Page 52 of Risk of a Lifetime
“No. Either we have a conversation right now, or I’ll be damned if I walk out that door with you.”
“Okay. What do you want to talk about?” He’d give her a conversation she wouldn’t soon forget.
She didn’t flinch, just reached out and pressed her fingers against the brand on his chest. “This. I want you to trust me enough to tell me about this and the marks across your stomach.”
That whole topic was off limits. Way off limits. He might not be able to hide the scar, but reliving it was one of those things hidden in a compartment in his mind. “You couldn’t handle it, Marcy.”
“Try me.” She leaned back against the counter. “Or maybe it’s you who can’t handle it.”
Over the line. She’d stepped over his personal line. No one, not even her, said he couldn’t handle something. But there’d be no sugar-coating. This would be a telling point in any relationship they might ever have in the future. He sucked in air and blew it out.
“Jennings, my partner from a couple years ago, was killed while on assignment. Once leads stopped trickling in, the homicide got turned into a cold case. Then, not long after I worked the meth case with Landon, I got a lead. A good lead from a trusted informant. Wilson even agreed I should do a follow up. So I went to meet the guy where he wanted. Waited an hour. He never showed.” JB filled a glass under the kitchen faucet, then chugged it down. Filled it again.
“When I got back to the car, three men with masks were waiting for me. Shoved me in the trunk, right alongside my informant that they’d already killed. They’d took my guns and my phone, but I wasn’t worried. Might take a while, but I figured once I didn’t show up back at the office, the FBI would zero in on whoever was carrying the phone and follow them to my location through the GPS.”
His gut steeled with a double-clutch at the thought of just how damn long it had actually taken. “They found me dumped in an alley, a couple days and a lot of beatings later.”
She’d started to fidget. Grabbed a soda from the fridge. Took a few sips before she sat it on the counter and turned back to face him. “Go on.”
He gulped his second glass of water down. Filled it again. Rechecked to make sure the listening device on the counter was working.
How far should he go with this story? He’d always tried to protect her from the bad things in life. Never wanted to hurt her more than her father’s death and his career choice had already done.
Everyone had said she was fragile. To work around her childhood trauma. But he knew she could be strong when she needed to be. Otherwise, she’d never have made it through the case studies in college to become a counselor. Maybe he’d been wrong to not at least give her a chance to prove how strong she was to herself. Time to give her that chance.
She rolled her hands at him. “I said go on. Don’t worry, I’m okay.”
He braced his hands on either side of her as she once again leaned back against the counter. Stared her in her eyes. “They tossed me in a dark closet and brought me out every few hours to pelt me some more. I fought back. They didn’t like that, so they smashed my hand with a two-by-four. Tossed me back in the closet. I fought back again, so they smashed the other hand.”
She cringed.
He managed a light laugh. “No big wup.”
Gulping down the third glass of water, he realized the toll this telling was taking on him. “The next time I fought back, they started with the knife across my belly until one of them reminded the others that their boss didn’t want me killed.”
She’d pulled her eyes away from his stare. He should stop, but he couldn’t. She’d been right about this being hard for him, so they needed to walk through this together.
He tugged her into his arms and held her tight. “Every time things got bad, I thought of you, sugar. Of the good times we used to have.”
“Really?”
“Really.” Truth was she’d been what made him keep getting up off the floor to throw one more punch. Take one more breath in the cold darkness. Her. He’d have been hard-pressed to come out alive without their memories. “Made it easier thinking about you. The way you look first thing in the morning. Those mewy little sounds you make while you sleep. And your jasmine-scented hair.”
Twining his fingers in the soft strands, he nuzzled his nose against her ear. Lowered his lips to hers and kissed. One long, tender kiss.
She kissed back. Soft and light and sure. Then stared him in his eyes once again. “And the brand?”
He cricked his neck, lifted his eyes to the ceiling, and sucked in a deep breath. That had been bad. A breaking point. “The last time they opened the closet door, they said I’d be happy to know they had their final orders. Come on out, I was going for a ride. I tried to get to my feet, but stumbled getting up. They pulled me out. Held me down on a table. The jerk whose nose I’d broke the day before kept tossing my badge in the air. Then he snapped it into some pliers and held it over a candle flame.”
Feeling in his gut what had been about to happen, he’d focused on a water stain in the ceiling. Focused and focused and focused till he passed out from the pain of the brand. “And the rest is history, as they say.”
She kissed the mark, then eased her hands back around his neck. Caressed the tension from his shoulders. Trailed her finger back down his chest. God, he loved the feel of that. Back to where they’d started, he slipped his hands up under her sweater. She felt good and warm and—
The phone rang.
The listening device on the counter beeped. The bright red light flashed.
The world grabbed them back.
