24. Jelly
Chapter 24
Jelly
Taz
I got dressed, and we went back to the small clearing of the trailer. I took a shower while he meandered about. He said he’d scrounge up food from the meager supplies I had in the kitchen, but I knew he’d find that my domestic skills were still just as awful as they had been the first time he commented on the contents of my fridge.
After rinsing off the day, and seeing the jewelry on my wrist, I tried to imagine what the hell got me to this place.
I had been rather stable for the last few months, living in Mourningkill, and going to Sunday Dinners at the farm. I spoke to people, and rode my bike, and sometimes got the random bounty to supplement what little income I got doing odd jobs around the town.
I stretched every dollar because I could, and I wasn’t ready to get consumed in another job. Not yet. Not when I could feel the electricity in the air that something was about to happen. It made me excited, uneasy and afraid.
After Kai, the bounty, Noam’s friend, and my father… what else could the world throw my way? Could I handle it?
I had been idle when I came out here to help Top and Charlotte, between pyrotechnic jobs where I ran fireworks shows for concerts and events. Then I settled here to take care of Kai after he took a bullet to the thigh, and just… stayed when he left.
I had been in suspended animation, waiting for Kai to return.
But now everything was moving so fast that I longed for the routine of boredom of the last few months.
The bracelet felt good against my skin. I had tried to slip it off, just to test if I could, but true to his word, it didn’t budge past my hand. I wondered why that didn’t make me feel constrained.
While I dried my hair, my phone buzzed on the sink counter. I looked down as the name “MOM” flashed on the screen, and I let it go to voicemail.
When I stepped out of the trailer, Kai had his back to me, one arm crossed in front of his chest, and the other up, holding a phone to his ear. He was silhouetted by the small bonfire he had started in front of him. Modest, by my standards. I liked my bonfires big, and able to be seen from miles around.
“Do not come out here. I’m dead fucking serious, Sierra. Don’t come here.”
Who the hell was Sierra?
I felt a pang of jealousy. A reminder of what it had been like with Heath, and how he paraded girls in front of me. A means to keep me in line, and make me insecure. But that wasn’t Kai.
Or was this an ex? The last woman he might have spurned when his interests turned to me?
“I haven’t even talked to her about it yet! No!”
I stopped at the open trailer door and listened.
“I’ll handle it, but I swear to God, do not come here. Do not… Don’t—”
By the sudden drop of his head, I realized that whoever this Sierra was had hung up on him.
He bowed his head, his phone dropping to his side. He pinched the bridge of his nose with his other hand and groaned.
For a few moments, I just stood still, watching him in the firelight.
To some degree, I loved fire because of its ability to destroy. There was something beautiful about being able to harness that raw power and turn it into something that could nurture - a fire could burn down a forest, but it could also provide warmth, cook food, and bring comfort.
If fire could do that, then surely, I could too.
Seeing the fire that Kai created, tame and quiet, was a metaphor for something. I just didn’t know what.
His hair was so black it was practically blue in the light. His jaw was so square it could cut like a razor, and his prominent, thick black brows gave him a masculine edge that I had always admired. Standing head and shoulders taller than me, he was over six feet tall, and broad about the chest and shoulders. He’d grown thicker in the time outside the Army, and not a single bit of it was from fat.
“I can feel you staring,” he said with a small chuckle. “Come join me, baby. Let me hold you.”
Busted.
“I was just admiring your sweet ass.”
“Seems unfair, it being all one sided,” he retorted.
“So turn around, dumbass.”
“Come here, Psycho,” he chuckled, holding his hand out to the side to invite me down.
I did, walking down the stairs, and stepping up beside him. He wrapped an arm around my waist, pulling me into his side.
“We have to talk.”
I internally cringed. “Haven’t we talked enough today?”
“I’m not talking about this,” he said, squeezing my hip with his strong hand. “There’s another reason I’m here.” He placed a kiss on my temple as his hand snuck into my jacket, grabbing the pack of cigarettes, and the lighter. “I’m taking a hiatus from work. My entire group is.”
“Why is that?” I asked, watching him pull out a cigarette with his teeth, then putting the pack back into my pocket.
With one hand, he flicked open the lighter, and lit up.
“You ever sweep for bugs?” he asked.
“Bugs? Out here?” I gestured at the woods with my hand. “Who the heck could get in to plant one with the security cameras? No one comes out here. Not even Mack and Charlotte.”
“What about that Riley douchebag?” I almost laughed. Riley was far from a douche. “He ever come on here when you’re not around?”
“Never,” I said, as he offered me the cigarette.
“Repair men? Contractors? Landlord?”
I let out a long line of smoke, and he placed his open mouth near mine to breathe it in.
“Secondhand smoke kills,” I told him with a smirk.
“That’s why you quit smoking, right?” he bumped his nose against mine. “You told me that lie two birthdays ago.”
“And I did!” I protested. “For a whole week, I didn’t smoke.”
“Then what happened?” he asked, tilting his head.
“My mom called.”
“Shit.”
He had seen me take calls from my mother enough to know what kind of an impact she had. I wasn’t prepared for the therapy it would take to resolve. Plus, he couldn’t complain. Not when he was draining my pack as fast as I was.
“Mellie doesn’t come out here when I’m not around, and I turn in the rent at her house. As for repairmen… to repair… what exactly?” I knew spooks were paranoid. When we’d had to work with them on the team, back in the days when I was in 6th Special Forces Group, we had made fun of the CIA spies and the way they jumped at their own shadows. I never thought Kai would become one of them. “You can sweep every tree and every bit of furniture I don’t have if you like.”
He pinched my rib, tickling me. I squirmed from his grasp, before he wrapped his arms around me, pulling my back to his front so that I stood between him and the fire.
He took the cigarette from my fingers and started smoking, stretching his arm out far to ash away from me.
The night was cold, but I was perfectly warm. We were so far out that the sky was filled with stars, undiluted by the light pollution of nearby cities and towns. The spill of the Milky Way was so much more obvious when we were out here in the middle of nowhere.
“You’re being targeted,” he said, quietly, resting his chin on the top of my head. “I need you to not talk, while I get this out. I’m part of a wet team called Cerberus.”
Wet team. Wet work. It was a fancy way of saying an assassination team. Targeting, and killing.
Finally, I could confirm what he did for work.
“We operate directly under President Lau, and coordinate with the Company.” He was well into his jargon tonight. “Our most recent target was a disenfranchised former DEVGRU.” I wondered if that target knew Trout. Spec Ops was a small world, after all. “He was part of a group planning to attack an event we have yet to identify. But it’s going to be a big one, in retaliation for a choice President Lau made a few years ago.”
“What kind of decision?”
“A prisoner exchange. He traded a few GITMO prisoner for an AWOL Marine.”
I listened, taking it all in. Terrorist groups could start for any offense. I suppose for a bunch of soldiers, losing a high value target for a traitor would be enough.
“Yup,” he nuzzled his nose into the back of my wet hair. “I like your shampoo. What is that? Orange blossom?”
“Yes,” I said, trying to pull away as his breath tickled my skin. “Stop breathing on me, creep!”
He placed his nose at the crook of my neck and started sniffing me.
“Stop! Damnit!” I tried to squirm away, but he held me tighter. “Stop! Okay! Okay! Tell me what the point is!”
He sighed, dropping the cigarette into the bonfire before lighting up another. Was he stress smoking? That was something he had done in the Army. He used to tap me on the shoulder for a smoke break when he was stressed, and that was one of those formative habits that made us close.
“The DEVGRU guy said your name to me. Told me that they were after you.”
“Me?” Well, that was a surprise. So many men were after me, I had never felt so popular in my life. “I’m nobody.”
“Apparently, you’re someone. To Trout. To Paradigm. To me.” He tightened his arms around me, crossing them beneath my breast until I was flush against him. “I like to think it’s because of me, but after today, I think it might be about your Dad. I wasn’t in on the decision for the prisoner exchange, even though I was there when it happened. Now this thing with Brett and the rest…”
He put his hands on my shoulders and turned me around so that we were joined at the hips. He wrapped his arm around my waist, looking down at me, his brows together, a deep groove in the space between them.
He’d aged a lot in the last couple of years. Crows' feet that hadn’t been there were now making themselves visible. He had bags under his eyes, and I wasn’t sure they’d go away with just a good night’s sleep.
“Is there anything you could think of that could help me figure this out?” he asked, his eyes narrowing.
I tried to think. I really did. But the honest truth was that I had no idea.
“The last of my secrets you learned today. There’s nothing else to know.”
That was the truth of me. I was a simple girl, of simple origins, with no connections, barely any family, and certainly no real friends to speak of outside of the team Kai and I had shared. Nothing special.
Ghost, and Kai… the most interesting things about me seemed to be about someone else.
“I’m not going to get into how bullshit that statement is,” he chuckled. I felt it rumble through his chest, as he pulled me into him. “But if you think of something, tell me.”
I looked at the bracelet on my wrist, letting it jangle. The sturdy metal glinted in the firelight. I always liked silver for this specific property - the way it could reflect the colors around it, far more than the yellow taint of gold.
“Now that you have me chained by this bracelet, how do I get to brand you?” I lifted my arms and put them around his neck.
“You’re already tattooed on my skin. Want me to make it more explicit and get Trinity Blaze Guerro on my ass?”
I tilted my head to one side, then the other, as if I was really contemplating that option.
“Shut the hell up,” he said, placing a kiss to my lips. “And you won’t be a Guerro for too long, anyway.”
“Oh? You think I’d change my name?” I said, poking me in the rib. “I didn’t change it for Heath. Why do you think I’d change it for you?”
“I dunno, I assumed you weren’t that attached to it because of your Dad. But I’d take a hyphenate, or hell… don’t change it at all, and just go by Mrs. Griffith socially. I don’t really care.”
I pursed my lips, thinking for a moment about what I would say next. He had brought my ex-spouse into this. So maybe it was safe to bring his into it as well.
“Kristin changed her name,” I said, carefully. “I think she still goes by your last name now.”
“Are you stalking my ex?” His smile was low and broad as he looked at me with mirth in those dark eyes. “Jealous?”
“No!” I tried to squirm out of his hold, btu the more I tried to pull away, the tighter he held me. “But she shows up on socials sometimes. We still have mutuals, and shit.”
“You’re cute when you’re jealous,” he said with the teasing smile as he rubbed his nose against mine. Then he sang, “I think you liiiike me. You wanna fuuuuck me. You wanna—oof!”
I punched him in the sternum. Not hard, just enough to get him to shut the hell up.
My phone chimed.
I pulled it from my pocket and looked as the cameras picked up a red Corvette coming up the road.
“Friend of yours?” I asked, turning my phone to him as he closed his eyes, and groaned.