13. Mac
13
Mac
The casual use of the word “we,” like we’re in this together
She follows meekly, standing back and watching silently as I toss her bag into the trunk and go around to open the passenger door for her. I don’t miss the way she reacts with surprise to the gesture.
When I climb into the driver’s seat, I’m gratified to see that she’s already buckled in. But she’s reaching into her pocket and I spot the top of the screen as it lights up. “Don’t make me take that from you,” I warn. “Leave it in your pocket, at least for now, okay?”
She frowns at me, but pushes the phone back where it was and rests her hands on her thighs.
I’m not trying to be a controlling asshole, but until we can talk and she understands what kind of danger she really is in, I need her to find another way to calm that anxiety than scrolling through her phone. It’s not that I don’t trust her, she just doesn’t know what any of this means for her going forward. What she can and can’t do.
“What’s going on?” she asks, like she’s been saving it for a moment alone. “What did you mean by they know I’m involved? Who are they ? What am I involved in?”
“Just give me two minutes, darlin’. I’m going to call someone to take care of that guy, and it’ll be better if he doesn’t know anything about you. Okay?” I trust Felix, but only the smallest bit further than I can throw him. And that’s nowhere near how close I’d let him come to my girl.
She nods, taking the message to keep silent. As I settle into my seat, I pull the dead man’s gun from my waistband and lean across her to shove it in the glove compartment. Then I throw the car into reverse and pull out my phone. As I start for the home base, I speed dial my fixer.
“Mac, my man,” Felix greets me and I can hear the smile in his voice. “How’s one of my favorite customers?”
“About to become better.”
“All business, huh? Fine by me. Whatchu need, amigo ?”
“I need a discreet rush on a cold one.” I rattle off the address of the gym as we pull into the main street and start making our way out of the city. I keep Eleanor in my periphery and one eye on the rearview to make sure we’re not being followed, which doesn’t leave a lot to pay attention to the road. Good thing driving under pressure is one of my skills.
“Ladies locker 28, as of,” I check my watch, never trusting the clock on a dash, “11 minutes ago. He’s a big fucker, so send guys. And I want the ojos, comprende ?”
Felix whistles in respect—he always has appreciated a bit of drama, so a request to bring me the eyes of a dead man is right up his alley. “What’d he do to you?”
“Looked at someone he shouldn’t have.”
“Shiiit. Like, a lady someone?”
Appreciates drama was perhaps too generous. Fucking nosy is more like it.
“Just send me a bill,” I grit out through my teeth.
“Can do, chico . It’s gonna be quite the roll.”
“I only pay for the best,” I remind him. Felix and his team are quick, quiet and careful. And he’s got enough powerful people in his pocket for one hell of a contingency plan. He takes his payments in money or I-O-U’s, and the more powerful and well-connected the client, the less physical currency they pay for Felix’s services. I prefer cash; I’ve got plenty and I’m not a fan of owing favors.
I hang up, then hang a left at the light that indicates we’ve officially left city limits. The coast is clear—we’re not being followed.
“Okay,” I tell her. “Here’s a CliffsNotes to save us some back and forth. I’ll answer whatever you still got after. Sound good?”
She eyes me warily, trying to hide her surprise. “Yeah, okay.”
“That man worked for Jacob Rossi, a businessman, landlord—”
“I know who he is,” she interrupts.
“—murderer, wife-beater, thief, gun-smuggler and all-around dick,” I finish, eyeing her. She swallows audibly. “I—we—were running a mission to take him and most of his guys out before they could sell their most recent shipment of AK-47s, explosives and other automatic weapons.”
“So, you’re trying to tell me that you’re a sniper with a moral code?” she replies, boiling it down to its essence as she inhales shakily and turns to look out the window. “Give me a break.”
If anyone else said that, I could easily brush it off. I need her to understand. I need her to believe me… but I also need her to be a little bit afraid so she’ll stay vigilant and be careful. “Morality has nothing to do with it, but yeah, they’re scum. So, my job was to put him down. But you walked in on me, the mission went sideways, and now Rossi is out for blood. I don’t know how they found out about you, but they must have.”
“Someone saw the light come on in my apartment that night,” she says, and her voice is so small, it hurts.
Of all the piss-poor luck… That light couldn’t have been on for more than a minute. I’ll have to ask how she knows when it’s my turn for questions. But right now, she gets her answers because she’s been through a lot and she’s taken it all on the chin.
“No matter what that guy said, he was going to kill you—if you’d talked or if you hadn’t, it wouldn’t have mattered. They were looking for information on, well, me basically. Me and my associates.
“We’re bad people, Eleanor. We kill people. We tried to kill him and we failed. So now Rossi is going to try to kill us. And you’re in the middle of it. So, I’m taking you back to my place.” I finish with a little sigh. I want to reach out and take her hand, but she lifts them from her lap to cross her arms over her chest.
Her eyes narrow at me. “Nice speech. How do I know that it’s not all just a bunch of lies?”
“I won’t lie to you. I only did that one time when you thought I was an exterminator.”
Her mouth falls open. “That one time? That was a… a whole thing! It doesn’t count as one lie!”
“Why not? ”
She ticks them off as her eyes flash with the kind of vitality I haven’t seen since before the sauna. It fires me up, too. “Because the uniform was a lie, the hat was a lie, those glasses were a lie, the words out of your mouth about being an exterminator were a lie. Everything about that interaction was a lie—except, apparently, your name? Which I really cannot fathom.”
I can safely assume she heard some of my exchange with Felix, then.
This temper is good. Anger, I can deal with. It’s the cold, afraid, timid Eleanor that worries me. “Okay, how about this: I haven’t lied since then. And I won’t, that’s a promise.”
She heaves a sigh. Her stare is burning a hole into the side of my face, but I keep my eyes forward. If I turn, I’m not going to be able to stop myself from pulling over. If I pull over, I’m not going to be able to stop myself from touching her. And she probably doesn’t want me touching her right now. Not yet.
“How did you know where I was? How did you get here so fast?”
I didn’t expect to have to curse my promise not to lie so quickly, but here we are. “I followed you.” When she says nothing to that, just sucks her bottom lip into her mouth to chew on it, I continue with the story, “I saw him pull into the lot after you, wait in his car, then go in after you’d been in there a while. I thought he looked familiar. I called to check on you.”
“You really did save me,” she says, almost as if to herself. “Why?”
Why? She wants to know why? I shake my head a little. “I’m not ready to answer that.” It’s not technically a lie— she’s not ready for me to answer that, so I’m not ready for it either.
The truth is, I’ve decided she’s mine to protect. But women don’t often take kindly to obsessive, possessive declarations before you’ve even learned each other’s last names.
Her shoulders slump and her hands fall back into her lap. I eye the one closest to me, itching to take it, but I make myself use both hands for my next turn to give them something else to do. “Now, my turn. How did you know that someone saw the light?”
“It’s what they said when they came to my door. He was pretending to be a detective.”
“They? ”
“Um, the guy you just… um… him, and there was an officer there, too. Really Irish name… McCloskey, I think.”
I frown. Why hadn’t I heard any of it? “They came to your door? When?”
“Um, Thursday. I went to the movies and when I got back, they were standing there”—makes sense, they were outside the apartment, out of range of the bugs—“and asked me if I was home that night and showed me a picture of some guy I didn’t know. Said he was a person of interest or something.” She winces. “I, ah, don’t think I did a very good job lying. I was really freaked out.”
“What made you think the other guy was a cop?”
“He was in the full uniform and… I dunno, he sounded really convincing. Had one of those little notepads and used all the lingo I hear on cop dramas. Hey, wait. I just remembered, back in the sauna, that guy said something about how he didn’t want to get caught on the security cameras of my building again.”
“Yeah?” I ease to a stop at the last light right before I start the maze of back roads through the ‘burbs.
“Well, you’ve been there, right? Should we be worried that someone might have seen you—”
Maybe it’s the relief in realizing her concern is solely that I might be in danger of getting caught. Maybe it’s the casual use of the word “we,” like we’re in this together, like we have been since we hid that body in the locker room. Maybe it’s that she just looks so damn gorgeous—strong, resilient, earnest—in spite of the fear, and I can’t believe I get to have her in front of me, in touching distance like this.
I reach over and cup the back of her neck, pulling her roughly forward to meet my lips halfway. She’s stiff at first, stunned, but then she relaxes and melts into me. The contact is a spark, just the start of a fire that runs hot through my veins. Her lips are so fucking soft, so pliable, so warm…
As much as I want to deepen it, I don’t. Someone honks behind us, I pull away and notice that the light is green, so I make my turn.
“Listen to me, darlin’. If you’re ever approached by the police in the future, I want you to ask for their name and badge number and then get somewhere safe until you can call into the station and verify their information. Worst case scenario, it’ll irritate the hell out of some sheriff trying to get you for speeding, but it may save your life someday. It’s too easy to impersonate an officer, and the cops generally make people nervous enough that they usually just cooperate. It’s the perfect disguise for one of those guys.” And me.
She nods, a silent promise as she looks deep in thought, filing that information away. “Have you ever pretended to be a cop?”
Doesn’t miss a beat, does she? “Yes.”
I nearly grimace as she starts chewing that lip again, looking thoughtful. This is going to be a long fucking drive.