Hallowed Ground (35 page)

His bootsteps echoed
squish squish
as he tracked slop across the concrete floor to his private office. Only one of the five locks was engaged and he’d entered the room before I could catch up to him.

A phone rang. Once. Twice.

Stopped abruptly mid-third ring.

A telephone base and receiver sailed out the open door and crashed; plastic exploded like shrapnel.

The plug-in end of the cord still had a piece of Sheetrock attached from where it’d been ripped from the wall.

His grief hit me; my knees buckled from the force of it.

Martinez reappeared and steadied the door with one hand, while he angrily wrote with the other.

My feet finally moved. I inched closer, to see the angry black letters he’d scrawled over the door:
STAY THE FUCK OUT

Our gazes crossed. In his I saw unmitigated rage.

I didn’t know if I could handle this situation, let alone handle him.

Sensing my hesitation, he chucked the black Sharpie toward walk-in coolers, and cocked his hands on his hips.

“You comin’ in or what?”

Heart thundering, I nodded and crept past him.

A series of locks tumbled behind me.

Water dripped from my clothes. I stayed put, making nervous puddles on the carpet.

Martinez bypassed me and headed straight for the bar cart. He wasn’t choosy about his anesthetic. He pressed the bottle to his lips. Drank quietly, but steadily. When he drained the last of his self-prescribed painkiller, would he throw the empty at the wall?

I know I would have.

I primed myself for the explosion of glass and fury that didn’t happen.

All at once he remembered himself. He slowly turned toward me. The bottle of Jack Daniels dangled from his fingertips. His gaze raked me from stringy hair to soggy feet.

“Sorry. You’d probably like to get out of those wet clothes.”

I shifted, not yet able to articulate the words he needed to hear.

He pointed to the dark hallway. “There’s extra towels in the closet. Feel free to use whatever you need.” He lifted the bottle, drank. “I’m hitting the shower.”

The Jack Daniels accompanied him to the bathroom and the door clicked shut.

Inside the bedroom, I peeled the sodden clothes from my body as quickly as my numb fingers allowed. After I toweled off, I slipped into a white cotton robe I’d found on the back of the door.

I didn’t snoop, although technically Martinez had given me free rein. Any other time I would’ve seized the opportunity to glean secrets about El Presidente, but I wasn’t in the mood. Wasn’t anything in the windowless room besides a king-sized bed and a small dresser.

Gathering my sopping things, I returned to the main room and dropped them on the plastic carpet protector beneath the office chair. My restless gaze zeroed in on the bar cart.

The round, wooden cap exclusive to Don Julio tequila rose up like a beacon.

Tempting, but one of us needed to stay sober. I took a bottle of water from the mini-fridge and my eyes sought my purse, in dire need to feed my nicotine habit.

Crap. I’d left my smokes, my keys, my cell, hell, everything in the car. With the Fort Knox security system in this place, I couldn’t sneak out to retrieve my cigarettes or “borrow” a pack from the bar. I was screwed.

Couldn’t drink. Couldn’t smoke. No TV. What the hell was I supposed to do?

Wait, which I don’t do well under the best circumstances.

These were far, far from that.

I tucked my clammy feet under me and secured the robe over my knees. Nestled my neck in the cushions and closed my eyes. Time on my hands gave me time to think. I didn’t want to think.

The ghastly images of Harvey’s last moments flickered behind my lids.

Big Mike, No-neck, and I had grabbed Martinez to try and stop him from going to where Harvey had fallen.

He’d shaken us off like lint.

No one had come near him as he stood over the body. He wouldn’t leave Harvey. He watched until they zipped the bag and loaded him into the back of an ambulance.

Even then he hadn’t uttered a sound.

At the sheriff’s department he’d let his lawyer do the talking.

If I was having a hard time blocking it out, what was Martinez going through?

When the shower shut off, I knew I’d find out soon enough.

One door opened, another closed.

Humid, pine-scented air wafted in. Muffled noises drifted from the bedroom.

And I waited.

Surreal stillness amplified sounds. The bottom of the bedroom door scraped against the carpet as it swung open. The fabric of his clothing brushed the tweed couch when he walked past me.

Then the suctioning pop of the mini-fridge door, followed by the snick and hiss of a carbonated can.

Finally I found the guts to look at him.

Martinez stood in the center of the room, staring sightlessly at the exit sign above the door, a Coke can clutched to his naked chest. Baggy silver boxing shorts exposed his muscled stomach and skimmed his knees. His feet were bare.

My stomach roiled. I’d never seen him like this, half-dressed, half-lost, totally vulnerable.

“Tony?”

He turned toward me, his face shuttered.

“Do you want to talk?”

He shook his head.

“You want to get drunk?”

“No.”

“Then what can I do?”

He drained the Coke and crushed the aluminum between his hands as easily as a gum wrapper.

“Can you make it go away?” He whipped the spent can at the garbage pail. “Jesus, Julie. Can you tell me why he did it? Make me forget he’s fucking
dead
?”

I winced at the hard slap of his words.

God, I hated this. I didn’t know why I’d come or why I’d stayed. Why I thought
I
could help him. Being here just reinforced the sad truth that I was the
last
person qualified to hand out advice on how to deal with gut-wrenching, soul-stealing loss.

No wonder Kevin hadn’t confided in me.

I unfolded from the couch and tiptoed to the pile of wet clothes, my single thought to escape. I grabbed my cold jeans only to have Martinez snatch them from my hands and fling them back to the floor.

“What are you doing?” he demanded.

“I’m leaving.”

“Like hell you are.”

“For Christsake, Martinez, I suck at this. How am I supposed to help you when I can’t even help myself?”

I whirled away to hide my humiliation; my mouth had no such shame and ran unchecked.

“Ben has been dead for three
years
, my mother for almost twenty, and I’m still seriously fucked up. I can’t sit here and coo sympathy and lie that it’ll be all right. It
won’t
be all right. Nothing will ever be the same.”

My voice cracked, then broke completely. “Your life will have a big, black, gaping hole in it that nothing or no one on this earth will ever fill. But you already know that, don’t you?”

Being strong and tough was an illusion. Far more appealing to crawl in that hole and howl like a wounded animal.

His hands curled over my shoulders. “Julie—”

“Don’t.” I tried to shrug him off. Jesus, I was a pathetic, self-centered excuse for a human being.

I was supposed to be consoling him, not making it worse, not making it about
me
.

He spun me back around.

I didn’t have a chance to see sorrow or pity or anything else because his mouth was on mine.

And I didn’t do a single damn thing to resist.

As Martinez kissed me, so sweetly, so completely, so perfectly, my tears fell.

I fell.

I’d expected tongue-thrusting, teeth-grinding passion from him, not tenderness. Not bewilderment. Not this intimate glimpse into his frailty.

The deeper we took the kiss, the more he let me see his raw, battered state. I recognized it.

Understood it. Gave into it.

My blood, sluggish from the cold rain, heated and raced through my system, vanquishing my tears but not my doubts.

His mouth broke away in slow increments; he slid his warm, soft lips to my cheek. “Stay.”

Hands knotted in my wet hair. Ragged exhalations teased the skin below my ear, sending goose bumps cascading down my body. “Please. Just stay, okay?”

I knew it was wrong. I should’ve pushed him away. Taken the opportunity to put him back at arms’ length where he belonged. Even as my conscience blasted warnings, I whispered, “Okay.”

The sweet kisses disappeared.

His hands, always so gentle and tentative with me, were idle no more. Rough fingertips and palms slipped down my face, my throat, then inside the robe and caressed my bare flesh from the curve of my belly to the curve of my ass.

I wound my arms around his neck, threading my fingers through his damp hair. I couldn’t get close enough to him. I wanted to share the same breath, the same mind, the same skin.

His forehead burrowed into the tender spot where my collarbone connected to my neck and he went still.

“Tony?” I murmured.

“Make it go away.” His hoarse whisper cut across my skin, cut
through
it. “Can you make it go away? Make me stop thinking about it?”

His anguish ripped the air from my lungs.

I pressed my body against his, cradled his face in my hands, grazed my lips across his cheeks, the corners of his eyes, his temples, the lines on his forehead, the rigid set of his jaw.

When our lips met again, and his mouth freely opened to mine, I poured myself into him.

Offered him the understanding of his grief that I couldn’t verbalize.

With this, I could make him forget, make us both forget.

What little control he had shattered.

He unknotted the belt and pushed the robe from my shoulders until it pooled at my feet. Grabbed the back of my bare thighs and lifted me against the wall.

My senses were awash in his heat, his scent, his urgency. My legs circled his hips. I arched closer, letting my head fall back as he trailed hot, wet kisses down my throat, buried his face between my breasts.

“Yes or no, blondie. Tell me now.”

This was wrong, wrong, wrong. We both knew it.

And yet, I still answered, “Yes.”

Our eyes met and there was no going back.

I hooked my fingers inside the elastic waistband of his boxing shorts and yanked until there were no barriers between us.

He drove inside me and nothing else mattered.

Later, in the complete darkness of the bedroom, we didn’t communicate beyond the sounds of lovers.

We didn’t have to. We didn’t want to.

Martinez rested his head on my belly, one hand clasped in mine on the mattress; the other idly stroked my leg from knee to the inside of my thigh.

My fingers sifted through his hair, smoothing the soft strands from his brow, the tensed line of his neck, the heavy set of his shoulders.

His silent tears dampened my stomach. As he pretended not to cry, I pretended not to notice.

I WOKE ALONE, SPRAWLED FACE FIRST ON THE MATTRESS. Naked.

Without a hangover.

There went the excuse for my behavior last night.

Did I need an excuse?

No.

So I’d slept with him. Big deal. Pointless to shut the barn door after the cow had gotten out.

Besides, Martinez and I had been headed this direction since our first meeting in Dusty’s months ago. Circumstances had just accelerated the process.

When I remembered those circumstances, my insides grew tight, my head pounded, and nausea spread like I
had
been knocking back tequila.

Harvey was dead.

God. I could not believe he’d done it. How he’d done it. And now that my brain was a bit clearer, it pissed me off. What a selfish goddamn thing to do. In front of his best friend. Harvey knew it’d scar those left behind far more than the millisecond of pain he endured right after the gun discharged.

No matter how invincible Martinez acted, he wouldn’t be able to shove it aside.

Had he disappeared because he regretted opening himself up to me? Or for another reason entirely? Was he the type of guy that now that the chase was over, he’d set his sights on bedding someone else? Was I just another notch on his handlebars?

The idea I’d been taken for a ride didn’t sit well. I sighed and rolled, taking the twisted cotton sheet with me. I’d just scooted back to the headboard when the door opened.

Martinez walked in.

My heart kicked hard.

Even though he was fully dressed in his usual biker finery, I didn’t bother to cover my nakedness like some Victorian maiden. We’d gone far beyond normal embarrassment last night.

We’d gone
way
past a professional relationship.

He shut the door, braced his wide shoulders against it and crossed one booted ankle in front of the other. He stared at me unabashedly, not with sexual intent, but as if he was trying to read my mind.

No trace remained of the despondent man from last night. Yet, the haunted sorrow was there, lurking beneath the surface.

I wanted to soothe that ache even when I knew he wouldn’t welcome it now, or want to talk about it. I never had either. Scary, that we were more alike than I’d imagined.