Carnal Passions Presents
Search Me
By
L. A. Witt
This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents and dialogues in this book are of the author's imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is completely coincidental.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Carnal Passions
A Division of Champagne Books
www.carnalpassions.com
Copyright 2011 by L. A. Witt
ISBN 9781926996714
December 2011
Cover Art by Amanda Kelsey
Produced in Canada
Carnal Passions
#35069-4604 37 ST SW
Calgary, AB T3E 7C7
Canada
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Smashwords Edition
Dedication
To Andy.
One
Gun in both hands, I inched down the hall of Nick's apartment. The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end, my nerve endings tingling and my senses on high alert for any indication there was someone here. So far, the apartment was empty. Nothing had been disturbed.
"Nick," I said over my shoulder, keeping my voice down. "Did you leave your bedroom door open or closed?"
"I don't know," he said. "Probably closed."
I pursed my lips. Up ahead, the door was ajar.
As I took another step forward, I said, "Stay up against the wall."
Fabric rustled behind me, so I didn't look back to make sure he'd done as I asked. Instead, I continued toward the door, listening for any movement beyond it. If Jesse was here, he could be in any state of mind. Lucid. Volatile. Going through withdrawal. In the middle of a high. The kid was mentally ill anyway, plus he was a crack addict. After he'd attacked Nick the other night, breaking his nose and nearly strangling him, there was no predicting what would be going on in the kid's head now.
At the door, I paused for a moment, listening. Then I nudged the door open with my foot.
Everything happened so fast. So goddamned fast. He must have been completely still, completely silent, and I didn't see him until he raised the gun. Until the muzzle flash startled me, sent me stumbling back in the same instant fire ripped across the side of my arm and a donkey kick's worth of force hit the center of my chest.
Nick tried to steady me, but we both went down.
As he scrambled to his feet, I gripped my upper arm. It was a minor wound. Grazed me. My chest ached where my vest had stopped the second bullet, and breathing took some extra effort, but it was nothing serious.
And Jesse was still here.
"Andrew, are you okay?" Nick asked. Concern and fear were etched all over his bruised, cut-up face.
"The gun." I coughed, then spoke through clenched teeth. "Get my gun."
The pistol that had been in my hands had fallen just beyond the open doorway, so Nick took the revolver from my ankle holster.
From the other side of the doorway came a hysterical, familiar voice: "Oh God, oh God, oh God…"
"Jesse, put the gun down," I called out. I moved to my knees. "Jesse…"
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to, I'm sorry," came the shrill, shaky response. "I didn't mean to, Mark, I didn't—"
"Jesse, just calm down." I kept my voice low. The kid only knew me by my undercover name, and probably had no idea I was a cop. He was already delusional and had long ago bought into a charade my partner and I had put on for months. As I tried to figure out how to defuse this situation, I noticed Jesse had dropped his weapon. The noise and the kick must have scared the shit out of him. That, or he'd realized he'd hit me—not Nick, the one he probably wanted to shoot—and freaked.
Dropping my voice a little lower, I said, "Nick. His gun. It's on the floor." I nodded toward the bedroom.
Nick looked. Then he turned to me and mouthed, "What do I do?"
"Just stay there." I gestured at the revolver in his hand. "Aim the gun at the doorway."
He cocked his head. "Aim the—"
"Just do it. He goes anywhere near either gun, do not hesitate to fire."
Nick nodded and drew the hammer back. He swallowed hard, his Adam's apple bobbing between the purple and red welts across the front of his throat. I thought he shuddered. He had to have been scared out of his mind, but he did as I said, adopting the shooting stance I'd taught him and aiming his weapon at the bedroom doorway.
"Jesse, move where I can see you," I ordered.
"No, no, I can't, it's—"
"Jesse, move where I can see you. Now."
Tentative, unseen movement shuffled across carpet.
"Jesse, I'm not fucking around." I sucked in a breath as I gingerly pushed myself to my feet, still clutching my wounded arm. "Get in front of the doorway with your hands in the air and don't touch that gun. Come on, Jesse."
Another step.
"Can you see him?" I asked.
"Not yet," Nick said.
"Come on, Jesse," I barked. "Now."
"Please don't shoot me," came the shrill voice from the other side. He was crying now, almost hyperventilating.
"I'm not going to shoot you unless you reach for a gun," Nick said. "Come out now, or I'm coming in."
Jesse stepped into view. His eyes were wild with fury and probably no shortage of chemical influence, but also red from crying. His hands were up and his face was blotchy, vertical streaks marking where tears had cut through the dirt on his skin. He struggled just to breathe in between sobbing, and when he looked past Nick and saw me, he cried even harder.
"Oh, God," he moaned. "I'm sorry, Mark, I'm sorry…" He whimpered and shook, brushing frantically at his arms like he had unseen insects crawling all over him. His legs trembled under him as he rocked back and forth. Fuck. He was probably coming off a high, maybe even a binge, and if ever a crackhead was going to be volatile and dangerous, this was it.
"Jesse, put your hands back up," Nick said calmly.
Jesse's hysteria shifted to anger when he glared at Nick.
"Fuck you. I wanted to hit you, not…" He looked at me again and crumbled into renewed crying. "Mark, oh God, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to, I'm so..." He mumbled something after that, sobbing and struggling to speak. He started to sink to the floor, way too close to my gun for comfort.
"Stand up, Jesse," Nick said sharply. "Stand up and put your hands where I can see them. Now."
Jesse obeyed, but stared at Nick with nothing but rage in his eyes. "You killed Chelsea." His voice cracked and he blinked rapidly. "You killed her, I saw you, I saw you, I tried to save her…"
"Jesse, I didn't kill anyone." Nick's voice shook, but the gun in his hands stayed rock steady.
"Listen to him, Jesse," I said. "He didn't kill anyone. Chelsea's alive. She's fine."
"No, she's not," Jesse said. "I'm not stupid, Mark. I saw her. I fucking saw her."
"And you damn near killed me," Nick growled.
Jesse crumbled into incomprehensible crying and mumbling.
Struggling to keep my voice calm, I said, "Chelsea is not dead, Jesse."
"You're both lying." Jesse's voice inched toward even greater hysteria. He tore at his own hair, wavering back and forth on shaking knees. "She's dead, I saw her, and they moved everything out of her house and took it all away, and—"
"Jesse, I can call her," Nick said. "We'll let you talk to her. She's alive, I promise."
Jesse clutched his hair and shook his head and fidgeted. "You're lying. You're lying. I'm not stupid, Mark, I'm not stupid and she's dead, I saw her, I saw what he did to her, I saw it, you—"
"She's not dead, Jesse," Nick said.
"You're lying!" All at once, Jesse went for a gun on the floor, and Nick fired. The sound and recoil must have caught him off guard, especially with the vertigo from his concussion, and he grabbed the doorframe for balance.
Jesse dropped to the floor, screaming. For about two seconds, I thought he was neutralized and this might be over, but then he lunged for one of the guns.
"Nick! The gun!" Without thinking, I shoved Nick out of the way. A gunshot. Pain. More shots.
I dropped to my knees, holding my arm. The wound was worse than it had been earlier. Far worse. No, no, it wasn't. This was a new one. A deeper, bloodier one, right through my upper arm.
"Oh, fuck…"
A hand materialized on my shoulder.
Nick's voice sounded far away as he said, "Are you—"
"Get the gun," I said through my teeth.
Nick left my side. I was vaguely aware of movement, of Jesse moaning beside me, but more than anything, I was aware of the hot blood slipping through my fingers and over the back of my hand. My head spun. I slumped forward, my vision turning black, and from nowhere, Nick was beside me again.
"Easy," he said. "Lie back." He guided me onto my back, which slowed some of the spinning. Then he was gone again. Panic rose in my throat, alternately directed at the wound, my waning consciousness, and Nick's absence.
His voice and presence returned. "Look, I'm a paramedic and one of these guys might be bleeding out." Who is he talking to? "I need both hands to do this. Just send help and send it now."
A second later, something clattered beside me. A gun? A phone? Fuck if I knew, because the pain in my arm worsened. Someone was moving my arm. Squeezing it.
"Keep a tight grip on this," Nick said, guiding my hand to a towel he'd wrapped around my arm, "and hold it against your side. It's going to hurt like hell, but don't let go of it."
I gripped the towel, which sent daggers of pain shooting through the wound. "Fuck, that hurts."
"It's going to. But don't let go."
I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. I looked around at the blood and bullet holes in the room. "Looks like you're fucked for your damage deposit," I muttered.
Nick chuckled. "And I thought I had a dark sense of humor." He nodded at my arm. "Keep holding that."
He started to stand.
Panicked, I seized his wrist. "Wait, where are you going?"
Nick gestured at Jesse. "I have to help him. He's bleeding badly. I'm not going far and help is on its way."
"Nick…" My heart pounded. My head spun faster.
Don't leave me like this. Nick, don't leave. Don't go, please.
But he got up. As I fought to stay conscious, to see through the pain and my fading vision, he got up and walked away.
He walked away.
Nick…don't leave me like this…
~ * ~
My eyes flew open and I pulled in a breath.
That same fucking dream again.
I wanted to tell myself it wasn't real, that it was just a damned dream, but I knew better. Sighing I rubbed my eyes. The dull ache in my other arm reminded me that no amount of "it's not real" would change the fact that the dream was real. It had happened. The better part of a year ago, yes, but whether it had happened back then or just now, it was anything but "not real".
I fidgeted, then cursed under my breath. No wonder my arm ached: it was pressed between the back of the couch and me. I moved just enough to free my arm, then raised it, bending and straightening my elbow gingerly. Same thing happened last night. One of these days, maybe I'd learn how to sleep on the couch without fucking up my arm. Like facing the other direction or something.
Then again, it would all be a moot point if I just got up and stayed in the bedroom, but I couldn't. Not now.
I couldn't sleep in the bedroom because Nick was gone.
I was used to spending nights apart, but this was different. This wasn't like when he stayed at the firehouse for his three day shifts. During his rotations, he was gone for a few nights, and when that was over, he came through the front door, sleepy-eyed and exhausted, in the morning before I went to work. Not this time. He was really gone this time. Not moved out yet, but all it would take was a borrowed pickup truck, some cardboard boxes, and a few hours to take care of that.
He hadn't decided yet if this was permanent, but it didn't feel temporary to me. There was too much finality in the click of the front door two nights ago. He didn't storm out. He didn't slam the door. He just quietly said he had to go, needed to go—Nick, please, don't go—and slipped through my fingers.
I exhaled and rubbed my forehead, swallowing the lump that kept trying to rise in my throat. We'd had problems for a while now, but I'd been so sure we'd be all right. Even when we'd fought and couldn't stand the sight of each other, when we went days on end without speaking, I knew we'd make it through. Somehow, we'd make it through.
I thought we would, anyway. There was never any doubt in my mind that what we had was solid enough to weather damn near anything.
Now, all I knew was that Nick's side of the bed was empty.
Two
"You, my friend, look like hell." Detective Macy Lombardi, my partner, dropped into her chair at the desk in front of mine.
"Good morning to you, too," I muttered.
Concern knitted her eyebrows together. "You and Nick still having problems?"
"Oh, just a few." I reached for my coffee cup, but when I picked it up, it was empty. Just like it had been twenty minutes ago when I realized I needed to go refill it.
She folded her arms on the edge of the desk and cocked her head. "Have you guys talked?"
I pushed my empty coffee cup aside and closed my eyes. Rubbing my forehead with two fingers, I tried to ignore the noise of the precinct—ringing phones, chattering voices, shuffling papers, scraping and rolling chairs, doors banging closed—but even if the place was dead silent, my head still would have been throbbing. Lack of sleep, not enough caffeine, generally feeling like—
"Andrew?"
I looked at Macy. "We haven't talked. Not since he left."
She scowled. "You aren't giving up on him, are you?"
"No, I'm not." I rubbed the back of my neck and avoided her eyes. "Can't say the same about him, though."
"Well, you know where I stand on the issue. You guys either need to talk this thing through, right down to all the uncomfortable shit that I know you haven't discussed, or throw in the towel before the stress kills you both."
Sighing, I said nothing. She was right, after all. Wasn't she always?
"Shit." Macy stood suddenly, and I looked up. "It's almost nine. We should get out of here if we're going to meet with Haines on time."
"Crap, already?" I looked at my watch. Sure enough, we didn't have a lot of time, so I got up, grabbed my jacket and keys, and we headed down to the parking garage.
After our respective injuries during an undercover job, not to mention having our cover blown, Macy and I were mostly relegated to desk detail these days. Our faces were too well known in Masontown—the seedy neighborhood that served as the hub of the city's thriving drug trade—for us to be on the streets much, but we still discreetly met with informants in other parts of town as part of the ongoing investigation. It wasn't the same as our more intense, firsthand involvement, but we were both content to work with a bit less excitement after each getting a little too closely acquainted with the Grim Reaper.
On a day like today, when my mind wanted to focus on one thing and one thing only, I welcomed the opportunity to get out of the precinct. It kept me busy, kept my mind on my work, and didn't let me wallow at my desk. Even if the informant was an asshole who was going to wind up with a bullet through his balls if he kept leering at Macy and smarting off to me.
"I'm going to hand that guy his ass one of these days," I growled into my coffee at a diner down the street from the precinct.
Macy laughed. "You're so adorably protective, Andrew."
I rolled my eyes. "Oh, whatever. He's a jackass."
"We're not pretending to be married anymore," she said with a smirk. "You can stop playing the territorial husband."
At that, I laughed. "Macy, darling, if we were still pretending to be married, I'd tell him to have at it."
She scoffed and glared at me. "What? You asshole."
I shrugged. "You married me."
"Only because the chief told me to."
"What?" I put my hand to my chest and feigned offense. "So it was just an assignment to you? Just… a marriage of convenience?"
"Convenience, my left tit," she muttered, lifting her coffee cup to her lips. "Isn't like you ever put out or anything."
"Sorry, my dear." I shrugged again. "You're not exactly my type."
She snorted, very nearly choking on her coffee, and we both laughed.
Then the bells on the diner door jingled behind me, and when Macy looked past me, her eyebrows rose slightly. "Pity I'm not that man's type, let me tell you"
I didn't even have to turn around. "Do I have to tell Tony you're ogling other men again?"
She waved a hand. "Considering every man who catches my eye these days is gay, he'll probably just laugh."
I chuckled. "Good point."
A second later, the object of her momentary affection slid into the booth beside me.
"Sorry I'm late," Eric said. "Brian had to bail, though."
"What?" Macy released a melodramatic, exasperated breath. "Here I thought I'd be spending my lunch surrounded by beautiful gay men, but now I'm just stuck with two of you?"
Eric laughed. "Guess you'll just have to make do."
The three of us made small talk which segued into shop talk. We were all involved in the same investigation, after all: after Eric's deep-cover investigation ended a few months ago, he resigned from the DEA and went to work with our department. Brian, his significant other, worked over in homicide, but since Eric had been in tight with countless players in the drug trade—after all, he'd spent months posing as James Merrill, the kingpin of one particular operation—he came to the narcotics unit. We'd become good friends over the last couple of months, which I supposed was inevitable between working together and the fact that he was dating my longtime friend. Now if Nick and Eric would stop striking sparks off each other…
Which will probably be a moot point sooner than later anyway.
The thought made my heart sink.
"Hey," Macy said. "Andrew?"
I blinked, then looked at my two lunch companions. They were both staring at me, and I wondered how long I'd gone quiet before she'd gotten my attention.
I cleared my throat. "Sorry, what?"
Eric cocked his head. "You all right, man?"
"Yeah. Yeah." I muffled a cough. "I'm fine."
They both exchanged glances, then eyed me skeptically.
"We were asking if you remembered whose turn it was to get the check," Eric said.
"I, um…" I absently reached for my long empty coffee cup. "I think it's Macy's."
She huffed. He laughed.
"I told you." He shoved the check across the table. "Go pay, woman."
"Woman?" She glared at him. "Do we need to take this outside?"
He put up his hands. "Are you arguing with me? I mean, you are—"
"Oh, fuck you." She picked up the check and stood. As she walked past him, she shoved his arm, and all three of us laughed, though I was pretty halfhearted about it.
After she'd gone, Eric turned to me, his expression more serious.
"You sure you are all right?"
I sighed and pushed my coffee cup away. "Yeah. I'm just still stressed about everything with Nick."
He pursed his lips. "You guys still having problems?"
Not for much longer, at this rate.
"You could say that," I said quietly. "How are you and Brian doing?"
"Oh, you know." He shrugged. "The longer he goes without drinking, the less touch-and-go things are."
"I can imagine," I said dryly.
"We'll be all right, though." He furrowed his brow. "You think you guys will pull through?"
"Don't know." I sighed. "He left the other night and hasn't been back. Hasn't moved out, but isn't exactly running back in either."
"Oh, shit," Eric said quietly. "Have you—"
"Talked to him?" I kept my tone even; my frustration wasn't directed at Eric, so I didn't want to snap at him. "Not yet. I need to."
He nodded. "No kidding. Sooner than later, if he's already out the door."
A knot twisted and tightened below my ribs. Eric had a point. The longer Nick and I let this sit, the more likely it was to settle into something permanent. Assuming it hadn't already, and I was just too stubborn to accept that.
By the time I had a few minutes to myself at my desk that afternoon, I couldn't wait any longer. Nick was leaning toward checking out and calling it quits, so if anyone was going to bridge this gap, it needed to be me, and it needed to be now.
Heart in my throat, I took my phone out of my pocket and thumbed a quick text.
I'd like to talk. Face to face, if we can.
I stared at the message for a long moment, second-guessing myself and wondering if—
Fuck it. I pressed the send button, and before I could decide if I regretted it, the message was gone.
I set my phone beside the stack of paperwork that needed my attention. I glanced at it. Again. Again. Minutes passed by. More of them. A dozen. Two. Three. An hour.
Exhaling, I scrubbed a hand over my face and pretended my stomach didn't sink a little lower with every passing minute. Nick was hardly one to ignore a text, even from me. Especially from me, if only because he couldn't relax or concentrate if there was something unresolved in his world. Then again, maybe for him this was resolved just shy of a moving van.
I took a deep breath and released it slowly. He was probably on a call. Whenever he was on duty, long silences were usually broken with a text that began sorry, I was on a call.
He had to be on a call. He wouldn't ignore me, especially if he was pissed at me.
Come on, Nick. Come on. I want to work this out.
Almost an hour later, about the time I was ready to shut off my phone just to maintain my sanity, a text came through.
Sorry, I was on a call. We can talk if you want to. I'm on duty until tomorrow morning, though.
I exhaled. Well, it was a start.
I wrote back, I can bring dinner by the firehouse tonight.
My heart pounded as I sent the message. Deep down, I expected him to suggest we do this over the phone, from some kind of safe distance.
After a full minute, a reply:
I'll be around.
The message was non-committal and unenthusiastic, but it wasn't a no. At this point, I'd take that.
At around seven thirty that evening, I walked into the firehouse with some takeout Chinese food. Nick was in the lounge with some of the other guys, and when I walked in, he looked up from watching the game, but didn't look too thrilled to see me. His expression was flat, blank, as neutral as he was capable of, and that did nothing to settle my nerves. I had hoped for a flicker of something to give me a hint how this evening would go, whether it was an irritated scowl or a not-quite-suppressed grin, but he gave me nothing.
One of the firefighters, Bentley, wasn't quite so poker-faced. As soon as he saw me, he scowled, but didn't say anything as he turned his attention back to the game on television. He'd never said a word about his distaste for Nick's relationship with me, and neither of them let their mutual dislike get in the way when they were on a call together, but his quiet annoyance still got under my skin.
Nick and I left the guys to their game and headed out of the lounge. The night was warm, so we went outside as we often did.
"It's been a busy night." Nick pushed the door open and gestured for me to go out ahead of him. "Can't promise I won't get a call."
I shrugged. "Wouldn't be the first time it's happened during dinner."
He offered a tight-lipped chuckle, but said nothing.
We took a seat on our usual bench beside the concrete patio, and neither of us spoke as we pulled some cartons of Chinese food, packets of soy sauce, and cans of Coke out of the plastic bags I'd brought with me. The silence continued as we ate, and I tried not to notice how the scattered cartons filled—and almost masked—the distance between us on the bench.
Though neither of us spoke, I cast a few surreptitious glances at him in the silvery light from a single mercury vapor lamp above the door.
He was obviously exhausted, as was I. Both of our jobs were demanding, and the hours could be brutal, especially in his line of work. His shoulders slumped under his blue uniform shirt, and every motion—manipulating his chopsticks, opening the tab on his soda—seemed to require every bit of energy he had.
The thin, pale scar, slightly off-center on the bridge of his nose, was the only visible reminder of the night Jesse Kendall tried to kill him. Most of the time, I didn't even see the scar, but once in a while, the light caught it just right, reflecting off the sliver of slightly shinier skin. The light above the firehouse door glinted off it, and in my mind's eye, all the marks that had long since healed re-emerged: the bruising under his eyes, across his forehead, and down the length of his nose. The deep, angry marks across his throat from the tire iron Jesse had used to try to strangle him. The bloody scratches from Nick's own efforts to pry that tire iron off so he could breathe. He'd looked like hell the morning after the attack, but his appearance that night, when he was still lying on the floor of that hallway after a neighbor chased Jesse off, haunted me to this day. The sight of blood didn't bother me, but that much blood covering my boyfriend's face?
I shuddered.
"Cold?" Nick's voice startled me.
"No, I'm fine." I shifted, rolling my shoulders to ward off a chill. One fleck of light off that scar, and it had all came back, and with it, the deep-seated fear that had brought me here tonight in the first place: the realization of how easily I could lose him.
Nick cleared his throat and idly played with a flap on the carton in his hand. "So, you wanted to talk?"
I nodded and set my Coke can beside me on the bench. "Don't you think we should?"
With his chopsticks, he unenthusiastically picked at the chow mein in the carton. "We have talked. And we've argued. And we've…" Shaking his head, he put the carton aside and turned to me. God, his eyes looked so tired, and his voice was heavy with fatigue as he spoke again. "How much longer do we keep doing this before we realize we're more miserable than we are happy?"
"I want to figure out why we're more miserable than happy," I said. "I don't want to lose you, Nick." I'm scared to death I already have.
He shifted his gaze away.
Barely whispering, I asked, "Do you want to make this work?"
Nick swallowed. He didn't respond right away, which wasn't unusual for him. No man could mull things over like he often did, but I had hoped that question wouldn't require as much thought. The answer was a no-brainer for me, and every second of silence hurt a little more than the last.
Finally, he drew a breath and looked at me. "I want this to work. I do. It just seems like we've been a million miles apart for so long, I can barely remember what it was like before that."
I flinched. "Then how do we get back to what it was like before?"
"If I knew, I'd throw it out there," he snapped.
I put up a hand. Forcing my tone to stay even, I said, "Okay, you're right. But maybe we need to figure that out. Together."
He rubbed the back of his neck and sighed. "The thing is, I'm not sure it's even a question of wanting to make it work. It's a question of whether or not that ship sailed a long, long time ago, and we just need to accept it."
My heart sank. "Do you think that ship has sailed?"
He met my eyes, and his voice fell to little more than a whisper. "I don't know. I really don't." He drew a long, deep breath. "All we do is fight, Andrew. Things haven't been the same since we both got hurt, and I…" For a moment, he was quiet. Then, shaking his head, he went on, "It's been like that longer than it wasn't like that. So it's hard to imagine we can—"
The bell went off.
A second later, over the loudspeaker: "Code four, medical. Jackson and twelfth. Code four, medical. Jackson and twelfth."
"I have to go." Nick pushed himself to his feet. "We'll finish talking about this later."
I barely had time to draw a breath, never mind speak, before he was across the patio and the door had banged shut behind him. I exhaled hard and dropped my gaze into the carton of rice that wasn't going to get any more appetizing tonight. His abrupt exit didn't bother me. In our lines of work, personal problems took an instant backseat to professional commitments.
Even if he did make that exit even faster than he usually did when an alarm interrupted us.
I blew out a breath. We really were fucked, weren't we?
On my way out, I left the untouched cartons of Chinese food in the lounge for the guys, and took the rest with me.
The drive home was longer than usual. The road was clear, and my speedometer needle hovered well beyond the posted speed limit, but it felt like hours before the highway finally led me to the thin strip of unmarked asphalt that would take me to the dirt road on which I lived. All the way, mile after mile, I replayed our conversation in my head. More than that, I replayed the hopelessness in his voice and the sadness in his exhausted eyes.