I’ve gone too far with Jewel. I know this, but I can’t turn back. I want her. I’m fucking obsessed with this woman when that’s not my way. I don’t obsess. I don’t crave. I don’t have to have anything, and yet I do feel every bit of that with her. I want her that fucking badly, and I can’t explain it. I could keep her naked in bed for a solid week, and I know that wouldn’t be enough to be enough.
But right now, she has a real stalker, and I need to end that person. And so, I let her dress, no doubt hammering away at her wall as she rebuilds it, while second guessing me and herself for wanting to trust me. We reach for our shoulder holsters and once we settle them back into place, we’re both back on the job.
“Tell me about the umbrella,” I order softly.
“Tell me about your scar,” she says, and I almost smile at her brilliant dodge and deflect.
I could do quid pro quo and promise her an answer for an answer, but I’ve torn down her trust by sideswiping her today with her boss. I need, and want, it back. “It was a Cuban mission,” I say. “I pissed off the wrong guy. Does it bother you?”
She softens instantly. “No. God, no. Of course, it doesn’t bother me. It’s a part of you.”
“You seemed quite obsessed with it,” I comment.
“You were naked. I was obsessed with all of you.”
Obsessed. There is that word that was in my head, now on her lips.
“Were you a prisoner?” she asks, before I can comment.
“Yes,” I say. “I was.”
“How long?”
“Seventy-two hours, until my team showed up.”
“Did you kill the person who did that to you?”
“Yes,” I say again. “I did.”
“Was Jesse Marks on the rescue team?”
And there it is. Proof of how good she is at her job. She hit me from the side. “That mission was top secret, and I can’t tell you that.”
“That’s a yes,” she assumes.
“Sorry, detective. I’ve been questioned and cornered while being tortured. Your questions and assumptions don’t faze me, nor does my lack of an answer constitute an answer at all.”
I reach behind me and pull the book out that she was holding when I followed her up here. “Tell me about the umbrella and this book.”
She closes the space between me and her and grabs the book. I shackle her free hand and pull her to me. “I can’t protect you if you don’t tell me what is going on. We have to do this together.”
“Your version of together and mine don’t work. And spilling details of an investigation to an army of people leads to mistakes, miscalculation, and problems.”
“This is about Royce going to your boss.”
“You went to Royce,” she says, “or he would not have gone to my boss.”
“I don’t deny that. But would you feel better about me leaving you exposed?”
“Don’t be an asshole and go around me.”
“I will do what I have to, to protect you.” I say.
“You mean you will do what you have to do to ensure you know what I’m doing with Jesse Marks.”
“Damn straight, detective. Because Jesse Marks will end you. Not your career—you. Back off while you still can.”
“Is that a threat?”
“That’s a fact,” I bite out. “A cold, hard, brutal fact that will get you killed.”
“I’m a—”
“Detective,” I supply. “Yes. I know.”
“Then you know that I can’t just walk away from this. I need more than that. I need details.”
“Details are top secret, just like his file.”
“But you know the details?”
“Yes.”
“So you served with him.”
“Yes. I served with him.”
“You’re protecting him.”
“Not a chance in hell. I’m protecting you.”
“You’re protecting him,” she hisses, angry now.
“The government does not let its secrets get uncovered.”
“You’re saying they’d kill me?”
“Yes. I am. And I will continue to say this over and over, and hope like hell one day I don’t have to prove it. I am the guy who will die for you, Jewel. Set Jesse aside right now. Set it aside and let’s catch the slayer together.”
“I told you, I don’t like your version of together.”
“Come on, sweetheart,” I say, releasing her hand and settling mine on her shoulder. “Forgive me like you fucked me. All the way. Let me in. You said yourself you need me.”
She studies me for several long beats. “I need to be able to trust you. I need together to mean something.”
“One slip and you’ll be dead, and I couldn’t wait for you to decide to trust me.”
“Don’t do that to me again,” she says. “Together means together. Talk to me, not my boss, not my father. Not your team.”
“My team is protecting you, too.”
“I get that. I do. But humans make mistakes and the more humans who are involved, the more those mistakes multiply and whoever this is we’re facing is scary smart.”
“All right. I’ll concede there is truth to that statement, but my people are not average people. They’re the elite of the elite, and I don’t think your problem is what they know. I think if you’re honest with yourself and me, your problem is still what happened today with your boss. And Jewel, I’ve been frank and honest about why I did that. Put Jesse Marks aside for now. I need you to talk to me about that umbrella.” I lift the book. “Why did it take you to this book?”
She studies me for several more intense beats, before she takes the book, the tension around her brow telling me her headache is back. “I’ll show you, but downstairs. There’s a piece of the puzzle there as well.” She twists out of my arms and heads down the stairs.
I don’t hesitate to follow, hoping whatever piece of the puzzle she has leads us to the slayer. I find her behind the island, the book in front of her. I join her on the opposite side, and she reaches into her briefcase at her hip and tosses down the pink paper umbrella that she bagged.
I glance at it and then her. “What does it mean to you?”
She opens the book and flips to a page before turning it toward me. “My mother did an advertisement for the bakery holding a pink umbrella. People wanted those pink umbrellas and she started selling them in her bakery.”
I study the advertisement, and then glance at Jewel. “Another very personal message.”
“It is, but the ads were everywhere so this wouldn’t be hard to discover. Now, Tabitha’s love of butterflies is another story. This person still has to have intimate knowledge of my life.”
I glance at the date of the newspaper clipping. “This campaign took place while you were in college. That’s where this is leading us.”
“Or that’s where this person wants to lead us,” she says, shoving a wayward strand of blonde hair from her eyes and pressing her fingers to her temples. “That seems too obvious.” Her voice is heavy again.
I reach in my pocket and grab the last BC powder I have with me, before setting it on the counter in front of her. “You need this.”
“That obvious?”
“To me, yes. To others, you’d just seem like a stone-cold bitch, which I imagine in your job, works for you.”
“Says the man who is the king of the stone-cold bitch look.”
“Bitch does not sit well with a man,” I say. “I prefer stone-cold asshole, spoken affectionately, of course.”
She smiles but then frowns, pressing fingers to her temple. “I do not have time for this,” she murmurs.
“And on that note,” I say, we need to order lunch, groceries and more BC powder, because I’m out.”
“Groceries?” she asks, attempting to sound off with her usual teasing snark and failing. “You don’t like cereal?”
“Funny thing about me. I like milk with my cereal.”
“I knew there was something suspicious about you,” she jokes but her lashes lower on the delivery and she reaches for the BC powder.
I round the island and open the fridge, snagging her a bottle of water. “Take that powder,” I order, joining her and twisting the top off the water.
She nods, tears open the pouch and downs the medication, grabbing the bottle from me and gulping water afterward. “Still nasty,” she murmurs, making a disgusted face. “Ah God. It’s horrible, but it works.” She rotates to face me and rests a hand on the counter. “Thank you, Jacob.”
“You’re welcome, Jewel,” I say, reaching up and wiping a droplet of water from her lip, when I really want to kiss it away.
She catches my hand, and despite her headache, and a fuck session behind us, that touch sets off ten degrees of heat between us. “I like you better naked and with stubble,” she says. “In case I didn’t fully express that up to this point.”
“I like you better naked and with your hair down,” I reply, aware that she is always looking for a reaction in me. Even more aware of the fact that she always gets it, even if she doesn’t know it. “In case I didn’t fully express that up to this point,” I add.
“I like it when you laugh,” she says. “It’s a good laugh, all sexy and deep. Almost awkward, like it’s unfamiliar to you.”
“Always trying to kill my tough guy routine, aren’t you?”
“I don’t want to kill the tough guy routine,” she says. “I just want to see beneath it.”
“You have. You are.” I shackle her waist and walk her backward, easing her onto the barstool behind her. “Now,” I say, my hands on the wood arms, framing her body, “let me see beneath yours. What don’t I know about you and your slayer, Jewel?”
She looks upward, eyes to the ceiling, seeming to battle with whatever this has become for her, before she looks at me again. “It’s ridiculous. It’s a crazy theory that I would normally keep to myself until I had more time to investigate.”
“Crazy ideas, have saved my life more than a few times, sweetheart. Tell me.”
“Okay then.” She breathes out. “Crazy it is. When I was at my uncle’s funeral, I looked up to find a man standing a good distance away. He was wearing a hat and trench coat. I couldn’t make him out. The funeral was a big deal with uniforms, the playing of taps, and a big tribute in general, to my uncle. I thought maybe he was just watching that.”
“How does that tie to this, now?”
“When I got home after the funeral, I was about to go into the gated area when I saw him again. He was standing far enough away to make it impossible for me to make him out. I thought maybe he was one of my uncle’s informants, looking to me in his absence. I went after him, but he disappeared around a corner. I couldn’t find him. When I was returning to my building a few days later, I got to the security panel and found a sticky note on it. I didn’t connect it to the man, but now, I think I might.”
“What did the note say?”
She walks around me, and I turn to find her standing at the refrigerator and indicating the note I’d noticed before. “This is it,” she says. “You’re not ready yet,” she reads and then looks at me. “I thought it was about someone being late to a date or something like that. But now, I’m not sure anymore. You know this, but my uncle always told me that if I thought I was ready, I was being overly confident.”
“Therefore, you weren’t ready,” I say, not even trying to hide the disapproval in my voice. “Yes. You told me.”
“And you told me, you disagree with that way of thinking. I get that but that isn’t the point. My uncle’s words are why that note hit home: You’re not ready yet, is what I always tell myself to make myself work harder. Maybe it hit a little too close to home.”
“How are you connecting this note with the butterfly and the umbrella?” I ask. “Aside from the fact that all three items were found by the security panel.”
“I know they appeared years apart. I know there is no obvious connection, except me, but I’m a big connection, an obvious connection, I have a gut feeling about this. That note, that man, is a part of this. And there’s one more piece of this puzzle anyway.”
“I’m listening,” I say, dragging the stool behind me closer to her and perching on the edge.
“Every Valentine’s Day, the guys at the precinct write me love letters. Or love letters to Little C. My uncle was Big C. This year I got this strange card. It read: Finally, it’s our time. No one there calls me Jewel.”
“Was it internal or sent through the postal system?”
“Internal. No postmark which is why I tried, and failed, to blow it off.”
“Where is the card?”
“That’s the thing. I left it on my old desk in the general population. I went back to get it, and it was gone.” She points at the note. “You’re not ready yet and then, finally, it’s our time.”
“I see the potential connection,” I say, “but tying in the items found at your door, feels like a stretch.”
“Not to me. To me it feels connected. It does. They do.” She balls her fists at her chest. “I feel it.”
“Then we go with your gut. We operate on the premise that the person who left that note, left the butterfly and the umbrella.”
“That means this person has been watching me for two years and I’m not going to lie. It’s screwing with my head. I’m not supposed to let things screw with my head. This job is how I keep things from screwing with my head. I’m doing something. I’m fixing something.”
My hands come down on the arms of her stool again. “I get it, sweetheart. I do. More than most people and I think you know that. But both of us are human, even if we don’t want to admit it.”
“If I let him, whoever he is, get to me, then he wins.”
“That’s not true, but don’t fight what you feel. Feed it. Get angry. Hurt him before he can hurt you. I’ve been in some fucked up situations, and when I hid from what I feared, I almost lost. Embrace it and stop fucking telling yourself you’re not ready.”
“My uncle—”
“Was a damn good detective and man, but you are your own person. Be you because it’s you in this war, right here and right now, not him. Could you make out any of this man’s features?”
“Not much but—” She considers a moment. “He was lean, and he was agile.”
“You know that we need to tell the Walker team about this. They need to know what to look for, not just for your safety but for your father’s.”
“Yes. Okay. Tell them. And I need to run prints on the umbrella though I know there won’t be any.”
“Walker can take care of that,” I say. “Where is it?”
“In my bag, in the library. The butterfly is in the drawer here beside me.”
My cellphone rings and I pull it from my pocket. “Asher,” I say. “I called him about the security footage before I went upstairs with you.” I answer on speaker phone. “I’m here with Detective Carpenter,” I say, setting my phone on the counter between us. “What do you have for us?”
“Hey ho, this all blows,” he says. “I do not have good news. We have extra cameras all over that place, and not a damn thing to show for it but the bag of chocolate Finn ate while we were scanning through the feed. He’s the garbage disposal of Walker Security, detective. In fact, if he wasn’t a sharpshooter and booby-trap expert, he’d probably work at a candy store.”
“Forget Finn,” I say tightly. “Define cameras all over this place. Do we have a full ground view next to the security panel?”
“We did and we do,” Asher says, “but that area by the security panel is recessed and dark. In shot after shot, the position of the legs and feet, blocked camera views. Detective Carpenter—”
“Jewel,” she says. “Just call me Jewel.”
“Jewel,” he says. “I’m going to email you, and the stone-faced dude there with you, the names of everyone who entered the building for the timeline we have footage for now. The list will hit your inboxes in the next few minutes. But I can tell you this now. There’s no one on the footage that doesn’t live in the building, except the mailman, who we’ve been monitoring for days now.”
The obvious hits me, my gaze shoots to Jewel’s. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
“Whoever is leaving those gifts by the door has to be close,” she says. “As in right here in this building.”