Wet Work: A Dark Bad Boy Romance Read online

  Chapter Seven

  There was nothing to find. I turned Coquille County Morgue upside down Friday evening after dropping Leah off. I’d asked to see Jonas Welborne and came up empty. Then I’d asked to see all the John Does. The attendant looked at me like I was bat-shit crazy and wasn’t allowed without some fucking form from the police. Then I’d asked to see the body that had been brought in earlier that day. The attendant had nodded in sympathy and asked which one. I told him the one that had been pulled out of the ocean, but he couldn’t help me without a name, and I was right back to square one. I had never wanted to kick the ass of a morgue attendant so badly in my life.

  Saturday afternoon, I’d chatted up one of the policewomen after her shift ended, plying her with fawning attention and beer, and gotten the investigating detective’s name along with an invitation to play a little slap and tickle. She was attractive enough, but I had more pressing matters to deal with.

  The detective wasn’t hard to find as he was in the phone book. I’d staked him out Saturday night and all day Sunday. He was a sad excuse for a man, in my opinion, living in a small run down house in a bad part of town, going to work on weekends, then back home, and nowhere else.

  Butch was on my ass, but it wasn’t like I could bust into the detective’s house and threaten him for the information. Not only would that potentially get me shot, but it would also bring heat down on the VC, and get a lot of attention on me, which was the last thing I needed when I wanted information under the radar. This was harder than it looked. I was usually so good at my job, but this was the first time I’d ever had to deal with bureaucracy, and I was finding it more than a match for my talents.

  Now it was Monday, and I was trying to work my way through the police department to get the fucking form for the fucking morgue so I could see the fucking John Does. My phone rang for the fourth time in half an hour.

  “Pax, you shit waffle, I need some answers. You’ve had all weekend.” Butch sounded pissed, and it annoyed me.

  If the roles were reversed, I would probably have felt the same, but I was doing what I could. Here’s how it worked, though. You had to have people who had information in the first place before you could extract it. So far, I’d come with a whole lot of nothing.

  “I’m doing what I can, Butch, goddammit.”

  “You want to fucking tell that to Jonas?”

  I rolled my eyes and groaned inwardly. “I’m doing what I can! I’m at the fucking police station right now!” I hissed, my voice soft but I knew he could hear the anger and frustration.

  Butch hung up before I’d even finished speaking and I stared at the phone, wishing I could hit Butch with a brick. He tried using emotional blackmail like a little bitch sometimes, and it was getting on my last nerve. I couldn’t produce anything if there were nothing to find, and even though the body had washed up, there was nothing special about it. Nothing in the news other than the fact that an unidentified body was found, and the police were in no hurry because they would eventually have the ID of the body from fingerprint or dental records, and the chick that had found the body was too shaken up to be of any use. I was the only one in a hurry and the one guy that didn’t know shit.

  I spent another hour dealing with the police but still left empty-handed. Since I wasn’t next of kin of anyone missing, or suspected missing, they weren’t going to allow me to go on a fishing trip to the morgue. I left the police parking lot and pointed my bike to the Rat and Parrot. It was a bar on the other side of town—the kind of place where I could pick up a good evening for myself. The women there were just classy enough to take home, but still slutty enough for a good time, and best of all, they rarely wanted me to call them afterward. Besides, the few that did always managed to get over me being a dick to them.

  I rolled into the parking lot and dismounted, taking a moment to smoke a cigarette before going in. When I was finished, I stubbed the butt out and walked in. The place reminded me of a student joint— the kind of place that had half price specials on a Monday night and photos on the walls of the regulars that had come and gone over the years, many of them under thirty.

  I wasn’t a student even though I fit the bill. I was young and just as full of shit as the rest of them. But at my age, I felt like I’d lived a thousand lives already and drinking my life away for no reason at all seemed like a waste of time. Besides, I could never relate to people who hadn’t had it hard growing up. They were all soft.

  I walked to the bar and sat down. Conrad was an old friend with muscles that bulged underneath his tight shirt and eyes that made women believe he was a bleeding heart. Guess we both had a bad boy routine down, which was why we’d hit it off when we’d first met. We’d gone different ways in our lives, but we were close once. He nodded at me when I sat down, and I returned the nod.

  “Jack, neat, please,” I said and pushed a twenty over the bar. He took it from me.

  “How’re you doing?” he asked while he poured the drink.

  “I’m doing fine.”

  He nodded. I didn’t return the question. I never did. He always asked even though I was off about it. Maybe it was his job to be nice to everyone. I didn’t give a shit about him because I felt like he didn’t really give a shit about me—it was all an act.

  When he put the drink in front of me, I thanked him, and that was where we left things by way of conversation. I told myself over and over again that if you didn’t lose friends along the way you weren’t changing, and if you weren’t changing, life was going to be very bleak. Everyone had to change.

  The crowd was thin on a Monday night despite their half price specials. I preferred it that way. Little groups chatted in the corner, their voices not heard over the music from where I was sitting, and the barstools were mostly empty. It gave me space, and that’s what I valued.

  “Are you following me?”

  I turned around and looked into Leah’s big blue eyes. My mind scrambled a little, and I thought about when I really had been following her. I smiled the smile that got women to look twice, and she smiled, too. She sat down on the bar stool next to me, on the same side as the first time and I was struck with an odd sense of déjà vu.

  “Looks like we just can’t stay away from each other, sweetheart.” I winked at her.

  She looked a lot more put together. Her hair was brushed and tucked behind her ears but curling up around the earlobes. She had put on a bit of makeup, and her smile was quick and easy.

  “It seems like you have a knack for drinking at odd hours,” I added. First, it’d been the middle of the day and now a Monday evening.

  She shrugged. “Sometimes a girl needs some distraction.” She flashed a cheeky smile. “Besides, I’m not drinking tonight. Despite what you saw, I don’t drink, as a rule, believe it or not.”

  Her smile was flirty, her eyes on mine for a reaction. Was she flirting with me? I leaned on the bar.

  “Well, I can provide all the distraction you need.”

  She blushed the way she had the first time. The shy creature wasn’t gone; just hidden. I studied her face. When she wasn’t talking to me or smiling, there was something about her that was a lot deeper and a lot darker. Something that was hidden under a mask of smiles and jokes, but it was close to the surface.

  I saw her eye Conrad, and I wondered what she saw in him—if she saw something more desirable than what she saw in me. The good girls, the ones that didn’t want to cross the line, went for him. The ones that craved danger went for me.

  “A Coca-Cola, please,” she said and fished in her bag for her wallet.

  I shook my head. “I’ve got this.”

  “Oh, no. I know exactly what happens when I let you buy me drinks.”

  I chuckled. “What could happen if you’re drinking soda?” I held up three fingers. “Scout’s Honor.”

  “Right,” she said, drawing the word out. She remembered what I’d said last time. She pushed money over the counter, refusing my offer. She was playing hard to get.
I wasn’t sure if she was trying to get me to like her. It was working, in any case.

  “So, you want to tell me what’s on your mind?”

  She wrapped her fingers around her glass when it arrived and took a sip, looking at me over the rim. God, I’d forgotten how big her eyes were. You didn’t see eyes like that on a woman every day.

  “Who says something’s on my mind?”

  I shrugged. The fact that I knew she was dealing with finding the body had to stay secret, and I didn’t want to give away the fact that I’d been after her in the first place for what she knew. It helped, of course, that we ran into each other now and it was completely by chance. She was reaching out to me. She was keeping this going.

  This was good. This was working. Maybe another drink or two with her, without getting her drunk, and she would decide that I was worth pursuing. After all, I could be exactly the kind of guy a girl like her needed in her life. I could be whoever the girls needed me to be, and there was nothing wrong with mixing business and pleasure.

  I looked her up and down—tight skinny jeans, a blouse that was cut low enough to make me wonder, and pumps. Yeah, a bit of business, but a whole lot of pleasure.

  Chapter Eight

  “Good!” I said, forcing some good cheer into my voice. “I’m glad you’re past whatever was bothering you Friday.”

  She took a deep breath and blew it out again in a shudder. She turned her glass around and around on the bar, holding it with a thumb and middle finger. “I don’t know about that. I try not to think about it. Talking about it makes me think about it. When I think about it, I have trouble sleeping.”

  I held my tongue, letting the silence work for me. The lost girl I’d dropped off at home last time only vaguely resembled the mature, controlled woman sitting with me now, even though she still had the doe-eyed innocent look about her. God, men had to go crazy for her. There was something insanely attractive about a woman like her. She was sexy and innocent—the kind of girl you wanted on her knees, with her ass to you as she screamed for more. I shook off the thought. I had to be in tune with her right now if I wanted to get her to talk at all. I shouldn’t be thinking about every way I could take her.

  She took another deep breath. “I told you I’m a hydrologist, right?”

  I nodded. “At the Oregon Institute of Marine Biology.”

  Her lips curled into a faint smile. “You remember.”

  I knew it that well because I knew where she worked; I knew where the body had been found. The OIMB was my current place of interest. I shrugged and gave her a lopsided smile.

  “If a pretty girl talks I tend to pay attention.”

  She blushed again and produced those dimples in her cheeks, and it was sexy. I wanted to kiss her. I wanted to take her home with me. I wanted to fuck her. I didn’t know why tonight she was such a sex bomb. I didn’t know why I wanted her so bad. I wanted to strip off her clothes and use every inch of her body for my pleasure. I shoved the thought away again, scolding myself for being perverted. She was traumatized, for God’s sake.

  “I was out on the ocean—collecting my samples. We sample the water in twelve places between four and six miles out.”

  I nodded in encouragement. I wanted her to keep talking. I didn’t care about the technicalities, but I didn’t try to rush her to the part of the story I was interested in. I let her ramble on, throwing in a word here and there to keep her going.

  “When I got back to the dock, I was walking back to the lab… and I found a dead body.”

  She said the last words quickly as if getting the words out fast would hurt her less. For a moment, she looked like she wanted to cry, the girl from Friday surfacing again. I’d known what she was going to say, but I acted surprised and a little shocked. I widened my eyes, rounded my lips, and pushed my head forward again. I knew body language. I was good at pretending.

  “Oh my God, Leah! That must have been terrible. Are you okay? No, of course, you’re not okay. This was Friday?”

  She nodded. She still looked shaken, but I didn’t get the idea she would spill tears on me, and I was relieved. I hated it when women cried around me. I didn’t know what to do with them, especially when it was usually my fault.

  “Yeah. But you’re right, it does feel a little better to talk about it.”

  I smiled at her, not the sexy smile I usually pulled but a sympathetic one. I put my hand on the small of her back, and she looked at me.

  “I’m so sorry,” I said softly. I was sorry, just not for the reasons she thought.

  She nodded. “Thank you.”

  I wanted to ask her what he looked like. I wanted to find out if any of the details suggested it was Jonas. I was trying to figure out how to do it without seeming ghoulish. She must have mistaken the silence for an invitation to continue.

  “He was all wrapped up. I saw his face,” she murmured as she stared into her glass.

  Something inside me sat up straighter. I took mental notes. This was it; this was where I was going to get a clue.

  “He looked so… dead. His face was all swollen and blue. His eyes staring into nothing. It freaked me out completely, and now that’s all I see when I close my eyes.”

  I frowned in mock concern. “Are you seeing someone about this? I mean, seeing a dead person floating in the ocean is hard-hitting stuff. I hope the police aren’t bothering you with identifying the body and things like that.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t want to speak to anyone about it. I told you. You’re the first person I told, besides a friend. I look at it like it’s a horror movie. It scares you, and you can’t sleep for a few days, but in time the memory fades.” She gave me a sad smile. “At least that’s what happens to me. It’s why I don’t watch horror movies.”

  “The police aren’t bugging you?” I needed her to say something about the guy. I needed to know who the fuck he was, dammit! I was starting to get agitated. I didn’t want to be all sympathetic and kind. I wanted answers.

  She shook her head again. “No, they’re not bugging me. I told them as much as I could, but the guy was no one I knew. They’re sorting the rest of it out themselves, thank God.”

  I watched her face for lies. I knew the tells. She wasn’t lying, though. She had no reason to. She just didn’t have any facts to give me on the body. She hadn’t recognized the face. After everything, I was no further than before. I still knew only as much as the news told me, which was nothing. I downed the whiskey in a frustrated gulp.

  Leah eyed me. “That was my first reaction, too.”

  I looked at my empty glass and then waved at Conrad for another. This wasn’t going my way. I wanted to get hammered and just forget about it all for one night. There was so much pressure on me to get this damn information, and a gang war, or not, rested on my shoulders.

  I swiveled my barstool so that my knee touched hers. She glanced down but didn’t make a move to break the contact.

  “I’m glad you told me,” I said, putting my hand on her knee, too.

  “I’m glad, too, actually. It feels good just to be able to get it off my chest, you know?”

  I nodded. “I get that. You found the body at your work, right? How’s that working out?”

  She shrugged and took a sip. Her glass was almost empty. “I’m coping, but it’s hard because every time I see the yellow tape, I think of it. Right now, I’m just trying to ignore it, but I’ll be glad when the cops take that stupid tape down.”

  I nodded and moved my hand again, sliding it a little higher up. I didn’t want to come on too strong.

  “Anyway,” she said and finished her drink. She waved at Conrad and ordered another glass.

  Conrad nodded and smiled the kind of smile that made the girls covet him.

  I watched Leah closely. She didn’t blush or smile back except in the way someone smiles at any waiter. She didn’t look the way she did when she was with me. It made me feel superior. Sure, I was a piece of shit, but I could get a doll like Leah and Con
rad couldn’t. She wasn’t interested in him. Maybe it was because I took her home that time when she was drunk. Didn’t women develop that thing where they fall for the guy that saved them?

  Whatever the case was, Leah only had eyes for me, and that made me feel like the man.

  I leaned on the bar and flexed. Leah glanced at my arm, sliding her gaze down the rest of my body before turning her attention back to Conrad who brought her another glass. I wasn’t planning on sleeping with her right now. I’d gotten everything I could from her, but it was nice to know that if it came down to that, she was willing. It was in her eyes when she looked at me, the way her lips parted slightly when she did and how her eyes dilated. She looked away and blushed when she realized I’d noticed.