Hey, baby, what’s your sign?
You’ve gotta be kidding me. The computers were linked? I clicked on the icon to fold the new page shut, and leaned forward to continue my work. There was a file called JO.12.12.00175 that looked somewhat promising.
Don’t you want to know who I am?
“Some ballsy SOB,” I mumbled. I resisted searching the room and typed:
No. Fuck off twice and die.
Okay, so it wasn’t very Olivia-esque, but now I could work in peace.
Dirty mouth for such a pretty girl. Where’d you learn that…from your sister?
My heart took up residence in my throat as I jerked my head up, left hand automatically moving to my handbag, where my conduit lay hidden. The gamer across from me had disappeared at some point, replaced by the man who’d been glaring at me, though he spared no notice of me now. The homeless man was still racking up his minutes, and there were three laptops lying open on the center tables. I zeroed in on the one person I couldn’t see, a man hunched so low behind his screen it had to be on purpose.
I rose just as his screen lowered, and found Ben Traina grinning at me like he used to when we were kids. I grinned back, forgetting for a moment who I was supposed to be, surveying him for sign of injury, age, depression. Infection. Watching me watch him, Ben dropped his chin onto one fist and crooked a finger with his other hand. And just as I had the day we’d met fifteen years earlier, I dropped everything and went to him.
But not before I went to the bathroom. Locked in a tiny stall, I spritzed myself with an entire bottle of masking pheromones, conscious all the while of my voice sounding from some far-off place, repeating over and over again, Please, please, please. I don’t know what I was pleading for. That my emotions wouldn’t leach through and twelve Shadow agents wouldn’t swoop down on the café to kill the only man I’d ever loved? That there’d be no scent of death or illness on his breath to mark him as infected? That he wouldn’t recognize me, the love of his life, beneath Olivia’s beautiful skin?
Or that he would?
He was smiling as I returned to the table. My booth had been given to another customer, I was paid up, and I dropped into the chair opposite Ben, where a steaming cup of coffee was already waiting for me.
“I didn’t know how you liked it,” he said, indicating the sugar and creamer in front of us. “Jo took it plain, so I thought…”
“It’s fine, thanks.” And I took hold of the coffee cup like I was grabbing for a life preserver, careful to keep the pads of my fingertips hidden. I had to force myself not to down it so fast I scalded my throat, and, sipping, I also drank in details about the man across from me. The sun streaking in the café windows caught in the richness of his hair, deeper than any shot of espresso, and longer now that he’d left the police force. He wasn’t as pale as he’d been the last time I saw him, but it was summer, and he’d always tanned easily. A scar below his hairline stood out as a silent reminder of less healthy times, and a tribal tattoo was just barely visible beneath the sleeve of his white tee. I didn’t have the nerve to study his eyes. Besides, they were trained too closely on me.
“What brings you here, Traina?” I said, before he caught me watching.
“Indulging my geeky side,” he said, with a grin so crooked and perfect it stole my breath away. Ben didn’t seem to notice. “It’s an old hangout, actually. I used to write here when it was nothing more than a smoky, airless room with concrete floors and a friendly pothead for a barista. Most addictive mochas you’d ever had.”
I couldn’t resist. “Do the guys at the station know you like girly drinks?” I said glibly.
But he was suddenly stone serious. “The guys at the station don’t know much about me at all anymore. I’m not there, remember?”
I did remember. Mostly because Ben had once told me his police badge was, appropriately enough, his shield. It filtered the world’s filth and danger and corruption through a second pair of eyes, he’d said, insulating him so he could perform his job more effectively.
So what kept those horrors from climbing into him now? Because even though he was no longer a cop, he hadn’t stopped seeing, or studying, the darker side of life. The hard glint glazing over those chocolate depths told me that much.
“I forgot,” I lied, drawing a finger around the lip of my mug, simultaneously crossing my legs as I flicked a gaze up at him from beneath my bangs. “Still playing lone wolf, then?”
I actually felt the tension rise around us, and his shoulders rose a degree and knotted there. Christ, if he were a wolf, he’d have hackles. “Who’s playing?” he said, jaw clenching as he leaned back.
And those two little words brought reality crashing back down onto my own shoulders, reminding me of the last time I’d seen him, hunched over the grave he thought was mine. I’d been trying to get him to stop his search for the man he believed had killed me, trying to keep him safe.
He’s disappeared. I told him. And Ajax had. I’d made sure of that.
That’s okay. Ben had said, his mournful look turning cold. There are others.
No, I thought, watching him now, he certainly wasn’t playing. And though my mind wanted to jet back to the past when I could practically finish his sentences for him, my responsibility was to the present. I was no longer Joanna. I was Olivia. And he was dark-eyed, tense, and self-contained. A Ben I didn’t know.
I’d give him leeway, though…a courtesy I wouldn’t extend to anyone else, mortal or not. Ben had come to this place in his life because he’d lost me twice, and I knew the pain of that loss…what it took just to get out of bed every day. I’d let this slide, I thought, because the one thing Warren hadn’t put in the files he’d amassed about me and Ben was the most important information of alclass="underline" I was to blame. If not for my death the second time, he wouldn’t have thrown off the constraints of his badge, his shield, to become a P.I. And there’d be no shadows shellacking his gaze, turning it into a cold, hard thing.
“So, working on anything interesting?” I asked, clearing my throat.
Ben shrugged, glancing down as he toyed with the edge of his napkin. “A couple things. Sometimes I help the department on an auxiliary basis, act as another pair of eyes on a stakeout or share some information gleaned on one of my cases. But mostly it’s just run-of-the-mill stuff. A missing person. A depressing number of people wanting me to trail their spouses. An old woman desperate to find her miniature poodle.”
“That one sounds like it’d tax your abilities.”
“You have no idea.” He rolled his eyes, and almost looked boyish.
I laughed, and felt a shiver run down my spine despite the warm cup in my hand and the heat beating on the café from outside. Chemistry was such a strange thing. I’d be willing to bet even Micah couldn’t tell me why hundreds of men could leave me cold, while this one could string me along forever with only a smile. My laughter faded at that thought-at its futility-and I stared down into my cup. Ben noticed my abrupt mood change.
“So how are you, sweetheart?” he asked, his voice soft, like he was talking to a child, or someone very fragile. I glanced up in time to see the specter of pain passing behind his eyes, the ghost of the man who’d loved and lost me flickering, before disappearing into the past again. I nearly cried out in response. Fucking chemistry. “Still seeing that guy…Lorenzo?” There was a snapping of fingers. “Hunter Lorenzo, wasn’t it?”