A Brutal Tenderness (20 page)

Jesus on a stick, what a colossal clusterfuck that was, I think,
as I jog out the back entrance of the establishment I thought I’d
never enter again.

So much for that.
It’s been fifteen minutes of damage control, critical time I
could’ve been warning Dec about Jewell’s unbalanced mind-set,
my urgency to corral her somewhere safe dumping ten loads of
numbing adrenaline inside me.
My chin dips down to the sensitive mike and I speak in
a whisper, “Subject departing, destination unknown, south
on . . .”
Even as I think it, reciting the same tired route I’ve tailed
Jewell as she drives from Skoochies to her dorm room, I begin
striding toward my bike. I’ll just . . . fuck it. I’m going to check
primary as well.
Clearwater will understand. And if not . . . too damn bad.
I listen to my instructions from the other side of the mike
with half an ear, my mind completely engaged on primary. On
Jewell.
“Roger that,” I say, starting the hog.
I change frequencies, the quiet rumble of the Harley
underneath me, finally giving Dec the heads-up. “Clearwater,
look lively, subject might return.”
I do some quick calculations. The brawl outside Skoochies
had been about fifteen minutes and  .  .  . I consult my watch,
the numbers glow, the movement triggered by motion, and I
estimate five more minutes.
“ETA five minutes.”
Silence.
I adjust my earbud, its twin swinging loose, lightly tapping
my chest.
A buzz of white noise bursts softly from the mike.
Unease unravels, low and deep, my bowels doing an
involuntary hiccup of dread.
“Clearwater?” One tense word, barked into the mike like a
weapon.
Fuck!
The earbud slides out as I rev the engine and scream away
from the curb.
Jewell! Her name spins out endlessly in my mind.
The Bureau plan is obviously working. Clearwater not
answering a summons can mean only one thing.
Death has arrived.

Thad strokes the satin ribbons with a scowl, tossing them back
inside the locker.
“These aren’t the ones she dances in.”
Ben rolls his eyes. His brother might be a manic genius, but
his worship of routine and his own “code” make Ben want to
strangle him himself.
Thad’s scowl deepens when he sees Ben’s expression. “You
might not appreciate the finer points of my efforts, but know
this: It is my careful planning that has allowed the blood sport
we crave, brother.”
Ben exhales, pegging strong hands on his hips. “Fine. Find
the fucking slippers so you can ‘ruminate on your memories,’”
Ben says, quoting Thad’s earlier words. “But let’s hurry the
fuck up, the bitches will be back in their territory and I want
surprise . . . it’s part of it.”
Thad meets Ben’s eyes, his own narrowing. “Yes  .  .  . I am
aware.” He moves to Shelby’s locker, expertly picking the lock,
and opens it.
“What are you doing? You don’t give a good goddamn
about that bitch.”
Thad rummages through the ballerina’s gear, still damp from
the perspiration of the dancers. “I’m exhausting the possibilities
that it might be in here with the other dancer’s things . . .”
“Why would she do that?”
Thad smiles, lifting his set of burglar tools. “Shelby’s locks.
Jewell’s does not.”
Ben shrugs. “So?”
Thad caresses two pairs of pointe shoes. One has
bloodstains, the other doesn’t.
He triumphantly lifts the one that does. “Jewell is mildly
superstitious.”
Ben snorts, and Thad shrugs his response. “She would
never leave her toe shoes to be taken. She put them with her
newfound friend’s . . . for safekeeping.”
“Her dead friend,” Ben says, a dark prediction.
“Yes,” Thad agrees, giving a sharp look at the door as the
ballet instructor, Patrick Boel, enters.
Should have locked that
, Thad muses with regret.
Ben bleeds into the shadows behind the door and
Thad flicks his eyes in silent communication. Ben nods his
understanding.
Thad finds Boel interesting. Boel’s eyes do not widen in
surprise but narrow in distrust. Excellent timing, Thad thinks.
Sometimes the most exciting things present themselves in
unexpected ways.
“What are you doing with Miss Mackey’s things?” Boel asks
like he owns the very air Thad breathes.
Which, of course, he does not.
Boel inadvertently confirms that the slippers Thad holds are
Jewell’s. Jewell’s ballet mentor would know the slippers of his
principal.
Which is what Jewell would be if Thad lets fate decide.
But Thad will not; part of the joy found in the misery of life is
manipulating destiny, and Thad will do that.
Pity
, Thad thinks, giving a disappointed exhale. Boel would
have been most fun to toy with.
He gives a subtle signal to Benjamin, who moves forward
with a grace not unlike the dancer before them.
Thad’s brows pop as Ben wields the inch-thick PVC pipe, a
plastic used extensively in construction for drainage. And very
effective for bludgeoning with silence.
Boel sidesteps Ben and moves in a graceful pivot as his arms
rise above his head, fingers laced, to deliver a deliberate blow to
the back of Benjamin’s neck.
We can’t have that
, Thad thinks, moving forward in a lunging
prowl, grabbing the neck of the smaller man, a cord of sprung
muscle as he uses his height for leverage, wrapping his fingers
around Boel’s neck, startling him. Thad slides his arm down and
makes a V with his elbow, Boel’s neck lying in the crook, and
jerks it at an unnatural angle, hardly breaking a sweat.
He gives Ben a sardonic smile, allowing Boel’s cooling body
to slide down his front. It crumples, and Thad jerks his feet
from underneath the corpse.
“You can learn something here, Ben. There is a lesson if you
were paying attention.”
“Surprise,” Ben spits out in disgust.
Thad nods. “That’s part of it, but you have to be the eye of
the storm, brother . . . not the storm itself.”
Ben thinks about the words Thad speaks, his expression
darkening. “The calm.”
Thad’s grin breaks through on his face like sun piercing
clouds, pleased by Ben’s understanding. “Yes.”
They move the body into a little-used locker in the corner,
breaking the corpse’s pliant arm to maneuver it inside.
“Isn’t this  .  .  .” Ben begins, quietly shutting the locker,
sequestering the gruesome cargo inside.
“Taking a chance?” Thad finishes Ben’s sentence.
Ben nods.
“Yes.” Thad moves away from the locker and walks to
the door, swinging it open, knowing the traffic of people is
nonexistent on a Friday night.
“However, it will distract the feds, who are so easily led by a
ring through their noses.”
Ben smirks as Thad brings the tracking beacon out of his
pocket, the dot marking the progress of Shelby’s car as it makes
its twenty-minute journey to the dorm.
“Five minutes to spare,” Thad remarks, opening the door for
Ben, who moves through it and outside.
They make their way to Jewell’s room in companionable
silence, the night stretching before them with endless
possibilities. But always the beat of the inevitable kill blooms
on the horizon of his mind like a sick sun that never sets.

I run to Clearwater, but Adams intercepts me. “No! Fuck . . .
Steel . . . he’s gone . . .” I see nothing but a football huddle of
medics, still working on him. Blood everywhere it shouldn’t be.

A world without Clearwater doesn’t compute, short
circuiting my head, and I compartmentalize it for later. “Jewell?”
Adams shakes his head and I feel like howling.
I spin away from my fellow agent’s murder site—the earbud
whispering its secrets in my ear—and race in a dead sprint to
where yellow tape spills and moves with the wind; beginning
outside, it snakes into the locker room.
So close to the closet where Jewell and I came together I
can barely breathe past the sensory memory. My hands tremble
as I tear my eyes away from that damning door, the word
JANITORIAL mocking me from the outside as I step into the
locker room, still swampy and hot from a thousand showers.
“Agent Steel.” My name comes to me through a fog of
consciousness.
She’ll die.
I walk toward the forensic technician, bent and silent with
his duster, fingerprints that aren’t Thad’s showing up like black
smoke on the lockers.
They’re hurting her.
My gut clenches.
Luke lays a hand on my shoulder. “We’ve got everyone on it,
Cas.” His face says what he can’t communicate with words. “I’m
sorry about the girl . . .”
I dismiss his sympathy, I can’t handle it right now,
maintaining focus is critical. “They’ve killed Clearwater, they’ve
been on to us for a while. That fucker, MacLeod . . . he’s a wily
sucker.”
“And loaded, getting funded by Daddy,” Adams says.
“Yeah.” I exhale in disgust. “Isn’t this a can of worms.”
Adams nods in sage agreement. “The presidential hopeful’s
psychotic spawn. Fuck. Yeah,” Luke says, running a hand up
and down his face in irritation.
I know the stats. Every minute that ticks by steals Jewell’s
chances. I swallow past what is left of Shelby Lynne Richards.
The pure rage found in the massacre of her body speaks to who
we’re dealing with. My mind touches on Thad. It doesn’t seem
to fit. His modus operandi is so controlled, so planned and
methodical. My mind skitters over Faith, then away. That was
also violent, but not all the murders have been. Another idea
begins to take shape . . .
My cell phone buzzes. My hand moves as if by slow motion
through water banked by quicksand to my ear.
“Steel.” One word.
Records, the unknown face on the other end of the
phone, relays the details of a background check in a drone of
indifference.
My reaction isn’t indifferent as my cell goes slack in my
hand.
I’ve been right all along. It’s a fucking twofer. Some cops
have a keen sense of smell and I’ve ignored mine. I’ve allowed
myself to be nose-blind. Like a hound with a cold.
I come up for air out of the drowning waters of my mind,
gasping like a fish who finally gets tossed back into the water.
In my case, I’m free of the deep lethargy that’s been
wrapping cotton on my brain.
“People!” I yell into the sharpness of the locker room that
flings the echoes of my voice back at me.
A sea of the best in the Bureau raise their faces, some
cautiously hopeful, others resigned. In the end, we’re death
dealers. Fate calls us too late.
Maybe not this time.
I tell them what we’re looking for and who.
Now it’s two for the price of one, and they’re going to
fucking pay.
Forensics knows what’s riding on this and takes the small fiber
that’s been collected from Shelby’s locker to be analyzed in the
rolling lab truck.
We have a murdered dancer who’s being swept, even as
I think it, like a broken doll into a black zippered shroud of
death, and another who’s in a tug-of-war between a serial killer
pair.
I pace my boots off, waiting as the minutes become an hour.
A fucking hour of lead time.
They’ve broken Jewell, they’re . . . fuck. I throw my hands
on my head, lacing them together, and walk the length of that
courtyard where Maverick made Jewell defend that she isn’t a
whore.
Now he’s in the position to make her one. And it won’t be
her choice.
I fall to my knees, my dinner rising in my throat. This is
beyond my coping skills. I actually can’t stand myself right now,
it feels like my skin’s slipping, I’m coming apart.
I see Adams from a distance, bursting through the forensics
lab stuffed in an unmarked truck, and I stand. The water that’s
leached through the denim of my knees ices as I meet him
halfway.
Luke shakes the paper in his fist, eyes bright, eager.
Hopeful.
“What the fuck, Luke?” I grate in a low voice, my eyes
searching his face.
He tells me, and I’m so grateful to have something to pin
my hopes on I suck in air to keep from falling apart right then.
Jewell needs me now, I can be a pussy later.
“Let’s go,” Adams says, and we jog to our transports.
I move through the black ribbon of road like a torpedo,
ignoring my partners, save one.
Agent Luke Adams follows me like a second skin, his bike
a match for mine. He’s got my back as we make our way to a
remote summer camp for the pampered, the privileged.
This is the fateful place where two minds came together
with the same ideas. And like seeds that germinate, they’ve
been planted in the fertile ground of each other and flourished.
Distance hasn’t stopped them, it’s made their hearts grow
fonder. Together.
I pull up a half mile outside the camp, the huge secondgrowth trees adding cover, hiding problems. I silence my
Harley, and it goes quiet in a smooth contented purr. I tap the
kickstand with a practiced sweep of my boot and dismount.
Luke pulls up beside me.
We look at each other, and he opens his mouth.
“No,” I say.
“Fuck me . . . Steel . . .” Luke tries to insert reason where
there is none.
I cut him off. “Jewell doesn’t have time, Adams.”
We stare at each other and I break my gaze when I see he’s
deferred to my insanity. I pull my Glock 23 out of its holster
and Luke says nothing, his actions a mirror of my own. We
weave through the trees, the chilled air sweeping past us,
evading the trunks of the trees where it finds the gaps of our
clothing.
I nod at Luke and he moves, then I go. A waltz of sorts
begins as we slowly make our way to the group of cabins that
hug the top of a knoll, the trees stabbing a sky with clouds that
pass over the moon, giving us cover.
We hear the agonized feminine shriek—terrified. The birds
leave the trees, and a well of silence fills the forest as if every
living thing has been silenced by that scream of desperation.
I break cover, my arms pumping, the grip of the Glock
buried inside my dominant hand in grim comfort.
“Fuck!” Adams hisses, taking after me.
I barrel up the hill like a reverse avalanche, landing on the
deck of the nearest cabin. I flatten myself against the wall.
Every ounce of training is all I think of.
It’s all I allow myself.
Luke gets on the other side of the door and takes the time
to flip me off. His expression says
dickhead
as clearly as words.
If it wasn’t so desperate, it’d be funny.
But humor’s in short supply and I give the signal.
He kicks in the door and I follow.
I think I’m having trouble speculating about what they’re
doing to Jewell.
The reality is worse than any imaginings could ever be.
My heart gives a sick stutter at the sight of the three of
them. Jewell is without pants, her knee a swollen disaster, and
my eyes find the weapon used on her just a few paces away
from an undone Mitch Maverick.
Or should I say Ben Miller.
Don’t look at Jewell
, my mind warns.
But I do. Her face is swollen, her nose a bloody mess. My
hands tighten around the butt of my gun.
Fuck, I’m going to queer my shot.
Ben gives Jewell a long lick on the side of her face, his
tongue rasping over the wound I’m now certain he’s caused,
and she gives a low mewling sound like a wounded animal.
It does something terrible—and also beautiful—to my
senses. A focus so profound, so astute, so otherworldly
descends over me.
My vision crystallizes—all I see is him. The sweat that runs
into my eyes burns, time slows down to some kind of surreal
crawl. I tramp down on premature trigger finger that will make
me miss the target, which is high on the brow, my imaginary
target dot hovers over Ben Miller’s pale eyes.
I control my breath, taking one . . . then two deep inhales
and let them out in an unhurried measure of air. I gauge the
wind that might be present inside the tomblike quiet of the
cabin and will screw the bullet’s trajectory. When all the air
leaves my body and I am still like a statue . . .
I depress the trigger.
It takes seconds but feels like an hour has passed since I
catch sight of Jewell.
Pale eyes widen with knowledge. Death stares him in the
face and finds him worthy.
Ben Miller’s skull shatters, brain matter and blood flying
like food in a blender without a lid, spraying Jewell from the
side, covering the upper third of her body, the glitter of the
top I admired at the club now covered in bits and pieces of her
assailant.
“Cas!” Luke says.
“Got it!” I swing my gun to Thaddeus MacLeod, and he
drags a stunned Jewell in front of his body.
“Not too good to spread your legs for Castile,” Thad says
loud enough to carry to our ears, and he puts his hand over the
part of Jewell I’ve loved with my mouth, my hands, my cock.
She’s mine!
my mind roars in a primal rage. It reverberates
inside me and I level my gun, the imaginary dot finding his
forehead with unnerving precision, my anxiety gone.
Thad squeezes his palm over Jewell’s softness in a vicious
twist, and she gives a painful cry.
Steady . . . steady.
“No!” Jewell pleads. Thad’s hands wrap the delicate column
of Jewell’s throat, tightening. “I’ll break her neck, heroes.”
A burning trail of sweat runs from my forehead into the
crevices of my face, my eyes. My vision gets fuzzy. I jerk my
head. The sweat droplets fall around me like wet terror.
For Jewell.
My gaze narrows on the target.
My eyes flick to Jewell’s, then back to the target. Because
that’s all Thaddeus MacLeod is to me, a target.
To be eliminated.
I don’t think. My body stills like it did with Maverick
seconds before, and I level my sights on his head, those brutal
eyes regarding mine for a split second.
In that last moment, Thad jerks Jewell up higher, but my
shot’s gone, heading for them both. It makes a smoothly
perfect black dot appear on Thad’s forehead, the back of his
head like a gutted pumpkin rind. I can’t take the bullet back as
I watch blood spill from Jewell’s forehead.
So bright.
Her blood is so bright.
Like a waterfall of rubies.