Rapid Fire (11 page)

Orangey
brown. Brown-out. The thoughts connected in his brain with an uncomfortable
click.

He remembered
how quickly she’d gotten hammered on four fingers of whiskey at his place.
Later, when she passed out half across his bed with tear tracks drying on her
cheeks, he’d figured she’d started early. Hey, it was Friday. He wasn’t going
to judge her for being a lightweight.

But now
he might have to do just that.

What if
she’d been drinking the day she went after Wexton Henkes? The reports said
she’d arrived unannounced and seemed normal enough when she’d asked to speak
with Henkes. But once they were seated in the living room, Henkes claimed she’d
become argumentative, then outright violent. She’d pulled her weapon, and when
Henkes had tried to disarm her, the firearm had discharged and he’d been shot
in the arm. Maya had fallen and struck her head, leaving her in a semi-comatose
state for nearly three days.

At least
that was what the reports said, and the evidence was more or less consistent
with the story. But with Henkes the only eyewitness…

Could the
truth lie somewhere else?

Deep in
thought, Thorne parked the Interceptor in the inner lot of the prison, the
parking area closest to the outer wall that separated the courtyards from the
cell blocks, overlooked by manned towers at each corner.

He
climbed out of the car, needing to move, to pace. Apparently sensing something
was up, Maya joined him, then leaned back against the car and folded her arms
across her chest. “What is it?”

Thorne
took a deep breath and tried to decide whether he was asking because it might
help the case, or because it would help him take her job. The latter thought
brought a sting of guilt, one that had grown stronger every hour since he’d
first realized whose job he’d been offered. It didn’t matter that the chief was
going to replace her one way or another, Thorne owed her better than to scheme
behind her back.

Unable to
deal with the dilemma right then, he said, “Look, I can’t think of a graceful
way to ask this, but is it possible that you were drunk when you went to Wexton
Henkes’s house?” When she hissed in a breath and her eyes darkened to storms,
he held up a hand. “I’m not judging or anything. Lord knows I have no right.
But it was obvious earlier that you don’t remember much,” maybe anything,
“about that night back at the academy. You were pretty plastered.” He jammed
his hands in his pockets and tipped his head down, so he could look at her over
the tops of his shades. “You can tell me, you know. I can help you deal with
it. I can—”

“I don’t
need your help,” she said, voice low. Embarrassed color rode high on her cheekbones
and a pulse pounded along the slim column of her neck. “I didn’t…I don’t—” She
broke off with a quiet curse, pushed away from the car and headed for the
prison security checkpoint, a clear signal that the conversation was over.

But
before Thorne could follow, she spun back, eyes blazing. “No, damn it. I’m
going to say this.” She took a breath and said, “You’re right, I don’t remember
that night in High Top Bluff. Nothing after that first drink. So I don’t know
if I told you that I developed an allergy to alcohol when I was nineteen, that
I brown out practically at the first taste.” Her lips twisted in a bloodless,
humorless smile. “I wasn’t always that way. I could keep up with the best of
them until—” She broke off, a shadow crossing her face. “Never mind. Not
important. What’s important is that yes, I browned out on you. But I’ll also
have you know that until that night with you, I hadn’t touched a drop in six
years.” Her hand lifted to touch her throat. “And I’ve been dry in the five
years since. That night was…” She lifted her shoulders helplessly. “I don’t
know what that night was.”

“It was a
mistake,” he said, feeling the slap of grief, of guilt. He’d been buzzed enough
that the voices in his head had been dulled to a background roar, buzzed enough
that he’d wanted her to join him in a drink. At the time, he’d thought her
protests forced, but once the tears started, he realized he’d been the one
doing the forcing. Or at least the persuading. Just a little drink, he’d said.
Don’t you want to keep me company?

If he’d
known…

Hell, it
wouldn’t have changed anything. That was the sort of man he’d been back then.
The sort of man she’d saved him from being. But in the process, he’d taken more
from her than he’d intended.

“My
mistake,” she said, agreeing with him and challenging him at the same time. “My
responsibility. I chose to drink your whiskey. I chose to do—” She faltered and
looked away. “Whatever we did.”

“Nothing,”
Thorne said quietly. When she looked at him, eyes bleak, he said, “We didn’t do
anything. We talked. You passed out. I tucked you in. End of story.”

He left
out the part where he’d sat up late into the night, watching her sleep and
trying to figure out what to say to her when she woke up, how to convince her
they could heal together. He also left out the part about how he’d woken up
alone and cursed her for it, how he’d gone looking for her and felt like he’d
been kicked in the chest when he realized she’d run.

She
sucked in a breath. “We didn’t…”

“No, we
didn’t.” He saw the relief in her eyes and felt a spurt of frustrated anger.
But he couldn’t blame her for thinking what she’d thought. He hadn’t been much
of a gentleman back then. Still wasn’t, for that matter, despite his mother’s
best efforts, which is why he pressed now, asking her, “You said you’ve been
dry since. How about the night you went to Henkes’s place and shot him in the
arm? Did you drink that night? Is that why you can’t remember the struggle, and
why were out of it for three days after?”

“No,” she
said, quietly. “I didn’t drink that night. I swear it.”

But he
thought he caught a flicker in the back of her eyes, confusion maybe, or doubt.
He took a step forward, needing to know. “Maya, talk to me. I can help.”

Almost
without conscious volition, he lifted a hand to move a strand of dark hair away
from her cheek. His finger grazed her soft flesh.

And an
image ripped through his carefully constructed barriers and nearly brought him
to his knees.

MAYA SAW
HIM FLINCH. HIS skin grayed and his eyes went dark with shock and something
else. Maybe fear.

Her angry
shame gave ground to concern. “Thorne? Are you okay?” She reached for him,
thinking to guide him to the car, to the curb, before he fell.

“Don’t
touch me!” He staggered back, reeled and nearly fell before he was able to
brace his legs and stand, breathing quickly, hands clutching at his sides.

Then he
took a long, shuddering breath and his eyes cleared. His hands stilled.

And his
expression darkened with a dread emotion she couldn’t define.

“Thorne?”
she said, taking a small step backward, away from him. She’d never seen him
look so grim. So violent.

Then the
darkness was gone, blanked from his eyes and face so thoroughly she might have
imagined it. He blinked twice, straightened to his normal stance, cleared his
throat and nodded to the checkpoint guarding the entrance to the next layer of
prison security. “You ready to talk to Barnes?”

Maya
stood her ground. “I’m not letting you off that easy. What the hell just
happened?”

He jammed
his hands in his pockets and started walking. “Nothing.”

Instead
of grabbing him, she ducked around in front of him and blocked his path. When
he stopped and glared, she crossed her arms and lifted her chin. “Try again.”
Remembering the rumors of why he’d been assigned to a teaching rotation, how
he’d gone undercover and come out with post-traumatic stress disorder and
delusions of ESP, she said, “Did you have a flashback?”

His lips
twisted in a smile that was utterly devoid of humor. “I haven’t had a flash in
five years.”

His words
echoed her own—I haven’t had a drink in five years—and the look in his eye told
her it was intentional.

He was
lying to her just as she had lied to him.

That made
them even.

Or did
it?

Minutes
later, Maya found herself on the wrong side of a sheet of one-way glass. The
corrections officer who’d escorted her to the narrow, gunmetal-gray viewing
room gestured to the dark glass panel that took up most of one wall. “They’ll
bring up the lights in just a minute and you’ll be able to see the interview
room. The volume control for the speakers is down there on the right.”

“Thanks,”
Maya said, trying to keep her voice friendly because it wasn’t his fault Thorne
had suddenly changed his mind and decided he didn’t want her in on the
interview. She wasn’t sure whether he was punishing her for their argument out
in the parking lot, or if he’d developed another theory, but he’d been
immovable on the decision.

The
corrections officer nodded and closed the door behind him when he left. A lock
clicked into place, and moments later the lights came up in the adjoining room,
which was painted the same gunmetal gray as her room, and held a bolted-down
table and two chairs.

Thorne
stood behind the table, staring at her.

She knew
he couldn’t see her, knew he was probably staring into space, thinking of the
coming interview. But his intense gaze locked on hers through the one-way glass
as though he knew precisely where she was, precisely what she was thinking.

She felt
the click of connection, felt a spear of heat in her core, and cursed herself
for the weakness that drew her to bad-ass men, the sort who drank and lied and
manipulated the truth to suit their needs.

The good
guys she’d dated had left her cold, while the damaged, angry ones made her
burn.

And left
her charred in the aftermath.

“My
choice, my responsibility,” she said aloud, and as though he’d heard her
through the one-way audio hookup, Thorne looked away, breaking the connection.

They both
heard the clang and bang of the far door being opened, the one connected to the
prison itself. Thorne leaned up against the wall with his arms folded over his
chest and a bored expression on his face.

Nevada
Barnes appeared in the doorway, flanked by two guards.

Seeming
small in his orange prison jumpsuit, the gaunt-faced Barnes shuffled toward the
table, his slow, short strides making him look as though he was shackled,
though his wrists and ankles were bare of chains. His narrow shoulders were
hunched, his body thinner than the last time Maya had seen him, when she’d sat
at the back of the room during his arraignment and tried to figure out what
made him tick. What made him kill.

Which
parts of the plan had been his and which had come from his master.

Barnes
sank into the flimsy plastic chair at his side of the bolted-down table. His
orange jumpsuit settled around him, like a deflating balloon, making him look
empty. Hollow. Dried-out, as though something else had been animating him from
within while he’d committed the crimes.

“I got a
message that you were ready to talk to me,” Thorne said. He didn’t move from
his position against the wall, keeping the high ground as the guards backed out
of the room and closed the door.

Barnes
turned his head and looked toward the reflective glass. “I said I was ready to
talk to the shrink.” He spoke slowly, as though each word was an effort. “Not
you, though. The woman. The pretty one. Maya.”