Page 10 of Danger Close

He was immoveable, heavy. And unlike Ray, he smelled… like… coffee, leather, and the slightest hint of amber. The scent went from my nose right to my brain, sparking a memory I had long tried to suppress. Feelings of home, of dancing in Paris under the rain. The lust-filled gaze of the multi-colored eyes of a man who adored me.

I stopped struggling for an instant as my knees buckled beneath me, as the feel of his body, strong, but gentle, made me feel… confused.

“Princess?” His voice was laced with concern.

He sounded far away. Or maybe I was retreating back to a different place and time. I was folding into my own mind, separating from my useless body.

“Teresa!” He was louder this time.

I shook my head, trying to fight the fogginess taking over me. “You’re not him…”

“I’m notwho?” the stranger said.

I was determined to think of him that way. He was an unknown man. A stranger. He was a stranger.Un inconnu.

My heart squeezed as the memories came like an unrelenting, growing wave.

“You’re one of Ray’s men.” The corners of my eyes darkened. My vision narrowed on a tiny thing—an absolutely insignificant little birthmark that rested to the right of Adam's apple. A little heart, almost hidden by his beard.

He swallowed, his voice gentler, as he said my name again. And again. And again.

The world darkened. My mind shut down. The past collided with the present. The careful partitions I had placed inside my mind crumbled, and the structure collapsed. In my delirium, I whispered a name I’d done my best to forget, “Joe.”

Chapter 4

Simplified

Cobra

“Good going, Cobra,” I said to myself, as I held her limp form in my arms. “Sweeping them off their feet, like always.”

She’d fainted. After giving me a damn good fight, she shut down like a glitching computer. I looked like a creep, holding her unconscious body in my embrace. Two sedans and a van drove by, the motorists eyeballing me as they went. I adjusted her into a bridal carry before going on, conscious of the strange looks of anyone who drove by.

“This doesn’t look suspicious at all,” I groaned. “You were always trouble, weren’t you Teresa?”

She didn’t need to identify herself to me.

I would know her walk anywhere. It was the runway walk: graceful, steady, and my eyes stayed on her ass the whole time like I was a fucking teenage pervert.

Now, I was staring at her face, remembering every god damn thing: Dancing under a stormy night on a date that went horribly wrong, but so fucking right at the same time. Playing my guitar as I sang to her growing belly after we defied the odds, and got pregnant even with diligent condom use. Sneaking into her apartment—which had been provided by the modeling agency, and boys werestrictly forbidden—by scaling the old Parisian windowsills and wrought iron balconies like a cat burglar.

Thirty years on, she looked like the same girl I’d been so crazy about that getting married in a hurry was the second best day of my life. The best day, of course, was when I first held our baby.

“What the fuck happened to you, Teri?”What happened to us?

I’d gotten Trinity’s side of the story, but it didn’t take much to know that there was something murkier lying far beneath the surface. A woman didn’t fight this hard against a stranger unlesssomethingtaught them that they needed to.

Something bad had happened in the time we’d been apart. I had to figure out what it was, because that was the key to repairing whatever damage lay between mother and daughter. And hell, I was retired. That’s what a bachelor was supposed to do during their retirement, right? We were supposed to figure out how to fix things?

I didn’t have an old farm house to repair like McClanahan, my daughter’s old team sergeant. So I had to do the next thing. I’d repair my family.

“Well’p,” I said, adding a superfluous “p” while I walked towards the car. “I guess this simplifies the problem.”

She was gonna be seriouslypissedwhen she woke up.

Chapter 5

Clad in Darkness