Nothing ever worked that way.

  “Yeah. Do we have an ID on her yet? She’s just a baby. Someone needs to notify the family.”

  “Not yet. The only lead we have is that she may have been a dancer over at Spanky’s. She was found with a whole lot of cash in her purse and not much else.”

  Oh, great. Nassir was already on the edge and close to going over because of what had happened to his club. When he found out that one of his girls was in the worst place at the worst time and the same guy who torched the club was responsible, he was definitely going to go over. There were some men that I could care less if they decided they wanted to do battle on my streets. I was tougher, I was faster, I was smarter, and when I had to be, I was more brutal. None of that was the case with Nassir Gates. I wasn’t a hundred percent sure what his background was but I knew training and cunning when I saw it. He might try and play himself off as a typical thug but I knew better. Nassir was the Devil, and if he dropped off that thin ledge of civility he was holding on to, the bloodbath that would ensue when he fell would drown us all.

  As they put the girl in the coroner’s van I stared out over the industrial waterway and felt the weight of one more unnecessary death settle deep into that part of my soul where they collected and filled me up. I lost track of time, trapped in my own thoughts wondering how exactly I was going to fix this particular mess, when a heavy hand fell on my shoulder.

  I didn’t think.

  I reacted and had my gun out and pointed at the offender before my next breath. We both swore as Race took a step back and lifted up his hands in a gesture of surrender.

  “Whoa, Titus.”

  I narrowed my eyes at him and put the gun back in the holster. “What are you doing out here, Hartman? Shouldn’t you be off running numbers, or better yet, dealing with all the dark shit that has to be in your head knowing your old man got smoked?”

  I wasn’t being tactful or kind. I didn’t have it in me anymore and I think Race saw it because he just smirked at me and looked as regal and unruffled as ever. He was a different man from the one that had been in my office yesterday. I wondered how much a good woman, a woman that understood him and the life he lived, helped with that. I felt a surge of jealousy that I ha
d to struggle to choke down.

  “I live out here. Brysen’s little sister heard the commotion and we peeked at the security cameras from the building. I saw you arrive and figured I would wait until the rest of the boys in blue took off before coming down to see what was going on.”

  “You live here?”

  He nodded and motioned to a concrete-and-glass building that looked way too nice to be anywhere in the Point and definitely way too slick to be on these crumbling docks.

  “My old man used this place to stash his mistresses. The property owner is shady as hell, so when all that stuff with Brysen’s stalker came to a head, I had him transfer the deed over to her name so she had a safe place to go. I like it out here. It’s quiet, and when Booker got out of the hospital after he was shot, I moved him into the building to keep an eye on things when I’m working. I like that the girls have someone they can run to if I’m not around. Plus I upgraded the security system so that it’s harder to get into the place than it is to get on Bax’s good side. No one gets in or out without me or Booker knowing it. There are cameras everywhere.”

  Noah Booker was an ex-con and an all-around badass. He was a lot like my brother in both of those aspects. Booker was smart enough to know that Race was the one that was going to be running things in the dark and in the back rooms and alleyways now that Novak was gone, so he had gotten in on the ground floor. He had offered himself up as a bullet catcher when Race’s girl found herself caught in the sights of a deadly stalker. Booker had almost died trying to keep Brysen and her sister safe, so it didn’t surprise me at all that Race had promptly put the man at his right hand and was relying on him for protection not only for himself but for his girls as well.

  I rubbed a thumb across my scruffy jaw as the wheels in my head started turning. I lifted an eyebrow at Race and asked, “Is there any open space in the complex?”

  He crossed his arms over his chest and his green eyes narrowed at me.