A Little Too Hot (11 page)

I can’t think at all at the moment, but I dig deep and try to remember. “I started at Benny’s two weeks ago Thursday, so . . .” It was the next night; Blake’s second private, that I let him closer than three feet. “Yes. It was definitely the twenty-sixth.”

Her lips purse and she nods once. “They’re going to ask you to place Richard Weber in Benjamin Arroyo’s office that night. They’ll want any details you can remember, and a time, as close as you can estimate. And, for that, they’ll drop your charges.”

What if I’m wrong? I like Ben, and they’re asking me to help them prove that he killed someone? “Can I see the picture again?”

She nods and clicks open her briefcase. She pulls out a file and spreads three new pictures on the cot, different than the one Cooper keeps shoving in my face. And it’s definitely him. I feel suddenly sick. “What if I don’t want to testify against Ben?”

“I still think we can get you off on entrapment, but it will mean going to trial.”

And it will be in the newspapers, and Mom and Greg will see it and say,
Yep, we always knew she’d go bad. Good thing we threw her out before she ruined the golden boys.

My stomach twists harder, sending a sharp pain through my insides. I hang my head between my shoulders. “Okay. I’ll do it.”

“I think it’s the right decision, Sam. From what I can tell about your former boss, he’s not an upstanding guy.”

I take a deep breath and bob a nod. Deep inside I know that. I’ve always known it. But I wanted him to be the guy he seemed to be when he told me I was family.

She lays her hand on my knee. “I’m sorry they’re putting you through all this. But the good news is, if you agree to their offer, I think they’ll send you home tonight.”

I smile, but it’s forced. More than anything, I want to go back to my life, but all of a sudden I’m not really sure what that is or where I belong. Lexie, Trent, Mom, Dad, Blake, Ben: they’ve all either given up on me or let me down. No one is turning out to be who I thought they were. “Thanks.”

Chapter Fourteen

“
R
ED?”

At first I wonder what Jonathan’s doing in the VIP room with Harrison and me. It takes me a minute to shake off the remnants of the dream, then I rub my eyes and push the blanket aside. The lights flip on in the dark room, and I sit up and look at Jonathan through bleary eyes, standing in the door of my holding cell, a backpack slung over his shoulder.

Cooper took Jonathan’s number and told me he’d call him after he milked my brain for every insignificant thing I could remember about that night, from what the dead guy was wearing to every word he said in my presence, which was none. Apparently, Cooper made good on that promise, because here Jonathan is.

He steps into the room and I spring off the cot into his arms. Anything I think I want to say is choked off by the lump pulsing in my throat.

“Fuck, Red,” he says low in my ear, his fingers stroking my hair. “I can’t believe this shit happened to you.”

I swallow hard and pull back from his shoulder. “Did you talk to Ben? How pissed is he?”

He cringes a little. “They’ve got him. He might even be here somewhere,” he adds, his eyes flicking to the door, where Special Agent Nichols stands, arms folded over her bulging stomach. He unloops the backpack from his shoulder and hands it to me. “The guy who called said you needed some stuff.”

I take it from his hand. “Thanks. What time is it?”

“Like, nine.”

“Christ, it’s been a long day.” I look past him at Agent Nichols. “Can I use the washroom?”

She nods and I grab my towel and move to the door. “Don’t go anywhere,” I tell Jonathan. “I’ll be right back.”

I throw some water on my face, then slip on the clothes Jonathan brought: some of my sexiest underwear, a snug Victoria’s Secret Pink T-shirt, and my most comfortable jeans. He also remembered socks and my green Chuck Taylors.

He really is a good friend.

When I knock, Nichols opens the door, and I find Cooper waiting with her. Nichols hands me a white plastic sack. “This is everything you came in with.”

I peak inside and find my shoulder bag and my Benny’s costume, complete with boots. I pull my bag out and sling it over my shoulder, then dig for my phone . . . which is totally dead. “You don’t happen to have a charger . . . ?”

Cooper gives me a look, then turns and starts walking me back to my holding cell, Nichols trailing behind. “We recommend that you don’t talk to anyone about the case,” he tells me. “And don’t leave the Bay Area without talking to us first. We’ll need you to come in next week and give a sworn statement. We’ll set it up through our attorneys.”

“Aren’t you afraid I’ll leave the country?”

“No.”

He says it so matter-of-factly that it makes me want to prove him wrong. I start plotting where I could go. Cancun? Paris? Mars, maybe?

I hoof it up the hall toward where I hear Jonathan’s amazing voice wafting up the corridor as he sings. When I step through the door, he’s lying on my cot, his earbuds in and his eyes closed. His fingers are laced behind his head and one ankle is propped on a bent knee, his legs rocking to the beat of whatever’s playing on his iPod. I know he’s spent a few nights in jail here and there, but he’s looking way too comfortable.

“Jonathan,” I say, nudging his elbow with my knee.

He opens his eyes and sits up. “Oh, Red,” he says, a Cheshire grin lighting up his entire face as he scans my outfit. “I chose well. You look
hot
.”

I roll my eyes. “Can we
try
to stay a little focused here, Jonathan? I’ve been
arrested
.”

He rubs a forearm over his face and stands. “But you’re good now, right? They’re letting you go?”

I look a question at Cooper, who’s propped on the door frame.

“Your charges have been dropped. You’re free to go.” There’s something in his eyes as he says it that makes me uneasy.

“Get me out of here,” I tell Jonathan.

“Damn straight,” he answers, looping an arm over my shoulders.

I lean into him as we ride the elevator down, and ignore Cooper as he escorts us out of the building. But when I look up, Blake is just stepping through the front doors. My feet stall halfway across the lobby, and Jonathan slows to my pace.

“You okay?” he asks, low in my ear.

I nod and force my feet to move again.

Cooper peels off and Blake steps forward. “Be careful, Sam.”

“That’s it?” I ask. “That’s all you have to say? No ‘I’m sorry I screwed up your life’?”

He just nods and steps back, his expression flat and his eyes giving nothing away.

I glare at him, then Jonathan and I push through the doors into the dark of the night.

He follows us out and watches from the door as we cross the street.

I focus on breathing and force myself not to look back as we walk the few blocks to where Jonathan parked. The light drizzle cools the fever burning under my skin, but it’s not enough to quell the tumult of emotions that presses tears into my eyes and blurs the sidewalk in front of me. I stagger and Jonathan steadies me, then loads me into the van.

“You okay?” he asks again once we’re in, reaching for my hand.

“No,” I say, and the floodgates open. All the tension, and frustration, and fear from the last twenty-four hours, everything I refused to let Blake see, comes pouring out of me in tears that I can’t stop.

Jonathan pulls me to his shoulder. “I got you.” He strokes my hair and holds me tight until the tears slow.

“I can’t believe this is happening,” I snivel between hiccups.

“I never would have brought you there if I saw this coming.”

I pull away from his shoulder and wipe my eyes. “What is Ben into, Jonathan?”

He shakes his head. “I don’t really know. I thought it was just minor drug stuff.”

“They want me to testify against him . . . say I saw a guy in his office that they think he killed.”

He groans a little and hangs his head. “This is so fucked up.”

I pull my foot up and hug my knee. “I was so stupid. I can’t believe I didn’t know Blake was a cop.”

He runs a strand of my hair between his fingers. “You really liked him?”

With his question, I realize I’m crying again. I tip my head and rest my forehead on my knee. “I would have slept with him right there at Benny’s. I wanted to. I just never thought . . .” I trail off, too ashamed to finish.

“It’s not your fault he turned out to be a narc, Red. He played you. The guy’s a dick. You can’t beat yourself up over it.”

Sure I can.

I click my seat belt, then crank the stereo, a Hell’s Gate demo reel, and listen to Jonathan singing about pizza toppings through the speakers as he pulls out his phone. “Ginger’s dying to see you. She was getting her legal panties all in a bunch,” he says, his thumbs flying across the screen.

He tucks his phone into his pocket and we glide away from the curb. When we hit the Bay Bridge, I lean into the window and close my eyes as the adrenaline drains from my system, trying to forget about Blake, Benny’s, and everything else.

Minutes later I realize I’m dozing when there’s a loud crunch and I’m jostled in my seat.

“What the fuck!”

The freaked pitch of Jonathan’s voice chases away any remnants of sleep and sends my heart shooting into my throat. I brace my arms against the dashboard when a car darts in front of us and Jonathan slams on the brakes. I’m thrown against the door of the van as he jerks the wheel to the left, and the screech of tires tells me we’re skidding. When we roll, it sounds like the whole world is shattering all around me. My seat belt locks me in my seat, but as we slam onto my side of the van, a rock or something smashes through the window and I hit my head hard.

It feels like we’re spinning and flipping forever before the van finally settles, creaking and groaning, in the ditch on the side of the highway. The sputtering hiss of the radiator in the sudden silence sounds like the rattle of a snake.

We’ve come to rest on Jonathan’s side of the van, so I’m dangling over him from my seat belt. My head throbs, and when I look around, it’s dark and my vision is blurry.

“Jonathan?” I croak.

I squint at his shape below me and see a dark splotch growing on his shirt. It takes me a second to realize that it’s blood. Mine. It drips in a steady stream off the tip of my nose.

“Jonathan!”

He just lays there, unmoving.

“Damn,” I say, my shaking hands trying and failing to work the buckle and free me from the seat belt. The throbbing in my right temple becomes a splitting pain with the effort. “Jonathan! Wake up!”

Adrenaline surges my bloodstream as I get my bearings. I finally manage to get the belt loose and fall out of my seat on top of him. I cry out at the stabbing pain that shoots from my right shoulder through the whole rest of me at the impact. He grunts and opens his eyes.

“We’ve got to get out of here, Jonathan!” I say, shaking him.

He blinks a few times, then seems to realize where we are. “Shit!” he groans, feeling around in the dark for his seat belt latch. “What the fuck happened?”

I snap open his buckle and untangle his seat belt from his body, then stand and reach for the passenger door above us and let out another shriek at the pain in my right shoulder. I yank the handle with my left hand and try to push it open, but it’s too heavy, or stuck, or something.

I scramble between the seats into the back, and when I reach the cargo door and tug the lever, it falls open with a groan and a thud. “Come on!”

He topples over the seat and staggers back to where I am. I get down on my belly and slither out. When I stand, I see the silhouette of a man looking down at us in the streetlights up on the road.

“Help!” I call.

My head pounds and through my double vision I see the streetlights glint off something in the guy’s hand. There’s a pop, then a chink on the door of the van at my feet. For an instant I stare up at the guy, my brain unable to register what’s happening. Jonathan drags himself through the door and is still on his stomach in the dirt when two more pops sound from up on the road. A patch of dirt near Jonathan’s face explodes.

He grunts and then sucks in a hissing breath. “Fuck! Get down, Red!” He grabs my legs and rolls me in the dirt so we’re behind the van. “He’s shooting at us!”

Chapter Fifteen

H
E
THROWS ME
onto the ground behind the van, covering me with his body, and I’m sure my head just exploded with the impact. Shouts sound from up on the road, and my mind struggles to put together the pieces of what’s happened in the last ten minutes in a way that makes any shred of sense. I wait, disoriented and facedown in the ditch, my heart pounding and Jonathan on top of me. My eyes dart through the dark, assessing our surroundings and looking for a way out. There’s really nowhere to run. We’re in a ditch maybe ten or twelve feet below the road, with a cement sound wall behind us. It’s too high to get over. And if we run to either side, we’ll be in plain sight of the guy up the embankment.

On the road above, there’s the squeal of tires.

“Sam!”

Blake’s voice cuts through the night and my racing heart races faster with the renewed adrenaline.

“Sam!” There’s a rustling in the dead grass at the side of the road. “Sam! Are you down there?”

“Jonathan,” I say, bucking against him, but he doesn’t move. “Jonathan, let me up.”

I slither out from under him, rolling him onto his back, and that’s when I see the crimson bloom on his T-shirt below where my blood stains his shoulder.

“Oh, God!” I stagger to the end of the van and see Blake skidding down the embankment toward us. “Blake! Help! Jonathan’s shot!”

He looks up and sees me. “Stay there!” He half runs, half slides down the rest of the embankment and skids to a stop in front of me. “You’re bleeding.”

“I’m fine,” I say, pushing him back. “But Jonathan is shot. He needs help!”

My voice shakes so bad it doesn’t even sound like words, but Blake seems to get it. He lurches around the side of the van, pulling his phone from his pocket. “Direct pressure,” he tells me, kneeling next to Jonathan and bunching his T-shirt in his fist over the wound.

I kneel at Jonathan’s side as Blake calls for an ambulance. “You’re going to be okay,” I tell Jonathan, lifting his T-shirt to find the wound. He’s bleeding from a spot low on his right side, and I press my hand into it and lean my face near his, saying what he’s said to me so many times. “I’ve got you.” A tear leaks over my lashes as I slip a hand around his neck and rest his head on my knee. “I’ve got you, Jonathan. You’re going to be okay.”

Despite the fact that I’m starting to feel dizzy, I keep talking to him, and it seems like forever later when I hear the sirens. As they get closer, I bend down to be sure he’s still breathing, leaning my cheek near his nose and mouth. I feel his breath on my face and drop my forehead onto his, relieved.

“Hey, Red,” he whispers as a hand cups my breast.

“Don’t you die on me,” I tell him.

A ghost of a smile curves his lips as his fingers give a weak squeeze. But then his hand falls away and his eyes flutter shut again.

I look up to see Blake staring at us.

“Are they almost here?” I ask.

He nods.

I lower my face into Jonathan’s shoulder and press harder against the wound on his side. “Stay with me,” I whisper.

I hear people crashing through the night, and I’m being pulled back from Jonathan. I let them move me, as much as I don’t want to, because I know Jonathan needs more than what I can give him.

I watch, numb, as the paramedics load him on a stretcher and drag him up the hill. It’s only once he’s gone that I realize I’m sitting in the dark, on the ground, leaning against Blake’s body. Blades of light slice through the dark, catching the steam rising from the van like something out of Jonathan’s stage show. As a flashlight beam glides over my face on its way to door of the van, a stabbing pain shoots through my head and I gasp.

Blake’s arms tighten around me. “I need some help over here!”

His voice, so close to my ear, sends another spike of pain through my skull.

“Let me look at your face,” a uniformed woman says, crouching over me with a flashlight.

“I’m fine,” I say, trying and failing to pull myself to my feet.

“Hold still, Sam. You’re bleeding,” Blake says, and for the first time I detect a tiny shake in his voice. I look at him and, in the periphery of the flashlight beam, his eyes are too wide and the icy blue has melted into something deeper.

The paramedic is careful not to shine the beam directly into my eyes as she prods my right cheekbone with her gloved fingers. “This might need stitches,” she says. “I need to bring you in so we can get a closer look at this and check you for concussion.”

“I’m fine,” I repeat, louder. My voice reverberating around my skull sends another shooting pain through my brain. I gasp and lift my hand to my temple to stop it.

“You’re not fine,” Blake says. “You have a concussion.”

“Shut up, Blake,” I say, softer, gaining my feet. It’s harder than I think it’s going to be, and I stagger.

Blake puts his arm around my waist. “I’ll help you get her up the hill,” he says to the paramedic.

I jerk out of his grasp, and I swear the effort ruptures my brain. I cry out with the pain in my head and drop to my knees when my legs won’t hold me. But the next second, Blake scoops me into his arms, cradling my head firmly to his muscled chest. He scrambles up the embankment toward the flashing lights up top.

I try to protest, but the pain in my head stops me and I give up and sink into him. He makes the road and lays me on a gurney near the ambulance, and the blare of sirens nearly kills me. I want to press my palms to my ears, but my arms feel too heavy to lift. Headlights wash over me, and the light is too bright, shocking my brain. I whimper and close my eyes as a black car skids to a stop next to the ambulance and the lights click off.

“How is she?”

I recognize Cooper’s voice, and I want to tell him I’m fine, but my voice won’t obey.

“She’s pretty banged up,” Blake answers. “Did you get him?”

“No,” Cooper says. “I lost him off Grand. The locals are sweeping the area.”

I’m jostled as my gurney is hoisted into the ambulance.

“Where are you taking her?” Blake asks.

“General,” the paramedic answers.

I don’t open my eyes, but the light through my eyelids as I’m loaded into the ambulance is painful. I groan as the paramedic presses my eyelid open with a thumb.

“Light,” I say, trying to twist my head out of her grasp.

She lets me go and reaches up for a switch. The light dims and the pain in my head instantly recedes.

When the paramedics get me settled and strap the gurney in, one of them pokes at my face again and then roots through a drawer in a stand at the head of the bed, pulling a gauze bandage from a packet and pressing it hard to my face. The pressure stings and I let out a groan.

A warm hand grasps mine. “You’re going to be okay,” Blake says quietly. He must believe it, because I can hear the relief in his voice.

“If you’ll step out of the ambulance, sir,” someone says. “We need to get her to the hospital.”

“I’m coming,” Blake says. “DEA. She’s in protective custody.”

The same someone cuffs a laugh. “Then you guys are doing a pretty shitty job of it.”

I open my eyes in time to see Blake flashing his badge at a guy in a paramedic uniform.

“I don’t want him in here.” It comes out garbled, and I’m having trouble thinking straight enough to remember why.

What happened?

The image of Jonathan lying on the ground, bleeding, is the last thing I see before everything goes black.

I
HAV
E NO
idea where I am when I wake up, but as I look around the room, it all comes back.

“Jonathan,” I say, but it comes out a weak croak.

“He’s going to be okay.”

Blake’s voice is the last thing I expect, so when it comes, so close to my ear, I suck in a breath.

The room spins as I turn my head to see him. He’s sitting next to my bed, his short sandy hair smashed on one side in a sexy case of bed-head. “What are you doing here?”

“You’re in protective custody, Sam.”

“Where’s Jonathan?”

He nods toward the closed door. “Just down the hall. He’s out of surgery and they say he’s in stable condition.”

“I want to see him.” I try to pull myself to a sitting position but my head pounds at the effort.

“Stay still,” he tells me. He sits back in his chair and scrutinizes me. “How’s your head?”

“Fine. Why am I in protective custody?”

“In case you missed it, someone was shooting at you. I don’t know how he found out, but Arroyo must know you’ve agreed to testify.” He looks hard at me. “You haven’t talked to anyone about the case, have you?”

I narrow my eyes at him. “You’re blaming this on
me
?”

“I didn’t say that,” he says with a shake of his head, “but he found out somehow.”

“The only people I told where Yvonne and . . .” Jonathan.

“Who?”

“No one.”

His intense gaze drills through me. “I can’t keep you safe if I don’t know who I’m keeping you safe from.”

“I told Jonathan, but it was just a few minutes before we were run off the road. And he’s the one who got shot, so I think the chances he’s in on any big conspiracy are pretty minimal.”

“Well, someone’s obviously gotten word to Arroyo.”

“Ben’s in jail, right? So how could it have been him?”

Blake shakes his head. “Arroyo rarely does his own dirty work, and he’s got a long reach. If he decides you’re a threat, he’ll find a way to take you out. It’s his pattern.” His brow creases and he drops his gaze. “And whoever’s leaking information has a direct pipeline, because he knew you were out within minutes of your release.”

I feel that defensive knot rise in my chest. “It wasn’t Jonathan.”

“We’ll see.” He leans back in the chair, tenting his fingers and tapping his lips.

I lift my hand to rub my face and find a thick gauze bandage fixed to my right cheek. “How did you find us in that ditch?”

“I had a feeling.”

“A feeling?”

He hauls a deep breath and rubs the back of his neck. “People who cross Arroyo tend to go missing.” His eyes flick to mine. “Or show up dead in Dumpsters.”

“So you knew he’d come after me? Is that why you told me to be careful?”

A shadow of guilt passes over his face. “Just for the record, I didn’t want to let you go. As long as we had you in custody, you were safe.”

What if he really did this? What if Ben’s really trying to kill me? My lungs feel like blocks of ice and I’m having trouble getting a breath.

“Sam, you’re going to be all right. I’ll make sure of it.”

There’s something about the sudden softness in Blake’s voice that cuts through my panic like the sharpest blade. If he hadn’t arrested me, none of this would be happening.

I stuff back the panic and glare at him. “This is your fault. If anything happens to Jonathan, I swear to God, I’ll make sure everyone knows exactly what you did. I’ll go to every newspaper who will hear me and tell them what a douchebag you are and how you set me up and got my friend shot.”

His mouth presses into a line and he lowers his eyes from mine. “I suppose I deserve that.”

“Leave.”

His eyes lift and lock on mine. “If that’s what you want.”

“What I ‘want’ is to have never met you. What I ‘want’ is my job and my life and my friend back. What I ‘want’ is for you to die a slow, painful death a thousand times over. But I guess I’ll have to settle for never seeing you again.”

He winces. “Like it or not, you’re sort of stuck with me for now.”

“Get out!”

He stands and moves toward the door, but before he steps through, he turns back to me, and the almost-smile on his lips makes me madder than I already am. “Glad you’re feeling better.”