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Decker looked confused for a moment before dropping his head to observe the wet patches on his shirt. “I look like a wet t-shirt jack-o-lantern” The tone was that same matter of fact one that held no amusement, but when he looked back at me, I saw the humor dancing in his eyes. I felt myself smile at him and when he smiled back at me, I gasped.
Immediately the smile was gone and Decker was looking around the room and then studying me for any signs of distress. “What?” His tone conveyed the concern matched in his eyes.
“You.” The word left on a breath and he cocked an eyebrow at me. “You’re beautiful when you smile.” There was wonder in my tone and I bit my lip to keep from laughing as I watched Decker shuffle awkwardly as his cheeks warmed slightly to a pink. The fact that this man who radiated dominance with every breath he took could actually blush at my comment had me fighting back more words of endearment just to see how pink that blush could get.
“Uh, thanks?” It was posed as a question, and this was the first time I’d seen him speak with anything but full confidence in what he wanted to express. It was actually extremely adorable and, despite my tear soaked cheeks and swollen eyes, I found myself grinning at him. “Let’s not tell the other guys about this, they’ll mock me incessantly for those words of yours.”
“Because I said you’re beautiful?” Honestly, men and their stupid opinions that mencouldn’tbe beautiful. They sure as shit could.
“No, because you said I smiled. I’ll never hear the end of it.”
The surprise of his response, and easy levity to it, made a laugh escape me. A deep belly laugh that felt so damn freeing after days upon days packed with dread and stress. I let my head fall back and my eyes closed as I finally lost myself in an emotion that was healing. As my laughter waned, I looked back to him and saw the hint of smile tugging at his lips as if he were fighting to bite back a laugh of his own.
“Why don’t you get dressed and grab some breakfast. We’d like to have a little meeting before you head off to run the world from your laptop.” Decker had let the hint of a smile fade, but his words still sounded friendlier than they had until this very moment and I felt myself stir awake all over at how much sexier he sounded without the hard blade of formality. His eyes dipped briefly to my chest before darting around the room, and I remembered far too late that I’d dropped my arms to my lap as I’d laughed and I knew already that my nipples had risen to salute him. It was my body’s automatic response to his voice these days, and I knew I’d need padded bras around this man to keep my lust disguised.
Crossing my arms over my chest again, I nodded, feeling my own cheeks heat as I saw the familiar intensity in his eyes return when his gaze finally came back to mine. He nodded as well and was out the door before I could utter another sound.
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The room was a gentle hum of activity as I entered twenty minutes later. The makeshift command center had been rearranged so that there was now a large table in the center of the room that looked as if it were set up to hold large meetings. The men who seemed to be surgically attached to their computer stations were now lining the wall, their backs to the room. Decker, Aiden and Fitz were all sitting around the table looking extremely relaxed as they spoke softly, each seeming to stiffen with awareness when I’d entered. But Decker was the only one who cut his gaze sideways to me as I approached and sat between two empty chairs that squarely put me at a disadvantage. My back was to the door which always had me uneasy, but I was also alone on this side of the table, Decker and Aiden at either end and Fitz directly across from me. To an outsider, we may have looked evenly spaced around the table, but to me, I felt like I was an island, wondering if this was how people felt during job interviews.
I was still glancing nervously around the room when Fitz seemed to pick up on my building anxiety. “You’re not being called to the principal’s office, Lake.” His words were teasing but the tone held comfort and I turned my attention to him fully. I studied his face for long moments, silence becoming almost deafening as the seconds stretched into minutes. His expression of calm comfort didn’t change nor did it give me a hint as to why I felt so uneasy sitting here. It wasn’t until Aiden cleared his throat that our staring contest was finally interrupted. I glanced at the man who had cleared his throat, noting his own unease, before I turned the other direction to see Decker white-knuckling the sides of the table, his gaze trained on nothing as he glared the table into submission.
Turning my attention back to Fitz, I kept my tone light. “Just trying to figure out if the comforting tone is training or sincere.” And it was as if the bubble of tension just popped, the room calming, though I had no idea why. Everyone was on edge and I’d been the cause of it. Well, hell, I was already the cause of it being the client, but this seemed like more.
“Both,” he replied simply before turning his attention to the monitor over my shoulder and said, “Alright Jack, we’re ready to begin.”
I turned quickly to see Jack on the screen behind me, his clothes at odds with the rest of the team. Where they were in suits, Jack had a vintage looking T-shirt with the cover of one of the Star Wars movies on it. My neck began to protest the position, and instead of turning my chair, I stood up and took the empty chair between Fitz and Decker, focusing on the screen as well. No one spoke as I repositioned, just focused as the expert had files flashing up on the screens around him.
“So far we have nothing on The Wraith.” Jack’s tone was matter of fact, and, as I heard the men around me shuffle with irritation, I kept my focus on him. “I’m glad I got proof of this fake son being on paper, because as of this morning, he’s been wiped from all the places we’d used before. Guy’s a fucking ghost. But,” Jack said quickly, speaking over Aiden who had begun to say something, “this guy hasn’t dealt with me before. Anything he can do, I can do better and we all know it. I just need a little time to peel back the layers. He left something we can use behind in his false identity. I know it.”
“Preliminary reports from the scene say that there were hardly any fingerprints, even from the victims. That place was spotless. I mean every inch. Nothing was recovered from the drains in the bathtubs.” Aiden spoke with a hint of admiration. Not for the man who’d bested them, but for the attention to detail. For the first time I had a discomfited feeling when looking at Aiden Cabot.
Thinking about the drains, I swallowed back the lump in my throat. I knew enough about crime from watching those forensic shows to understand what they’d been looking for in the drains. They were looking for how and where the Pasternaks had been killed. The thought of my elderly neighbors being killed shot pain through my gut, and I immediately focused my gaze down as tears sprang to my eyes. I didn’t want to cry about anything in front of these men, but Lillian and Hank had been such lovely people and mourning for them was as natural as if I’d lost my own grandparents so horribly. Maybe I had and just hadn’t known. I knew of the death of my father’s parents in a small plane crash, but I’d never known about my mother’s parents. No one ever mentioned them, and when I’d been younger and asked, I had been outright ignored. Even at my mother’s funeral, I had looked around the church, hoping to catch a glimpse of an old couple who looked like my mother in some way, but there had been no one that hadn’t belonged. When I’d recognized that almost all the people in attendance were colleagues and business contacts of Robert's, even the young me understood that a funeral was just another chance to network.
Robert wouldn’t use the Pasternaks’ deaths as a chance to network, he wouldn’t even show up for a funeral since that would cause people to wonder who the elderly couple was. If they wondered, some intrepid reporter would dig and dig until they found the connection and from there they'd ferret out the truth. No matter how much danger that information could put me in. But it wouldn’t be the threat of danger to me that would keep him away, no it was the threat of linking himself to a clusterfuck and having to explain it to the world at large.
With my head still down, I broke through the meeting when I said to the room at large, “Please let me know what information you find out about services for the Pasternaks. I know I probably won’t be able to attend a funeral service with all of this going on,” and being the reason they died in the first place. I didn’t voice the last part, knowing that I wouldn’t have been welcome there even if there hadn’t been a target on my back. “I’d like to cover the costs of the service. I know they had money of their own and their daughter is wealthy but I just…” I refused to let tears fall in this room but felt my nose starting to run despite the fact that I had not let one tear drop go. I quickly sniffled and jutted my chin up, blinking back tears. “I need to do something to help.”
The men around the table were silently watching me, every expression blank besides Fitz who wore the hint of an encouraging smile, something grandfatherly and probably his psychology background taking the reins. I would constantly feel like a patient under him, and it would have annoyed the hell out of me if not for the fact that it actually worked. The silence was nearing awkward when Jack spoke up finally.
“We’ll get something worked out, L. Something good for them, okay?”
I shot an appreciative look to the screen in front of the table and nodded slightly. As they continued to discuss things about the crime scene next door, I let my gaze fall to my lap, not really wanting to hear the gory details and honestly not understanding much of what they were discussing. Becoming quickly bored with staring at my lap, I let my gaze drift toward the black suit pants completely wrinkle free next to me. I would have preferred to stare at Decker’s face, committing every sharp curve of his features to memory, but I settled for analyzing what I could see from my current angle. The suit he wore was obviously expensive as were the black shoes shining on his feet, but it was the hand that hung down in my field of vision as he draped it over the armrest of the chair.
He had such strong looking hands, large and decently manicured. Something that told me Decker Mullins attempted to look the part, but he was newer to money. He didn’t have a strict manscaping schedule that most in his position of business would have had down to an art. It was a simple conclusion I had reached even before analyzing his damn nail beds. He’d been in the military which wasn’t something I knew much of the upper crust to do. He worked in a business intended to help others. Yet another check mark in the category of “rags to riches”. With his hand’s position, I couldn’t detect any calluses or scarring, but his hand still looked rough and capable. My mind drifted to the dream that had quickly turned into a nightmare. Where he’d been touching me, hands bringing me to life as he stroked my body. I could still feel the flames of desire marking my skin where his imaginary touch had been.
I was side-staring at his hand, my breathing picking up at the images flashing through my mind, thinking about how that hand had enticed me. When Decker’s pinky flicked suddenly, the spell was broken and the action jolted her out of her daydream. The physical reaction to the small movement had the background noise of conversation dropping silent. My eyes shot up to Decker’s face, and I noticed his jaw tense and ticking as he stared at the screen ahead of us. Fitz and Aiden were just looking at me questioningly, and Jack was typing away on the screen apparently not bothered in the slightest by the silence that had fallen over the room.
“Sorry, I must have dozed off.” I pushed away from the table and stood, deciding that I could get a cliffnotes version of this little meeting later from Jack when he could dumb it all down for me. I might have been damn good at numbers and finance, but I wasn’t a security expert and wouldn’t understand much of their business anyway. “I’m going to get some work done in the library, and let you guys get back to your work.” Quickly leaving the room, I made my way to the library in time to see Evan standing along the far wall, waving a metal contraption from side to side all across the books. I came to a stop just inside the door and Evan completed his task before turning in my direction, unsurprised to see me standing there. All the men seemed to know where I was, like I had a bell around my neck, announcing my entrance. It wasn’t like I wanted to jump out and scare any of the men, but knowing Icouldif I wanted would have been nice. The option of stealth. The illusion of it even.
“Sweeping for bugs?” I asked, making an educated guess as he turned off the metal contraption and made his way toward me.
“Sort of,” he answered, not meeting my eyes. “I just finished anyway, so you’re good to work in here if you want.”
I stepped in front of Evan, stopping him in his tracks. “What do you mean ‘sort of’?” I liked Evan, I really did. He was the type of person that made me feel safe both in a physical way and with my confidence. I’d started to regard him in much the same way I did Scout, but his awkward brush-off of a simple comment had red flags popping up all around me. In reality I’d known him less than a week, and it wasn’t like fucked up people didn’t get security or police jobs all the time. I couldn’t afford to not suspect everyone, including someone hired to protect me.
He seemed to notice my wariness of his non-answer and his hand rose to the back of his neck as he glanced around, wanting to be anywhere but there. The signs of nervousness and the fact that he was looking everywhere but at me had me backing up a step, getting closer to the door in case I had to make a break for it.
