61. CHANCE

“Remind me never to fuck with you,” I say as I open my laptop on the motel room table.

“I don’t do all that training with Kelsey just to maintain my shapely legs, you know,” she says through a shit-eating grin.

I insert the data stick with the info I stole from the office in Pearce’s house in Lake Forest while Sara was entertaining him and his friends. The distraction gave me almost two hours to break in, fill the stick, and get back out. But we’re still looking for a needle in a haystack.

“So what did you find?” she asks, looking over my shoulder at the screen.

“I did a search through his most recent transactions, and the name Nova Chemical kept popping up,” I say as the data fills the screen. “I did a little checking before I left: it’s a small operation, hardly worth Empire’s notice.”

“So why is it so important?”

“Exactly.”

“Wait a minute,” Sara says, her eyes widening. “Nova Chemicals… now I know why I recognize the name! I did some work for the owner last year. Background checks on some job applicants. Paid really well.”

I scratch my chin. There’s something hinky about this.

“That’s quite a coincidence,” I say. “Who did you deal with?”

“A guy named Dacosta. He was a real creep – kept asking me all sorts of personal questions. I think he was trying to hit on me, but he wasn’t very good at it.”

Wait a minute… this can’t be right…

“This Dacosta guy: was his first name Sebastian?” I ask.

She raises her eyebrows. “How did you know that?”

Shit. As if this wasn’t convoluted enough as it was. This is a monkey wrench I really don’t need. But it might help me make sense of all this.

“I met Sebastian Dacosta in basic training,” I say. “Served with him in one of my tours in Iraq.”

That’s as far as I’m going to go with that.

“I got the sense he thought of himself as a tough guy,” she says. “Like he got off on being intimidating.”

“That was him all over. He used to brag about being from a ‘connected’ family, as if that would somehow impress a bunch of Marines.”

Sara sits down next to me and drapes her arm over my shoulder, still staring at the screen.

“What does it all mean?” she asks. “Now that you say ‘connected family,’ it makes me think of the guy from New Jersey tonight. He definitely gave off a distinct vibe, kind of like your friend Sebastian.”

“He wasn’t my friend,” I snap.

“Okay, okay,” she says. “Your enemy, then.”

I sigh. “I’m sorry. I’m on edge.”

“You’re on edge? I was the one who took on two guys single-handedly!”

I turn to her and take her hands in mine.

“That’s why I’m on edge,” I say. “When I heard what was happening over your earpiece, I almost lost it. The thought of you in danger…”

“I was never in any danger,” she says, laying a palm on my cheek. “You’ve seen me in action, remember?”

“In my head, I know that. But that didn’t stop my heart from going into spasms at the thought of you getting hurt. It’s not something I’ve ever thought about before, but now – now I think I have to know that you’re safe all the time, or I might go crazy.”

She stares into my eyes. “That’s the sweetest thing anyone has ever said to me,” she whispers.

“I lost you once,” I say. “I’m not going to let it happen again.”

Sara climbs out of her chair and straddles me on mine. Her lips meet mine with a softness and warmth that’s a total contrast to our usual manic passion. I wrap my arms around her as she lowers her lips to my neck, tracing tiny, warm circles with the tip of her tongue.

“I want you so much,” I sigh in her ear.

“Not as much as I want you.”

She climbs off me and leads me by the hand to the electric blue bed. I strip off my shorts and shirt as she frees herself from her tank top and yoga pants. We turn down the coverlet together and lie down, gently stroking each other’s bodies.

“You have to get used to me taking care of myself,” she says.

“I know. And you have to get used to me worrying about you.”

She smiles. “You were the only one who ever worried about me. I was always worried about Grace, or Mom, or getting a beating from my father, but never myself. And I always felt safe in your arms.”

“I actually did go kind of crazy when you turned me away that night,” I say. “It was like the only thing I could ever count on in the world was suddenly taken away from me, as if it had never existed. If I hadn’t had the Marines to carry me through, I don’t know what would have happened to me.”

I see the tears pooling in her eyes and reach out a hand to stroke her face.

“Shhh. There was nothing you could have done; I know that now. I just wanted you to know that’s how I felt about you.”

“Sending you away was like slicing myself open with a rusty blade,” she husks. “I was never the same after that.”

Jesus, now I’ve got water in my eyes, too.

“We’re quite a pair, aren’t we?”

She giggles in spite of her tears. “Yeah, we’d make a therapist rich. Well, you would, anyway.”

“Excuse me?” I say with mock indignation. “You’re just as screwed up as I am!”

“Yeah, but I don’t have any money, so I can’t make anyone rich.”

We grin and go back to making out. It’s slow and wet and warm and luxurious. Sara strokes my cock gently with the tips of her fingers as I gently massage her breasts.

“We should talk about money,” I say.

“Yes, we should. But not right now.”

Her hard nipples poke my chest as she reaches over me to turn off the lamp on the rickety nightstand.

“Now,” she says, “it’s time to serenade the neighbors with another bedspring concerto.”