Chapter 18
Eighteen
brISTOL LEANED INTO Agent Marshall, letting her weight rest on him as they entered the hotel room. He helped her into a chair, and she sank into it.
“I’ll get you a washcloth.” He moved for the bathroom, the sink sputtered on, then he returned and knelt in front of her. He folded the washcloth and laid it across her forehead. The bathroom door remained wide open, the night sky as dark as black, liquid ink out the windows.
“Thanks,” she said, her head still spinning—round and round until she feared she’d pass out.
“Just sit still for a bit. You’re really unsteady.”
She nodded, and her head swooshed.
“How’s your stomach?”
“Don’t worry. I’m not going to throw up on your carpet.”
“I wasn’t asking about that.”
“No?” She smoothed the washcloth. “Please don’t say you care an ounce about me. You only want to get your man. You couldn’t care less about me, and we both know it, so don’t play the doting agent.”
Harsh, but it was the truth, and she wasn’t playing at another relationship that wasn’t real. She was his informant, and he was her safety net. At least she’d let him think so, and then she’d get the heck out of dodge.
It was too much. They couldn’t ask her to do this. She wanted nothing to do with Dalton—not anymore. Couldn’t play along like all was good. The thought of who he really was quirked her stomach. She swayed in the chair.
“Whoa!” Aubry braced his hands on her arms, holding her firm. “Just relax.”
“Relax? I just learned my boyfriend has sex slaves, deals drugs, and ordered a woman killed.”
His eyes widened. “You heard him order a woman killed?”
She nodded and regretted the motion as the room spun faster.
“Do you know who . . . when . . . where?”
She shook her head again, and again regretted it. Why couldn’t she just sit still?
“Let me get you some water.” He straightened and moved for the bathroom, returning a moment later. “Here,” he said, holding a cup up to her face.
“I’ve got it.” She took it from him. She was being a pip, all right, but how could they expect her to play nice with Dalton now that she knew the truth about him?
Aubry stood over her, hands braced on the back of his hips.
“You don’t have to hover. I’m not going anywhere.” Yet.
“Did Dalton see you? Hear you? Anything?”
“He didn’t see me. He mentioned the side door being unlocked but assumed the housekeeper must have done it.”
“Smart going over the fence.”
“Thanks.” She took a sip from the cup, letting the cool water run down her parched throat.
He offered her a mint.
She took one from the metal tin in his hand. “Thanks.” Why was he being kind to her? Because he wanted something from her. They always did.
“And you’re wrong,” he said, slipping the tin back into his pocket.
“About what?”
“That I don’t care about you.”
“Huh?”
“I care about my informants. For goodness’ sake, I hunted you for more than a year. I know you. I know the reaction you just had was real. I care for the people in my protection.”
“Isn’t that sweet?” Okay, she was being a witch. It wasn’t his fault she’d been Dalton’s fool.
“You’ve got a viper’s tongue at times, you know that?” He stepped back and took a seat on the edge of the bed.
Apologize. Apologize? Where had that come from?
“You play tough, and you are tough, but not in the way that you think.”
“Oh, and you know how I think?” He didn’t know anything about her. No one did.
“You think you can’t rely on anyone. You come out of the gate snarky, but it’s just a protective measure. You don’t latch onto anyone so no one can let you down, because you’ve been let down a lot. Am I right?”
Far too much so. She shifted, finally feeling her equilibrium returning. “Don’t pretend you know me. I’m just one of your experiments.”
“Experiments?” He frowned. “How do you mean?”
“You try to use me to nail Dalton and see if it works. If not, I’m expendable. Right?”
His jaw held firm—a rugged one at that. Quite handsome now that she really looked at him. Handsome? Where was her mind? Get your game on, girl. He was the enemy.
He bent, coming to eye level with her. “I’m not going to let anything happen to you.”
“Right.” She cocked her head. “Let me guess. You’ll protect me with your life.”
“I will.” He didn’t flinch. Didn’t make any evasive maneuvers with his face or body. He was telling the truth. How on earth could that be? Shake yourself out if it, girl. He’s lying. Everybody lies. “You can save the Boy Scout speech for someone else.”
He smiled. “True to form.”
She blinked. “Excuse me?”
“This is what you do.” He straightened. “Come out like a cat with claws at the ready.”
“Don’t analyze me.” He was hitting too close to home.
He slipped off his jacket and laid it over one of the dining chairs, then pulled another chair over, turning it around and straddling it—a mere foot away from her. “It’s part of my job.”
She linked her arms across her chest and crossed one long leg over the other.
Her best feature, many said. If he was going to disarm her with his looks, she could do the same.
“Your analysis . . . Let’s see. . . . I was raised by cons.
Unstable home environment. Left at sixteen.
Juvie record a mile long, which shows a penchant toward criminal activity.
And you, personally, believe I’ve pulled more cons than what you busted me for, despite how hard you tried. Am I missing anything?”
“A lot, actually.”
Hadn’t seen that coming. The shock of Dalton’s true identity must be throwing her off her game. That was all. She cocked her head again, focusing in now that it had stopped swirling. “Such as?”
He tapped the top of the chair. “We don’t need to go through that tonight. What we need to go through is what happened at Dalton’s.”
“I told you. He ordered a woman killed.” What else mattered?
“Did he say anything to indicate who this woman might be? Anything we can go on to find her?”
“No.” She shook out her hands. “Nothing tangible.” Dalton’s words replayed in her head, rising and falling in rapid fashion, ripping from her lungs.
“I . . . I . . . can’t breathe.” What was happening?
She never panicked. Never got out of control.
Ever. Now she was falling apart in front of Agent Man.
And needed the stupid thing. Great. He’d know her one weakness.
“Slow down.” He kept his voice calm—firm. “Deep breaths. In through your nose and out through your mouth.”
“I . . .” Her chest muscles clamped on her lungs and squeezed, her breath dipping shallower. “I . . . need . . . my inhaler.”
He frowned. “Inhaler?”
She inclined her head at the purse that had gone to prison with her. She’d slipped her inhaler inside before striding out to meet Agent Man at the gate.
Confusion plastered on his face, he stepped to her purse on the table, its black sequined tendrils strewn along the white faux marble tabletop. When he opened it, surprise registered across his face. Pulling the inhaler out, he hurried back to her side and handed it to her.
She shook it and took a puff. Then another one. The sure grasp on her lungs loosened, and after a moment, her breathing slowed, growing deeper. Her chest rose and fell in normal rhythm. Please don’t make a big deal over this. It was what it was.
He stood a few inches in front of her, concern thick on his face. “Better now?”
“Yes.” She swallowed, the urge to get out of the hotel room flaring. The overpowering desire to put New Mexico in her taillights threatened to consume her. She needed to move. To go.
He retook his seat on the chair. “I didn’t know you had asthma.”
“Oh. Something not in your report?”
Still snarky and rude after all his help . . . but it was for the best. She couldn’t rely on him, and he couldn’t rely on her. They were square.
She’d done her part. Informed. Given them enough to arrest Dalton.
Time for her to go—with or without his permission.
She’d noted the exits straightaway. Two windows in the bathroom, front door with one guard—who looked exhausted, slumped in his chair as he was—and last, a large window on the side wall overlooking the base of the mountain.
Wasn’t it pretty? And all only two stories up—she’d made it farther than that numerous times. Whatever a girl needed to do, right?
“Look, I get it.” His voice held a strong yet soothing quality.
Curiosity about his personal life sprang to mind. She tossed the thought away from her. And turned her thoughts away from him. Now. She was a master of running from danger. Of running, period.
“You want to keep your guard up. You don’t trust easily,” he continued.
Continued? What had she missed? She’d been lulled by the sound of his voice, her thoughts heading down a track she didn’t need to go on.
In fact, it was imperative that she not go.
She’d trusted one man. One. And look where that had gotten her.
She cringed—the mental screech of nails on a chalkboard swarmed her mind.
How could she have been such a fool? The one man she’d loved, or rather, as close to it as she was capable of.
Love meant giving yourself to another. Wasn’t that what the Hallmark cards said?
That, she would never do. No man was that good or trustworthy or could even love her fully. Not if he knew her scars.
But she’d gone straight for Dalton. Given up her cons. Ready to live a normal life—whatever that meant. And it’d all been an illusion. Of course it had. Her life was one big illusion.
Dalton’s flippant words about the poor woman he wanted to knock off raced through her mind. That man used to touch her—caress her cheek, hold her hand . . . Bile rose in her throat, and she bolted for the bathroom, slamming the door behind her.
Aubry knocked on the door. “You okay in there? Can I do anything?”
He did sound like he cared, but odds were he was just making sure she wasn’t out the window. She would be, but not with him in the adjacent room. He was too smart for that. “I’m fine.”
She got to her feet. Washed her hands. Splashed water on her face—the cool liquid soothed the flame in her cheeks. Embarrassment riddled through her.
Gathering her nerve and her sass, she exited the bathroom to find Aubry still standing by the door.
“Don’t worry. I wasn’t going to run.” Not yet, anyway.
“You can’t blame me for thinking you might try.”
“Touché.”
“Look,” he said, still standing in front of her. “We’re going to have to work this case together, and I’m the one who will be watching your back. We might as well get this lack of trust on your end over with now.”
“One, you put me in prison.”
“Because you committed a crime. And two?”
“It’s not like you trust me.”
“I trust you to handle this case.”
Did he really? She shifted her stance, leaning against the solidness of the doorframe.
“It’s a con. You’re the best.”
“Don’t flatter.” But she was the best, though suddenly it didn’t seem like the compliment it had always been. “Besides, we don’t need each other anymore. You got me out of prison. I found the dirt on Dalton. Now swoop in and save the day, Agent Man.”
He chuckled. “Agent Man. I like that, but it doesn’t work that way.”
“What doesn’t work?” She narrowed her eyes, pushed off the doorframe and strode to him, poking him in the chest. “Don’t tell me you’re reneging on our deal?”
“Of course not. But what you heard is inadmissible in court.”
“What?” She dropped her hand by her side, surprised at how ripped Agent Man’s chest was. “Why?”
“Because technically you were breaking and entering.”
“That’s ridiculous. I was there all the time before you arrested me. I let myself in and out regularly. How is this any different?”
“Because this time he didn’t know you were coming. Didn’t invite you in. He could claim breaking and entering and then everything you overheard becomes inadmissible in court. Besides, we need more.”
“Of course you do.” There was always one more thing. One more thing that could get her killed.
“We need tangible evidence.”
“Such as?”
“Recorded conversations.”
“No way. I’m not wearing a wire.” Now that she knew the true Dalton, she easily believed he’d search for one if he thought there was even a remote possibility of it.
And she didn’t want Agent Man overhearing what she and Dalton said.
It was private. Or it had been, and in Dalton’s eyes it still was.
Who knew what intimate things he might say?
“Then we’ll need to catch him in the act. In possession of the drugs. With the women. Or evidence of selling or trading women. Or we’d need to get one of them to talk.”
“Are you crazy? He’d kill them on a dime. No way they’d go up against him.”
He smiled.
“What are you smiling at?”
“You.”
She frowned. “Why?”
“Because you’ve seen the real Dalton. Know what he’s capable of. It’s okay to admit you were wrong.”
She ground her teeth, her jaw shifting. She wasn’t wrong. She’d been played. “Look, I’m not going back in there. I’m not risking my life for some case.”
“Really? You’re just going to let him continue to treat women like trash, disposing of them as he sees fit? Using them to make money while he keeps them as sex slaves?”
“That’s your job to stop. You need to prove it.”
“I need your help.”
And there’s the rub.
He took a brisk inhale, then released it in a stream. “We can work well together if you’d just get on the same team. I know you care what he does with those women.”
“And why do you think that?” She did—no doubt to her detriment.
“Because you wouldn’t have gotten sick over drugs, which leaves the women—bought and sold like cattle.”
It was what got her, what made her so sick, but he didn’t need to know that. He didn’t need to know anything.
“I’m going to go get us dinner. Mark is stationed in front of the door if you need anything. I’ll be back.”
And I’ll be gone.
“Any preference on food?”
Nothing would sound good until her stomach settled. “I’m not hungry.”
“You need to eat. How about Chinese?”
“Sure.” Whatever would get him to leave sooner.
“See you in twenty.”
The door closed behind him, and she moved to the large window to watch him leave. As soon as his car took off and rounded the corner, she opened the sliding window—and Mark came rushing in. How on earth? She’d been so quiet.
“There are alarms set up on all the windows. Aubry’s idea. I’d say it was a good one.”