Hard as It Gets (2 page)

Jeremy followed him into the back. “Fine. Play it that way. But it was a dick move, and you know it.”

Rixey passed the three tattoo rooms, the piercing room, and the shop’s office that comprised Hard Ink’s inner sanctum before stepping into the wide lounge, with its two tables in the center, a couch along one wall, and a wall-mounted TV in one corner. “When I want your opinion, I’ll give it to you.”

“Yeah, and how’s that been working out for you?” Jeremy followed him in.

Jess looked up from her pizza. “Oh, look, it’s the Bickersons. I swear you two revert to twelve-year-olds in one another’s presence.”

“Shut up,” Jeremy said, smiling at Jess, his piercer, part-time artist, receptionist, and general Jill-of-all-trades. Nick’s little brother loved the girl like she was a sister, having saved her life a few years before. Rixey didn’t know the details, and he didn’t need to know. But he respected Jessica for the deep loyalty with which she repaid Jeremy. She’d more than earned the second chance he’d given her here.

Laughing, Taz rose and threw his plate in the trash. “Thanks for the grub, Jer. I’ll head out.”

Jeremy clasped hands with the man who was one of his oldest, regular customers. “You got it. See you in a few weeks and we’ll start coloring that bad boy in.”

“Sounds like a plan.” They exchanged good-byes and Taz left. Jeremy and Rixey sat at the table and accepted paper plates and drinks from Jess.

“Thanks,” Rixey said as he plated himself two slices. He took a big bite—

“So what did that cute woman want?” Jess asked.

Rixey managed to force the pizza down his throat without choking on it.

Cute? Cute didn’t begin to cut it. Becca Merritt was the all-American girl personified, with her fierce blue eyes and wavy hair the rich color of honey. Bet she tasted as sweet, too. And, damn, that body. It was all he’d been able to do not to gawk at the curves her fitted T-shirt hugged, or trace his eyes over the lace just visible through the thin cotton. It was like the sun had strolled through their front door, casting heat and light all over him. Only the haunted dark circles under her eyes ruined the analogy.

A part of him had felt twice as cold and dark when the door had closed behind her. She’d done just as he’d asked and split, so he didn’t understand the ache of emptiness ballooning inside his chest. No way he was examining it too closely, either.

“Something about her brother being in trouble.” Jeremy’s voice pulled Rixey out of his head. “But she wasn’t here to see me, she was here for Nick. But Nick refused to talk to her, even though she had great taste in T-shirts.”

Jess glanced between them and frowned as she ate. Her arched black eyebrow told Nick everything he needed to know about her opinion on the subject.

Rixey sighed and pushed up from the table, Becca’s hurt and disappointment playing on a loop in his mind’s eye. He grabbed his plate and an extra slice. Seeing her had brought the whole friggin’ mess with her father to the front of his brain. He was shit for company now. The loss of your friends, your career, and your honor did that to a man. Aw, sonofabitch. “I’m gonna take this upstairs.”

He tuned out their voices as he retreated through the back of the shop to the industrial stairwell that led to the upper floors. Jeremy had bought the three-story building with the money their parents left him, and Nick had given him most of his share, too, becoming a silent partner and occasional tattooist in his brother’s business. Not having been there to help Jeremy with everything that went down when their parents died in a car accident four years ago . . . Yeah, it was the least he could do. Literally.

Shit.
He was on a roll with the bad memories.

On the second-floor landing, he turned right and keyed in a code. A metallic click sounded, and Rixey pulled open the heavy door to the warehouse-style apartment he shared with his brother. It was supposed to have been a temporary arrangement, but ten months later, he was no damn closer to getting a life because he couldn’t think of anything that came close to replacing the one he’d lost.

Inside, the space still possessed an industrial character, with its brick walls, exposed I beams, high, wide windows, and fifteen-foot ceilings. But Jeremy had done a phenomenal job refurbishing the place and installing modern amenities. Whether it was graphic art, tattoos, or building the interior architecture of their place, the boy had a pair of hands like you hear about. As much of a pain in the ass as Jer could be, Rixey had to give him that.

He crossed the wide living room, with its enormous leather sofa and pair of well-broken-in recliners claimed from their parents’ house, and headed down the hall to his office. He parked himself at his desk, booted up the laptop, and chowed on a slice of pizza while he waited for the login screen to load.

When the thing came to life, Rixey pulled up an internet browser and typed in Becca’s name. He wasn’t sure exactly what he was looking for, but something she’d said had dug its talons into his frontal lobe and refused to let go. “
They’re not helping us.
” Not
me
but
us.
Who the hell was the “us”? Just the brother she’d mentioned? A husband? A kid? Man, two of the three of them gave him a real gut check he had no business feeling.

More distracting was the niggling question of how and why the Merritts would come to
him,
of all people. He didn’t expect them to know that bad blood flowed like a river after a hard rain between him and their father’s fabricated fallen-hero memory—they’d have no reason to, since the Army prettied that sitch up real good for public consumption. The bigger question was how they knew about Rixey at all. Or why they thought he was the best person to help.

None of it made any friggin’ sense.

And, so what? Why the hell did he care? He owed Frank Merritt absolutely nothing. And his daughter even less.

True. But Rixey couldn’t deny a kind of morbid curiosity about how the daughter of the man who’d ruined his life came to stand in his shop and ask him—of
all
people—for help.

Scrolling through the search results, listings appeared for Merritts by both the names of Becca and Rebecca. He ruled out the ones who lived too far away or had pictures that clearly weren’t his Becca.
His?
No. Not at all what he meant. For fuck’s sake.

In the end, he narrowed it down to one of two possibilities. The Becca who was an emergency department nurse at University Medical Center, or the Rebecca who was a kindergarten teacher at a private day school in the city. The woman he’d met seemed the sweet, nurturing type, the kind who brought warmth and comfort to others, so both jobs fit the bill. Rixey opened up the people search page and gathered some possibilities for address.

Why was he doing this again? He didn’t need her address if he had no intention of tracking her down, seeing her . . . helping her.

No. He just needed to convince himself she was safe. He’d devoted a dozen years of his life to Mother Army because he wanted to help people—and something about Becca had resurrected that desire after nearly a year of lying dormant. Once, he’d idolized Colonel Merritt, his former commander, before it had all gone to shit. So, fine. It wasn’t any skin off his nose to spend an evening checking things out. It wouldn’t be like the process server jobs he did where confrontation was part of the gig. For this, he’d stay on the periphery, out of sight. Rixey excelled at not being seen unless he wanted to be seen. What the hell else did he have to do anyway?

And wasn’t that cheery thought just par for the mothereffing course?

Whatever. It was just a little surveillance to make sure his curiosity didn’t keep him up all night—like he needed one more thing.

Printouts in hand, Rixey stalked into his bedroom and changed into a pair of black cargo pants. He secured his ankle carrier and sheathed a blade, then shrugged the holster onto his left shoulder over his tee. He knelt in front of the open closet door and entered the code on his gun safe. The M9 felt like an old friend in his grip. He inspected the piece, holstered it, and slipped a spare magazine into the pocket on his thigh. Jacket, keys, phone, and addresses in hand, he made his way through the apartment and out the back entrance of the building. Last thing he wanted was to play twenty questions with Jeremy and Jess.

The gravel of the parking lot crunched under his boots. The last light of day held on for everything it was worth, casting bright pinks and dark purples across the twilight sky. But the old warehouse veiled the lot in thick shadows, making the black Challenger, except for its silver racing stripes, nearly fade into the dusky murk. Man, he loved that car. After a dozen years of humping it around in armored vehicles built for stability, not comfort, he’d promised himself something sleek, fast, and kind to the ass once he joined the ranks of the civilians.

He’d just never expected that to happen quite so soon. Or against his will.

Goddamnit.

Rixey dropped into the driver’s seat and took all kinds of satisfaction in the growling rumble of the car’s engine. Small pleasures, man, but these days, he’d take ’em where he found ’em.

Now, to find Becca and prove to himself all was well. And then he could say good-bye to the Merritts once and for fucking all.

Chapter 2

T
hree hours later, Rixey found himself waiting in the dark on a quiet street wondering for the tenth time what the hell he was doing. The first address on his list had taken him into affluent Roland Park in the northwestern part of Baltimore. The woman of the house had had short black hair, so he’d headed crosstown to the second address located in the more middle-class neighborhood of Patterson Park. He’d been sitting there ever since, staring at her dark row house and hoping to get visual confirmation that Becca Merritt was doing just fine without him. Thank you very much.

The later it got, the more he became convinced he was just chasing ghosts. And that took his head to all kinds of places he didn’t want it to go.

Before his ass fell all the way asleep, Rixey pushed out of the car and sucked in a groan at the stabbing spasm the movement unleashed low on his left side. He might’ve been thirty-three, but, courtesy of two bullet wounds, he had the lower back of a seventy-five-year-old. At least, that’s how it felt sometimes.

Gritting his teeth, he crossed the narrow one-way street, his muscles slowly relaxing as he worked them. He’d do his due diligence—walk the property, check things out, and then get the hell out of there. Let the past stay in the fucking past.

Talking to Becca would’ve been the easiest way to gather intel, of course, but the little two-story row house was as dark and quiet as a tomb. Had been all night. So he ignored the front door and made for the cramped covered passageway that cut from the front sidewalk to the backyard. The rectangle of darkness was a mugger’s wet dream and seemed to swallow up any and all light.

Rixey paused at the edge of the pass-through and palmed the grip of the M9. All his senses came on line as he peered around the corner into the impenetrable darkness. Quiet. Still. Empty. He stepped into the shadows and let them swallow him up.

The far end opened onto a sidewalk the adjoined row houses shared. He scanned the visible landscape before stepping out of the passageway, then rescanned the full one-eighty from the back of the neighbor’s house to the back of Becca’s. A car passed by on the street, and Rixey crouched lower, moved quicker. The rear perimeter of the property met an alley, and he stole to the fence there and scanned again.

Clear and quiet. Just as it should be.

Time to bug out
.

A dim light became visible toward the front of the house. In quick succession, lights illuminated the interior from front to back. And then Becca—the very same bright ray of sunshine he’d met earlier in the day—stepped into the window of the back door.

Heart suddenly double timing it in his chest, Rixey melded into the shadows of a tree at the corner of the yard.

Silhouetted as she was against the kitchen light, he couldn’t make out her features, just the gold of her hair pulled back from her face. She pressed close enough to the glass to peer right and left, then yanked a pair of curtains across the glass. At the next window, she repeated the maneuver—right, left, closed.

Rixey frowned. What was she looking for? Maybe she was just cautious. Or paranoid. She was the colonel’s daughter, after all. Surely some of the SOB’s traits had been passed down the Merritt family tree.
Or, maybe something is
making
her paranoid
. She had asked for help, after all.

She was home now. And, as far as he could tell, everything was fine. He should get the hell out of there. Now. Right. So why couldn’t he pull himself away from watching over her?

For a few moments, her silhouette moved around, then disappeared from sight. Soon after, a low glow fell upon both of the upstairs windows. And then the light came on in the bathroom, judging by the wavy glass blocks that comprised the window and obscured the view. Nothing happened for maybe another fifteen minutes, when lamplight illuminated the room next to the bathroom and Becca stepped into the open space between the window curtains. In a robe. Hair down and wet, if the darker color was any guide.

Tension ripped through Rixey’s body and settled in places it had no goddamned business settling. She repeated the right, left, closed routine one more time, and the heavy, opaque fabric put an end to the show.

Forcing himself to focus, Rixey did another three-sixty sweep of his location, then replanted himself against the bark of the tree and got comfortable with the idea of keeping lookout for a while. Just until she settled in for the night.

It took about an hour. She made a pass through the house, shutting off lights from bottom to top and ending with her bedroom. And then the place was dark again. Becca all tucked in her bed. Was her hair still damp? And was she an ancient-threadbare-T-shirt or sexy-pajamas kinda woman? He thunked his skull against the rough bark of the tree to divert his thoughts from imagining how both answers might look on her tight little body.

Shit on a shingle, what the hell was wrong with him?

Something else he was better off not thinking about right now.

Enough time passed that the moon shifted position in the sky, and Rixey gave the all clear. Nothing troubling going on here. Trying to relieve his screaming back, he rolled his shoulders and twisted at the waist, giving his traps, lats, and obliques a hi-how-are-ya before making his soundless way back to the Charger.

His baby came to life on a metallic purr. As he pulled a U-ey, the LED of his dashboard clock caught his gaze. 12:22 a.m.

Aw, hell, he was gonna hate himself in the morning. Seven-thirty chiropractor appointment—probably fortuitously timed, given how he’d spent his evening—followed by a day of being on call to serve papers to whichever poor bastards found themselves summoned, subpoenaed, ordered, evicted, divorced, or otherwise within the crosshairs of the law. Rixey specialized in what they called difficult services, which might find him doing witness or defendant location investigation—or skip tracing, dodging an angry fist, or chasing a soon-to-be-served asshole down a street. Good times.

At least Eastern Avenue was quiet at this hour of the night. Rixey sped along the strip usually bustling with business for the liquor stores and check-cashing joints located cheek by jowl next to storefront churches and generations-old ethnic restaurants. Hard Ink sat a few blocks off the main drag, between the run-down strip and one of the city’s industrial areas.

The long, low building hunkered down on a corner, two brick arms stretching a half block down each street, with a square gravel lot in the crook of the L shape out back. Jeremy had grand plans to gather tenants for some of the unused space on the ground floor and had slowly but surely worked at rehabbing it. Generously put, except for the shop and their loft, the building was a work in progress. But Hard Ink had a loyal clientele and did a steady business, thanks to Jeremy’s growing reputation. It suited them just fine.

The Charger came to rest where it had started the evening, oh, six hours earlier. Rixey dragged himself out of the car and crossed through the cool night air to the lamp-lit back door. A five-digit code popped the lock on the thick industrial number with a metallic
clank,
and he secured it behind him before hauling his ass up the steps. Inside the dark, quiet apartment, his brain shifted to autopilot. Weapons. Clothes. Bathroom. Bed.

He pulled the covers over himself, a twinge in his back reminding him to take some meds. Despite the darkness, his hand found the bottle of ibuprofen with no problem, and he downed four with the remains of a bottle of water he kept there for just that purpose.

His body sank into the mattress. His aches floated away. And his mind drifted . . . to the image of Becca Merritt standing in a loose robe in her bedroom window. She ran her fingers through her wet hair, coaxing it to air dry and causing the neckline of the white terry cloth to gape, hinting at the swells of her breasts. After a few moments, she pressed her palms to the glass and scanned to the right and left.

As if she knew he was there, her gaze landed on him. For a moment, it was white hot, and the scorch of it reached down his throat and settled into his balls. Blood flowed to his groin, waking up a part of his anatomy that hadn’t seen action in more months than he wanted to count. But then the fierce blue of her gaze changed. Dark circles settled under wide eyes that looked at him with abject desperation
.
Her lips moved.
“I don’t know what else to do, where else to go.”

Sleep fell away in a rush.

Blood pounding in his ears, Rixey stared up at the dark ceiling, its pattern of pipes, beams, and ductwork becoming discernible the longer he lay there, unconsciousness eluding him, guilt weighing him down.

Goddamnit
.

Frank Merritt had stolen his career, his reputation, six of his best friends, and his fucking ability to sit or stand for any length of time without wanting to whimper like a little girl. What the hell more was he supposed to give? When would it be enough?

Even as he asked himself the questions, icy tendrils of dread snaked down his spine. And Rixey’s internal
oh-shit-ometer
went on full alert.

That sixth sense he had—that uncanny instinct that had kept him alive and unharmed on more ops than he could name—was telling him Becca Merritt had brought bad news to his doorstep. The kind that reached out from the grave, grabbed you by the throat, and did everything it could to lay you six feet under.

B
ECCA KNEW THE
key wouldn’t work. Before she even slid it in the lock, she knew. Just to be sure, though, she pulled it out and slid it in again. It fit but wouldn’t turn.

Charlie had changed the locks. Again.

He didn’t like her to come to his apartment. He sorta hated having anyone mess with his space, especially with his equipment. But his message, which she could only interpret as a call for help in light of her inability to find him, was a game changer. She had to figure out where he’d gone and why. And his apartment made the most sense as a starting point.

She sighed and braced her hands on her hips. Nowhere in this small stairwell to hide a key, either.

Oh, Charlie, what the hell is going on with you?

Maybe whoever lived upstairs could help. She jogged up the narrow cement steps, whipped around the railing to the front porch, and knocked three times on the door.

Nothing. Three more raps still didn’t get a response.

If she wanted a way into Charlie’s cramped basement apartment, that only left the windows.

As she stepped off the stoop, she immediately ruled out the front basement window. A cracked plastic cap screwed into the sidewalk ensured no one fell into the below-ground window well. Not that her brother appreciated the light—one of the first things he’d done was tape several layers of newspaper over the glass.

Hoping she’d have more luck with his bedroom window, Becca circled the block on foot and made her way down the alley that ought to lead to the back of his house. Her sneakers scuffed on the debris-strewn cracked pavement, the sound loud in the otherwise quiet pass-through. For the umpteenth time, she looked over her shoulder, feeling conspicuous in her scrubs and suspicious all at the same time.

From out of nowhere, the memory of the night their mom died of an aneurysm slammed into her brain. When the ambulance had driven away, Charlie had hidden. She, Scott, and their dad had searched for over a half hour before Scott had found Charlie sitting in the dark in their tree house out back. Her thirteen-year-old heart had been sure she was going to lose her mom and her little brother all in the same night. The relief of finding him had unleashed her grief.

That night was why she’d become a nurse. She wanted to know how to help if something like that ever happened again. Without question, she’d played a role in saving so many people’s lives, doing what she did. Just never the lives of the people in her own family. And Charlie was her last chance.

Becca counted to the back of the fifth row house and groaned. Freaking perfect. The rusted gate that sat at one end of the chain-link fence separating the property from the alley was chained and padlocked.

I can’t believe I’m doing this
. It was like an episode of Nurses Gone Wild. If such a show existed. Which it probably did.

Toe in one square, she grabbed the rusted fence top and hiked herself over. She dropped to the overgrown grass and darted up the length of the narrow yard, her gaze flashing to the windows of each of the surrounding houses. It was a Thursday, so most people were probably at work, right? Still, Charlie’s paranoia must’ve worn off on her, because her skin absolutely crawled with the sensation of being watched. But maybe that was normal when you were about to perpetrate a breaking and entering. Or at least try to. This wasn’t the kind of thing with which she had a lot of experience.

Unlike out front, the back half-window was neither covered nor below ground. She knelt in the tall grass and leaned in close, shielding her eyes to block the glare of the afternoon sun. A set of yellowed blinds hung over the window, allowing her a view only where they were bent or askew. But it was so dark—