Into the Fire (6 page)

Angelina was dead.

Dead and gone.

He was in Dalton, where Hannah was living these days after her own hellish tragedy. He’d come here, not to see her, but to get one of Patrick’s handguns. To put it in his mouth and…

The brightening dawn sparkled and danced on the glass of that gun case, taunting him.

End it. Now.

Jesus Christ, what had he been thinking? Hadn’t he already damaged Hannah enough for one night? For one
lifetime
…

Murphy scrambled to his feet—his head a near-solid block of pain. Somehow Hannah had fallen back to sleep.

Somehow?
She wasn’t sleeping, she’d passed out—just like he had—courtesy of her drug of choice, which was whatever top-shelf booze she found in Pat’s voluminous liquor cabinet.

Staggering only slightly, Murphy put a pillow from the sofa beneath her head and she didn’t even stir.

“I’m so sorry,” he told her, even though she couldn’t possibly hear him.

He took a blanket from the couch and spread it over her, then went out the door.

C
HAPTER
T
HREE

J
ANUARY
2008
S
AN
D
IEGO
, C
ALIFORNIA

E
den Gillman was crying as if her heart was breaking.

She was trying to be quiet, but her muffled sobs woke Izzy from the restless state of semi-sleep that he’d finally fallen into.

He lay there in the darkness of his bedroom, listening to her, knowing that the dead last thing he should do was get out of bed and go into the living room, where she was sleeping on his sofa.

Yeah, genius that he was, he’d had it all figured out. Gillman’s little sister could have a sleepover at Jenk and Lindsey’s. It was the perfect solution to the dilemma created by his relentless hard-on for this girl.

Girl, girl, girl. Yeah, it was well after midnight, but now, instead of being a seventeen-year-old girl, she was an
eighteen
-year-old girl.

His fatal error had been in underestimating the effect of a double cheeseburger on a girl—girl!—who hadn’t eaten or slept in close to forty-eight hours.

He’d only taken three minutes in the shower. Okay, maybe four and a half. But when Izzy’d come out the bathroom, fully dressed and ready to load Eden back into his truck—his plan was to make that phone call to Jenk and Lindsey from the safety of the road—she’d been completely unconscious, on his couch.

He paced back and forth in front of the damn thing, once, twice, thirty times, but she didn’t arouse. In sleep, she was much as she was while awake—angelically ferocious. She was curled tightly into herself, hugging the sweatshirt he’d given her as if it were a lifeline.

He tried calling Gillman’s cell again, but again, the dickhead didn’t pick up.

Izzy had fixed himself dinner then, cooking that steak he’d had marinating in the fridge, hoping the smell of food would wake Eden.

It hadn’t.

He’d washed up. Hell, he’d cleaned his entire kitchen. He even scrubbed the freaking floor.

Zero movement from the couch.

He called Mark Jenkins then, aware that it was getting late and that Jenk—like Izzy—had also been out on the training op. Like Izzy, he had to be tired, too. Jenk’s wife Lindsey had answered the phone and it was beyond obvious that they were already in bed.

Not necessarily sleeping.

“No, Zanella,” Lindsey said in lieu of a traditional greeting, like
hello
or even
what-the-fuck do you want?
“Whatever you’re calling for…Thank you, but no.”

“Really?” Izzy asked her. “Because I have this lottery ticket and I think I just won twenty million dollars that I’d love to share with you, but if you don’t w—”

“This is the sound,” Lindsey said, “of me not laughing. If there’s a point to this phone call, get to it quick, Z-man, so that I can tell you that I love you, say no, and then hang up the phone.”

“Gilligan’s little sister, Eden, came into the Bug, looking for him,” Izzy got to it. “Her boyfriend ditched her in a Krispy Kreme in LA. She’s got nothing. No money, no clothes—”

“No
clothes
?” That caught Lindsey’s attention.

“Besides what she’s got on,” Izzy explained. “She’s not, like, naked.” Christ, don’t think about Eden Gillman naked…. Shit, too late. Hecleared his throat. “I was hoping she could sleep on your couch tonight. I don’t think it’s appropriate for her to stay here with me.”

Silence.

“Linds? You still there?”

“Who are you and what have you done with Izzy Zanella?” she finally said.

“Go on,” he said. “Mock me. The one time I’m being serious and trying to do the right thing.” He lowered his voice in case his talking on the phone had awakened Eden. “She’s gorgeous and she’s funny and she’s too young and she’s too young and sweet Jesus, she’s too freaking
young,
okay? Oh, yeah, and here’s a recipe for disaster: She’s Gillman’s sister. And I like her. Too much. So can I please,
please
bring her over so that she can sleep on your couch instead of mine?”

“Wow,” she said. “Of course you can.”

“Bless you.”

Izzy could hear the murmur of Jenk’s voice in the background, no doubt wondering WTF Lindsey was doing,
of-course-you-can
-ing Izzy when any and all responses to a request made when they were already in bed should have been a resounding
no.

“Hang on,” Lindsey told Izzy, then covered the mouthpiece of the phone as she no doubt explained the sitch to her adorable yet height-challenged husband.

“Remind him of that time I saved his life,” Izzy suggested, but then Jenkins himself came onto the phone.

“Eden
Gillman
?” he asked.

“Yup,” Izzy said.

“She’s alone with you, in your apartment.”

“She is.”

“Are you out of your freaking mind?”

“That’s the point,” Izzy said. “I’m not. Hence this SOS. You gonna help me out here, man, or are you going to leave me with my dick in this extremely uncomfortable vise?” Although, he suspected that there was no such thing as a
comfortable
vise when one’s dick was involved.

Jenk sighed heavily. “Bring her over,” he said.

“Thank you,” Izzy said.

“Can you just…maybe take your time getting here?” Jenkins asked.

“No problem. Eden’s out cold on my couch.” Izzy checked his watch. “I’ll let her sleep for another hour. That work for you, Romeo?”

“See you then,” Jenk said, and hung up the phone.

Apparently, it worked for him. Lucky little bastard.

But an hour came and went, and Eden didn’t wake up.

When Izzy tried to talk to her, she just burrowed her way deeper into the couch.

Part of his problem came from his unwillingness to touch her. Yeah, sure, he could have gathered her up and carried her to his truck—but first he’d have to touch her. And he couldn’t bring himself to do that with her shirt all up and twisted around her and…

Nipple! Holy shit!

Izzy quickly put a blanket over Eden and her lovely wandering nipple, paced the room a few hundred more times and then called Jenk and Lindsey back. “She won’t wake up.”

“Is she all right?” Jenkins asked, no doubt speaking softly because Lindsey had fallen asleep.

“Yeah, I think she’s just exhausted,” Izzy said, before it occurred to him to say,
I don’t know. Do you think you can get Lopez to come over to check her out?

Even though all Navy SEALs had some degree of medical training, Jay Lopez was a hospital corpsman. And once Lopez was here—albeit under false pretenses—Izzy would no longer be alone in his apartment with Eden Freakin’ Gillman.

“I know this is asking a lot,” Izzy said instead, “but could you and Lindsey maybe come over? You can have my bed. I’ll go back to your place and crash on your—”

“Zanella.” Jenk cut him off. “Just go into your bedroom and close the door. Go to sleep. If you’re even half as tired as I am—”

“Yeah, see, that’s just it,” Izzy said. “I’m not. I didn’t spend the last hour perfecting my technique of Palm Tree in High Wind from page seventy-five of the Kama Sutra, with my incredibly sexy wife.”

“Go to sleep,” Jenk said again. “If Eden wakes up—which she probably won’t before morning—call us then, okay? If you need to. Which you won’t, because she won’t wake up, all right?”

“What happened to
are you out of your freaking mind
?” Izzy asked. “Gillman’s gonna—”

“I’ll tell him you went above and beyond, trying to find a place for her to stay that wasn’t your apartment,” Jenk promised. “He’ll be cool with that. I’ll make sure of it. He’ll thank you.”

Gillman would thank him—as a trio of pigs singing “Lean on Me” in perfect harmony flew past Izzy’s apartment window.

He hung up the phone and called Lopez. Who didn’t answer. “Fuck you,” Izzy left a cheery message on his voice mail. “I know you’re awake, Jay-Lo. It’s barely 2100 hours. Danny’s sister Eden is here and I fucking need a fucking chaperone. Call me back, douchebag.”

But Lopez never called, so Izzy finally went to bed because Jenk was right and Eden didn’t wake up.

But she was awake now. With her big brown eyes and her gorgeous legs and that errant nipple. Crying in his living room.

Izzy’s alarm clock said it was just after oh three hundred as he swung his legs out of bed. Just to go to the bathroom. He moved quietly out of his room and down the hall. He quietly took a leak and quietly flushed—and realized that there was no such thing as a quiet flush.

Sure enough, when he came back out of the bathroom, Eden was silent.

Izzy stood there for a moment, in the doorway to the living room. He should have gone back into his room and shut and locked the door. Instead, he proved that his older brothers were right. He
was
unbelievably stupid. He spoke into the darkness, asking her, “You all right?”

“I’m fine,” she said, a small voice from the shadows.

Fine?
“I…kinda don’t believe you,” Izzy told her.

“Well, duh,” she said, shifting to sit up on his couch. “Because I’m lying. I mean, God, nobody’s
really
fine.
Are you all right? I’m fine.
It’s like going to church and saying the responses to the prayer. It’s automatic—and meaningless. A stupid ritual.”

“I, uh, pretty much meant it,” Izzy pointed out. “You know, when I asked. You.”

“No,” she said. “Okay? No, I’m
not
all right. What could possibly be
all right
about my stupid boyfriend ditching me, and me being stupid enough to wait there, at that
stupid
doughnut shop,
praying
that he’d come back, even though I knew he was gone for good.”

A-ha. Eden had reached the anger phase of her heartbreak. Over the coming days and weeks it would cycle around—despair, sorrow, pointless what-if-ing, self-recrimination, emptiness, equally pointless hope-for-a-reconciliation, and yes, scalding anger. Shake well and repeat. Over and over.

“I
knew
he was a total asshole,” Eden continued, her voice shaking, “and I must be one, too, because I love him. Loved him. I don’t love him anymore, how could I still love him after what he did?” The self-recrimination mixed with sorrow and body-slammed the anger to the mat, and she started to cry again. Big time, with body-shaking sobs. But the anger wasn’t gone without a fight. “I hate him, God, I hate him—I should hate him, right?”

“Well, yeah,” Izzy said, because she seemed to want a response.

“I must be a total idiot, because he played me, right from the start, because I
still
can’t believe he left me there like that, like, something must’ve happened, he must be hurt or bleeding or dead because he
said
that he
loved
me. He said I was the one, only I know he’s not dead because some girls who work for Richie came into the Krispy Kreme and they told me Jerry was working for him again, too, even though he promised me that he wouldn’t go back, and they said he already has a new girlfriend, so apparently I
wasn’t
the one. And all I could think was
thank God he’s not dead.
I’m
such
an idiot…”

Jerry was, no doubt, Eden’s douchebag of a former boyfriend. Richie was…apparently some local LA lowlife?

During Eden’s tirade, Izzy had gone back into the bathroom to get a spare role of toilet paper because the box of tissues on the back of his toilet had been empty for about three years. He stood there now, right in front of her, holding that TP ineffectually, able to see her a little more clearly in the light from the streetlamp that shone in through the front window. Tough-as-nails Eden Gillman had buried her face in her hands and was crying her heart out.

“Hey,” he said, at a loss as to what to say, what to do. He set the roll of TP on the arm of the couch as he crouched down next to her. “He’s an asshole. Jerry is. You have every right to feel betrayed and hurt. And upset. And sad. He definitely played you, Eden, and that’s definitely…sad. But don’t put that on yourself. That’s his shit. He’s the idiot. Yeah, you missed the clues—if there even were any. Some guys are skilled and…It takes a while to, you know, recognize exactly who deserves your, you know, time.”

Listen to him. Izzy Zanella, counselor for hot teen girls. Jesus save him. This was one of those nights that made him wish he kept a scrapbook. This would be a ten-pager, for sure. Scumbag that he was, he’d devote an entire special section to that nipple that was now securely covered by the blanket.

Christ, he had to give himself double scumbag points for thinking about that while she sat there, sobbing away.

He focused. “You know, it’s good to cry,” he told her because she was fighting her tears again, trying to force herself to stop, pulling a length of paper from the roll and using it to wipe her shiny face and blow her runny nose. “Everyone needs to do it every now and then. Get all the hurt and shit out of your system. Just…go for it. Flush Jerry and Richie and all their crap away.”

She turned to look at him, with big, dark, wounded eyes in a face that was pale in the dimness. “Do you cry?” she asked.

“Well, no,” Izzy said. “Because I’m a guy and…Yo, Powderpuff, don’t be such a pushover, believing everything that comes out of everyone’s mouth. Of course I cry. I’m human, and humans cry. That’s the way it works. Anyone who tells you that they don’t cry is a liar. We get the big brains, and the emotional shit comes standard. And yeah, okay, maybe I try to work it so that I don’t cry in public—I know you’re on
that
train with me. But you’re not in public right now. You’re in my living room, which is private.”

A little too private, especially considering he was wearing only a pair of boxer shorts.

And yeah, now she’d noted that factoid, too, her eyes widening slightly as she took in the scar on his chest as well. It was ragged and still angry-looking—even after all this time. It was a real chick-repellent, which was why, more often than not, he kept his T-shirt on.

“That must’ve hurt,” she said, which surprised him. Most people looked but then looked away. Pretended it wasn’t there. Nothing to see, move it along…