Desperate Girls

9

AFTER THE detectives left, Erik reviewed the new camera setup with Jeremy and then went across the hall to look for Brynn.

“Where is she?” he asked Hayes.

“In her bedroom.”

Brynn stepped into the hallway. She wore jeans and a white T-shirt now, and her damp hair was loose around her shoulders. She walked into the living room and grabbed a pair of sandals from under the table.

“Going somewhere?” Erik asked.

She slipped her feet into the shoes. “Getting some dinner. Who’s coming with me?”

Erik nodded at Hayes. “Bring the car around.”

“Sure.”

“It’s right next door,” Brynn added.

“Which place?” Erik asked. “One of us can run out for you.”

“No, I can run out.” She picked up her purse. “I refuse to be a hostage here.”

Erik looked at Hayes. “They need you at Ross’s to review the new camera setup.”

“Got it,” Hayes said, looking all too relieved to duck out the door.

Brynn grabbed her cell phone off the counter and tucked it into her back pocket. Erik followed her out and waited while she locked the apartment. Then she headed for the elevator and jabbed the button before he could reach for it.

They rode down in silence.

“Want to talk about it?” he asked.

“About what?”

“What’s bothering you.”

The door slid open, and she stepped out.

“Brynn?”

“I’m fine.”

She headed for the back exit. Erik strode in front of her and pushed open the door, scanning the surrounding area before allowing her to step out.

“Bamboo Palace,” she said. “It’s just past the yogurt shop.”

Farther than next door, but Erik let it go. She was already in a pissy mood. He skimmed the street as they walked without talking. They passed shoppers, dog walkers, even a few joggers, although the pavement was still hot enough to fry an egg.

The restaurant was sandwiched between a chiropractor and a pet groomer. A swag of red paper lanterns hung over the hostess stand. Beside the register sat a happy Buddha statue and a bowl of fortune cookies.

“Two for dinner,” Brynn told the hostess.

Erik had assumed they were picking up food, but Brynn had other plans, apparently.

The hostess showed them to a red vinyl booth next to a fish tank. Erik took the seat facing the door, and Brynn slid in across from him. Erik noted people and exits. An elderly couple had a booth beside the window, and a lone businessman sat at the bar near a line of to-go bags waiting for pickup.

Brynn already had her nose in a menu.

“Sure you don’t want to talk about it?” Erik asked.

“I told you, I’m fine.”

“You’re upset.”

She slapped the menu down. “How the hell would you know?”

“You get snippy when you’re upset.”

“Don’t you mean ‘bitchy’? How original. That’s definitely something I haven’t heard in my seven years as a female practicing law.”

“That’s not what I said.”

“That’s what you meant.”

The hostess reappeared with a notepad in her hand. She pulled a pencil from behind her ear and looked at Brynn. “Something to drink?”

“Two Tsingtaos.” She gave Erik a sharp look, daring him to object.

The woman jotted it down and walked away.

Erik rested his arms on the table. “You’re under a lot of stress. I get it, Brynn.”

She stared at the murky fish tank. “What they said about Jen . . . I had no idea.”

Erik watched her, wishing she didn’t look so anguished.

“I’ve been kidding myself. All this time.” She looked at him, and the vulnerability in her blue eyes put a pinch in his chest. It was such a contrast to her usual brash confidence.

“I thought maybe it wasn’t him.” She shook her head. “I know—crazy, right? Who else would it be? But I didn’t want to believe it. And I didn’t, not really. Not until they said that about him cutting her.”

“People don’t want to believe threats against them are real,” he said. “I see it all the time. It’s a natural response.”

She squeezed her eyes shut. “It’s so awful. Poor Jen.”

“I’m sorry.”

She looked up at him. No tears in her eyes, but he saw the pain there. He wanted to reach out and take her hand, but that was the last thing he could do. She was his client.

“Corby’s trial was a bad time for me,” she said. “There was so much pressure . . .” She trailed off. “It was big news here in Dallas. Four women raped and murdered over an eighteen-month period. The college campuses were practically on lockdown. Police were under a lot of pressure to arrest someone, and they did, which was good, except—between you and me—I think they may have rushed things. When it got handed over to the DA’s office, it was disorganized, and it fell to Jen and me to pretty much piece everything together.”

“What, you mean the evidence?”

“Yeah, I mean, they had him. No question. But some of the paperwork was hurried.” She sighed. “It happens in high-profile cases sometimes, but it makes things harder in court.” She squeezed her eyes shut again. “And God, it was hard. The worst case I ever worked on. It was all-consuming.”

“I bet.”

“It didn’t help that there was this media spotlight on everything. We worked a lot of long days. Long nights. And every morning, I had to go into that courtroom and sit right across the aisle from him. And sometimes he would just stare at me when the jurors weren’t there. I fucking hated it. I’ve never been so relieved to get to a verdict.”

Erik watched her intently, his blood simmering at the thought of that shitbag murderer intimidating her that way. Erik had wanted to get his hands on the man for days, but now he truly felt the urge to throttle him.

The waitress was back with two beer bottles, each wrapped with a neatly folded napkin. She set down the beers and then a glass for each.

“Something to eat?” she asked.

“We’ll start with the egg rolls,” Brynn said. “Then I’d like the sesame chicken, the spare ribs, and the ginger broccoli.”

The woman looked at Erik.

“Vegetable lo mein,” he said.

“That’s it?” Brynn asked.

“Yeah.”

The server left, and Brynn poured her beer, tipping the glass to minimize the head.

Erik watched her, waiting for her to keep talking about the trial. Her hair was still damp and had made little wet spots on her shoulders. She looked so anxious sitting there, and Erik hated Corby all over again.

“Finally, the jury came back with a verdict,” she said. “Guilty on all counts, just like we expected, but I’ve never in my life been so relieved. I never wanted to see him again. Or read about him or even think his name after that.”

And yet she had. She’d kept tabs on him. She knew his nickname in prison. And she knew he’d had no visitors, besides those few reporters chasing an interview.

“All this stuff, it’s dredging everything back up again.”

“I know.” He watched her, wishing there was something more that he could say.

“I’m glad they came, though,” she said.

“You mean Gorman and Leary?”

“Yeah. Actually, I’m surprised they reached out to me. We’re not exactly chummy with the cops around here, in case you haven’t noticed.”

“What’s that about, anyway?”

“It goes back to this case Reggie had here in Dallas. Hector Bell.” She sipped her beer. “You really want to hear this?”

“Yeah.”

She took a deep breath. “Hector was thirty-one. He’d used up two of his three strikes and was out on parole when he got pulled over for a busted taillight. He was driving an old Buick and had an envelope in the front seat stuffed with five thousand dollars in cash. The cop who pulled him over asked about the money, and Hector said he was on his way to buy a car. He had the Buick’s title in the envelope, ready to make the trade.”

“Sounds legit.”

“It was. So the officer ran him through the system, then returned to the window and demanded that he hand over the money. Hector refused. The cop asked him again, this time showing him the drop bag he promised to plant on him if he didn’t comply. The bag had enough coke to guarantee Hector a one-way ticket back to prison if he didn’t cooperate. Hector happened to have his cell phone recording the whole exchange, but the officer didn’t know that until much later.”

Erik shook his head.

“Reggie blew it out at trial, revealing a scam that involved three dirty cops, who sullied the reputation of the whole department. The three cops got fired, Hector got a walk, and Reggie got a ton of media coverage in Dallas. The case was a boon to his career, but when the dust settled, he decided to pick up stakes and move his practice to a place where he wasn’t hated by everyone with a badge.” She took another sip of beer. “So that’s it. That’s the case that made any lawyer from Blythe and Gunn a pariah around here.”

The server was back with the egg rolls. Brynn divided the order and slid a plate in front of him.

“You’re going to like these,” she said, spooning mustard from a tiny jar.

Talking about Reggie seemed to improve her mood. Or maybe it was the food. She had the appetite of a linebacker, but somehow she managed to stay in shape.

“Looks like your case is off to a good start,” Erik said.

“Where’d you hear that?” She chomped into her egg roll.

“I slipped into the courtroom and watched for a while.”

“Slipped?” She dabbed the corner of her mouth with a napkin. “You guys don’t slip anywhere. How come I didn’t see you?”

“I’m unobtrusive.”

She snorted and picked up her beer.

“You were preoccupied with your jury selection. Nice job, by the way. I think you made a good impression on those people.”

“Yeah, well, Reggie’s a good teacher.”

“Is that how he got you? I know it wasn’t all about money.” Erik reached for the mustard and spooned some onto his plate.

“That’s hot,” Brynn warned.

He added another dollop.

“Reggie approached me after the Corby trial. I’d taken a leave of absence because I’d become so immersed in everything.”

“What constitutes a ‘leave’ for you?” he asked.

“I was gone three weeks.”

Erik bit into the egg roll. Holy shit. His eyes watered, and he reached for his beer.

Brynn smiled. “Told you.”

Erik waited until he could talk again. “That’s not a leave, that’s a vacation.”

“Well, for me, it was a leave. I went to Port O’Connor to visit my mom and her husband. Very restful. Reading, jogging, fishing every morning at five a.m. Napping in the afternoon. Of course, my mom and I got to bickering, but I knew that would happen. I love her to death, but we drive each other crazy.”

“And your dad? Where is he?”

“No idea. He left when I was little and hasn’t kept in touch.”

She dipped the last bite of egg roll into some mustard and ate it without flinching. “Anyway, Reggie tracked me down the third week. He laid out his argument and persuaded me to move to Pine Rock and join his firm. So I did. I switched to private practice, bought a house, met a guy. Everything was great.”

A young waiter showed up with a tray of steaming food. He unloaded the dishes, and Erik asked for a water.

“Wimp,” Brynn said. She scooped food onto her plate and gave his lo mein a disapproving look. Erik already had buyer’s remorse after seeing her barbecued spare ribs.

“You were saying?” he asked. “Everything was great?” Erik had definitely sensed a “but” coming.

“But then I started doing it all over again.”

“What’s that?”

“Putting in the hours, the evenings, the weekends. Skipping time off. Neglecting my friends, my boyfriend. So—big shocker—he met someone. I found all these sext messages on his phone.”

Interesting. From the conversation in the car, Erik had thought the guy broke up with her.

“You found out he was cheating? That’s why you dumped him?”

“I’d suspected he was cheating for months.” Brynn stabbed a bite of broccoli. “I dumped him when I realized I didn’t care.”

Erik watched her.

“And I started thinking, you know, there’s a pattern here. My problem isn’t the job or the boss or the city.” She leaned back against the booth. “It’s me. I throw myself in, immerse myself in work, block out everyone and everything that isn’t my job.”

“Maybe that’s why you’re good at it.”

“It is, I know. Work’s great.” She shook her head. “It’s the rest of my life that’s a wreck.”

Brynn lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, listening to the faint hum of downtown traffic twelve stories below. She’d stayed in this apartment many times before. In this exact bed, in fact. And the noise had never bothered her. If anything, it had lulled her to sleep after a long workday.

Not tonight, though.

She kept thinking about that white truck. It was out there somewhere. James Corby was in it. Was he prowling the streets, watching her, waiting for his next window of opportunity? Or was he on the move, headed far, far away from the marshals and detectives and Texas Rangers who were scouring the state for him? Maybe he’d completed his revenge quest. Maybe he’d taken his last trophy and was on his way to enjoy his newfound freedom south of the border.

She thought of the digital pictures Erik had shown her, all the different images of what Corby might look like now. As if she needed a reminder. As if Corby’s stone-cold eyes weren’t permanently etched into her brain.

Brynn stared at the ceiling fan as it churned the air. She felt hot. Sticky. She kicked the covers off, swung her legs out of bed, and grabbed some cutoffs from the chair in the corner. Then she stepped into the hallway to check the thermostat.

And Erik.

The living room was dim, and she poked her head around the corner to see him sitting on the sofa, his arm stretched across the back. His suit jacket was off. He had his sleeves rolled up, and the light of the television cast him in a bluish hue.

“Still here?” she asked.

He just looked at her, and she felt a flush of embarrassment at the dumb question.

She padded into the kitchen and opened the fridge. Wine, Gatorade, water, beer. Nothing tempted her.

“Want anything?” she asked.

“I’m good.”

She grabbed a water and joined him in the living room, sinking into the oversize armchair beside the sofa. Close but not too close. She wasn’t wearing a bra under her T-shirt, and it was dark, but she didn’t want to give him an eyeful.

“I can’t sleep.” She twisted the top off her water and took a swig. Then she glanced at the TV. He was watching CNN, but he had the volume switched off and the closed-captioning turned on. “You can turn that up, you know. That’s not the problem.”

“I like it on mute so I can listen.”

Listen to what? Traffic? Voices? Footsteps in the hallway? She didn’t know how his job worked, exactly. The cameras at Ross’s were a part of it. Erik had gone through that with her earlier tonight—sharing information, just as he’d promised. Instead of two monitoring stations—one at each apartment—they had set up a designated control room in the spare bedroom at Ross’s. And they’d assigned an agent to monitor the cameras full-time, versus an agent in each apartment “keeping an eye on” the cameras. The new setup would eliminate the possibility of someone slipping into the building behind a tenant while both agents happened to be distracted, which was how Bulldog had gotten in.

Security gap filled. Or so they hoped.

“What is the problem?”

She looked at Erik. “Huh?”

“You said my volume isn’t the problem. What is?”

She put down her water and grabbed a Vanity Fair off the coffee table. “Just, you know, general insomnia.”

She flipped through the pages and found the article she’d tried to get through earlier, an interview with some twenty-three-year-old actress from the summer’s big blockbuster. Brynn had absolutely zero interest in the woman, beyond the fact that she was gorgeous and Liam had protected her a year ago. Did Wolfe Sec still work for her? Had Erik ever met her? Maybe he’d been on her detail and they were friends now. Friends with benefits even, if he was ever in LA.

Brynn was losing her mind. Truly. She needed sleep. She glanced at the TV.

“Are you watching this?” she asked.

“I’m watching you.”

She looked at him.

“What’s wrong, Brynn?”

“Nothing.”

He picked up the remote and switched off the television. Then he leaned his elbows on his knees and looked at her.

“Talk to me.”

His words sent a rush of heat through her body. His words and his eyes. They were dark and serious, and the only light now came from the glow in the kitchen.

And he was completely focused on her. He knew something was bothering her, and he was determined to pin her down on it. Maybe that was why she’d come out here.

“I can’t go to the funeral,” she said.

“Jen’s?”

She nodded. “It’s at ten o’clock, and I have to be in court at eight thirty. Not that I even want to go. I hate those things, but I should be there.” She sighed and rubbed her forehead. “Jen took a chance on me when I was straight out of school. I was drowning in loans and desperate for a job, even though my GPA wasn’t great and my résumé was thin. We hit it off, and she gave me a shot, and I owe everything to her. And now . . . I can’t even make it to her funeral.”

“She’d understand.”

“She would. That’s the irony. She never let her personal life get in the way of her work.” Brynn combed her hand through her hair. “I’m relieved, if you want to know the truth.”

“That you have an excuse?”

“I don’t really want to see all those people from my past and think about Jen and how she died.” Brynn sounded whiny, even to her own ears.

Erik reached over. He took the magazine from her hands and set it on the table.

Her pulse picked up.

“Brynn.”

“What?”

“I know you’re worried.”

Worried didn’t begin to cover it. She felt paralyzed by her own thoughts. And she couldn’t stop thinking them. Every time she tried to sleep, her brain got stuck on this continuous loop.

“But we will protect you, no matter what. That’s ironclad.”

She laughed. “Why? You don’t even like me.”

“You’re wrong.”

He held her gaze, and her pulse sped up again. Her skin felt tight. There was something in his voice, his look.

“I won’t lie to you,” he said. “Corby is a serious threat. He’s armed, and he’s experienced.”

“And he managed to escape from prison. And get the drop on a cop.”

“Retired cop,” he said.

“Same thing.”

“No, it’s not. Mick McGowan wasn’t ready for him. He never saw him coming. We’re prepared. We’re trained, and we have the advantage.”

She stared at him, not wanting to voice her doubts.

“You still don’t believe me?”

“I want to, but . . . it sounds a little arrogant.”

“Not arrogant, confident. It’s not arrogance if you have the skills to back it up.” He rested his hand on her shoulder. It felt warm and heavy, and her pulse picked up at his touch. “You need to trust us, Brynn.”

He held her gaze, and she wondered what it would be like to kiss him. She could tell he was attracted to her, and he had to know it was mutual. But she sensed his frustration, as though he didn’t want to be attracted to her.

He dropped his hand from her shoulder and stood up.

She stood, too.

“You should get some sleep.”

It was a dismissal, and she felt a twinge of hurt.

Then he surprised her by walking down the hallway to her room. She followed him, and he stopped at the thermostat beside her door.

“You hot?” he asked.

“Not anymore.”

She watched as he crossed her darkened bedroom. He parted the slats on the miniblinds and peered out. Most of the window treatments had been closed since she’d arrived, and after learning Corby might have access to rifles and not just handguns, Erik had given her strict instructions to keep everything closed at all times.

He returned to the door, darting a glance at her rumpled bed.

“You’re off at midnight?”

“Yeah.” He touched her waist, surprising her again. “And on again at eight.”

She gazed up at him, and suddenly the air between them felt so charged that she couldn’t breathe. His fingers were on her waist, burning a hole through her thin T-shirt.

“Good night.” He stepped away, but she caught his arm.

“Wait.”

She kissed him, going up on tiptoes to reach his mouth. She slid her hands up to cup his face, holding him there as he tried to pull back.

Cold panic shot through her.

But then he kissed her back, and every part of her body fired to life. His lips moved against hers, and then his arms were around her, thick and strong and lifting her off her feet. He turned and backed her against the bedroom wall, pinning her there while his tongue delved into her mouth.

It was hot. Explosive. Every nerve inside her was electrified by his firm lips and his hard body and the heavy weight of him leaning against her.

He tasted so good, sharp and male and musky, and she realized she was starved for the flavor. She wanted more. Him. She wanted his mouth and his stubble under her fingertips. She wanted his big hands that were sliding under her T-shirt, searing a path over her skin.

God, he was good. She should have known he would be. He was so capable at everything, so why would kissing be any different? She pressed against him, and his hand gripped her hip.

A faint noise made her pull back. “Erik—”

He cut her off, taking her mouth in another fierce kiss that made her dizzy.

She heard it again—a soft snick. She pressed her hand to his chest. “Someone’s—”

He jerked back before she finished the sentence. Keys jangled as someone unlocked the door and entered the apartment.

“Trent.” Erik looked at her, and the desperation in his eyes mirrored what she was feeling. They stared at each other, breathless.

“He’s early,” she whispered.

Erik stepped back, raking his hand through his hair as Brynn tugged her T-shirt into place.

Erik’s gaze hardened. “Sorry. This won’t happen again.”

Then he turned and walked out, leaving her alone in the dark with her lips numb and her heart racing.