Page 85 of Reckless Devotion
“June twenty-third, Hunts Point, eleven-thirty p.m.,” I murmur, reeling off the text that I can make out. There was more, but whatever part of paper existed for it to scrawl onto before it was ripped apart is nowhere to be seen. “Hunts Point?”
“It’s a food distribution center in the Bronx.” Chase lifts his burnt whiskey-colored gaze to mine, but it’s far away as he ticks it over in his head.
“That’s tonight, we have to go!” I take the note from him, reading it again as if I can glean some deeper meaning from the words.
“I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” he starts pensively. “This is all becoming a bit too cloak and dagger for my liking.”
My lips pop open, goggling at him. “You can’t pull the plug now, we’ve come so far!”
“Pepper.” He runs a hand through his dark hair and tugs on it softly. “We don’t know who these people are, and I don’t want you in harm’s way in the middle of the night in the ass end of some packing district.”
“Why? Because I’m a woman?” I fold my arms and grit my teeth.
He scoffs, letting out a small, exasperated laugh. “No,Sherlock, because I care about you.”
“Oh.” The single syllable drops from my mouth stupidly, puncturing my bravado from moments ago like a pin to a balloon.
The corner of his lip twitches again, his eyes glittering like a night sky. “It’s also really hard to take you seriously with twigs in your hair.”
“What?” My hand leaps to my head and he laughs, taking hold of my shoulders and twisting me so that I can see in the slim mirror that hangs above the back of the couch.
My breath stutters a little, taken back to that earth-shattering moment when he stood behind me earlier today, both of us looking in a different mirror, with a very different outcome. One that still has me quietly spinning my wheels because I’m equal parts embarrassed by being so vulnerable, and proud for claiming back that part of myself. The smashed and ugly thing that lives inside my chest feels a little less sharp because of it, like someone sanded down the edges.
All of that is swiftly sucked away when I see the large piece of fern sticking out of my hair. “Why didn’t you tell me?!”
He throws his eyes to the ceiling and laughs in despair, looking beyond done with my shit. “I tried! You never listen!”
Do you know what? He kind of has a point there, too.
***
“Did you really need to pick a hiding space that is so cramped?” I hiss, shifting my weight as my left leg goes numb.
“Perhaps it was strategic?” His fingers curl around my hips and drag me back into him.
Despite my discomfort, a spark of electricity zips up my spine at his suggestive tone.
“I’m pretty sure these days you could find an easier way to feel me up, Wolf Boy.” I draw my thin zip-up jacket tighter around myself and wish it was a coat instead.
The only way I managed to convince Chase to come here was to let him choose our stakeout spot, and we had to canvas the dockside manufacturing bays surrounding tall, refrigerated buildings during the day. Which is how we find ourselveswedged between a wall and a towering stack of empty wooden pallets.
“It was either this, or under the trucks, and considering it’s starting to rain, be glad that we aren’t lying on the floor,” he grumbles, pulling me in closer to his chest and curling over me so that the faint spattering of moisture doesn’t reach me. If I weren’t so cold and bored, this might have been sweet—a chill breeze whips up from the dark, inky water in the bay, bringing with it an uncharacteristically cool atmosphere for summer.
“What’s the time?” I attempt to shift so that I can reach my phone in my pocket, but his hand clamps around my wrist to stop me from pulling out the screen that would effectively be a homing beacon at the exact same time as a set of headlights pulls into the loading bay forecourt.
“Wait,” Chase whispers, his warm breath tickling my ear.
Adrenaline spikes, my heart beating rapidly as the burgundy Camry parks just feet from us, turning off the engine and the lights. Little hazy glow holes still sit merrily in my vision where the headlights had been, burned into my sight from sitting in the dark for so long.
I blink rapidly, trying to clear them as a dark figure in the car steps out. The dock is pitch black, with only the moon reflecting off the water to give some small light source. It’s only because we’ve been here for so long that my eyes have adjusted and I can see it’s a man, based on his wide shoulders that face us.
Suddenly, my breathing feels uncomfortably loud in the silence that settles back over the loading bays, only the sound of a small rock grinding beneath the man’s shoe as he lifts something out of his pocket. I cap my hand over my mouth just in case, and only realize once the soft amber glow flares that the man is lighting a smoke, swiftly followed by the unflattering smell of tobacco.
We stand there locked in silence for what feels like endless minutes, the man in front of the palettes becoming increasingly restless as he finishes his cigarette and chucks the cherry-red ember to the floor so hard it splits apart and sparks scatter over the cracked concrete.
He pulls out his phone, the blue glow illuminating the very edge of a side profile I can’t quite see, even if I lean to find a gap in the palette wood. He places it to his ear, and because it’s so silent and he’s so close, I can just about hear the vibration of the line ringing.
“Put me through to Evelyn Blackwood.”
