Wet Work: A Dark Bad Boy Romance Page 4

  There was no way I was letting her get behind the wheel of the car, though. I’d seen too many accidents caused by alcohol. My life wasn’t a pretty one, and I didn’t want to think of her as the next victim. Besides, she hadn’t told me anything, and I didn’t want to lose any information.

  “It’s not a problem. Really.”

  She tried to protest, mentioning Uber or some other taxi. I opened the passenger door and guided her in, not taking no for an answer. I closed the door behind her and walked around the car.

  The seat was so far forward I had to move it back before I could even get in. I didn’t bother adjusting the mirrors since I wasn’t going that far. Fussing with the car was starting to annoy me, but it wasn’t the car that was the problem. I’d wasted a lot of time and gotten nothing for it. I needed answers and time was running out. The Venom Chasers wanted information on Jonas. They were getting itchy, and they were looking at me to give them something to scratch. They wanted to avenge Jonas’ death and at the moment all clues, or lack thereof, suggested it was Demon Aviators out of Newton. They were our rivals, and they were more than capable of making someone disappear without a trace.

  I wasn’t frustrated with her, though. Not in the least. The afternoon had been a waste of time but not the effort—I had a foot in the door now. And if I had to be honest about it, spending time with Leah had been fruitless but nice. I smiled as I backed out of the parking lot. I didn’t have a lot of nice in my life. The contrast was refreshing.

  I looked over at Leah. Her eyes were closed, and her head was leaning back against the seat. She wasn’t asleep, but she was fading quickly. She was going to feel this one in the morning. Or rather, considering how early it was, a bit later this evening.

  I couldn’t remember the last time I’d driven a car. I’d been on my bike since I’d started carting myself around because, at the time, it was the only thing I could afford. A fifteen hundred dollar Honda, and I had been free.

  That had led me to the Venom Chasers and a bike upgrade. I’d been part of the VCMC for three years. I’d starting out as a lackey and had worked my way up to a more specialized position by doing whatever was asked of me. I discovered that I had a way with people, so now information was what I did. I had the charm and the looks to pull it off, and I was good at getting people to talk even when they didn’t mean to. That was the reason I was here. That and nothing else.

  I glanced at her again as I took a more direct path back to her house. She opened her eyes when I parked in front of her house.

  “We’re home,” she said. She looked at me, her eyes confused. “You know where I live?”

  Shit. “You told me your address,” I said with conviction.

  “I did?”

  “Yeah, when you gave me your keys.”

  “Oh. Right.” She didn’t dispute it, which meant it she couldn’t remember, and I breathed a small sigh of relief.

  Leah opened the car door and got out. She stumbled onto the pavement and then turned around, looking at me. “Thanks,” she said.

  I got out of the car and walked around to her, handing her the keys. “It’s your car, I’m not leaving with it.”

  She looked like she felt stupid. “Right,” she said again and took the keys from me. She looked at them and then up at my face. “I don’t always get this drunk, you know.” It was cute that she was trying to defend her image.

  I shrugged. “We all have rough days. I drink, too, when things go wrong.” And when things didn’t. And whenever I could in between.

  She nodded and held out her hand. “You’re great for taking me home. Thank you.”

  I looked at her hand and couldn’t help but smile. She was offering me her hand. No hug, no impromptu kiss, no offer to come in and fuck her stupid. Her hand. I shook it and looked at her with a smile. She was a weird one. Women usually wanted to drag me off to their beds, especially when drunk, but she was keeping her distance. It was intriguing. What was it they say about forbidden fruit and wanting only what you can’t have? This made her that much more desirable.

  “I’m sure I’ll see you around,” I said. She smiled, ducking her head with a blush as she turned away, walking to her door. She stopped just before unlocking, jingling her keys.

  “How’re you going to get back to your bike?”

  “I have a friend close by. I’ll ask him to drop me.”

  She nodded and unlocked her door, despite fumbling for the right key. She closed the door behind her, and I was alone on the street. I pulled out my phone and called for an Uber. I could probably get one of my brothers to come pick me up, but I didn’t need that shit right now.

  Chapter Six

  I opened my eyes. Light from my undrawn curtains pierced my vision, and it felt like a thousand evil gnomes were driving spikes into my skull. I groaned and clawed at my temples. I hadn’t drunk like that since I’d left Indiana State. The hangovers were one thing that I definitely didn’t miss. The doorbell sliced through my head, shrill and insistent, and I realized it was what had woken me up in the first place.

  I rolled out of bed. The world tipped on its axis, and I was sure I was going to puke on my carpet. Five seconds on all fours and I had it all under control again. Thank God.

  “Ah, fuck!” I said as I pushed myself onto my feet. I stumbled downstairs, hanging onto the rail for dear life. How I got to the bottom without breaking my neck was beyond me. I pulled the door open, and it enraged the gnomes when the sunlight hit me full on.

  “Jesus, Leah. You look like shit,” Abby snickered.

  “Thanks,” I muttered, using my hand on the knob to keep the world from spinning.

  Abby stood in front of my door looking resplendent—long brunette hair that I now envied for its length and not just its thickness, her makeup perfect, and a bright yellow dress that made me feel like the sunlight had just walked inside when she pushed past me into the house.

  “You went out last night? You never go out.” She sat down on one of my couches and waited for me to unstick my feet from the floor.

  “It was more like yesterday afternoon. At like, three,” I said as I gently closed the door; the gnomes settling down again once I was out of the sun.

  She frowned. “Are you okay?”

  Abigail was the one friend I felt I could lean on. She’d invited me to stay with her after my father’s death so I could blow off steam. She’d helped me move here—finding me my duplex and arranging some strong backs to unload my furniture when I’d decided to transfer—and she’d been there for me ever since. I’d roomed with her at State my first year, and we’d become friends. I’d been looking forward to rooming with her all through school, but she’d decided that school wasn’t for her and had left for some guy in the grunge band scene. That hadn’t worked out, but she’d stayed. We’d stayed in touch but hadn’t been this close until after I’d decided I needed a change.

  I sat down and yesterday crashed down on me like waves on the shore. The images floated up from the alcohol-induced fog. The body in the bag with the bloated, dead face... The police and their tape and flashing lights... The detective trying to be nice when the reason he was there in the first place hadn’t been nice at all.

  I shook my head. I wasn’t okay. I wasn’t okay at all.

  “I found a body yesterday.”

  Abby’s eyes widened. “A what? What kind of body?”

  I swallowed. This was hard to talk about. “A human body. In the tide pool. I thought it was a bag of garbage, but it was a body.” A lump rose in my throat. I wanted to cry. The combination with the hangover from hell made it seem like going back to bed was the best idea. Maybe I could stay there until it all blew over. How long could it take? A couple of months?

  Abby moved so she sat next to me. “This is crazy.” She pulled me against her for a hug. “I wish I’d been here.”

  She’d gone out of town for a job. Abby modeled clothes for Season 11 an up and coming women’s clothier based out of Portland.

  I sho
ok my head. “It’s okay, you couldn’t have known. Besides, you don’t want to know what I was like yesterday. I was a mess, got shitfaced, and now I feel like death warmed over.”

  She looked at me with sympathy. “Is there anything I can do?”

  She didn’t ask for more details. She didn’t ask about the police, or if they found something. She didn’t ask about the body and what it looked like. Abby understood that for me, a dead body took me back to the farm and the death of my father. She knew that I couldn’t talk about it without breaking down.

  I shrugged. “No.”

  She nodded then stood and walked into my little kitchen. She knew her way around, and I watched her over the counter with the two stools that separated the kitchen and living room as she poured water and spooned coffee into the machine

  I dropped my head in my hands. “My head is killing me.”

  “What did you drink?”

  “Gin and Tonic, and a lot of it.”

  She took two cups from the cabinet above the coffee machine, and then filled a tall glass with water and shook out two ibuprofens from a nearby bottle. “Take this and lie down,” she said as she handed me the water and the tablets. I knew the drill. I tossed back the pills and drained the glass.

  I leaned over with a groan and closed my eyes. I tried not to concentrate on the body. I tried not to think about all the horrible things that had happened yesterday. Instead, I thought about the bar where I’d been drinking.

  “Salty’s is a dump,” I muttered as I covered my eyes with my arm, hoping the weight of it would prevent my head from exploding.

  “Is that the place on Highcap?” she asked from the kitchen.

  “Yeah.”

  “Jesus, Leah! That’s the worst place you could go. You’ll probably need a tetanus shot! God only knows what kind of people go there.”

  I knew that. She was right, of course. I just hadn’t wanted to go anywhere I might run into someone I knew.

  Eyes still closed, I heard the machine gurgle, then a moment later I heard the soft knocks and bumps as she filled the mugs. The smell of coffee filled the room, and there was nothing better considering how I felt.

  Abby brought the two cups over and placed mine on the coffee table. I lay still a moment longer, but the smell of the coffee called to me, and I sat up, wincing as the world tilted and the gnomes started pounding their spikes harder—the evil little bastards.

  “Actually, I met someone there, and he wasn’t half bad,” I said as I reached for my mug. I picked it up and met her eyes as she waited for me to say more. “God, and I was such a mess, but he was a gentleman, and he brought me home.”

  “He brought you home, or you brought him home?”

  I took a sip of the strong black coffee and sighed. The kick hadn’t hit me yet, but just tasting the hot liquid made me feel better. “It’s not like that. He was just keeping me company.”

  “Was he hot?”

  “Oh. My. God. He was drop dead gorgeous, Abby. And it wasn’t beer goggles because he showed up before I got sloshed. He’s a biker type, you know with the leather jackets and the dangerous look? Pax—that’s what he said his name was.”

  “Pax? That sounds like something you go to the doctor for. He’s probably trouble.”

  I shrugged. “Maybe.”

  The chances that I would see him again were slim, so it didn’t matter. I wasn’t the kind of girl men like him went for. It was apparent in the way he wasn’t coming on to me. He had been flirty, but he hadn’t tried to do anything. Girls like me just didn’t end up with guys like him.

  “You know, I’ve never seen you really drunk.” Abby grinned as she sipped her coffee. “I’m kind of sorry I missed it.”

  I had both my hands wrapped around my mug, drawing heat from it. I wasn’t a big drinker anymore. I tried to keep things under control. I knew what it was like to lose control and I hated it.

  “You didn’t miss anything. When he got me home, I forgot we were in my car, and I couldn’t figure out why he didn’t drop me off and just leave. Then I shook his hand, Abby. Can you think of anything more embarrassing?”

  “Puking on him?” She giggled, and I joined in. It was funny, after all. A damn shame that he would never see me as the kind of girl he would want to sleep with, but funny.

  The water, ibuprofen, and coffee began to work their magic and one by one the evil gnomes began to die, pulling their spikes out of my skull as they went. Abby was a godsend, and by the time she’d prepared sandwiches for lunch, I was feeling nearly human.

  Nearly.

  I tried to send Abby away, feeling guilty for her hanging around and nursing a hungover girl back to life, but she refused to leave, shooing me into the shower instead. I showered, using every drop of the hot water, but when I emerged from the tiny cubicle, I realized I wasn’t going to die after all. I stepped out of the bathroom wrapped in a towel, my skin pink from the hot water. Abby was sitting on the bed with my clothes laid out.

  “Hurry up, we’re going to be late,” she said, not looking up from her phone.

  “Late? Late for what?”

  “Dinner, silly,” she replied as if talking to a five-year-old.

  And so my weekend had gone.

  I kept myself distracted with things around the house and going out with Abby. It was only at night when the quiet and darkness left me alone with my thoughts that I dwelled on the body.

  I kept an eye open for Pax, but I didn’t see him again. Why would I? He’d been at the scummy bar, and that wasn’t the kind of places Abby and I usually visited. Besides, I suspected he wouldn’t be interested in someone like me, not after I’d shaken his hand and gotten trashed in the middle of the day. There were certain things that were a turn-off, and an emotional, needy woman had to be somewhere near the top.

  On Monday, I spent twenty minutes in front of the mirror, talking to myself, as I got ready—about how everything would be okay. It wasn’t work that was the problem; it was just a location close to work. Things happened all the time. I didn’t stop going to convenience stores just because one got robbed once, did I? I tried to ignore the fact that this wasn’t the same situation, but it didn’t work.

  The upside was that I had little reason to be in the area of the tidal pool, not to mention the pool was only there at low tide. That meant there was rarely anything to see other than the ocean. The downside was the fact that I worked with the ocean every day, and now I was apprehensive about what it might offer up next.

  I took samples on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and I went out as scheduled. Being busy and on the ocean helped, but the joy I normally felt was a bit tarnished.

  When I returned to OIMB with my samples, I walked the path, trying to think of anything other than what I’d found the last time I made this trek. It didn’t work, and by the time I arrived in the lab I was panting, but not from exertion.

  I quickly began to prepare my samples. If I was efficient, I could get both of Friday’s samples, as well as today’s run, before I went home, but that meant no time for lunch. I started gas chromatograph with an attached mass spectrometer heating. I would load the samples when I got back, and by then the machine should be ready to go.

  “Leah? How’re you holding up?” Cindy asked when I joined the queue in the cafeteria, a cold sandwich from the sandwich machine in hand. “You look a little pale.” She paused, perhaps to give me a chance to say something, but I focused on waiting to pay for my sandwich and said nothing. “I saw you during the… investigation.” That was the nicest way she could put it, but it was still like a punch to the gut.

  She was another assistant, and I’d seen her pretty face and coal black hair in my lab door window, along with a few others, as Detective Reynolds had questioned me. She worked in the microbiology lab, squinting into microscopes at living things too small to see. We worked together from time to time but were nothing more than friendly colleagues.

  “I’m fine,” I lied as I pasted on a fake smile.

&n
bsp; She didn’t know the smile was fake and smiled in return as she nodded. “That’s good. If I’d been the one that found him...” She shuddered for effect.

  I nodded, keeping my smile in place until we’d paid for our food and she left to go sit with someone she was obviously more comfortable with. I guess it was always hard to speak to someone who’d been through something like this. You couldn’t say you understood because you didn’t. You couldn’t say you were sorry because you didn’t know what you were sorry for. And you couldn’t ask too much about it because it seemed inappropriate.

  It was fine by me. I didn’t really feel like talking to anyone at all, not even to make small talk.

  I left the cafeteria, with my sandwich and soda in hand. I’m sure they were talking about me, but I didn’t care so long as I didn’t have to participate. It’s always like that. Everyone always talks about the latest excitement and I was definitely going to be the midpoint of all that gossip for a while.