A Brutal Tenderness (4 page)

I ride off, making sure that I’m out of sight of Jewell, and loop
around to our surveillance site. I slide into the tight crevice
of parking I’ve worked out with the shop owners of the Pike
District. Flashing my badge is a real motivator, especially
when dealing with irate merchants whose cramped parking
allotments are already stretched to the breaking point.

I slip off the warm seat of my bike, placing my helmet
on the seat, and wend my way toward the building with a
great vantage point. The smells of the city assault me with
their familiarity: food, booze, and people for surveillance.
The underlying odor of car exhaust reminds me where I am
and what I’m doing like an anchor in the stormy sea of my
internal conflict. I look up, shielding my eyes from a brilliant
sun, showcased by Seattle’s typical Indian summer. I don’t trip
as I traverse the alley that holds the remnants of the original
cobblestoned streets that run underfoot, paved over many
times. Rips in the asphalt like antique wounds bleed through.
I approach the solid steel door that faces the alley dead center.
I give a hard rhythmic knock in a pattern that changes every
day. There’s an answering knock, and I reply with the required
sequence. The bolt slides with a shrieking pull and I’m in. Luke
wears the standard all-black cargo pants with black T, his utility
pockets filled with the tools of our trade.

I give a chin lift and follow him. We go up the flight of
stairs, moving through an unused attic of sorts that has a low
bank of windows facing Java Head.

“What’s happening?” I ask, getting down on my knees to
lie on the yoga mats we’ve placed over the unfinished Douglas
fir planks that cover the floor. The glass facing the street and
bisecting the building we’re using for a surveillance checkpoint
is perfectly situated to view Java Head. Cars and people
constantly fill the streets and concrete pathways like ants
scurrying around on their hill. I prop myself on my elbows as
we set up our tripods and adjust the binoculars.

“Nothing. She’s talking to lacrosse boy in there,” Luke
answers dismissively, cracking his gum in a retort like machine
gun fire.

I flinch at the echo. “They’re on a date,” I clarify neutrally.
Adams turns to me, cocking a brow.
Not so neutrally after all
, I think, though he says nothing.
“Anyway, did you do the fuel line?”
“Affirmative.”
He nods.
“Are you engaging soon?” I ask, my palms dampening.
We’ve done this routine before: lure the killer out in the
open by making him believe that his prey is being pursued by
another.

He doesn’t answer, his silence answer enough. Adams knows
I’m not liking what will come next. He’s not going to enter into
another argument about how to handle what follows.

Ignoring Luke’s thick silence, I focus in on the couple and
notice Jewell watching Maverick as he goes to the counter.
Probably buying coffee. I also notice Jewell doesn’t turn away
from him very quickly, instead giving his ass a thorough
inspection, her eyes roaming up and down his body. My frown
deepens.

“Where’s Clearwater?” I ask, smoothly distracting the
direction of my thoughts.
“The university, primary position,” Adams responds, not
moving from his binocular rest. As this is where Jewell is
typically located, agents positioned in primary are responsible
for her dorm and class area.
Luke Adams is playing college jock under the alias Brock
Williams. He will begin the slow process of negative focus on
Jewell. Her seeming peril, while a storm of feds around her
assist in the unfolding of a negative drama that is meant to
propel our killer forward—and push him into the waiting arms
of justice.
Though the ultimate goal is Thad’s capture, I don’t have to
like the method we employ. But I remind myself that I have to
keep my emotional distance from Jewell.
“They’re leaving,” Adams says, breaking my restless chain of
thoughts.
That’s my cue to go.
I’m glad to stop this bout of surveillance, even as I
remember the warm press of her against my back. The way the
wisps of her hair fell across my shoulder as we slowed to a stop
in front of the coffee shop, the deceleration bringing those
silken strands to bind me. I hop up, sweeping the dust off my
pants. When I reach the door, I place my hand on the rough
wood of the jamb and turn to Adams. “When?” I ask, wanting
to know how soon it will be when we have to put all this into
play. When the destruction of Jewell’s life is used to tighten the
noose on the killer.
He cocks his head to the side. “Soon.” My hand convulsively
closes around the wood, causing it to creak under my applied
pressure. I blow out an exhaustive sigh, touching my forehead
to the wood. I kick the jamb. My face gets tight, I feel it pull
like a hard mask stretching taut over my features. Then Luke
glances back at the street. “Get moving, Steel.”
“Don’t hurt her,” I hear myself say in a near whisper of
barely contained warning, not believing I utter the words.
Adams has been my partner for the last three years and my
friend for fifteen. Hell, he and I go back to before we graduated
the Bureau together three years ago, both twenty-three. This
girl has my head spinning, my typical coolness gone and
replaced with the weakness she represents, the tragedy.
Adams grins suddenly. “I’m not in charge of everything,
Steel. Just let the cards fall. It has to seem natural. You know
that.”
I spin away from the agent who’s charged with the unsavory
task of taking the fall—at least in the public’s eye—for the
campus killings.
I take the steps two at a time, racing to the alley door.
I open it soundlessly at first, magically working the latch
with a practiced jiggle, and it still squeals like a slaughtered
pig. Fucking figures.
So much for stealth
, I think. I move out,
watching Maverick’s vintage Camaro pull out of the metered
parking space. Long dark hair is all I see of Maverick from the
side, a flash of a golden messy topknot is a sliver behind him.
I wait until the Camaro is a creamy speck in the choked
traffic, then jog to the hog. I follow at a distance, letting the
familiar road take me like it has for the two years that I’ve been
tailing Jewell between her job at Java Head to her dorm at the
U Dub campus to the home of Jess Mackey, stepsister to a
serial killer, the crosshairs falling dead center on them both.

I make my way to the women’s dorm to cement my reputation.
Clearwater’s got primary, so it’s time to establish my rep  .  .  .
some more. It’s tiresome. What’s especially undermining is
the female FBI agents posing as students. I’m still not sure
if making a show of banging my colleagues in hiding us
something they find amusing or something they want. Either
way, it compromises me, choice assignment or not, and my
discomfort pleases them. I have a ready solution for that. No
female agent asks for that assignment with me again, and the
rumor she whispers to establish who I’m not smacks of realism.
I’ve made sure of it. To authenticate my role I have to be the
player that Devin Castile is rumored to be. It’s all for show,
but it needs to be Academy Award–worthy. I won’t sleep with
fellow agents, but it needs to look as if I do. My rep has to
be proved. I have to be a lethal choice for Jewell. The wrong
one . . . but oh so right. The proverbial forbidden fruit.

But I can’t lose sight of the goal: I want Jewell to feel like
she knows me. When Jewell asks about me, and her girlfriends
give her the whispered speculations, it will throw her off about
who I really am. Keeping people off balance is a successful
manipulating tool. It’ll work very well for Thad surmising his
turf is getting encroached on.

And that is the key to my personal mission: manipulation.
If I do this right, Jewell will be putty in my hands. She will
tell me why she let Faith die, why she stayed hidden when she
could have called for help.

Why the feds saw fit to make her numero uno on the pilot
program of Contained Witness Protection is beyond me. Yet
somehow, it fits so well. I can do my job and finally get the
answers Faith deserves, the closure I deserve. I can finally hold
Jewell accountable.

Having the codes for all the residence halls is an enviable
perk of the gig, and I enter easily. I gear up to get a hard-on
and nothing else but a case of elephant blue balls. It’s an
unconsummated mindless encounter. I’m male, the female
agent will take pains to make it realistic, my johnson will give
the nod, there’ll be witnesses, and I’ll be done. I’m human: The
hard-on I can’t help, the result I can. And that’s what my role is:
a drama. An ensnaring tool toward the entrapment of our killer.

Sometimes I get a little carried away. Especially with the
type of woman I’m drawn to: fragile, vulnerable, intoxicatingly
feminine but with that unobtainable air. I feel compelled to
protect a woman like that and be the only one to get under her
skin, and then she’ll beg for what I’m desperate to give.

I’m fucked-up. I get it. In this line of work, being on the
wrong side of normal really works. I don’t have a normal
history. I’ve chosen to protect others because I was unprotected.
The most important female in a boy’s life died because I
couldn’t do that for her. The past has molded me into what I
am now. I choose to embrace what I am and know it makes me
stronger. But not impervious, never that.

I go to my fellow agent’s dorm room and knock once, hard.
Her cover is as deep as mine and never more so than tonight.
She opens the door and comes on so strong out of the gate I
barely have time to register her elaborate costume.

“Whoa, Nelly, dial it down,” I say, staying her hand that
hovers above my crotch.
“Come on, Devin,” she false purrs.
I grit my teeth, taking in the trash wear. “We’re going
somewhere public,” I say, my voice cutting off the last part of
the word like a guillotine.
She huffs, crossing her arms underneath a rack that begs
to break out of her bra, the sheer top hiding nothing. Subtle is
sexy.
This is eyeball overload, pussy on a platter. Subtlety is a
theory Agent Haley Carmichael doesn’t ascribe to. Which
works sextastic for the cover.
“I thought we’re supposed to make this realistic,”
Carmichael says.
I use her alias. “Listen, Madison, I want to do this public,
but we’re not going to hump here in the hall. Witnesses,
remember?” I say, and she steps into my personal bubble, the
one I reserve for no one.
She looks up at me, round eyes like saucers, her federalissue handgun in the thigh holster, high and slightly inside her
upper leg. Her skirt is short, and as she puts one leg against the
outside of my thigh, the outline of the gun presses into me, her
tits waving at me from a foot away. My cock gets semihard.
Traitor.
I scowl, and she moves her hand to play grab tag again, but
I latch on to her wrist. “I said no.” I squeeze, understanding
well how much force I can exert without breaking those small
bones.
Carmichael hisses, her pain receptors warning her. “It’s true,
you deviant fuck.”
Whatever she wants to believe works for this. I move my
face inches from her own. “Yeah, it is. So whatever you ladies
are discussing around the dungeon cooler is mild compared to
the reality. So. Don’t. Fucking. Push. It.”
Carmichael shoves me in the chest, and I don’t move an
inch.
“You’re no fun,” she says, rubbing her wrist like it will take
the pain away.
I walk away as Carmichael trails behind. “I’m plenty fun,
just not with you,” I throw over my shoulder.
I take the hall that leads through the hub of the university,
all paths intersecting, students on their way to different
locations, and put on the Devin Castile persona. I reach behind
me, and Carmichael takes my hand in role-playing mode. I pull
her to my side and sling an arm around her, stuffing my hand in
the back pocket of her miniskirt. She wears full skank attire per
my request and seems comfortable in it. After all, Devin “Cas”
Castile only bangs girls who look like hot sluts. O’Rourke has
stressed that I’ll pose a greater threat when I engage Jewell if
Thad sees me as a dangerous choice for her. Reverse psychology
at its finest. He must feel that he’s losing control to someone
who can potentially take it from him.
It’ll help force him out into the open. Because when I make
contact with Jewell, it needs to look like the real McCoy, as if
I’ve set my nefarious sights on her like a bull’s-eye. We hope
that it will be the catalyst to throw the net around our killer.
I throw Carmichael on the back of my hog, and we ride
to my cover job as bouncer at Skoochies. It’s there that we’ll
put on the grand finale. It’s the final time, the final undercover
agent public dress-down make-out session.
There’ve been ten at last count. Clearwater and Adams were
all up in my grill over agent advantage. They wanted the full
recall. What was it like? Female agents lining up to pose as
lovers to solidify my rep?
I have it in a word: hollow.

Carmichael spins on the middle of the packed dance floor,
though room is made for her when she lifts that skirt at the
back, cleverly hiding her gun and flashing her ass. I watch her
with my arms folded, warming up to the drama I must be part
of. I take a covert glance around, scanning my environment,
and catch sight of one of Jewell’s friends.

Amber.
It just so happens she’s a walking hormone and has a big
mouth. That yap will run like diarrhea after what I do tonight. I
want her to see, and I want her to spread it.
I move Carmichael across the dance floor and put her
against the wall, none too gently. “Harder,” she demands, as I
bury my body against hers, the line of her completely folded
against the wall, her face turned so only the profile is visible.
Those eyes are closed while I mold myself to her, and she enjoys
her part a little too much.
And behind Amber is the one who really counts: Carlie
Stanton, Jewell’s other friend.
Jackpot.
It makes my cock soften as the job gets in my head, but
I’ve achieved all I meant to anyway. I turn away like they don’t
matter and wrap my fist in Carmichael’s long hair, hauling her
off the wall and spinning her around to face me. I look down
into her flushed and surprised face as I pin my lips on hers and
my hand covers her pubic bone.
I hear the gasp behind me and can barely hold in the grin.
It’s FUBAR all right. Fucked up beyond all reason. Just how
I liked the dish served.
Carmichael squirms beneath me as I paw her in a rough
caress and then release her dismissively. “Thanks, Madison,” I
say.
I give her the signal and, seeing Carlie and Amanda, she
bursts into tears.
Academy Award–worthy performance, on cue.
Good girl
, I
think.
As anticipated, Jewell’s friends rush past me with looks of
scorn. I’d be on fire with hell and brimstone if looks could burn.
I chuckle when all I want to do is make my grim escape.
They turn on me. That Carlie is a spitfire, I think, her eyes
commanding my attention. “You’re a prick, Castile.”
Probably.
It doesn’t matter that it’s an act; it diminishes me. Each false
step I take deeper into this mission takes me farther away from
who I am. As I feel my cover slip into place more deeply, the
talons of the lies impale me to the spot.
Her eyes narrow on my amused expression, and I ask in the
softest voice I can and still be heard over the din of the club,
grabbing my package for emphasis, “Wouldn’t you like to find
out how much?”
She gives a huff of disgust and hisses, “Piss off and take your
pathetic millimeter wiener along for the ride.”
I bark out a laugh as they ignore me, swooping in to console
the agent I’ve practically had sex with against the wall. They
think I took advantage of her. That maybe things went too far.