Following Fabian (8 page)

No. She had to be the bigger person.

She wasn’t that woman of four years ago anymore.

Nope.

She meditated on the specks of the laminate tabletop, only half-listening to the chatter going on around her.

Fabian occasionally got a word in edgewise, but mostly the talking came from one side of the table.

Astrid picked up a menu and held it inches from her face, unseeing.

When Fabian nudged her thigh beneath the table and sought out a bit of skin, she nudged his hand away after projecting
“Sorry”
to him.

He may have been the balm she needed to her bruised soul, but for the moment, she needed her thoughts to be her own. She didn’t want pity.

* * *

Fabian couldn’t remember ever meeting such an inscrutable woman before. He’d had his fair share of hookups throughout the years as the troupe traveled the world and performed shows. Women following him back to his trailer was a typical occurrence, and occasionally, he partook of their company. Not once had a woman ever made him second-guess his own intelligence. Dealing with Astrid required him to stay one step ahead—to predict what she’d say and what she’d do in order not to offend her.

He didn’t even know why he cared so much. He’d never been the kind of man who’d chase after women who played hard to get. Maybe that had been his problem. If he didn’t recognize that there was something between him and the cranky dragon, he wouldn’t be standing outside her motel room at five in the morning bearing the donuts he’d struggled to order, and nearly burning the skin off his palms carrying a hot coffee cup in each hand.

He pounded the kick plate again, and moments later, Astrid pulled the door open and set her heavy-lidded gaze on him.

The room was dark, and she was undressed down to her underclothes. He tried not to stare, and how he managed the feat came down to his healthy fear of the woman, and not so much his self-control. She’d probably rip him a new asshole if she caught him staring like a letch.

“I told you I’d come get you from your room at seven,” she said, still blocking the doorway.

He shook his head. “Don’t understand.”

She blew out a breath and moved from the doorway. “I’m going back to sleep.”

He used the sliver of light from the hallway to watch her fit form stalk back to her rumpled bed.

To think that’s what she was hiding under those baggy clothes…

Perfect, round ass just begging for a squeeze.

He whistled low, hit the corridor light switch with his elbow, and let the door close behind him. Setting down the coffee cups first, he let the paper bag fall from under his right arm.

When he turned toward the bed, Astrid was under the covers with the blankets pulled up to her ears and wriggling down lower as he watched.

He slid between the bed and the wall and sat on the edge of the bed.

“What?” came her muffled voice.

“Talk to me.” God, he would love to be able to have a conversation with her in his native tongue and speak sentences that contained more than ten syllables.

“Sleeping.”

He nudged the covers down a bit and pressed his hand against her warm left shoulder. She always felt so good, and he didn’t know if the draw was due to him being so fucking skin starved or if she was really that spectacular.

“Shit,
what
, Fabian? Why aren’t you sleeping? I want to be sleeping. That fucking agent talked herself blue in the face until one in the morning, so why are you so goddamned spry?”

Oh, she was punchy. He massaged the tense cords of her neck. “I should be sleeping, I guess, but I’ve become so accustomed to having someone in the room with me when I sleep that being alone is unsettling. Maybe I feel like someone is going to sneak up on me.”

“Understandable.” She yawned and rolled onto her back.

He nudged the covers beneath her chin and smiled at the sight of her puffy eyelids. It was nice to know that even dragons woke up a bit soft. He found her sleep-roughened appearance to be absolutely charming, though he wouldn’t tell
her
that.

“If you want to catch a few Z’s before the agents pick us up, I won’t quibble if you curl up in a little ball at my feet,” she said.

“You’re so generous.”

“No, generous was me not getting the grilled onions on my cheesesteak last night. Or banana peppers. Really wanted those fucking onions, though.” She yawned again, and let her eyelids droop.

“I’ll make it up to you one day. I’m a pretty good cook.”

“Really? I’m a mediocre cook. Eric’s the chef of the two of us. He’s better at it because I always try to be too precise. He has a cook’s intuition. Gets that from our grandmother.”

“What do you eat when Eric’s not feeding you?”

“Whatever’s convenient.”

“Pity.”

“Ah, don’t feel sorry for me.”

“I don’t.”

Her head turned toward the windows, away from Fabian, and he brushed her silky dark hair away from her cheek. “I brought donuts. I had to guess what you’d like, and I’m not certain the clerk understood me.”

“Where’d you get money?”

“Agent Rodriguez set me up with some cash until I can draw from the inheritance my mother left for me.”

“Ugh.” Astrid rolled again, and this time put her back to him.

“What?”

“Oh, nothing.”

“You’re a horrible liar, little dragon.”

“Which is probably why I wouldn’t have made a very effective lawyer.”

“Tell me. What bothers you about me borrowing money from the agent? You worried I’m going to run off again? I doubt Dana would fire you over that.”

“You’re right. There are very few things Dana would fire me for, but I appreciate your concern about my ongoing livelihood. I don’t care if you take money from Rodriguez. I’m more annoyed at the fact she looks at you like a fly she wants to catch in her web.”

“Ah, she’s too sweet for that.”

“Mm-hmm. All right, sugar.”

He grinned. He always grinned when she called him
sugar
. Couldn’t help it. “She’s been nothing but professional.”

“To your untrained eye, sure. As far as you believe, she’s on the clock and being professionally cordial. Me? I’m a professional peer here working toward the same goal. What she says to me behind your back may not always be one hundred percent work-related.”

“What did she say?”

Suddenly, Astrid’s shoulder tensed, and Fabian massaged that knot out of it yet again.

“Tell me.”

“She asked me in no uncertain terms if what I said for the sergeant’s benefit when I called her from the station was true.”

“Which parts specifically?” Astrid had said a lot of crazy shit both before and after the agent arrived, and every bit of it had made him forget, at least for a little while, how he’d ended up in this infernal place and what his morbid chore was. She was funny. Maybe she didn’t even know she was, but she was. She tried to be tough, but most of the time, even her edge made him smile. Rare breed, the woman was.

“Mostly, the bit about you being my boyfriend. She didn’t know I met you for the first time yesterday morning.”

He pulled his legs onto the bed and rolled onto his left side. “What did you tell her?”

“What would you have liked for me to tell her?”

Damn her.
Anything he said had the potential to put him in hot water.

He cleared his throat and ran his palm down her arm, letting it rest just above her elbow. “Perhaps it would be a good idea if she believed we were really together. That would explain my need to touch you.”

“You don’t need to touch me when you’re around her, with her being fluent and all.”

“Maybe I’m more interested in what you have to say than her.”

Astrid didn’t say anything for a long while, and the only sound was the central air unit clicking on, and then blowing heat into the cozy room.

“Are you some kind of masochist?” she whispered. “Your brother said you are.”

Fucking Felipe.
“No. I never know what you’ll say. You’re unpredictable, and I guess that’s refreshing.”

“Oh, sugar, spend a little more time around the Shrews and we’ll have your head spinning from just how refreshing we are. I think Felipe’s learned to just tune us out. It’s for his own sanity.”

Maybe that tactic worked well for his brother, but Felipe hadn’t been pretty much alone for more than half the year and starving for company. The only times Fabian had had a conversation, really, was when one of the more sympathetic troupe members snuck into whatever temporary shelter he was being kept in and fed him bits of information. They encouraged him to stay hopeful during his short stints of wakefulness, and said they’d get the word out. That someone would come for him.

He thought they were just placating him, but maybe they’d known something he hadn’t.

“Astrid?”

“Hmm?”

“How did you know to look here? In South Dakota? I know the Shrews are good at finding people, but this is so far…”

“Oh. We got an anonymous tip from a troupe member that managed to get out just before Dana sent me here.”

“Ah.” He laid his head against the pillow and pulled his hand away from Astrid. Maybe he and Felipe hadn’t been the only ones pushed to their limits.

Jacques had kept an iron fist clenched around his troupe members for so long, that many of them couldn’t tell if they were thinking their own thoughts or only what Jacques had planted in their minds. No one made a move without his say-so. No one ever ran—they’d been kept ignorant so long that they didn’t know
how
to run. They thought running meant death. That’s what Jacques always told them.

Apparently, it had taken Felipe absconding to spark the fire, and maybe by the time Fabian got close to the man again, the blaze would be burning unfettered.

Fabian would love to see that blaze close in on Jacques—for him to choke to death on black smoke, the flame for which he’d provided the kindling.

He didn’t have the constitution for it, though. He’d never been a fighter. Never had the guts.

Maybe Astrid did, though.

At 6:55 a.m., Astrid nudged the lamp’s switch and opened the desk drawer for a sheet of hotel stationery. If she had to guess, she’d pinpoint the time Fabian fell asleep at right around five-twenty.

The alarm had gone off at 6:15, and he hadn’t moved a muscle. He was in the same exact position twenty minutes later when she stepped out of the shower and dressed in front of him.

He was dead to the world.

She’d even slipped her compact mirror under his nose and held her breath until she saw the fog.

She wouldn’t dare wake him, because she knew that kind of sleep all too well. The Shrews had fallen victim to it a time or two after working too many weeks without proper rest. At that point, they were really no good for work until they’d gotten ten or twelve hours of uninterrupted sleep.

She didn’t think Fabian would miss anything she couldn’t report back on during this preliminary scouting mission, so she saw fit to let the man sleep. Hastily, she scribbled:

Please don’t leave unless you’re heading up to your room. I didn’t want to wake you, and hopefully I’ll be back before you get up. We’re doing simple recon—no engagement—so don’t get too amped up.

Big lunch when I get back?

-
Dragon

She left it sticking out of the pages of her English-Spanish dictionary and grabbed her room key before slipping out.

As she folded herself into the agents’ backseat, Rodriguez turned from the front passenger seat and scrunched her cute little nose. “Where’s Mr. Castillo?”

David turned in his seat and looked at Astrid expectantly.

With her hands balled into fists at her thighs, she took a deep breath and resisted the urge to roll her eyes. If he were going to act so unaffected, she’d do the same, or at least try. Through clenched teeth, she responded, “He’s sleeping off the past seven months. We can debrief him later.”

“You spoke to him before you left?” Rodriguez asked.

Astrid concentrated on her seatbelt buckle and took an inordinate amount of time fitting the tongue into the groove. What had Fabian said? That if Rodriguez believed they were together, she wouldn’t question his need to touch Astrid? Astrid didn’t care what the agent thought, really, no more than she did any other stranger who made assumptions. If she needed to touch the man, she’d fucking touch him. And maybe it’d bother David a little bit, too.

Not that she cared.

“I saw him. Yes.”

“I see.”

I don’t think you do.
She curled her toes in her sneakers, trying to focus herself. When she looked at David again a moment later, his expression was tense. Perturbed.

She wanted to tell him, “Fuck
you
, dude,” for whatever it was he had flitting through that small mind of his, and he deserved it. How dare he express annoyance on the very tail end of a smug smile?

She couldn’t believe she was ever going to marry him. Now she could see what a disaster it would have been, marrying someone that selfish. He’d said she was cold, but she’d given him everything she had. It just hadn’t been enough. He tried to force her to give something she didn’t have.

She’d known Fabian for less than two days, and already, he’d figured out that he shouldn’t try to climb over her walls or even walk around them. He’d seem to instinctively know that he needed to wait for her to open a door. She’d let him in as much as she was comfortable, and he didn’t overstay his welcome.

She’d known him a fucking
day
, and he’d figured that out. She’d been with David for three years and he hadn’t worked out that balance.

Now she did allow herself that eye roll. She wasn’t so fucking inscrutable that she needed fixing. She’d just been with a man who didn’t fit well against her rough edges and never would, no matter how much smoothing he tried.

* * *

Fabian bolted upright and scanned the dark room.

Was he safe? Where was he? What time was it?

Slowly, his vision focused, and large furniture came into view.

Dresser. Recliner. Television cabinet. Nightstands.

There was the digital clock flashing
5:57
in red numbers.

Had she just left? Perhaps he could catch up to her.

He sat up and rubbed his eyes. When they focused on the clock once again, he found that the little dot indicated that the time displayed was
p.m.

“
Mierda
.” He’d slept the day away and his dragon was missing. He tapped the lamp’s switch, and tipped his legs over the edge of the bed.

Where could she have gone? She’d seemed intent on working with him, so she wouldn’t have abandoned him. Perhaps she’d gone to get dinner? Hell, he hadn’t even eaten the breakfast he’d brought in. He couldn’t believe he’d slept that long, but he’d probably needed every second of it.

He hadn’t had good REM sleep in months because of all the drugs. When they started to become less effective, his sleep was a little better, but only marginally. The troupe was always on the move, and him being ripped out of his sleep so they could pack up camp was a typical occurrence.

He stood and shuffled to the tall lamp in the corner. He turned the switch between his thumb and forefinger, and as the nearby desk illuminated, he caught sight of a small book atop it with a sheet of hotel stationery jutting out.

ENGLISH-SPANISH/ESPAÑOL-INGLÉS

He grinned and picked up the little book. Slowly, he made out the meanings of the words on the page, and only had to look up a few terms. His on-paper English was far better than his speaking English. Words on pages didn’t have funny accents or come out a mile a minute. He and Felipe had taught themselves what English they knew from reading newspapers and watching television. Felipe had had a better knack for spoken English, whereas Fabian had a better memory for vocabulary. Together, they could make out most statements. Apart…well, he didn’t know how Felipe was faring now, but he’d been out in the world for seven months and had an American wife. He had to be fluent by now.

Yet another thing Fabian would have to play catch-up on.

The door’s electronic lock whirred, and a moment later, Astrid stepped into the room looking very tired, and a bit agitated. Her pink lips were pressed in a tight line and she carried her shoulders high up her neck.

He met her halfway and extended his hand.

She studied it, warily it seemed, for a moment, and then wrapped her soft fingers around it. “Bet you’re hungry,” she said.

Right, because food was the most important consideration at the moment.

“I could eat, but why don’t you talk to me? Tell me what happened.”

She met his gaze, and there was a flinch in her eyes. “Maybe I’ll order pizza? If you don’t mind, I’d like to take a hot bath. Soak off some of the dust.”

“And the stress?”

She didn’t respond, but he didn’t really need her to. The question he had now was what was causing her stress? It couldn’t have been the job. She had no emotional investment in that.

He dragged his thumb across the back of her hand. “Did something happen back at home? Is everyone okay?”

“Nothing like that. Everyone’s fine, last I heard. Fine enough, anyway.” She shrugged out of her jacket and removed her holster, stashing it and her firearm in the closet safe.

He shouldn’t have been surprised by it, but he was. Seeing a woman like her armed to the teeth and handling those weapons with such confidence was an unexpected turn-on. She was a woman who could take care of herself. His mother hadn’t been able to do the same, so maybe knowing she was a bit more durable and had some fight in her held an enormous appeal. Maybe Astrid wouldn’t survive a fall from a tightrope, but she’d probably never let someone like Jacques get close enough to push her down, anyway.

“So, pizza?” She rolled her shoulders and laid her head left to right, closing her eyes.

The resultant sigh that escaped when he pressed his fingers against the tight cords of her neck encouraged him to continue his massage. He dug into the tense muscles with his fingers and grazed the pads of his thumbs gently up her neck to her jaw, stroking her as if she were an agitated kitten. “Pizza is fine, if that’s what you want.”

“I’m in the mood for anything I don’t have to stand in a line to get.” She opened her eyes, and his heart broke a bit upon spying how red they were and how heavy the lids hung. Evidently, she needed rest as much as he had.

“You need someone to take care of you,” he whispered.

That made her grin. “You’re worried about me being taken care of when you’re the one who’s been off the grid for half a year?”

“I’m an adaptable sort.” Slowly, he trailed his hands down her back and let them rest at her waist, just under her shirt. “I bet you don’t take care of yourself. When was the last time you had a real meal?”

She blew out a breath and rested her forehead against his chest.

She felt good there, just the right height for him to nestle against him—to hide behind him, if she needed to. He hoped he could be that column for her one day if she needed him. He hoped he could get himself there.

“You mean meat-and-two-veg sort of meal? Not since the last time I was at the lodge. Neither my roommate, Maria, nor me have much time to cook, so we grab what we can. It’s a good thing our metabolisms are so robust because we eat a lot of shit. If you don’t think vegetarians can eat badly, you haven’t met Maria.” She snorted, and he grinned.

It was nice that her mood was picking up, but he still had no idea of what had been bothering her in the first place. Maybe he’d never know. He wasn’t going to push. Didn’t see the good of doing so.

“I’d cook for you, if you’d let me.”

“Yeah? Would you wash the dishes, too, and sweep the floor?”

“Of course. If you’re not going to do something all the way, you shouldn’t bother starting.”

“You make good sense, Castillo.”

“I try to.”

She brought her hands up between them and pressed them against his chest, giving him a little push backward. “Pizza or Chinese?”

“Chinese.”

“Anything in particular?”

He shrugged. “Surprise me. I want to see what you like, besides onions.”

Her eyes narrowed to slits. “Why?”

“Because that’s what people do when they’re curious about someone. They watch them.”

Her lips parted, but no words came out. She blinked a few times, and then eased away. She rooted through the papers piled atop the desk and found a menu. Sitting down with it, she reached for the phone’s handset.

While she talked to the order-taker, he leaned back on the bed, studying her. He didn’t understand everything she was saying to the person on the other end, but she spoke with a quiet efficiency. She was unapologetic, but her tone was polite enough.

After she hung up, she stood and stretched her arms over her head, yawning. When she was done, she walked over to him, tucked her hand beneath his ponytail at the back of his neck, and stared at him a moment.

“What?” he asked, when words didn’t seem forthcoming. She was completely zoned out, judging by the way her pupils dilated and breath sped.

She didn’t say anything, but her thumb tracked up the side of his neck, rubbing as his had to hers before.

He grabbed her other hand and kissed the back of it. “Dragon?”

Her throat pulsated with a swallow, and she blinked. “What?”

“Where’d you go? You seemed to leave the room for a moment.”

“Ugh.” She closed her eyes and used the hand that had been on his neck to rub them. “Weird psychic stuff. Sometimes it activates without me wanting it to. I think my brain is trying to unpack all the data my eyes took in today, and the psychic part is making projections about what it could all mean.”

“What did you see?”

“Honestly, I’d thought not much, but obviously my brain is telling me otherwise after the fact. I’ll tell you about it after my shower, okay?”

“Okay.” He let go of her, and she padded away, calling over her shoulder, “Answer the door if the delivery gets here before I’m out, will you?”

“Yes.”

He was dead curious about what she’d learned during her outing that her brain would start sending up red flags so far removed from the event, but he’d have to trust her judgment that whatever it was she’d figured out could wait until she was out of the bathroom.

He lay on the bed and reached for the remote control. No sooner had he figured out how to bring up the channel listing did her phone jump from vibrations on the dresser. He thought to let it ring, but maybe she’d like to know if it were going off.

He got up and grabbed it, already heading to the bathroom when he looked at the display. There was no name listed on the caller ID announcement, but the number was familiar. He’d dialed that number once.

He answered. “Hello?”

“Fabian?”

Ah, Sarah
. He sighed, and said in simple Spanish, “Yes. Astrid just got back in and we’re waiting for dinner. She went to take a shower.”

“Hey, my Spanish is a little better than that now. Your brother seems to think I need immersion so he won’t speak English to me at home, but I appreciate the consideration.”

He laughed. That sounded like Felipe, all right. “Should I pull Astrid out of the shower?”

His sister-in-law made a sputtering sound on her end. “No, I guess it can wait until she gets out. We need to fly her home, and the next flight out is around dawn, so she’s got some time to clear out.”

He paused in front of the bathroom door and put his hand on the knob. “Fly her home?” What about him?

“We need another Shrew on the ground here. We’ve got a bit of a Bear mess on our hands. More so than the usual.”

What
now
? Astrid had told him her brother had been recently attacked, but had something else happened? He didn’t know why he cared, given he had no investment in the situation, but he did. He couldn’t very well let her fly east without him, but he wasn’t
done
in South Dakota.

Was he?

“You can stay on and work with the agents,” Sarah said, and her voice pulled him out of his thoughts. “They’re on the case until it’s solved. It’s in their wheelhouse now, so we don’t really need Shrews there.”