A Brutal Tenderness (5 page)

Amanda Miller has gone missing. Snatched right out of
our very own bird’s gilded cage. She shares only one class with
Jewell MacLeod, but it is too fucking close for comfort. We
can’t guard the entire female population.

I turn. “Chill out, Dec.” My eyes peg him. “O’Rourke will
brief us.” I knot my fingers together, standing with my legs
spread casually as Clearwater winds up like a top. Hell, I get it.
The possibilities are bad.

One, the jig is up. Looks as if our killer is picking from
Jewell’s class to rub it in our face. He knows we’re here—or
maybe he is getting her attention. I’m hoping the latter, because
if he’s on to us, we’ve got a snowball’s chance in hell at surprise
or using Jewell as bait.

Adding to the stress of everything is Brock’s role in it all.
He and Dec played off each other seamlessly the other day
in bio class. Now’s the test to establish my role as enigmatic
protector. Protect without the subject being aware, protection
without seeming purpose. Establish trust with Jewell long
enough to lure the killer. Appear elusive to maintain my cover
of dangerous player while safeguarding Jewell.

Check and check.
Simple. Except how do I protect our subject while baiting a
psychopath? That’s the rub: I can’t. And the contrary terms of
my role are eating a hole in my guts. I don’t want to use Jewell,
but I can’t stand anyone else protecting her.
O’Rourke blasts into the small conference room, the door
swinging so hard it leaves a dent on the wall.
“You’ve heard?”
We give terse nods and his shoulders relax infinitesimally.
“Then a quick debrief, and Steel goes to ‘rescue’ our girl.”
O’Rourke recounts details. In the end, it’s budget. The
budget’s tailored to this pilot assignment. After twelve deaths
that circumstantially point to Thaddeus MacLeod, there is yet
another missing girl; Jewell isn’t the quick bait and hook we
hoped, and now the entire plan has just been ratcheted up to a
shrieking crescendo. We’ve got to reel Thad in, and fast, before
more lives are taken.
“We’ve primed the pump, boys,” O’Rourke counsels slowly,
looking from Clearwater to me. “Now it’s up to Steel and
Adams.”
O’Rourke turns even more serious. “You understand what
Mastersen postulates for MacLeod. What kind of sicko would
have this pattern and kill this many women?”
I put my hands on my hips, my head hung low, and nod.
Profilers like Mastersen aren’t field feds. I’m certain that’s only
the tip of the Thaddeus MacLeod psycho iceberg. “Yeah, some
kind of whacked-out sister fetish.” The profilers were almost
as twisted as the killer: You have to be to think like they do to
catch them.
“Who cares why?” Luke says dismissively.
O’Rourke moves in so close to Adams he’s like a fly to
shit. “That’s all that matters. It’s all we got,” he says in a low
voice and meets our eyes with somber resolution. “It’s about
manipulation; we know that much. He wants the attention. In
his sick perspective, Jewell has stolen it from him.” O’Rourke
clenches his fist like he’s capturing the very air. “She’s the
ballerina, the princess of the family. What has he accomplished
but being relegated to the dim shadow of his senator father?”
O’Rourke asks rhetorically.
I remember what Faith told me, how hard Jewell’s parents
rode her. She might have had everything at her disposal, but it
wasn’t without a price.
“Excuse me,” Luke says, raising his hand, and O’Rourke
scowls. “Doesn’t seem like his jealousy of our girl should make
him go on a psychotic spiral. Just sayin’.”
O’Rourke shrugs. “That’s what we do know.”
What we don’t know is left unsaid.
Clearwater turns away, his hands going to his hips, his
long hair bound at the nape of his neck, his Native American
heritage all the more prominent now that his black hair is
pulled back.
O’Rourke states what I already intuit: “Clearwater, you’re
too close to the subject.”
“Jewell,” Dec says. “She’s got a name. Don’t you think, by
fuck, I know what it is now? After two cocksucking years?”
The silence fills the space like heat from a sauna. O’Rourke
answers quietly, “You’re going to step back, do you understand?”
O’Rourke turns to me, not waiting for Clearwater’s
response for the moment, though I know there will be
disciplinary action. “Are you comfortable with the next phase of
our assignment.”
No.
“Yes, sir.” I’m not getting fucking axed for attitude.
O’Rourke nods. “Good, because it might just be one for
the many here, Steel.” O’Rourke stares at me, commanding my
understanding, and I give him steady eyes in return.
Translation: We might have to sacrifice Jewell for the many
women MacLeod plans to kill in the future.
I turn to leave, abandoning Clearwater to the verbal
shakedown he’ll get and possibly much more. O’Rourke stops
me with my name.
His low voice rings like a faint bell. “Steel.”
I turn, and a small smile lifts his lips. “Check your swing.”
“How do you know I’ll use my fists?”
Clearwater snorts in the background, and we ignore him.
“Isn’t that what you always do?”
Yeah, it is.
I leave with his eyes on my retreating back. Hating the next
step, wanting the next step. Hating that I want it.

I intercept Brock as he moves purposefully toward the girls’
locker room. He’ll meet the lovely Jewell there and accost her,
and I’ll put “Brock” on notice. Adams and I are hand in glove
in this sort of scenario; we’ve done it plenty of times. Like stunt
actors, we are just two feds playing an intricate game. We do
the dance in the hopes it will have an audience of one.

Unfortunately, there’s a need for realism. And I’ve kept my
reactive nature hidden. Like a monster who’s underneath a
child’s bed, it’s suspected but, like so much lore, if it isn’t seen,
it’s not real.

Carmichael’s a believer now. She gives me wary and slightly
excited eyes when we brush past each other at our temp
headquarters. What does she see in my gaze?

Lust? Hope? Anger? . . . Fear?
I watch Brock wait for Jewell, and as she rounds the corner,
she isn’t paying attention and runs right into him. Her things
slide to the ground, and his hands close around her shoulders.
A deep burn flares in my gut at the sight of his hands on Jewell.
We’re role playing. I get it. But I react anyway. The two aren’t
mutually exclusive.
My turn.
I leave the outdoor courtyard, quietly swinging the door
open.
Jewell’s face is clenched, and the color leaves her face, paling
her out before my eyes, my body physically responding to her
distress.
“Take your hands off her, Brock,” I say, each word clipped
and short. Normally this is all playacting as we work seamlessly
in tandem, but something has shifted in our relationship when
she stands in the middle.
“Cas,” Jewell whispers, her hands wrapped on the forearms
that press against her chest. Her voice squeezes the breath from
my throat. My will. My indifference. They’re vapor before her
fear.
He’s holding Jewell, and something instinctive and primal
rises inside me like oil surfacing on water. I try to hold it back,
but it comes against everything I am. All my anger at Jewell
and my desire to get to the bottom of Faith’s death fade away as
I look at the bruising hold Adams has on her.
Adams plays along, though I’m not sure if we are anymore.
I’ve never felt less like playing in the sandbox than I do now.
He says to me, “Fuck off, Castile. Jess and I were just talking.”
He spins Jewell around to face me, and as his fingers dig deeply
into her small shoulders, rage that is both color and texture
shrouds me. I taste it, feel it. He leans down next to her ear,
her eyes wide, breath coming in gulps. “Don’t fuck this up,” he
whispers.
And still Brock doesn’t know that he’s stepping in hot shit.
Hell, I don’t know until just then.
I study her anxious face, the blue eyes all the more for the
green that lurks beneath. “Do you want to talk, Jess?” I ask.
Then, as if by compulsion, I add, “Do you want to be held by
him?” My voice comes out in a low growl.
Jewell looks dazed by the way I form the dangerous
question. It means more than those words alone. She shakes
her head, her eyes wide and shocky.
Adams lifts his brows, and I can see the shrug in his eyes. I
watch his fingers press harder on Jewell, and when her response
bursts softly out of her mouth, “No,” I hear it like a syllable of
pain, but it comes from far away because I’ve entered the zone.
Suddenly all I can think about is protecting her, sheltering
Jewell from anyone who would do her harm.
“No!” she repeats in a hoarse shout, but I’m already moving,
using my fists like O’Rourke predicted.
I don’t check my swing and ring Adams’s bell with knuckledriving crack to his forehead that grazes his nose. He reflexively
begins to take Jewell down with him, and I scoop her behind
me in protection.
Pretending, pretending, pretending
, I recite.
Intellectually, I know that Adams and I are playing roles
here, but I stop acting when I take that jab, drawing first blood.
I speak without thinking, my mind suppressed as my
instincts sing a tune. “Don’t get up, Brock,” I hear myself say.
I can feel the warmth of Jewell clutching the leather of my
jacket as the solid heat of her seeps into me through the barrier.
I clench my eyes against the rightness of her body against mine.
Like it was always meant to be there. You know the feeling
when something is so perfect, so right, that it feels like it’s
always been?
The girl who will get me the truths I need is the fix to my
broken, the key to a lock I didn’t know existed.
Luke holds his forehead tight, stanching the flow of blood,
and looks at me. His eyes hold anger but something else too.
Knowledge. Somehow my partner’s figured out what my
problem is at about the same time I do. Maybe he’s always
known.
My days of lying to myself are over. The erosion’s begun.
Jewell has gotten under my skin.
I ditch Luke according to the plan and walk a shaken Jewell
outside into the late autumn afternoon as twilight’s brightest
stars wink in and out of existence in the uncertain light. I watch
my partner lurch to a stand, using the wall to brace himself. He
gives me a single heated glare, then stalks off.
I look down at Jewell and cover her hands with my own;
that electric signature begins humming between us, and I feel
my body respond. The passion of violence lies dangerously close
to sex for me, and the adrenaline that I summoned to deal with
Adams awoke that need.
But instead of gripping her body tight against mine,
ravaging her like every part of me aches to do, I summon my
self-control. “What happened?”
Her shoulder lifts in a delicate version of a shrug, and my
eyes catch on that sliver of flesh at the base of her throat, like
a captured butterfly beneath the veil and cover of skin. Her
heart beats toward escape. I want to lay my lips there so badly
I bite my nails into my palms to keep from seeing the impulse
through.
“He’s mad because Brad put him in his place last week,” she
explains, her voice shaky with the strain of the last few minutes.
“I don’t know why he’s become fixated on me.” Her eyes roll to
mine, still wide, still scared, but a little edge of trust glows from
her. For me.
She trusts me. Jesus, what a mess. My eyes slide from hers.
Back in box.
“Gunner?” I clarify for her benefit, switching gears instantly
to Dec’s alias: Brad Gunner.
She cocks an arched brow that looks suspiciously dark
against her golden hair. Of course, I’m looking for it because I
know the flame of red hidden under all that gold.
Jewell nods. “Yeah,” she replies slowly, as a cute stripe of a
frown appears between her brows. “Do you know everyone?”
I smile. If she only knew. “Just about.” I stare down at
her, memorizing every inch of her face, mesmerized by her
closeness, that addict part of me begging for a fix. The mix of
what I must do and what I want to do an alluring blend and
just the cocktail I want. “But not you,” I say, my voice a low and
husky drawl as I watch her eyes go to my mouth. And just like
that, I know she wants me too.
However, I feel her insecurity, her need to pull away, and we
continue the verbal circle of small talk. “I don’t think he liked
getting dressed down in front of me. Not that my existence
should matter to a jerk like Brock,” she says quietly, like an
afterthought, and I’m left to wonder why she dismisses herself
so quickly.
Jewell is still looking at me when her face suddenly changes
expression like she’s hit on something funny, and a giggle
escapes. I feel my eyes move to her mouth.
“What’s so funny? Didn’t I just interrupt an extreme
manhandle there?”
She nods, a huge grin plastered on her face. “I was
experiencing a pang of jealousy over your lashes and thinking
you’d never need mascara.” She covers her mouth, still
trembling slightly after the encounter with Adams, I’m
guessing.
Or busy having a laugh at my reaction. I frown at the
thought of makeup or the notice of my eyelashes for shit’s sake
and guide the conversation back to Brock. “You gotta watch
him,” I say, my eyes flicking away from those kissable lips to
where Luke disappeared. “He’s got a rep. And now he’ll be all
ass hurt because I stopped him from threatening you.”
That isn’t the half of it, but it’s all I can say.
“I hear you have a rep too,” Jewell says in a coy tone that
baits, her level stare on mine, and I know her friends have
passed on the gossip. My ruse for the Bureau is working. I’m
just dangerous enough to intrigue, just protective enough to be
safe. It worked.
So why don’t I feel triumphant?
Jewell stands indecisively before me as we stare at each
other, looking like she’ll bolt, and then suddenly she says,
“Well, it’s not like he was going to get a date the way he went
about it!” She gives another nervous laugh and folds her arms
underneath her ballet top that covers her completely. That’s
why it’s tough to look at, it’s that subtle sexy I love. It shows
every line, every curve, wrapped in a package of sleek black, her
breasts offered up by her arms in and unwitting frame just for
my eyes.
I reach out against my express will. Everything I’ve
commanded myself against doing I ignore, so I can touch her.
I need to touch her.
I shift the lightweight sweater off her shoulder and look at
the prints of Luke’s fingers on her skin. For now, there’s a well
of silence as students are occupied with things between school
hours.
It’s just Jewell and me.
My mouth thins into an angry line. “You’ll have a bruise,” I
say, then seethe, “That bastard.” I drop my hands and clench my
fists. “He needs a real beat down.”
I realize I mean it and thank whatever’s holy that Adams
isn’t in front of me now.
I can’t stand the wounds on her body, I can’t stand not
touching them. As if I could erase their appearance.
Her lips curl into a sardonic smile. What can possibly be
funny?
“Was that a fake one?” Jewell asks, her lips curling as she
tries to lighten it all. “Do you always just show up at exactly the
right time for saving me, Cas?” She buries me with her eyes, her
question holding a weight only Jewell possesses.
I give her a slow nod as our eyes lock.
I can’t ignore the primal attraction that screams between
us any longer. I back Jewell against the wall, caging her in
with my hands spread beside her head, my fingers against the
rough brick of the wall. I can almost hear her heart speed, and
it makes me hard instantly. This is so wrong. She’s the subject.
But if it’s so wrong, why does her body feel so right?