The P.U.R.E. (27 page)

“Well, my apologies, but I could say the same thing about you.”

“I almost got fired for real after Anderson-Blakely sacked me. My superiors reprimanded me for losing my cover as an insider. If they’d an inkling how involved I’d become with you, they would have done it for sure.”

He’d lobbed a bombshell I hadn’t anticipated. “I felt horrible the first time you were fired.”
Don’t soften. Hold firm!
“They obviously didn’t fire you though.”

He fanned his hand. “No, but I’m on probation for three months. Not so healthy for my career as a field agent. They might still send me back to an analytical desk job like I had before. Honestly, I don’t think I’d mind too much because computer hacking and analytics is what I’m best at and why they recruited me.”

He paused, his lips pressed together, brows knitted. “The truth is … you’re a better field agent than I could ever be, Gayle. Your instincts were dead on, and I rode them like coattails.”

“Why would they fire you? You were defending me.”

“Doug’s a little fish, and we’re after the big fish. But I lost control because he touched you. You clouded my judgment, and that’s why they fire agents. I saved my skin by telling them what we found in Bob and Jeff’s offices, but I tried to keep you out of it. I had to. My heart nearly stopped when I turned around and saw you with Marilyn.”

“I think Burrows knows you lied about me because I gave him Jeff’s planner pages and office key.”

Jon shook his head and gazed off into the restaurant. “Yeah, he does
now.
I don’t think he’ll say anything because ultimately you helped bring the case to an end. Beating Doug so severely and blowing my cover …” he closed his eyes and sighed. “Making it personal is why they’d fire me.”

“Well, you were a tad extreme in how you beat Doug to a pulp. I’ve never seen anyone fight with such cool savagery. But I already told you all that … afterwards when … well, you remember.”

I sure did tell him—when he was screwing my brains out for the second time in his sister’s guest bed. The whole primitive animalism of how he fought for me and took me to bed less than an hour later had us burning up the sheets. I flipped my hand to signify my desire to end the topic despite having brought it up.

He too must have reminisced because his eyes darkened and a hint of a smile played upon his lips. I had unwittingly steered us into dangerous territory.

“I remember, but you’re more than welcome to remind me any time you like.”

“Don Runyon asked me out.” I blindsided him with a little cold water on the situation. “Do you know who he is?”

He glowered and leaned forward with unnerving intensity. “Yeah, he’s one of Jeff’s minions. What did you say?”

“I haven’t called him back yet. I’m not so sure what I
should
say.”

He bored holes into me, his gaze was so intense. “Tell him ‘no’. I don’t want you to date him or anybody else but me.”

“I assumed the Jon I thought I knew would say ‘no’, but I’m not so sure what the real Jon should or would say. Besides, didn’t we already determine I hadn’t even dated
you
yet?”

I hit my mark judging from the scowl he tried but failed to suppress.

“I should say ‘go and find out what you can about who Jeff sold insider information to’, but I’m not enough of a company man,” Jon said. “The best I can muster is, ‘I can’t stop you, but I’ll hunt him down and permanently damage him if he so much as lays a finger on you, job be damned.’”

I frowned. “Damn you, Jon,” I muttered after a long pause. He’d once again tapped into my baser instincts and got me right back under his thumb.

“What?” His eyes searched my face, his own a study in worry.

“Why do you say macho bullshit like that? I want you so badly I can taste it.”

He grinned. “Why are we still talking? Let’s go.”

• • •

Two Hershey’s kisses lay on the passenger seat of Jon’s car. I looked up at him, my arms crossed in front of me, head cocked to the side. “How the hell do you pull off these pranks?” I picked up the kisses and gave one to him as I unwrapped and ate the other one.

“I swear, Gayle. It’s not me; it’s always been Christine. I told you she adores you.” Jon lifted his brows, eyes wide with innocence, but again he laughed and undermined his words.

36

Jon drove me back to the parking garage. He wanted us to go to my apartment, but I refused, knowing where we’d end up. Instead, I insisted we go our separate ways to cool our jets a bit. Despite my body’s urgings, I was still angry with him for deceiving me. I couldn’t let sex—even what promised to be mind-blowing makeup sex—influence me. I didn’t call off our date, however.

When he dropped me off at the garage, I kissed him and told him goodbye. He didn’t look pleased with the chaste end to our reconciliation, but it served him right. I needed time alone to digest the whole story and nurse my bruised pride. Though Jon’s point of view had merit, I wanted him to gnaw a while longer on how much he’d pissed me off.

I unlocked and entered my apartment and tossed my purse in a chair. I had about three hours before my official first date with Jon. The place still needed some cleaning from Doug’s vandalism, but I wanted to do nothing more than kick back in my sweats and listen to music. In my bedroom, my sweatpants lay on the floor from the last time I’d lounged in them. I slipped off my skirt and sweater, wearing nothing but my bland bra and panties from Nuns-R-Us, and struck a few poses in front of my dresser mirror. I wasn’t as full up top, or as svelte as Thalia, but the curves I had were God-given. Perhaps he blessed me a bit too much in the trunk area. Lots of guys liked that, though, Jon being one of them.
Gotta love an ass man.
My abs and legs I loved—lean and strong from years of running. If only I had a few extra vertical inches to hang my stuff on.

I opened my dresser drawer, and a movement in the mirror caught my attention. Raising my eyes, I detected a shift in my closet door. I froze.

My mind flipped through a series of possibilities, some realistic, others entirely too fantastic thanks to an obsession with horror novels. The cockroaches grew pretty large in Texas, but I’d never seen any muscular enough to move a door, certainly not in my apartment. Had a mouse somehow gotten in?

Please, anything but a human … or zombie.

“Jon? Honey? Did you bring in all our pistols from target shooting practice? I’m so proud of how well you shot today. I’ll bet you could blow off a zombie’s head from at least fifty feet!” I said to the unknown person or entity that might or might not have been hiding in my closet.

As I continued to weave my threatening story, I seized the dowel I kept in my bedroom window and tiptoed to the closet door. It might function as a weapon, but I first intended to push open the door from a distance.

I tapped it open a few inches.

Nothing happened.

A few more inches.

Still nothing.

I moved to the other side and kicked in the door the rest of the way. It only opened to a little beyond ninety degrees before it bumped into the clothes hanging behind the door. Many times I had threatened to mutilate my apartment’s architect should our paths ever cross. Having to shut the closet door to retrieve articles hung behind it drove me nuts and creeped me out, too.

Silence. No movement.

“I must be losing my mind,” I said to myself as I tossed the dowel on my bed and walked back to my dresser to take off my jewelry and finish my hunt for a shirt.

My eyes returned to the reflection of the fully opened closet door, and again I would have sworn I saw movement. I kept my head down as I appeared to rummage through my drawers, but my gaze never left the door’s reflection. Someone or something had to be hiding inside, or my eyes were going.

My heart pounded even harder as I again considered my options. First thing to remember—if I could see him in the reflection, he could see me.

I darted past the closet and into the bathroom, where I shut and locked the door. I turned on the shower, cursing myself for not having brought my clothes in with me. Too late, I thought as I searched my bathroom for something to use as a weapon. I found a bottle of rubbing alcohol and a book of matches, but my apartment was a little too small for a baby Molotov.

I’d replaced the shower curtain, but the spring rod might work if shortened. I removed the handheld showerhead from its mount and pointed the stream down the drain. I added a soundtrack of show tunes so my intruder would hopefully think I was hunkering down for a while. The rod detached with a light tug. I slipped off the curtain and shortened the length to about four feet—a much more manageable size for taking a swing at a critter or a person.

Curtain rod in hand, I moved to the door and listened.

Silence.

I sang a new song, belting out ‘I feel pretty’, though I felt anything but and listened again.

Rustling and the soft padding of feet moved past the bathroom door.

I stifled a scream. Had I not had my ear pressed against the wood, I would have missed the sounds. With ninja-like stealth, I turned the lock and the knob, my left hand tightening its grip on the shower rod.

Pulling open the door, I stepped out into the short hallway that connected my bedroom to bathroom. To my right, in my living room, a man bent over the chair where my purse lay. He rifled through my bag. Had theft been his goal, he’d have taken the cash and credit cards and run off already.

He straightened and cocked an ear toward the bathroom.

Idiot me.
I should have closed the door behind me. The sound of running water must have grown louder and alerted him to the door’s opening. As he turned his eyes toward me, I charged at him with the shower rod hoisted over my head.

“Eeeeyaaa!”

He grabbed my purse, and for a split second, I made eye contact with Bob’s hired hand, Ron Fein. He seemed to recognize me too but acted less startled than I at the reunion.

I continued to advance toward him, brandishing the rod.

He ran for the front door, my purse in his hands. I’d be damned if he was going to make off with my new five hundred dollar purse and all my identifying information.

I gave chase. “Drop the bag, Ron!” My fight or flight hormones surged, giving me the strength and power of five Gayles on a good day.

I pursued him down the stairs, through the grassy commons area and across several narrow streets within the apartment community.

Gone was my fear. Pure rage flooded my brain over his violation of my privacy. He might have been a man, but he was older than me by at least a couple of decades and carried as many extra pounds
.

Where did Bob find this guy? At the thugs outlet store?

I continued to chase him, yelling and screaming as I waved the rod overhead like a midget Amazonian warrior. When he stumbled over a tree root, I caught up to him and swung, nailing him on the back. He yelped but continued to move. I swiped at him again with the rod and hit the arm he used to hold my purse.

“Gayle, stop!” he yelled as he turned to face me, arms outstretched to his side.

Gayle?
How did he know my name was Gayle, and how did he know where I lived? If he had somehow followed Jon and me home the night before, he should have thought my name was Tina.

“Give me back my purse!”

“Just give me what you stole from me last night, and we’ll go our separate ways, no harm done,” he said.

“No friggin’ way! How did you find me?”

I swung at him again, but he dodged my swing and charged, tackling me to the ground. I bashed the heel of my hand into his nose and jerked my knee up, missing his crotch but reaching his gut.

He grunted and rolled off long enough for me to scramble to my feet and snatch back my purse.

I threw the shoulder strap over my head so it crossed the front of my body, grabbed the shower rod he’d knocked away and raised it up overhead. “You mother fucker! Son of a bitch! You think you can steal from me? Terrorize me?” I struck him with the rod.

“Gayle, stop!” he cried.

“How did you know my name?”
Thwop, thwop
. “How did you know where I lived?”
Thwop, thwop, thwop.

When the rod snapped in half, I reached in my purse and withdrew my pepper spray. I blasted him in the head with a long stream. He screamed louder and clawed at his face where the spray hit him.

I raised up the fragment of the rod I still clutched for another round of blows, but someone caught hold of my arms from behind.

“Fire! Fire! Fire!” I shouted as I struggled against my captor.

37

“Let go of me!” I snarled and twisted to get free, but the iron-grip held fast.

A man I didn’t recognize ran to Ron and pushed him over onto his stomach. He produced a set of handcuffs and yanked his hands behind his back before snapping them on. The man rolled Ron over and pointed at one of the residents watching from his balcony. “You, please go get this guy a washcloth to clean off the pepper spray.” Still crouched on the ground, he turned his attention to me. “Miss, did this man assault you?”

“No! The son of a bitch was hiding in my apartment, spying on me! He took my purse and ran off! Not so tough now, are you? You jerk wad!” I lunged toward Ron, but the grip that held me was too strong. “Dammit, let go!”

“Gayle, be still now!”

I recognized the voice as Jon’s and stopped struggling. He loosened his hold and turned me to him, his expression one of worry and concern. That soon faded, and a scowl moved into its place.

“What the hell are you doing out here wearing nothing but your underwear and a purse and beating some guy senseless with your shower rod?” Tense laughter replaced the scowl but only for a second. He ran his hands up and down my arms as he spoke. Returning to my shoulders, he gave me a small shake before he released me.

“Isn’t it obvious?” I lifted my brows and jerked my chin toward Ron.

“Alright, Gayle! Woo-hoo!” A man cheered from the nearby balcony. “Looking good, baby girl!” I recognized him as one of the neighbors I occasionally chatted with at the mailbox and in the laundry room.