A Brutal Tenderness (21 page)

I fly without wings, my feet driving the twenty feet to where
Jewell lies in a delicate pile of injury, the brightness of her
blood mixing with that of the dead criminals who flank her.

Every tactile and sensory input is crawling like fire ants of
pain, biting, stinging, as I slide in next to Jewell’s body, the gore
parting at my entrance.

Jesus, God . . . don’t let her be dead.
Jewell’s so injured I don’t know where to touch her first.
My eyes sweep her crooked nose, dried blood crusting as she
wheezes for air, her knee the size of a balloon.
The hell with it. I scoop her into my arms, and her head
rolls against me as those beautiful eyes flutter to opening, her
mouth trying to move to form words.
Her small hand reaches up and fists my shirt. My gun falls
to the ground with a dull clatter and I cup the uninjured side of
her face as the blood throbs and rushes in my ears.
“Don’t you leave me, Jewell,” I say in urgent command, my
voice coming from far away to my own ears, like someone else
is speaking.
Jewell’s hand slips off my shirt and falls against her chest.
Her eyes softly shut.
Something falls on Jewell’s face.
My sadness drops like rain, mixing with her blood.
I weep over this girl, my heart in pieces of glass that slice
me. I bleed inside while she does in my arms.
I love her.

“Agent Steel,” the medic calls me.
I cling to Jewell, my strong arms holding her against me.
“Cas, let them in,” I hear Luke say.
The paramedic steps away from me when I turn to look at

him.
“Man, do something. I have to help the patient. She’s the
only live one here . . .”
“Steel!” Adams yells.
I take a deep breath. Two. I stand, Jewell in my arms.
“Well, shit,” the medic mutters.
I carry Jewell to the spine board, laying her down. I
straighten, swiping at my leaking fucking eyes. The two
paramedics come in, sparing me not a glance. Adams puts a
hand on my arm and I bite the inside of my lip—hard.
“She’s going to be okay, big guy.”
“Fuck,” I say.
“Yeah,” Adams whispers, handing me my piece, butt first.
It’s got blood embedded in the handle, the textured grip
holding the proof of life that’s no more. I stuff it in my holster,
walking after the medics as they put Jewell in the ambulance.
I meet the eyes of the lead medic.
He gives a reassuring nod, one hand on the clear sack of
fluid, the other end of the IV piercing Jewell’s vein.
I blast my hand over my skull, rubbing it without mercy as I
move toward the ambulance.
“No, Cas, let them take her,” Adams says. I shake off his
hand, swinging in the opposite direction as I jog to my bike.
Adams runs after me.
“Hey, fuck . . . Steel!”
I turn, my ass already on the seat of the Harley. “Are you
okay . . . I mean . . .”
He’s so against guy-code asking if I’m all right.
I’m fucking peachy.
Luke scowls, giving up. “I’ll follow you.”
“Yeah.”
We ride there, the opposite direction we came, ahead of the
ambulance.
I haven’t had a chance to think about what I’ve done, what
it’ll mean for me that I killed not one but two serial killers.
It’s my job.
But I didn’t do it for that.
It’s all for Jewell, every bullet, every drop of sweat.
The night lightens, morning bringing an eerie end to the
torture of the past two years.
The future is as uncertain as a coming storm.
I know every nurse and every doctor from every shift who cares
for Jewell. I stay by her for ten hours. I don’t leave her side even
to take a piss.
When my bladder is shrieking with indignity and my
stomach is digesting my goddamned spine, I finally leave her.
My feelings for her stretch between us like a rubber band.
I leave her hospital room without looking back.
I know if I do, I never will. I’ll use her bathroom, I won’t eat.
But Jewell still needs me. More now than ever, and I won’t
abandon her by wasting away. One of us needs strength to give
to the other.
Luke stands up in the waiting room when he sees me,
raising a bag of slow death, and I smile.
Thank Christ. I give him a wan smile.
He hands it over and I take a bite of the cheeseburger that
leaves me with half.
“Holy shit . . . hungry?” he asks as I gulp the Coke through
a straw.
I nod, famished, more like.
Adams gives me a look that makes me slow in the hall, the
bathroom door a tantalizing ten paces away. My heart speeds at
that look as I cram in another bite. “Spill it, Adams.”
“Do you want the good news or bad first?”
“That’s easy, bad.”
Adams doesn’t talk for a few seconds. I suck another pull
from the straw, watching him.
“Fuck me, I hate being the bearer of this.”
I can feel my brows drop over my eyes.
Adams throws his hands up. “Okay, okay . . . O’Rourke has
come down with the hammer. No subject contact until she’s
released from the hospital.”
I stand in stupefied silence, my greasy meal forgotten.
After a few seconds, I find my voice. “You’ve got to be fucking
kidding me.”
Luke shakes his head. “No, man, the press is crawling all
over this place. If they get wind that you and she . . .” He can’t
finish, but I know what he’s going to say.
Ethics. This is about a clean kill of two sickos without the
collusion of me mixing it up with Jewell.
I breathe in and out with smooth deliberation.
Finally, I give the food to Adams. “I’ve got to piss like a
Russian racehorse.”
“Seriously?” Adams asks, looking comical holding my halfconsumed food.
“Yeah.”
I use the facilities and exit the bathroom, grab the food, and
sit down.
“You’re taking this pretty calmly, Steel.” Luke glances at me
with suspicion while I cram fries in my mouth.
I nod.
“Shit. I know that look . . .”
I grin. “O’Rourke thinks I’m going to not see Jewell for
what?” My brows raise in question.
“They’re saying three weeks, maybe a month. They’re
putting her knee in traction.”
I think of Jewell dancing, and make a low sound of despair
in my throat that Luke is perceptive enough to hear and clever
enough not to comment on.
“What are you going to do?” Luke asks, searching my face.
“People take a lot of rest when they’re healing,” I comment
neutrally.
I let Adams piece it together.
“Shit,” he says with awe, giving me a look of pure guy pride.
“That’s smart as hell.”
“Yeah.”
Adams leans forward on the cheap plastic waiting room
chair. “She won’t know that you’re here, Cas.”
“She doesn’t have to  .  .  . I’ll know. I’ll watch over Jewell
when she sleeps.”
Adams smirks, leans back in his chair, crosses his ankles,
and begins to grin at me.
“What’s the good news?”
Luke jerks up in his seat and I go on the alert, scanning the
hospital. Seeing no threat, I say, “Hey ass jack, way to start shit.”
“Clearwater made it,” he lays on me.
I set down my half-drunk pop. “No way.” A cloud of sorrow
I didn’t know was there begins to lift.
“Way,” he says with a grin, giving me the one-finger salute.
I stand. Clearwater’s alive! “Where is he?”
“ICU, man.”
Adams’s face grows serious. “That fuck, Ben Miller, he
nicked an artery  .  .  . the jugular. It was a near fucking thing,
Cas.”
“Let’s go,” I say, dumping my trash in the nearest can.
We fly up the three flights of stairs, taking two steps at a
time. ICU is on the fourth floor, and it feels like some kind of
wonderful to be back in motion.
They suit me up in a smock and I wash my hands to the
elbows, keeping my hands above my waist.
Dec is a pale shadow on a pillow that matches his pallor.
His inky hair flows around him like displaced black water. My
eyes travel, landing on the open gash, closed with Frankensteinlike stitches.
“Good fuck . . .” I breathe out, and Adams nods beside me.
“They say it’s a miracle he survived. If the nick had been a
millimeter deeper, he’d have bled out in minutes.”
We look at each other, the ventilator like an accordion,
breathing for Dec, and I shudder. Jewell in a hospital room
three floors down, and my fellow agent, and good friend,
clinging to life by a thread.
We stand by Dec’s bed, his body being manipulated by
machinery so he might live. And maybe, by some slim miracle,
he can survive and live to fight another day.

As I’m leaving the hospital, I see Carlie. I’ve been working up
the correct words to say . . . and I still don’t have them. I’m not
a talker, I’m a doer, and I find my personal silence swell with
every step that brings her nearer.

Carlie stops in front of me, her eyes swollen from the tears
she’s shed.
Jewell has cried beside her. I know from Jewell’s personal
doctor that they’ve given her something to dry up her tear
ducts.
How many tears does a human being cry before she can no
longer open her eyes?
“You fucker,” Carlie lights into me without preamble.
This is going to get ugly.
“Let’s take this somewhere more private, Miss Stanton.”
Carlie crosses her arms. “I call bullshit, Cas . . . or whatever
fucked-up name you have this week.” She glares at me. “We are,
by God, on a first-name basis, I think.”
We look at each other.
“Listen, it isn’t what you think—”
“Yeah, probably worse than I can imagine.”
I get pissed, leaning in. “Listen to me. Do you think I want
this for Jewell?” I seethe through my teeth, and Jewell’s fearless
friend stays where she is, completely unintimidated.
“No, I think you’re a natural dickhead. It’s automatic.” She
smirks, tapping her foot.
Carlie’s going to make me work for it.
My silence in response is so long she turns to leave.
“Wait,” I call softly. “I need your help.”
“Ha!” she exclaims in disbelief. “Fuck off. Twice.” Carlie
nods quickly. “Yeah  .  .  . uh-huh,” she says, agreeing with her
own sentiment. She begins to walk away again, and I tell her. I
say the words out loud for the first time.
“I love her.”
Carlie stops in her tracks, her back to me.
Slowly, she turns. Her eyes narrow, sweeping over my face,
judging my sincerity. Finally, she asks, “How much?”
I don’t take time to think it through. Instead, I reply quietly,
“I don’t want to take a breath unless she’s in it.”
Carlie’s dark eyes widen, the expression on my face a raw
wound of reluctant truth, my eyes steady on hers.
“Oh, my God . . . that’s so . . .”Then Carlie bursts into tears,
covering her eyes. I move to where she stands and watch her
cry. Finally, she lifts her head. “Why didn’t you tell her . . . Cas.”
“My name
is
Cas,” I say, and Carlie nods, waiting.
“I couldn’t . . . I didn’t know . . .”
“If she would survive,” she intuits.
I give one stiff, miserable nod.
Carlie takes a shaky breath. “Wow, that’s the fuck of fucking
clusterfucks.”
I grin with nervous relief and she does too, the tension
climbing down a notch.
“Now what?”
I give a sly smile as I tell her.
“Oh, my God, Mackey’s gonna crap a Granny Smith when
you show up.”
“I want to surprise her,” I say to Carlie. “I want her to know
it’s over. But for us . . . it’s just beginning.”
Carlie looks at me, and my breath burns inside my chest
that’s grown too tight, my heartbeat thudding inside me like a
drum.
I take a deep breath, letting it out slowly. “Do you think
there’s a chance?”
Carlie searches my face, then gives a rare and gentle smile.
She slowly nods. “Oh, yeah. There’s always a chance.”
I put my hands on my hips, cautious hope rooting where
doubt has been, feeling light-headed. “So you’ll help me?”
Carlie grins and my lips twitch. “Hell, yeah, I’m all over this
sneaky spy shit.”
I laugh and Carlie winks as she walks off.
My mind is on our coconspiracy, and as the elevator opens,
she turns. “And Castile?”
“It’s just Cas,” I reply, and she shrugs.
“Don’t get the ring without me.”
I incline my head.
“Because size matters, stud.”
I bark out a laugh as the elevator doors whoosh shut behind
her, my heart rate slowing. A plan that will secure Jewell’s
happiness takes shape. It’s been a shadow before, and it now
becomes a certainty, like sunlight chasing away the shadows of
indecision and doubt.

I drop the newspaper on top of the long dining table in the
communal cafeteria of our staged headquarters. There are a
few days left here, but it’s already in the early stages of being
dismantled. They’ll have it broken down easily, like the circus
leaving town. The case is closed. Adams sits across from me,
drinking the sludge from the coffeepot like a lifeline.

He’s a natural Seattleite. They drink day-old shit out of the
microwave.
“How’d it go?” he asks, his eyes meeting mine over the rim.
I nod. “Good, I’ve enlisted the help of Carlie . . .”
Adams whistles. “Wow . . . brave.”
“No shit.” We laugh.
“But she knows Jewell, and O’Rourke’s got me by the
gonads with that mandate. I don’t want to do shit halfway. I
want to be able to be with her—permanently. I don’t want a
case, O’Rourke, or anyone else coming against us.”
Adams looks down at the spoon he uses to stir the
powdered cream into the coffee. His eyes rise, locking with
mine briefly. “You hear about Senator MacLeod?”
“Yeah,” I say in terse answer.
“He has a right to see her . . .”
I lean forward. “Not after what I know, Luke.” We look at
each other. “He’s got some fucked-up DNA, pal.”
“He can’t explain that away. Figure the odds.”
“On them being brothers?” I ask rhetorically.
The silence fills the room as Adams thinks, then he says,
“Brothers by a different mother.”
“The same father, though . . . the same father.”
“Both of them raised apart . . .”
“Both serials.”
We give each other the nod.
Senator MacLeod had catted around years ago on his
former wife, Thad’s mother. He stepped out on her, got a trashy
chick pregnant, and paid her hush money when she threatened
to talk. Later bearing Benjamin Miller.
“Just think, they never would have found each other if
MacLeod had less of a guilty conscience,” Luke remarks
speculatively, taking another sip and giving a grimace. He rises,
walks across the room, and stuffs the cup of coffee into the
microwave, setting the timer.
I watch the mug spin atop the glass carousel, thinking about
MacLeod putting his two biological children together at the
same camp for rich kids.
Would they have become what they did without each other?
The timer beeps, and Adams retrieves the cup, blowing on
the liquid.
“I don’t think it was about guilt,” I say slowly, my eyes
moving to his.
“I guess we’ll never know, Cas. His presidential bid is over.”
It sure is. The follow-up story just broke. I pick up the dogeared newspaper that every agent on this case has fingered.