KNOCKOUT (30 page)

I already wanted to throttle him, but when I realized he wasn’t going to elaborate further, I simply rolled my eyes and turned away.

“Right. Well, I’ve got to go pack for our little vacation at the Peachtree Overlook.”

“The Peachtree Overlook, huh?” Nathan called out behind me. “Sounds like a nice little place.”

I could have corrected him, but I only smiled. Nathan had inflicted quite a few surprises on me today. It was only fair that I got to inflict one on him.

“
Y
ou
can’t be serious
.”

I couldn’t stop smiling as Nathan and I pulled into the parking lot of the Peachtree Overlook, which must have looked like a dump compared to the estates he’d lived in his whole life. His mansion just outside the city wasn’t his family home, and given that it was meant for only one person, I couldn’t begin to imagine what the house he’d grown up in had looked like.

“This is it,” I told him, trying to keep the demented glee out of my tone as I parked the old sky blue Honda the department had lent me in one of the narrow spots. The car was an auction vehicle, a prize seized from a dealer or some other low-level criminal who couldn’t afford anything better.

It was all part of the plan to make Nathan and I look like a couple just barely keeping our heads above the poverty line. Those were the kinds of people nobody saw, the ones who weren’t homeless, but who stood one small disaster away from losing everything. Nobody wanted to talk about those people, because that meant they’d have to acknowledge they existed and might need help. And nobody wanted to be inconvenienced enough to actually help them. It was easier just to forget about them and move on.

Nathan was, quite clearly, one of
those
people. As I killed the engine and stepped out of the car, he kept staring at the apartments with a wrinkled nose and slack jaw. There was nothing but contempt in his eyes for the place. I couldn’t resist making a remark.

“You know, some people would be damn grateful to live in a place like this.”

I’d expected him to scoff and say something about how he wasn’t one of
them
, but instead, he only sighed and opened his door, muttering that it would have to do.

We took our duffel bags stuffed with only our necessities out of the trunk and lugged them up the stairs to the second floor. Our room was 213, situated in the perfect spot in the middle of the hall where we had a view of the stairs, the lot, and partway around the corner from our living room window. It would make keeping an eye on the activity outside our apartment easy enough, and I immediately felt my nerves settle.

If you need anything, just holler,
Captain Pierce had said. As close together as these units were, I figured the other officers would have no problem hearing me.

“Do you want to do the honors?” I asked Nathan, offering him the dirty bronze key to our new home.

He smiled at me and plucked the key from my hand. “Sure,
Candy,
” he answered, but his smug grin faded a moment later when we saw what lay in wait for us inside.

Captain Pierce had failed to mention that this unit was an efficiency. The bedroom—if it could even be called that—was right on the other side of the living room and separated only by an old floor screen with tattered cloth panels. The kitchen had about six inches of counter space on either side of a Fifties-style stove beneath a microwave stained yellow from a previous tenant’s tobacco addiction.

At least, I hoped it was a
tobacco
addiction. Anything harder could leave a place coated in the kind of nasty things you
definitely
didn’t want to touch.

The single, small bathroom set off from both the living room and bedroom looked snug—or rather, claustrophobic—and included an all-in-one shower and tub combo with a fixed showerhead covered in limescale buildup. The toilet, thankfully, was clean, but it had one of those cushioned seats with little tears in it that reminded me of the nursing home my grandmother had died in.

I ran a hand through my shoulder-length hair and thanked God I’d recently splurged to have it styled at a salon. There was no way I would’ve been able to do it properly in this place. It was going to be a
long
week.

“Home sweet home,” Nathan mumbled, breaking the silence that had fallen between us.

“I guess so,” I said, looking at the twin-sized bed just beyond the shoddy divider. “You go on and take the bed. I’m good with the couch.”

“Oh, that’s not fair,” Nathan answered, inspecting the floral comforter. “The couch is in better condition!”

I smiled and shrugged, tossing my duffel bag onto the cushions to claim it. “One of the perks of being the girl in charge, I guess. Anyway, it puts me nearest the door in case anything goes wrong, and I can use the window to make sure no more of Wallace’s men come tromping up the stairs without our knowledge.”

“Fair point,” he begrudgingly agreed, setting his own high-end luggage case on the mattress. It groaned in protest. “Well,
Candy,
given the state of things here, I’d say it’s either takeout or starve.”

“In here, it’s detective,” I said, opening my bag and fishing out my fake ID and credit cards. “Or Sandra, if you’re feeling lucky.”

“Let’s go with that last one,” he said. “If we’re going to be spending this much time together in such a small space, I think ‘detective’ and ‘Mr. Hale’ are going to wear thin pretty fast. Besides, I’d like to think we can get along on a first name basis, seeing as I already know every curve on your body.”

“Don’t push your luck. You know damn well that little fling ended years ago and I’m not about to go jumping back into bed with you.”

“We’ve been a new couple for less than two hours! You’re telling me you aren’t committed to this relationship?”

I looked at him over my shoulder. There was something about the way he said it, something about his inflection or the soft purr of his voice that made him almost sound hurt.

“Look, Sandra, I get it. I’m not your favorite person. I never meant to hurt you. I took you for granted… And I’m sorry.”

“There was a time when I wanted to hear you say those words, Nathan, but I’m not that girl anymore. I’m here for one reason and one reason only,” I replied, turning away from him.

“I’ll stop making light of the situation. This must be uncomfortable for you, but it’s terrifying for me. I’ve barely slept in weeks. You’re the only one I can trust right now. I just thought since we’d be living here together for a few days, we might clear the air.”

His words made me equal parts uneasy and flattered. I’d never seen Nathaniel Hale as anything less than in control. In his little world, things happened the way he wanted them to happen. I’d fallen into that circle of influence once, and it had taken me years to break free. Now, he had no control. I was responsible for his safety, and there were no nets strung out beneath this trapeze act. His eyes were drilling into my own, but the look on his face was grateful, rather than self-satisfied... It almost made him seem… Human…

I lingered in the heat of Nathan’s stare just a little longer. Some secret part of me was reveling in his attention. All those times we had been together, I was so desperate for this man to look at me like this… Like someone he
respected
, instead of someone he
fucked
. Breaking away from his gaze, I flipped my hair and stood up straight, reaching out to hand him the credit card with
Candy Love
printed on it.

“What do you like—Chinese?”

“Seems like the easiest choice,” he said, taking the card from my hand.

Our fingers met for one single, glorious instant, and I felt the ripples of his touch race all the way up my arm and into my chest, heat blooming near my heart. I swallowed hard, my mouth suddenly dry and my stomach suddenly filled with a thousand anxious butterflies.

What the hell is wrong with me? He’s an asshole, remember? The man who took what he wanted and used you like some kind of call girl?

Maybe it was because he was starting to change. Maybe it was because he was demonstrating concern for others and a willingness to sacrifice his comfort for the good of the city. Maybe it was because I’d never truly expected him to accept any responsibility for anything…

It wasn’t fair. He wasn’t supposed to change my mind, especially not this quickly. Was he manipulating me? Was all of this just a ruse because he needed protection?

I pulled my hand away and tried to temper my expectations as he pulled the burner phone out of his pocket and began rifling through the kitchen drawers in search of a menu. A few moments later I was on the couch with the TV on, trying to lose myself in some trashy ‘reality’ show while he placed his order with whatever restaurant he’d managed to dig up.

He covered the phone with one hand and called to me from the kitchen-cum-bedroom. “What about you? Maybe some orange chicken?”

I narrowed my eyes at him. “How’d you know I like orange chicken?”

He grinned and shrugged. “Who doesn’t like orange chicken?” he said, the moved his hand away and began speaking to the restaurant again.

“You know, we
could
go out,” he added a moment later, presumably while he was on hold. “I’m pretty sure the Paddies aren’t going to be hanging around some two-bit Chinese place after what happened today. We should be safe as houses. And it’d be a lot nicer than hanging around in here all day.”

“I’m not up for it,” I answered, which was the sad truth. After what had happened this afternoon, I wasn’t in the mood to put myself in a room full of completely unpredictable people. “Besides, we’re safer here with the other officers around. Laying low right now is not the worst idea in the world, you know.”

He shrugged. “It’s no fun, either.”

I rolled my eyes. “We can worry about fun after you’ve testified.”

Nathan smirked as he got back on the line. “Then it’s a date.”

I was going to object, but he was already speaking to the restaurant again. That hadn’t been what I’d meant, but the longer I let it settle, the less I wanted to correct him. Sure, we had fucked, but that’s all we’d ever done. A date was never on the table…

I curled up against the armrest of the couch and hide my smile behind my hand. One date when this was all over? That couldn’t hurt, could it?

“
W
ake
up sleeping beauty
. Dinner is served.”

I opened my eyes. The TV screen was flickering in front of me and a soft, warm glow was coming from elsewhere in the darkened room. I could smell the Chinese food we’d ordered, the aromatic mix of soy and spices. It must have arrived when I was sleeping.

But I never heard the driver…

As if sensing my confusion, Nathan sat on the coffee table in front of me and smiled. “You were sleeping so soundly that I didn’t want to wake you. I met him outside and brought the food in myself.”

Then he extended his hand to me. “Come on, before it gets cold.”

Groggily, I reached out and put my hand in his. When his fingers closed around mine, I felt my flesh sizzle. My nerves burned for him, and I realized that I never wanted him to let me go. That’s how it always was with Nathan. It didn’t matter how much I loathed him, or how little respect he showed me… He awakened a desperate need inside me the first time I met him, and that fire had never truly went out.

I curbed those desires, instead letting him help me up and sitting down at the little table he’d prepared for us. “Look, you can’t be taking any chances here. You don’t go out that door without me,” I said firmly.

Nathan just let out a little sigh. He’d managed to find a few plates in the cabinets, and he used them to arrange our meals in a way that looked a hell of a lot more appetizing than it would stuffed in those pagoda-style boxes. My orange chicken popped against the lush green broccoli beside it and the sauce-stained rice resting underneath. He’d even poured me a glass of green tea, probably the kind you could get from the vending machine down the hall.

But the best part was the candles. With the rest of the lights dimmed, they made the room look cozy and quaint. I felt much more at home than I had when we’d first walked in together.

I smiled, looking up at Nathan as I tucked my hair behind my ears with my fingernails. “This looks incredible… But where in the world did you find the candles?”

He picked up the remote and turned off the TV. “A man needs to have a few secrets. Anyway, it’s the least I could do since I I’m the reason you’re stuck here.”

But that was the thing—I didn’t feel stuck.

“You’re important,” I told him, picking up my fork as he sat down. I stabbed at a piece of orange chicken, measuring my words, trying to ensure that what I said was both enough and not too much. I needed to appeal to his ego. “This city needs to see a man like you stand up for what’s right. Your testimony is going to make sure Wallace never hurts another innocent person ever again. Can you imagine what that means to the women and girls he’s devoted a decade to enslaving?”

Nathan didn’t answer. He only smiled weakly and skewered a bit of his broccoli beef onto his fork.

“Oh, come on,” I teased him. “You don’t have to be modest—not in here with me. You can brag a little, if you want.”

He chewed, then swallowed a gulp of his own green tea. “I thought you didn’t like arrogant, self-centered Nathan?”

“I don’t. But I have to give credit where credit is due. You’re putting your life on the line for the greater good. That’s something not a lot of people would do. It’s something you can be proud of.”

Nathan went quiet for a time, watching me eat. When he spoke again, it was in a tone I’d never heard from him before.

“Can I tell you something?”

I looked up at him and frowned. He sounded soft, hesitant,
uncertain.
His brows were furrowed and the corners of his eyes pinched. For the first time since I’d known him, Nathan looked like a man shouldering an unseen burden, a far cry from the man who would tie me to a bedpost and fuck my brains out without even a hint of care.

I stopped eating and put my fork down. “Yeah. Of course.”

Nathan puts his elbows on the table, wringing his hands together as he looked away from me and to the dancing candle flames instead. They lit up his eyes, highlighting the gold rimming his pupils as he took in a deep, shaky breath that nearly snuffed them out. When he spoke, his voice grated with the pain of a man who’d made a terrible, perhaps unforgivable mistake.

“When my father died,” he began, “I took over his company. You know that, obviously, but… what you don’t know is that I’m nothing but a figurehead. I have no idea how to run a business, let alone an international corporation. Dad tried to groom me for the job as best he could, but I wouldn’t listen. I didn’t want to do what he did for a living. Besides, Dad was young. Nothing was going to happen to him for a long time. When he passed from a heart attack at forty-nine and it all fell to me, I panicked. I decided to continue on with my original plan and ignore its very existence.”

I watched the shadows playing across his face. He suddenly looked older and farther away, not the twenty-something playboy with a smart mouth and no responsibilities. This was a facet I’d never seen before. It was like looking up at the dark side of the moon.

“But… I don’t know… When you broke things off with me things changed. I started to spend more time at the office. I started to like it. People looked up to me, Sandra. They wanted my advice. My ‘wisdom.’ I never wanted to be some big shot CEO, but once I was in the chair, I didn’t want to give it up… In a way, you gave me that,” Nathan trailed off, staring down at his fork. I kept silent, and he continued.

“When the head of our logistics division coordinated a meeting with Peter Wallace, I agreed, knowing full well who he was. He was offering us an obscene amount of money to transport those shipping containers. When he said it wasn’t anything illegal, I believed him, not because I actually thought he was telling the truth, but because I didn’t care if he was or not. I’d hired people to worry about that kind of thing, and they were all in agreement that the contract was on the level. Mr. Wallace has never been convicted of a crime—you know that. And he does plenty of
legal
shipping. I didn’t even consider that my advisors might be lying to me. I had no idea it’d be…”

He hesitated, lips parting as he struggled with the word.

“People. Women.
Children…
”

“But you knew?” I asked him, horror knotting in my stomach. “You knew what he was bringing into the city was illegal, and you let him do it?”

Nathan nodded slowly. “I suspected. Maybe… But everyone on the board wanted to take the contract. A substantial part of my inheritance is tied to maintaining my company. They could’ve voted me out if I didn’t do something, and once I lost the reigns, there was nothing stopping them from carving the whole damn company up for themselves. That would mean…”

“No more fancy title, no more office?” I finished for him. “You would’ve had nothing except for your things, your fancy home, your garage full of expensive cars, and the hundreds of millions of dollars you probably have stashed away in the Cayman Islands. Wasn’t that enough? You’re telling me you secured a job title on the backs of those young women and girls.”

“I didn’t
know
,” he insisted.

“Because you didn’t
want
to know!” I replied, gripping the edge of the table so hard my knuckles turned white. I could feel the smoke of anger swirling in my lungs, tightening my chest as it rose into my throat and spilled out of my mouth. “You just wanted the money! You wanted the power! If you’d bothered to look, you would’ve seen their faces. But you couldn’t have that, could you? You couldn’t have that kind of guilt on your head!”

Nathan sat back, folding his arms and looking away from me. “You’re wrong. I never, not for one second, considered there might be people in that container. Look, my family, my whole company has a history of looking the other way. My father didn’t build a huge mansion in Miami on the back of Chinese imports—he built the foundation of this company on cocaine smuggling. Sure, he went ‘legit’ by the Nineties, but that was on paper, Sandra. There were people putting pressure on me to keep quiet and maintain business as usual. Maybe I wanted to make everything legal, but it was easier to let other people deal with the dirty parts of the business. I chose to look the other way and play stupid. That’s on me.”

“We’re talking about lives here, Nathan,” I whispered. “Not drugs. Not guns.
People.
”

“If I had known… I would have done the right thing. That’s why I came to the police. Because when I heard what he’d been doing… When I heard about that container they shoved off into the ocean… I couldn’t help but wonder if I’d had something to do with it. If I had, and I let that asshole walk free, I couldn’t have lived with myself.”

I shook my head, and he blinked back tears. “Christ, Sandra… Haven’t you ever made a mistake in your life? One that you could’ve avoided if only you hadn’t looked the other way?”

The question hit me like a kick to the chest. My words dried up in my throat and I looked away from him, staring at the dingy table and my fingernails pressing into it. I closed my eyes, letting the whirlwind inside me die down.

Haven’t you ever made a mistake?

“Yeah,” I said finally, nearly choking on the word. “A long time ago, before I knew better. Before I… became a cop. I didn’t see what was happening around me because I didn’t want to. I wanted to believe in a pretty little lie, and it cost my sister her life.” My stomach turned. “I guess that makes me just as bad as you.”

Nathan’s expression softened. “What happened?”

It wasn’t a story I told often—or ever, if I could avoid it. But there was no backing out of this conversation now, not with the tidal wave of my shame brimming in my eyes and on my lips. I had to tell him.

“I got emancipated when I was seventeen,” I said at last, dropping my hands into my lap to keep from breaking my nails on the wooden table. “I took custody of my sister, Jenny. Our mother was a junkie, in and out of prison all the time, and after our aunt died… Well, it was just the two of us. I thought I had my shit together. I thought that I was the best thing for her. I thought that she’d see me working hard and playing by the rules and she’d want that for herself, too. I refused to believe that the fifteen years she’d spent watching our mom shoot up and smoke meth would tempt her to do the same thing.
She’s a good girl,
I told myself.
She’d never do that shit.
”

Nathan had put his fork down, just listening intently.

“So when Jenny started going to parties and not coming back for a few days, I told myself she was just troubled and going through some hard times. When I saw track marks in her arm, I told myself that there had to be some other kind of explanation, though I never even bothered to come up with one. When she lost so much weight that she was sometimes too weak to walk, I tried to ignore it all.”

“That’s not your fault,” Nathan offered, but I continued despite his petty attempt to stem the flow of words.

“And when she ODed in her room while I was cooking dinner? You’re trying to tell me that wasn’t my fault? That was when I couldn’t lie to myself anymore. That was when I finally had to look at her and see what she really was, what she had been for damn near a year. I finally had to see her bruises, the punctures in her arm and between her toes, the way her body had so obviously been used by the men supplying her with the shit that took her life. But by then it was too late, wasn’t it? I’d already put her in the ground with all the lies I told myself. I may as well have been holding the needle.”

I went quiet for a moment, the memories drifting through my head, taking a little piece of myself with them. “Don’t tell me it wasn’t my fault.”

A silence fell between us, uncomfortable and heavy.

“So, yeah,” I whispered, my voice hoarse and quavering. “Yeah, I get it. Sometimes we don’t want to see the truth, because it would mean we’re the monsters. And that’s not an easy thing to look in the mirror and accept.”

“But we can’t change the past,” Nathan said, his voice warm and tender. “We can’t go back in time and undo the damage we caused with our willful ignorance. The only thing we
can
do is…”

“Change the future,” I finished for him. “Yeah. I know. But it doesn’t make it better.”

“Not if you don’t let it,” he said. “Sandra… what I did… what I
didn’t
do… that’s going to take a long time for me to forgive. And I’ll work through it, someday. But what happened to you and your sister? That was a lifetime ago. That’s something you’ve paid for time and time again. I can see it in your eyes. Haven’t you punished yourself enough? What would Jenny say?”

“Jenny’s dead,” I said. Even though it had been years, tears sprang to my eyes like I’d lost her just yesterday. “She can’t say anything.”

“But
you
can,” he insisted, standing up from the table and walking to my side. He knelt down on the ground and took both my hands in his, and I gasped audibly. “You can tell yourself you’re forgiven. You can
stop
telling yourself that you’re worthless and to blame. You can tell yourself it’s time to move on and that you’ll never make the same mistakes again. And you can tell yourself that you’ll always be there for young people like Jenny who got lost along the way, and that you’ll use your position in the police department to offer them a way out.”

I looked down at our hands, my vision blurred by my sorrow. This was the first time since I’d known him that Nathaniel Hale took the time to ask me about my past. It was the first time I genuinely believed he was listening to me. Staring at our entwined fingers I just wanted to cry. It was beautiful.

“Doesn’t that seem a hell of a lot more fair to you than spending your whole life as a prisoner of your own guilt? And doesn’t that seem more fair to the lives you could save by doing so?”

I stared into his eyes, into those gold-green gems glittering in the candlelight. I was looking for the lie, for the thing that would tell me he wasn’t sincere. I didn’t believe anybody could know what I did and tell me to forgive myself. I didn’t believe anyone could look at me the way he was looking at me right now and really mean it.

But I couldn’t find it. I couldn’t find anything but honesty and acceptance. This was a man I’d known only as a sexual fling and a childish asshole, but now, looking into his eyes, I felt like we were one and the same. We were both looking for redemption. What if we’d found it in each other?