“I get it,” I say. “I know what working leads means and how much work it can be.” I look at Sierra. “I know you aren’t a profiler, but I assume you do some degree of profiling on anyone you study. Do you have input you can offer?”
“At this point,” she says, “I can only offer vague assumptions, based on what I’ve been told now and before this meeting. That said, statistically he’s mid-thirties to mid-forties. White. Highly intelligent, but I wouldn’t call that an indication of a higher education, though most likely, he has one. It would be easy for him. For some people, intelligence is natural, higher level, and school is data feeding the machine. I believe that is this man. He gets bored easily. He likes, and needs, a challenge that stimulates his mind.”
“Which could support my theory that he was playing a game with my uncle,” I say. “And now me.”
“The answers we need have to be in your uncle’s case files,” Jacob says, looking at Blake who takes the silent prompt.
“We’ve pulled reports,” he says. “But we’ll dig deeper.”
“Have you reviewed Darius’s history?” I ask, pulling Sierra back into the conversation. “Does Darius fit the slayer’s profile as you see it?”
“I have reviewed his file,” she says. “And no. He doesn’t fit the profile of the slayer. Not in my opinion.”
“Based on what?” Jacob asks.
“He worked for Gerome rather than himself,” she says. “In my opinion, your slayer, as you call him, is a control freak. He needs power. He needs to be right in all things. Darius is challenged by his hacking. He doesn’t look beyond that.”
“We aren’t ready to rule him out,” Royce intervenes quickly. “Not until we know more about his troubles at the FBI. And if he’s not the slayer, he was clearly plucked from Gerome’s grip and turned into a slayer operative.”
The idea that the slayer has an army of help does not sit well, and a key question drives my attention back to Sierra. “How will the slayer react to be me being here, well-guarded, and untouchable?”
“He needs that challenge I mentioned. You become more of a challenge when you’re well-insulated. Getting to you as he did at the police station will bring him pride. And defeating the Walker clan to get to you will simply feed his ego.”
“Wait,” Jacob says. “Stop there. Are we talking about him trying to get past us to kill her?”
“I don’t think he wants to kill her,” she says. “That would end the game that he wants to play, but I can’t be sure. I can’t know that I’m right about any of this.”
I inhale and let it out, concerned not for myself, but for the other people the slayer’s attention on me might cause to get hurt. “Assume you’re right, Sierra. He won’t kill me, but what about my father?”
Her expression tightens. “I can only make vague—”
“That’s a yes,” I say. “He’ll kill my father.” I look between Jacob and Royce. “Savage needs to get back to my father.”
“Not yet,” Royce says. “This is where we pool our expertise, and we all talk through how to protect him.”
Adam leans forward, suddenly more engaged in the discussion. Actually, it’s not just Adam. The entire table, I realize, has leaned in, as if huddling for a play. That’s how much of a team they are together. That’s how different they are from any group I’ve ever worked around or with.
“Your father just got back from Paris,” Asher says, taking the ball first. “One of our men, Kyle, is there now. We have allies in Europe. Get him out of here, for now.”
“He has a merger going on,” I say. “He’s not going to leave.”
“Guess again,” Blake says, shaking his hands out over his keyboard, as if warming them up. “Watch and learn.” He starts keying and we all stare at him for a good three minutes before he shuts his computer. “By tomorrow morning there will be a lump sum of product missing in the European plant. Your father will be forced to do damage control and there’s a requirement to report the financial loss to the involved parties.”
I reject that idea. “No. We can’t ruin his merger. That’s not an option.”
“Of course, we can’t,” Blake says. “That’s why a miraculous recovery will follow the crisis, and make your father look like a hero. With my help, of course.”
“How?” I ask. “I need details.”
“The error will be found to be a hacker’s attempt to steal from the company. We’ll help your father catch the bastard’s hacking fingerprint, and because he hired us, your father will be the hero. Leave it to me. It’ll work.”
“I’m not ready to leave it to you yet,” I say. “Who’s the hacker that goes down?”
“I can pick from hundreds of assholes that deserve to go down,” Blake says. “I’ll make sure it’s a dirty one that needs to be done and over, anyway.”
“But this doesn’t ensure he’s safe,” I say. “We don’t know how far the slayer can reach.”
“We have resources in Europe,” Royce says, “that reach well beyond our team.”
“What resources?” I press. “This is my father’s life. I have to know.”
Jacob squeezes my leg again. “He’s safer there than here. I promise.”
His promise is what matters, I realize. It matters more than anything else anyone has said to me on this matter. And what option do I have here, but to go with this? “Then do it,” I say. “Get him out of here.”
“Pack a bag, Savage,” Royce orders. “You’re going with him.” He eyes Adam. “Go or stay?”
“The slayer’s a chameleon,” he says. “I’m the most like him in that way. You need me here on this.”
Royce gives him a nod, laces his fingers together on the table and looks at me. “What else do you need to hear from us?”
“I still need Savage to be with my father right now.”
Royce motions to Savage and Savage starts to get up, but pauses, to look at me. “Take comfort, detective. There really is a savage killer protecting your father.” With that, he stands and exits the room, and I’ve never reveled in a killer’s confession as much as I do with his.
“We’re going upstairs to my apartment,” Jacob, says, taking my hand and guiding me to my feet, and in the process pretty much answering any question in the room about our relationship.
And I don’t care. We are together. We start walking, heading to the door and about to exit, when Royce calls out, “We’ll get him.”
That stops me in my footsteps and I turn to face him, suddenly not sure he understands the magnitude of the challenge. “With all due respect, my uncle didn’t get him. And my uncle was one of the best detectives who ever lived.” I say nothing more. I ask for nothing more. I don’t want lame guarantees. I don’t want impossible promises. I just want to catch the slayer before he kills again. And before he catches me by catching someone I care about.
Jacob grabs my bag from the hallway, and then leads me to a side door, where we’re greeted by yet another security panel. I watch as he keys in a code and then uses his fingerprint again. The process is a welcome reminder that there are layers of protection here that I do not have at my place. Jacob clears the security requirements and the door pops open, after which, we enter a spacious foyer with a high ceiling, and head up a stairwell, with wide, marble steps. He doesn’t speak. He doesn’t push me to speak. He simply settles his arm over my shoulders, and lets me know I’m not alone. Funny how until now, alone felt really damn good. I think I hate Jacob again. I think he’s slowly taking away the peace that alone gave me in the past.
“I liked you better as an asshole,” I whisper, thinking of how easily I could fall for him and how easily he can die on me. He glances over at me, his expression guarded, his only reply a slight tightening of his hand on mine, as if he’s telling me he’s not letting me go. As if he knows exactly where my head is right now, and it’s out the door, in the other direction. I know he does when he pulls me just a little closer, and then in front of him at his door, when he knows I don?
??t really want to push him away, but I don’t want to fall for him either.
His big arms reach around me as he keys in a code in his door, and repeats the numbers near my ear. An invitation to enter his apartment that feels as if it reaches beyond one open door. He’s protecting me. I know this. But I don’t know where that leave us when this is over.
Jacob pushes the door open and I realize now that this is the part of this visit that feels like it changes me forever. This is the part that changes us forever. I am about to see a part of Jacob, a window into his life, and by doing so, I become a part of that life. All the denial from the stairwell, disappear into my real feelings. I want to see in that window. I want whatever comes next. That desire, drives me forward and I walk through the doorway. Jacob flips on a light and what greets me is a stunningly crafted open concept space. A room that is divided in two halves by a see-through smoked glass strip of flooring with industrial pipes beneath; those two halves being a kitchen and a living area.
Jacob steps behind me then, and I let him ease my coat off my shoulders, as well as allowing him to take my bag. I glance over my shoulder as he walks them both to a coat rack that is steel and shaped like the Eiffel tower. This is no normal man’s home and I have questions that he must expect, and that I really need answered.
He shrugs out of his own jacket. I walk to one of the barstools by the island, perching on the edge of its leather cushion, while taking in the living area. A space framed by massive windows, while those windows are framed by thin industrial piping, and heavy wood. The seating area in front of them is two couches facing each other, both framed by wood, with gray cushions.
Jacob joins me, resting an elbow on the island. “It’s a beautiful apartment,” I say, rotating the stool to face him. “It’s also an outrageous expense, and it tells me I don’t know everything I thought I knew about you.”
“I bought it for a fraction of its market price from the Walker brothers. Myla, Kara’s sister, is married to one of our men, and she’s an up-and-coming fashion designer that does interior design on the side. She did all of this.”
“And?” I press, aware that this is millions of dollars, even at a reduced price.
“Aside from inheriting a decent nest egg from every family member I lost?”
“That answer would be enough,” I say, going with my gut, “if it was the whole story but it’s not, is it?”
“When I got out of the army, I went home. I thought I needed out of the war, whatever the war might be. I took the security job I told you about, working at a large office complex.”
“And met the Walkers through that job and a client.”
“Yes,” he confirms. “By that time, I was coming out of my skin, needing something, anything. I hated being ‘home’ when it wasn’t home anymore without the people that made it home. And I hated not having a real purpose.”
“And they offered you a job,” I say, remembering what he’d told me.
“Yes. But they wanted me to do security work again. Bodyguard work. And I did and do, but on one condition. I am first on the high-risk, high-paying jobs.”
“What does that mean, high-risk?” I ask, not liking where my mind is headed.
“The spectrum is broad. I rescued a Saudi princess. I hunted down a would-be assassin of a Turkish leader. I could go on. Each of those jobs was covert, and paid for in a lump sum that wasn’t small.”
I stand up with a rush of awareness and emotion I don’t want to feel. That I never feel when I’m living my life alone. That’s why alone is good. Alone helps me ensure that I’m good at my job. I see the scene, not the blood, not the death. Not the emotional side of the story. It’s why I survive this damn life I live and suddenly, I need space. I need to breathe on my own, not with Jacob. “I need a shower,” I say. “I need sleep.”
Those gray eyes of his narrow. “What just happened?”
“I realized that you’re the guy the girl falls for right before he gets killed. And I can’t do that, Jacob. I can’t do that. I don’t even know how I could entertain doing that.” I rotate and intend to escape this conversation, and him, but escape is never easy with Jacob. He catches my arm, turning me back around.
“Don’t walk away. Talk to me.” His phone chooses that moment to ring and judging from his murmured, “Fuck,” he is not pleased. “I have to take it. There’s too much going on for me not to take it.”
“I know,” I say. “Take it. I need that shower.”
His lips firm and with obvious reluctance, but he releases me. “Upstairs,” he says, motioning behind me. “I’ll bring your bag to you.”
“Thank you,” I say, twisting away from him, and spying the carved wooden stairwell. “No,” he says into the phone, as I move in that direction. “I know she’d like to talk to Sierra,” he adds, “but we do not want to do dinner tonight. No. Yes. We do. We will.”
The rest of the conversation is muffled, but the concept of a couples’ night with me and Jacob as one of the couples, no matter what the reason, only rattles me all the more. Proof that I’m hyped up emotionally and I’m never hyped up emotionally. I need to bring myself down a notch or ten.
I reach the top floor and enter a bedroom that is much like the lower level. Exposed beams. Gray and wood accents. A massive king-sized bed, with a gray headboard. Big comfy chairs in the corner. And bookshelves with books on them by those chairs. The man likes books, and I like a man who likes books, but the titles are elusive from the distance and I find that I really want to know every book he chose. I want to know too much about him, which is why I keep walking and enter the bathroom. I flip on the light and of course, it’s gorgeous. An egg-shaped tub that is gray with a wood finish like the double sinks. The floors are gray. I walk to the gray stone-encased shower and turn on the water to as hot as I think I can tolerate, before grabbing a gray towel from a closet and setting it on the edge of the bathtub across from the shower. I strip and once I’m naked, I step under the water, exhaling as the warmth heats my cold body, but it does nothing to calm the cold inside. The cold that is the one fear I can’t defeat: my fear of someone else I care about dying.
Suddenly, Jacob, in all his naked, impossible-to-resist perfection is stepping inside the shower, joining me. I decide I’m officially a mess right now because I want to tell him to leave while I also want him to pull me close, a moment before I’m wrapped in his arms, the hard lines of his body pressed to mine. “I hate you right now all over again,” I say, my hand pressing to his chest.
He cups my face. “No, you don’t. You never hated me.”
“Yes,” I say, unexpected anger sparking in me. “I did. I do. Because you’re making me get emotional. Alone isn’t emotional. I can’t do my job if I’m emotional. I can’t do my job if I—”
“Care?” he supplies.
“Yes. If I care.”
“I took those high-risk jobs because I had nothing but those jobs.”
“You don’t have to say this or do this. We just met.”
“We did just meet, but I know from my many warzones that those you fight with become more to you in less time. And we are fighting a war together.”
“And what about when the war is over?”
“The bond still exists. And I’ve never met a woman that made me want more. You make me want more and I don’t know what that means now, but I damn sure want to find out.”
“I can’t ask you to give up what you do. That’s unfair to you but at the same time, I can’t have you in my life while I wait for you to die on me.”
“I don’t need those jobs, sweetheart. I have plenty of money.” He cups my face. “I don’t need those jobs,” he repeats. “And I’m not letting you go. I need this.” He kisses me, and I don’t resist. And when he presses me in the corner, and settles on one knee, his lips and tongue on my belly, I tremble, and he owns me like I’ve never been owned. All at once, his mouth takes me away, and pulls me back to him. He kisses my hip, scrapes it with his teeth, and then travels low
er, and lower, until he’s licking me in the most intimate of places, in the most intimate of ways, driving me over the edge. Until I’m shattering for him, and I can’t stop it, or him, from happening to me.
Much later, I’m in his bed, pressed close to him, his heart thundering beneath my palm, I decide that even knowing how dangerously he lives, if I let myself, I could fall in love this man. I also decide that maybe the slayer is drawn to me because he’s a sadist and as a masochist, not so unlike him.
With moonlight beaming through the curtains of my bedroom window, I lay awake. In fact, the only reason I stay in the bed is that Jewel is in my arms, pressed to my side, her head on my chest, which is naked since she’s in my T-shirt. My mind races with thoughts of the slayer and his game. With thoughts of me, her, us. I have never thought of anyone with me as an “us” before. But I am now. And while yes, Jewel is right, and we’ve just met, I was right as well. When you go to war together, you say things, do things, reveal things you would never consider any other time. It opens wounds, closes wounds, bypasses time, and closes space. It opens the door to discovering a connection that might begin with an understanding of death, but it doesn’t end there. The slayer will not win and that takes me down the rabbit hole of my mind to analyze everything I know about him.
I’ve just noted the two a.m. hour when Jewel starts to murmur in her sleep. “No, no, no. Stop. Stop. Stop.” She jerks to a sitting position.
“Easy, sweetheart,” I say. “You had a nightmare.”
She blinks, resting on her elbow, her hand on my stomach, realization seeping into her expression. “You’re here.”
“Yes,” I say. “I am here. You had a nightmare.”
She sits up, and presses her fingers to her temples. “All I know is that my head hurts again.”
I reach into to the nightstand, grab her a dose of medication and offer it to her “Take this,” I order.