An Eye for Danger (15 page)

He took my left wrist, held up my hand for examination. "A husband, I ask? But no ring. They always wear the ring afterwards. A lover maybe, something in the midst of blooming, then cut down. Ah, there's the truth, in your eyes. Yet there's no picture of him, I notice. Strange for a photographer. But photos are dead, she tells me. Now the story comes together. There's no picture of him because a photo would make him dead. Because he is dead." He dropped my arm. "The news confirmed my theory, and Stone's article just filled in the details. A picture's worth a thousand words, isn't it, Jules?"

My chest tightened, and I turned to the curtains, wishing I'd left them open. The room was shrinking. I was shrinking.

"They can't see you, Jules. Not like I see you." He leaned into my view. "Those tears, they never stop, do they? Always there, nipping in the background. Touching everything you do. Or don't do. I'm waiting for you to tell me how wrong I am. To lie to me. Or tell me to go to hell. But no, you'd rather have the truth. You'll take a bullet for the truth. And yet all this is a lie, isn't it? Your whole goddamn life is a front."

"Please." I bent toward the floor, straining for air like he'd punched me in the gut.

He raised my arm. "Lock your fingers behind your head. You'll breathe easier."

With my arms in the air, my lungs expanded, but the air seemed to burn.

Sam slid a hand up and down my spine, like a snake hypnotizing the prey he'd just stricken. "Best part about you, Jules. Despite all this, you came through for a complete stranger. A homicidal maniac for all you know. Yet you break your back to prop me up. Risked your life to save me and Max. But one song and you collapse. You're either a rock of Gibraltar or a house of cards." He turned to the window and
humphed
to himself, his hand still stroking my back. "Either you're gunning for punishment, or begging for salvation. I don't know which. But it's hell to watch."

***

Yanking down the menus in the kitchen gave me something besides Sam to tear into shreds. I shoved the mess in a garbage bag with the plastic bags suffocating under the sink. But the cramping in my gut told me I could clean house for a week and still not appease my anger. The truth wasn't setting me free; it was giving me a panic attack. A panic attack named Sam.

"Jules?"

"I'm coming already." I wished myself capable of vengeance, but violence would only make me feel like crap. Worse, Sam knew that too. So I found a fresh glass, poured more gin than tonic, and choked back the drink at the kitchen sink till I gagged. I just wanted to feel numb.

"Gonna make yourself sick drinking like that," he said behind me.

I'd heard his long, shuffling approach, yet I'd done nothing to dissuade or assist him. Part of me wanted him to fall and break his arrogant neck. The other part of me...

"You should stay in bed, Sam. I'll bring you whatever you need."

"Don't punish yourself for my sake," he said, nodding to my drink.

My fist swung high, but stopped short, hanging in the air. He didn't flinch, didn't blink.

"Go ahead." He grabbed my fist, set it in the middle of his chest. "Hit me. I got it coming. Hard as you can, Jules." He slammed my fist against healthy skin. "Hit me, damn it. Get angry for once. You can't break me, Jules. You might even feel better. Christ, even I'll feel better."

Why the hell didn't I throttle him?

"At least throw something," he said. "Maybe not the cast iron."

Shaking my head, I flattened my hand on his warm firm chest. "That's not me."

I couldn't stomach becoming another character in his violent world, an aggressor like those of my career, my childhood, everyone I abhorred. I yanked my hand off his skin before I lost control and bluffed a smile.

"Guess I'm not such a good sport after all." I wiped my eyes. "Don't worry. You still have a safe house. As long as you need to heal."

"Yeah, I know." He sounded irritated. "That's why I feel like such an ass."

Sam reached for my face, his hand hesitating as he reconsidered. Then his fingers touched my skin.

My face turned into his hand, encouraged his caress. Across my cheek, my jaw. Down my neck. Even his rough hands could deliver the consolation I craved, buoy me after years of drowning in isolation. How long I'd waited to be touched, to feel again. To feel anything but numb.

Opening my eyes, I found his fingers hovering at my lips. His brows clenched, his jaw locked as he searched my face. Confused, angry, betrayed?

What have you done, Jules?

I slid down the counter, further and further away from him. Then I ran to my office and locked the door.

***

Sam slept wildly at best, his shoulders and head shifting about and gleaming with sweat. I didn't dare wake him, when he needed the rest. And I needed a break from his needling.

From my camera bag in the safe I'd retrieved my old Nikon D100. A camera always proved a window into the soul of my subject, each frame telling a story, so I pulled the camera strap across my chest like a rifle belt and rotated the lens till I zoomed in on Sam for an interrogation of my own.

First, his eyes, his thick lashes flicking as dream thugs chased him.
Click
. Then his strong jaw line that ran to a tough chin, where stubble reclaimed territory and light cast a hard-edged shadow, like sunset on a cliff.
Click
. Stubbornness, strength of will, pride: all here.

He mumbled, his thrashing resembling night terrors. Could have been a dream about gunshots or a slot machine paying out. All I knew for sure was he'd shoot me if he knew I was shooting him.

I scoped down his shoulder to the bleached hair growing thick on his sinewy forearms, arms that had climbed Red Rock, scaled places others feared to go, and crawled out of situations most didn't survive.
Fortitude, a will to fight, here they were.
Click
.

My viewer landed on his broad wrist, the tender flesh lined with scratches at the back of his hand, his strong fingers and thick nails scrubbed clean of soot. His thumb jutted into the air. Solid, sturdy, a presence to be reckoned with. This, I already knew.
Click
. His knuckles were still red and raw, like he'd dragged boxes off a flatbed truck, or pounded at flesh for his life. Driven to work, to produce results. Or just driven.
Click
. Whoever he was, his story was here in his hands. But was I photographing them because they revealed his spirit, or because I wanted to feel those rough calluses against my skin again?

I imagined blowing on his chest, disturbing the hairs and raising goose bumps across that terrain of muscle. Then grazing them with my lips. I looked away, forcing myself to remember the park, his gun knocking at my breastplate. Cop or thug, he was a brute. A brute whose hands had called my skin to life, for better or for worse.

Taking up the lens, I narrowed on a yellow, fuzzy head. Max sniffed the nightstand near the sandwich I'd left for Sam, then opened his mouth. I was ready to capture the shot. He closed on a black handle.

"No." I lunged for the Glock. Max jumped out of my path.

Slap.
Sam plastered his palm on my arm before I ever touched the weapon. My camera swung at my side, bouncing off my ribs, as I slowly withdrew my hand to open the nightstand drawer. Sam lifted the gun, his forefinger flat along the barrel, and set it inside the drawer.

"Thought you trusted me." I closed the drawer with a whisper.

"There's no trigger safety on a service weapon. No crossbar to keep it from firing if you pull the trigger." He stared till I got the message. Reclining, he covered his eyes.

"Give me your hand." I reached, but he pulled his fingers into a fist.

"You taking my picture?" He'd been awake after all, one eye on me at all times.

"Just give me your hand."

"She never lies, Max. Just evades." He pinched between his eyes, like he had a headache. "Thought you didn't have a camera here."

"Found my old one in the safe. That's the truth. Now give me your damn hand."

Finally, he presented his hand, palm up. I slid my cold fingers over his wrist. Goose bumps covered his arm. "Jules," he said roughly, but I shushed him. His skin was hot and damp, his blood pounding hard yet slow against my fingertips, too hard for someone who'd been lying still for hours, nightmares or not. I didn't understand why he wasn't better after days of rest. Then I felt his damp forehead. Burning. This I understood.

Sam grabbed my shirt as I rose. "Relax, Jules."

My jaw clenched as tight as his grip. "You need real help now."

"No doctor, no hospital. If they find me, they find you."

"But you could die," I said, my voice cracking.

"I know."

Sam's eyes looked as bloodshot as mine felt. His thumb stroked the back of my hand, that steady, reassuring stroke that hypnotized me into a false calm.

Maybe I was paranoid, but bravado wasn't going to bring down that fever. I fetched a towel from the freezer, set the stiff cloth on Sam's forehead.

"There's got to be someone you can call," I said. "A family member, your captain. Someone on the force you can trust."

Dropping his head on the pillows, he shook 'nope.' "People like us. Eh, Jules?"

I withdrew. People like us never asked for help. We'd rather drown in our own wakes.

Abroad, I'd seen how a morning fever left a child lifeless by nightfall. Like my last trip through Darfur, when a bone-thin girl had asked to take a picture of me. Against my rules, I'd handed her my camera, which her interpreter helped her hold up because her muscles were so weak. She'd giggled to see my face instantly appear in the LCD screen, like the machine captured my soul.

Then the interpreter explained in a pretty British accent, "She's dying of typhoid, I'm afraid."

The more pictures the girl had taken, the more she'd laughed, and the more useless tears I'd shed. Then she'd asked me to show her the image of herself in the LCD screen. She'd never seen her reflection outside a muddy puddle or scrap of tin, so this much I'd do for her, since I hadn't come to help her. No, I'd come to steal more dignity than her family could spare by taking her deathbed photo, then printing it on the cover of a magazine sold for the price of antibiotics that might have saved her life. Yet she wanted the world to see her picture, the interpreter had explained; to be kept alive in the eyes of strangers in strange countries, since her own country had betrayed her. And I'd agreed, only to return to my first-world country, my first-world luxuries, disgusted with myself, my thick-skinned colleagues, this self-promoting city.

After that I'd quit, as Luke had begged me to so many times. I walked away from that violent, senseless world, and I didn't need Sam bringing that pain home to me again.

"I know there's a protocol for this, Sam. They can't mean for you to die in the field."

"No, they don't mean for me to die." He smiled at the ceiling. "They don't mind either."

"I don't believe you." I tried to wipe the rough cloth over his cheeks. "Someone out there needs you to live. Someone's invested in you."

"Don't talk like that." He rolled his face toward the window, revealing his blotchy red neck. "My world isn't filled with clear windows or white bedspreads."

"Even a tough guy like you has to have someone—"

"Christ, stop calling me that." He squeezed his eyes shut.
"You push me away when you talk like that."

Looking away, I tried to catch my thoughts.
What the hell did he want from me?

"Maybe I don't want help, Jules. Ever consider that? I killed those people. I didn't know they were in the building, but I didn't stop the fire either. I didn't stop Troy."

"And maybe if you quit feeling sorry for yourself, you'd focus on going after that murdering sonavabitch. You said he's going to come back for me eventually, and Stone's got his own agenda, so I'm counting on you to have my back. Ever consider that?"

After a pause, I slid the cloth down his cheek. "Maybe I need you more than you need me."

He sighed, hopefully buying my spiel. I brushed the towel over his throat and onto his chest, where his skin was so hot I could practically fry an egg between his pecs. He nodded.
Again
. Another swipe of the cloth from shoulder to chest, so the hairs sparkled with dew and his nipples tightened. I lowered my lips toward his chest and blew. Goose bumps exploded over his skin. He leaned back and nodded. The scene repeated. We were both in trouble.

***

"Shit," Sam snapped, pushing himself up and swiveling his legs out from under the covers. He wrinkled his nose at the clock before re-examining the drawn curtains and the lighted seam between them.

"Take it easy, cowboy." I held his shoulders while he sucked air as fast as his lungs could pump. All night I'd watched over him, waiting for his fever to break, so I wasn't letting him kill himself now. "You slept through another day, and for good reason."

From under the duvet he pulled the recorder. "Gotta get this to the drop."

"You're too sick to go anywhere. They can wait."

"Already missed the first window," he huffed, pulling on the sweatshirt. Pushing me aside, he stood, courtesy of my nightstand that bobbed under his weight. He found the painkillers, threw a couple into his mouth and chugged the bottled water.

"You crazy fool." I grabbed the pill container. "You'll black out before you arrive."

He zipped the sweatshirt and staggered to the kitchen to find his boots. If he'd risk his life to deliver the recording to the cops, assuming that was what he intended, he must be a clean cop. Reasons to doubt him seemed infinite, but my desire to trust Sam had a heartbeat of its own now.

Jogging ahead, I blocked his passage. "Let me deliver it."
On my way to get a doctor
.

"Gotta do this myself. As soon as the meds hit, I won't feel a thing. Hardly." He stepped around me and stopped, balancing with the back of a chair and squinting at my front door. "Did your kitchen get longer?"

"We've done this dance before, Sam. And you didn't win that time either."