Chapter 29
TWENTY-NINE
Jessica bolted upright, her chair toppling over behind her with a thud.
The darkness was so complete it felt like she was blindfolded.
Instinctively, she thrust out her arms, unable to recall a single thing about her surroundings.
Another thud: a glass or the whiskey bottle falling over onto the table.
She felt panic crowd in around her, hot hands and breath, and the sensation that she couldn’t control any part of her body.
Bright white light burned into the backs of her eyeballs, and she shut them tight. When she opened them again, she saw Ryan holding out his phone.
He lowered the light. “Hey,” he said softy. “It’s okay. It’s alright.”
She was still breathing fast, her pulse beating in her jugular. It wasn’t just the dark that had frightened her. The similarities between the marshal’s story and her dream had also troubled her. She tried to shake the eerie feeling away, but it seemed to have settled in her bones.
He came around the table and gently pulled her into him in an awkward one-armed hug. She relaxed into it, into the solidness of his chest, the comforting bulk of his biceps. She could smell cologne on his shirt. Something fresh and marine.
“I’m sorry,” she said, panic giving way to a feeling of foolishness. “You must think I’m such a wimp. It’s just something happened to me in the dark a long time ago.”
Inglis was looking down at her, concern bracketing his mouth. He opened it to say something, then seemed to think the better of it and closed it. Stepping back, he let her go, and the feeling of security he’d wrapped her in melted into the darkness.
He turned to the kitchen counter, and she heard the click of a lighter. When he faced her again, he was holding a candle propped in a mug.
She gave a shaky laugh. “Definitely a Boy Scout.”
He placed the mug on the table and sat back down, letting his phone light die.
She forced herself to say something irreverent to lighten the mood. “Well,” she said, looking around their little candlelit table. “This is romantic.”
He raised an eyebrow. “We’re drinking terrible whiskey, with a candle that smells like an old crayon, in a house that may not make it through the night. You have a low bar for romance.”
She laughed, still feeling a little giddy from her fright.
“Oh, honey, my bar is, like, underground.” She unscrewed the cap, poured them both some more of the terrible whiskey.
“Most of the men I’ve dated think opening a can of beer for a woman constitutes a grand gesture.
The fact that you’re wearing cologne and haven’t tried to cop a feel yet puts you in the top one percentile, easy. ”
He tilted his head slightly, eyes glinting with something unreadable. “Yet?”
That one word sent a spark through her. She didn’t know whether it was her calling him honey, the talk of copping feels, or maybe the detail that she knew what he smelled like because of their hug, but suddenly, he wasn’t looking at his drink anymore. He was looking at her.
She regarded him for a long moment and realized she was making him nervous. But not in a bad way.
So. Not uninterested, then. Just restrained.
She knew that type, too. They were the ones who got dragged into the club by boorish friends.
They actually dressed up or at least put on a shirt with buttons.
And when they got peer-pressured into going into the Champagne Room with her (which, in all her time working at Femme Fatale, had never once featured champagne), they wanted to know her name, where she was from, how her day had been, instead of just attempting to dry hump her.
Choir boys, the other girls called them.
She thought of them as men whose mamas raised them right.
And of all the men she’d had to wade through in a night working at that awful place, they had been the ones she’d disliked the least.
She took another sip of her drink, aware that on her empty stomach it was going straight to her head. “So. You married?”
He said nothing for a long time, and she thought he wouldn’t answer. Then he cleared his throat and said, “I was. Long time ago.”
Hmm. There’s definitely a story there, she thought. “Got anyone back home in Memphis?”
“No.”
“See, that surprises me,” she said, tilting her glass at him. “I figured someone like you would be beating women off with a stick.”
He shifted in his seat, looking for all the world like someone who’d rather not be having this conversation. But she knew he was a little intrigued because he said, ‘Someone like me?’
“Oh, yeah,” she said, warming to her topic. “You’ve got this whole inscrutable thing going on. Taciturn and mysterious. Alpha, but not assholey with it.”
“Right,” he said, getting three syllables out of the word. His accent was getting thicker with every sip he took.
“Women love that shit.” She surveyed him some more over the rim of her glass.
She was flirting with a federal marshal.
Flirting hard. Was that even legal? “Plus, there’s your face.
And what I can assume is a fair amount going on underneath your shirt.
” She propped an elbow on the table. “I mean, I wouldn’t kick you out of bed. Unless you were better on the floor.”
He choked on his drink.
She hid a smile. Teasing this guy could keep her entertained for hours.
When he recovered, looking a lot pinker than he had before, she held one hand in surrender. “I’m sorry. I will keep it in my pants, I promise.”
He cleared his throat but didn’t reply. Neither of them spoke for a long moment. All her shameless flirting had thickened the air between them. She’d only been joking, but now it felt… real.
And the way he was looking at her? Like maybe he wasn’t planning to run either.
It was her turn to clear her throat a little nervously. And it was then she realized that the room was silent. There was no constant drill of rain on the roof. No incessant howling of the wind. She didn’t know how long it had been quiet, but now that she was aware of it, the silence was deafening.
Her ears popped, and the low pressure made her feel breathless. The air smelt like salt.
Inglis cast his eyes upward, noticing it, too. “Means the back half of the storm’s still coming our way,” he said.
She got up, went through to the living room. Stood in front of the one clear window, surveyed the new, calm world. There were stars overhead. They glinted off the water that now lapped gently against the side of the house.
Wait. Water that lapped against the side of the house?
She stared out, wondering if she was seeing things or if there’d been something in the whiskey.
The eerie calm continued.
Ryan joined her at the window, and she said, “How long do you think it will it last?”
He shook his head. “Depends on where we are in the eye. Could be half an hour. Could only be a few minutes.”
They both stood there for a long time, not speaking. Soaking in the silence. Then she heard it: a distant roar like an enormous wave approaching from the west.
She turned her head and squinted, certain that she could actually see the wind as it came towards them.
But that was impossible, right? And yet there it was, a physical ripple that seemed to shimmer in the darkness.
It smacked down trees as it went, their branches and leaves vanishing before the blast like a special effect.
She could only stare in horror as the ripple approached the house—
Ryan threw himself on top of her as the window exploded. The building shifted beneath them. The sound was like nothing she’d ever heard: a great, deep vibration that she felt in bones as much as perceived with her ears.
The wind was inside the house now, like an invisible wild animal, ripping and tearing at her hair and clothes. Inglis bundled her up and half-dragged, half-carried her out of the room, broken glass and debris crunching underfoot.
The candle had snuffed out, but he grabbed it and the lighter, and by the illumination from his phone, they made their way to the rear of the house.
He slammed the bedroom door shut behind them and twisted the lock while she slid down the wall and hugged her knees. “So, I guess that was the back end,” she managed.
Ryan relit the candle in the mug and set it down on the floor at her feet. “Are you hurt?”
She raised her hands and looked at them, then at her bare arms. “A few scratches, nothing major.” She realized her arms were shaking, so she lowered them. “What about you?”
He came to sit beside her against the wall. “I’m fine.”
Silence set up camp between them. Outside the room, the sounds of the storm had returned with gusto. The unholy howl of the wind, the sudden volleys of rain against what was left of the roof.
She rested her head back against the wall and sighed. “Shit. The whiskey.”
Inglis made a sound of resignation. “Probably better watered down, anyway.”
She snorted, which prompted him to chuckle, and then they were both laughing like idiots while the house groaned and the roller door in the garage sounded like it was being ripped from its hinges.
When they finally calmed down enough to speak, he said, “So. What’s your story, then? Since we’re sharing.”
She turned to him, smile fading. “Oh, you don’t wanna hear mine.”
“Why not?” He rolled his head on the wall to face her. “We got nothing but time to kill.”
* * *
Jessica looked away from his penetrating blue stare. She realized she’d been doing the thing she always did to people, especially men: pressing them into talking about their lives, so she didn’t have to talk about her own.
Because she couldn’t talk about her own. Not to anyone. Not ever.