Chapter 8
Play it!
Ben
We got back around nine this morning. As soon as she and Joan Wick were situated, I started a new case file for her. I asked Annie for more specifics and entered the data into my laptop so the team could get a jump on her case before we briefed.
I left Annie locked safe in my apartment a half a block away, and now I’m at LPA leaning against the wall in the large room we call the vault for its impenetrable design, waiting for Drew to show up.
Fitz, Landon, Harlan, and Shep are talking among each other about something I’m not paying attention to, and the empty chair next to Parker is mine, but I’m too agitated to sit.
I look at my phone, propped on the table, to watch the live camera feeds from my place.
Annie is still where I left her fifteen minutes ago—sitting on the couch with Joan Wick in her lap, watching TV.
I glance up at the digital clock on the wall, and when the time changes to indicate it’s ten minutes past noon, I shift my weight, frustrated by the delay.
“Sorry for the holdup.” Drew closes the door behind him, crosses the room, and sits at the head of the table. “Before we get started with particulars, I need to know if anyone besides me objects to Ben’s involvement from here on out.”
I narrow my eyes at him. “What the fuck?”
“I’m sorry, did you say anyone besides you?” Parker asks, a note of disbelief in his tone. He was already pissed I didn’t tell him about Annie immediately, so I’m sure he’s not thrilled about how that news was just delivered.
Drew answers with conviction. “Yes.”
“The only thing I object to is you blindsiding me with this bullshit right now.” Parker starts to stand, but Shep puts a hand on his shoulder and pushes him back into his seat as he speaks up. “I don’t have a single objection, either.”
“Ben’s the most well acquainted with the victim and the facts of the previous case should they be pertinent,” Fitz says. “I’d be more surprised if he wasn’t involved.”
Harlan nods. “Same.”
“Not sure if this is overstepping on a family issue or anything…” Landon hesitates. “But I don’t get why this is even a question.”
I stand silent, waiting for Drew’s reasoning.
“This has nothing to do with family. It’s all business. And you were all around for the previous case, so you’re aware of its facts, but more importantly, its outcome.”
Parker snaps his fingers. “I get it. And since he won’t say the words, I will. He thinks Ben’s too emotionally invested. Isn’t that right, Drew?”
“Yes.”
Parker looks at me. “Are you too emotionally invested, Ben?”
“No.”
“That’s bullshit,” Drew rebuts. “You were then, you are today, and you will be if she’s around. If you let your guard down again and there’s a repeat of what happened…” He slashes his hand through the air. “Fuck it. Pull it up, Fitz.”
Fitz is the Agency’s cybersecurity and technology expert. If it involves hacking cameras, tracing records, unsealing files, or tracking financials, it goes through him.
His shoulders hunch, and he keeps his head down as his fingers fly across the keyboard of one of his many laptops. The room lights dim, the glass frosts, and a still image of Annie and me on the couch that night five years ago illuminates the large screen on the wall.
A stunned harmony of sharp, uneven breaths sucks the oxygen out of the room, only for disbelief to suffocate any particles that didn’t manage to escape.
I knew the house was under surveillance, but I wasn’t aware the footage had been saved. I clench my fists, and my knuckles pop. “What the hell are you doing? Nobody needs to see this shit.”
Shep clears his throat. “He’s right, Drew.” Shep was there. He was the one who got me to the hospital. Neither one of us needs to relive that hell, ever, let alone in front of an audience.
“I beg to differ. Play it, Fitz.”
“Drew, I—”
“Play it!” Drew barks.
“Christ, fine,” Fitz mumbles, taps a button, then the video begins rolling with no sound.
Knowing what’s about to transpire, my throat dries, and my palms dampen, but I force myself to watch the raw footage of what has only been blurry snapshots until this point.
Annie turns to me, and the look on her face says more than any words could. Adoration, desire, she was gazing at me all dreamy, like I was the main character in one of her stupid shows—and I hadn’t a fucking clue.
It’s unfathomable how I missed the signs and misread her intent as she leans in and bites her lip.
All eyes are glued to the screen when she throws herself at me, and the silence becomes deafening. But when I push her off a couple of seconds later, way too fucking hard, thunder echoes off the walls.
“Fuck,” I say under my breath. I always knew I’d been rough and regretted not being able to control myself, but I didn’t realize it was that bad. I didn’t know she’d hit the corner of the coffee table so hard it made her bleed.
I wince when I watched her crawling away from me, so fraught she whacked her head. I tried to help her up, but she fought like I was a fucking predator.
It happened so incredibly fast, but this replay seems to be in slow motion.
All the things I should have noticed then, are blinding me now.
The red light on the security panel indicated a breach, and the motion light on the porch flashed bright.
My phone had fallen on the floor, but it, too, was warning me.
Then the door handle rattled, and the lock was destroyed from the first bullet that flew that night.
I looked over, and the door flew open. I reached for my weapon, but I was too late.
He pulled the trigger one, two, three times, each with precision. The burning pain is still raw and the smell of searing flesh coils in my gut as if those bullets were shredding through me in real time.
Through all of it, I managed to throw myself on Annie, but that was the last thing I remembered.
I link my fingers behind my neck as I watch Annie on screen falling apart as she tried to put me back together.
There’s no sound on the tape, but a faraway part of my mind remembers her heartbreaking cries.
Her emotions are so visceral that I know every man in this room can feel her terror as if they were there. You’d have to be soulless not to.
She attempted to roll my lifeless body off of her four times before she was successful. She did everything she could to stop the blood oozing out of me, frantic in her attempt to save me, all while Don remained a useless fucking statue.
I can read her lips. “He wasn’t hurting me,” she shrieked. “What did you do? What did you do?”
I’d later find out that Drew had, in fact, sent in another man to take over for me. Despite my insisting that nobody was taking me away from Annie and that I had everything under control, I can’t deny that his insistence was ultimately what saved me.
So that’s why Shep was there. He stormed inside and, with a face made of stone, aimed his gun at Don, who finally dropped his. Shep threw me over his shoulder, then raced me to a hospital.
But now it was just Don and Annie on the screen, both with looks I’ve never seen before—his a cross between terror, shock, guilt, and regret and hers filled with nothing but guttural agony.
She was covered in blood, tears streaking through the crimson on her cheeks.
Don took a step toward her, and when his hand grazed her arm, she lost it.
She shoved him away, screaming, and then pounded on her father’s chest over and over, so hard she couldn’t keep her footing.
And then she crumpled to the ground.
The screen goes black. The room is still. The men are speechless, and so am I.
For approximately four seconds. “Fuck you,” I growl at Drew. “You feel better now? Your superior ego inflated enough? Get what you needed shoving my failure in not only my face, but everyone else’s?”
He has the balls to look confused. “That’s not—”
“That’s exactly what you did.” I stab my finger at him.
“But if you think I earned that shit, fine. You win. You got what you want. Now, can we get back to why we’re here in the first place, or do you want to show everyone the night my knee went out and I fell down the stairs before we get back to our fucking jobs? ”
“You done?” Drew asks, getting to his feet. “Anyone else got something they want to say?” He holds his hands up and looks around.
Fights between us brothers don’t happen at work, so I’m not that surprised Parker is the only one who chimes in. “That was a dick move and completely unnecessary.”
Drew addresses the room. “Our number one priority is the safety of not just clients and victims, but also the team members involved. What you just saw was an isolated incident, but an incident nonetheless.” He clenches his jaw, then catches my eyes.
“I don’t give a shit if you’re pissed at me as long as my point penetrated, that point being that when emotions are involved, bad shit happens.
And really bad shit happened to you once already, I don’t want it to happen again. ”
“It penetrated. Just like those three bullets did through me. And I’ll tell you the same thing I had to tell Annie. That”—I point at the blank screen—“was my fault. Not hers. Not anyone else’s. I live with that failure every day, not you.”
“It wasn’t a failure. You’re not a failure,” Drew says low.
I shake my head and stare at the wall. “Right.”
“I thought you were dead.” My gaze swings back to him.
“I was alerted to the breach. I watched that happen in real time, and I thought you were dead. So forgive my reaction to discovering the same woman you took those bullets for showed up in the middle of the night, and then hours later, you take off without following the most basic safety protocols.”
“I had us covered.”
“You reacted with emotion and put yourself back into the same position as five years ago. I didn’t show the video to shove anything in your face. I did it because when you see the assignments, you know why I’m going to be with her and not you.”
I cross my arms. “Come again?”
“Fitz is going to continue gathering intel today. Tomorrow morning, you, Park, Lan, and Shep will head to Annapolis to canvass and get a lock on suspects. I’ll stay with Annie.”
My initial reaction was hell no. But then I wouldn’t be able to meet Vito face-to-face…and I’m looking forward to that.
“I can live with that.”
I spent all afternoon of doing more research into Vito and Poe. Annie was sitting right next to me on the couch, just like old times. The sun has set and I hear her stomach rumble. “Hungry?” I tease.
“Shut up.”
“I’ll make dinner.”
She gets to her feet, still slightly sore on her ankle. “No, let me. You bought lunch, the least I can do is make you a meal as a thank you.”
“You don’t have to do anything to thank me. Besides, you need to stay off your foot.”
“Fine. I’m going to take a shower then, if that’s okay.”
“Of course it’s okay.”
I go to the fridge and get out what I need, then start making dinner.
The pipes rumble when she turns on the shower, and a vision of Annie’s naked, wet body comes out of nowhere. Water cascading over her shoulders, down her back, over the curve of her round ass.
Trembling hands cause the knife to slip through my fingers, nearly taking off my toe. “Jesus.” I shake my head, and sadly, the image is gone. What the hell is wrong with you? This is Annie.
My nervous system is in disarray, with different signals fighting each other. I blow out a breath and roll my shoulders back in a lame attempt at releasing some tension.
I pour some sauce into the pan with the onions, bacon, and ground beef to let it simmer, then grab a mixing bowl and more ingredients from my cupboards to make cookies.
About ten minutes later, Annie comes out wearing a pair of dark purple pajama shorts and a matching long-sleeved shirt that hugs her breasts and shows a teasing hint of skin on her stomach. Joan Wick launches herself off the back of the couch at Annie, who easily catches her.
“Smells good. What are you making?”
I dump the dried pasta into the pot of boiling, salted water. “Grilled chicken and steamed veggies.”
Disappointment flashes as she comes toward me, but when she reaches the stove, her face lights up. “Spaghetti.”
“Unfortunately, I don’t have a plethora of cheese.”
Her voice gets soft. “I can’t believe you remember that.”
“I remember everything. Which is why I’m also baking a batch of double-chunk chocolate chip cookies.”
I thought that would make her smile even bigger, but it seems to have the opposite effect. “What can I help with?”
“Hey. What just happened?”
“What do you mean?”
“You just closed down.”
She presses Joan Wick closer and avoids my eyes. “Nothing. I’m just tired.”
I give her that because the past twenty-four hours have been rough for her. “Then I’d better get you fed so you can get some sleep.”
While we ate, we caught up on a few things, but nothing too heavy. It was effortless, but at the same time, there was an unease that I’d never had with her before—and I didn’t like it.
After a ridiculous argument about who would sleep where, I got her in my bed with Joan Wick curled up by her feet.
“I have the same one,” she whispers.
“The same what, sweetheart?”
“Insouciance. I-N-S-O-U-C-I-A-N-C-E. Noun. A formal word that refers to a feeling of carefree unconcern. It can also be understood as a term for a person in a relaxed, calm state, who’s not worried about anything. Insouciance.”
My eyes move to the word-of-the-day calendar on my nightstand.
When I was a kid, hell, even as an adult, if I say something stupid around my mom, she smacks me upside the head.
It’s like an immediate wake-up call, and I have that same feeling right now, but worse…
like a punch to the gut. Because that calendar is the first thing I see when I wake up and the last thing I see before I fall asleep.
And until this very second, I didn’t realize the significance of the fact that I’ve kept Annie close all these years.