Wicked Lies: A Dark Mission Novella (10 page)

If he’d needed any reassurance, Jonas got it there. She loved the man. Too much, maybe.

Loving a man with one foot in the grave just wouldn’t end well.

“Thank you, Jonas.” A fraction above a whisper. “Be in touch.”

“Count on it,” he replied after a moment, surprised when she didn’t disconnect the line after her customary sign-off.

Parker was taking this hard.

He couldn’t blame her. What would he do if the man he loved died a slow, brutal death every day?

The comm went dead, and he reached over to pick it up with fingers that shook ever so slightly. His heart hurt. For Parker and Simon, for the events that turned them into fugitives. For the funeral he was very much afraid he’d have to attend unless something broke. A crack in the Church’s defenses, anything.

Muttering a hard word, Jonas tossed the comm back to the desk and scooted his chair closer to it. He tilted one monitor to a better angle, jaw setting. That defense wouldn’t break itself.

Thud! Thud! Thud!

The knock reverberated through the old garage like a rusted bell, swallowed by the shadows and tossed back on a muted echo. Jonas’s hand flattened on the desk as the other covered his eyes. Company. He didn’t want company.

He sure as hell didn’t want the company that sent adrenaline pooling into his stomach, slamming his heart into his throat.

It wasn’t
him
. Wouldn’t be. Not after what he’d said.

The heavy door built into the far wall opened. “Jonas?”

Naomi.

He pushed away from the desk on a sharp sigh. “Back here!”

She took her time strolling through the garage. Trained too thoroughly to be anything but a missionary, she stepped soundlessly, giving her a ghostly appearance as the bank of computers bathed her in a blue-white glow.

She’d yanked her hair back today in a spiky ponytail, fringes of magenta streaks haphazardly framing eyes too clever to miss much.

He loved the woman, but Jesus, Jonas wanted her gone.

“Hey, Nai.”

She ruffled his hair as she passed, and took up position at his left. Perching a hip against the desk, she crossed her long legs and said bluntly, “I’m going to tell you how Danny’s doing.”

His fingers clenched into the edge of his chair. “Nice to see you, too,” he replied lightly.

“Yeah, yeah.” She flicked that away with a gesture. Her eyes glittered, blue-violet sparks in a sea of silver as the monitors glinted off her piercings with every move. She’d always been direct, his Naomi. “He’s completely healed.”

Relief tucked in somewhere under the anger. And the anxiety.

“Physically,” she added, and pointed at him. “Now let’s talk about you.”

“Wait, that’s it?”

Her full mouth curved beneath the silver ring. “Oh, I’m sorry, was there something else you wanted to know?”

So much. Like did any of his injuries scar? Was he eating normally? Did he ask about Jonas?

He ran his fingers through his shaggy dark hair and shook his head. “No, just making sure. He’s healed, that’s great.” It took so much effort to force himself to sound pleased. He
was
pleased. Just . . . not completely.

He was alone.

He
felt
alone.

“That’s it, then, huh?”

Jonas frowned. “No lingering trauma?”

“Oh, yeah.” Naomi bent, until she was practically nose to nose with him, one hand braced on the back of his chair for support. “Jonas Stone, you have been lying to me for fifteen years.”

Oh. Oh,
shit.

His stomach filled with bile, twisted in a surge of a nausea.
I’m sorry.

He swallowed hard, set his jaw. “It’s none of your business, Naomi.”

“Nah. It’s not. I don’t care who you want to fuck or why.” The harsh word slapped him.
I fuck all the people I want to thank.
“What bothers me is that you’ve been my goddamned rock for fifteen fucking years, and you never
once
let me return the favor.”

Jonas stared at her. No words came.

What could he say? She was right. He’d made that choice a long time ago.

“Obviously,” she continued, straightening again, “some of that is my fault. I should have paid better attention. I didn’t, and here we are. So I’m going to do you a favor.”

“No favors,” he cut in hastily, rubbing his forehead above his glasses.

She ignored him, dropping a hand on his shoulder. Her fingers bit, but not painfully. Just hard. Emphasis to her anger.

He couldn’t blame her. He’d seen the worst side of her, the best, everything in between. He’d seen her after a night spent in a stranger’s bed, and he’d crawl over broken glass if she needed him to.

But she’d never seen
him
. Because he didn’t want her to.

“Jonas.”

He looked up.

The hand on his shoulder transferred to his cheek, warm but no less firm. “Call him.” When he only stared in silence, a corner of her mouth hiked into a crooked slant. “Just call him. If you never listen to anything else I say, listen to this.” She let him go, jammed her hands into her pockets and added wryly, “You idiot.”

She left without another word, striding through the gloom, stepping between broken down husks of old cars and discarded canvas covers. Jonas didn’t watch her go. Instead, he stared up at the ceiling, lost in shadow. Lost in thought.

Call him.

Like he was some kind of a teenager needing a hand in a schoolyard romance.

No.
It was too late. Maybe, if he’d been willing to give it a try, he could have called the day after. Could have gone to see him with some kind of gift, more soup or a crate of the energy boosters he kept stocked. Something.

Maybe.

But three days was too long. Three days of his caustic words eating at whatever fragile bond they’d formed while locked together.

Jonas was right. People like Danny didn’t know how to react to something as intimate as a rescue. The statistics were in Jonas’s favor.

Adjusting his sliding glasses, Jonas seized the edge of the desk and pulled his chair closer to the keyboard. Within moments, the silence fractured on a rhythmic clatter.

People were counting on him. He had to deliver.

T
HE SCUFFED, MUD-SPATTERED
door used to hold a street address number. Somewhere along the years, the digits vanished, leaving behind small holes now filled with dirt and that slimy black-green algae that clung to the inner corners of the city. Neon lights popped and hissed in a chaotic sort of rhythm around him, painting the dark street in haphazard splashes of pink, orange, red, and green. A fizzle of purple overhead sent his shadow dancing wildly across the sidewalk.

The empty, shattered sidewalk.

Danny stared at the door, fingers twitching as he struggled to find a balance between hammering it down and running the hell away.

This was it. The address she’d given him.

Naomi was a strange bird. Danny couldn’t decide if she liked him or was only laughing at him. Maybe both. What he did know was that she loved Jonas—almost as much as she loved the man who set up Danny’s safe house location deep in the low streets. Phin Clarke wasn’t what he’d expected when he thought of people who’d balance Naomi’s palpable frenetic energy. He was smooth and polished, even in his worn denim and faded sweater, where she was sharp enough to cut.

If Danny had been forced to bet, he would have nudged the charming man over to Danny’s side of the sexual fence. Showed what he knew.

But maybe that was Danny’s problem. Maybe he needed to stop thinking about what was right or best or possible or even most likely.

If the devilishly handsome Phin could land a woman as wound up as Naomi West, then Danny had a shot. He had to try. Someone had to get through Jonas’s stubbornness.

That someone had to be him, because the thought of anyone else cracking through the other man’s barriers formed a painful knot in his chest.

Which explained, he thought dryly as he tipped his head back and studied the garage facade, why he was standing here staring at a door. A simple door. Turn the knob and go in.

Easy.

Fear kept him rooted.

You’re feeling grateful, that’s all.

The memory of it swirled around and around in his head. How logical. How very practical. Aimed so casually.

Was this a good idea?

Danny’s fingers clenched in his jacket pockets.

No. Jonas was right. Good sex—
explosive, life-altering sex
—wasn’t enough to base anything on. They’d spent too long trapped together. Danny had been restless. Time was the best medicine, now. His heart, bruised and battered, would mend, and Jonas wouldn’t have to tiptoe around him like he was some kind of lovelorn puppy.

Coward.

As his heart plummeted to his toes, he turned away from the muddy door.

Neon pooled in a pair of round spectacles across the street. Familiar silhouette. Staring.
Jonas.

His heart surged back up into his throat.

The other man said nothing. If he was at all surprised to find Danny hovering outside his door, his expression didn’t offer anything to go by. Like a blank slate, casually interested in the world as he passed it. It was the face cultivated by every stranger on every street Danny had ever strolled down.

Not the face of a lover. Or even a friend.

Danny’s jaw locked.

Jonas took his time crossing the street. The constant hum of electricity—the sound of the city living, breathing around them—undercut popping neon lights and the dull bass thrum from the warehouse next door. So many words tangled in Danny’s head, on his tongue, but all he could do was watch as Jonas pulled himself across the street on brace crutches.

The man had heart. He had spirit and more guts than Danny could imagine. He walked like it didn’t hurt; Danny knew that was a lie. He’d seen pain shape grooves beside Jonas’s mouth as he’d moved in the apartment.

That’s why he’d been ever so careful when—

Heat surged through anxiety. Twisted it into something frantic. Something so strong, he had to swallow before he could speak again. “Hey,” was all he finally managed.

Jonas hobbled past him without looking up. “Hey, yourself.”

It wasn’t a
go away
. He’d take small favors, at this point.

The door opened without a key, and he followed Jonas inside without waiting for an invitation. Jonas slanted him a look from underneath his too-long bangs, hesitated, then shrugged and nudged the door shut behind them. “What do you want?” he asked, spinning with coordinated effort on a crutch and one leg and pacing through the dark garage.

Danny took in the surroundings at a glance—old vehicles, tools, dust, and shadows—and hurried to catch up. His footfalls slapped loudly against the concrete floor, sending a flurry of echoes into the dark.

Jonas’s arrhythmic pace countered his.
Step-clack-step.
His thin shoulders hunched forward, pulled straight. Stronger than he looked. He led the way through the dark, toward the outlines of a desk inset into the far wall.

Cozy.

Danny rubbed the back of his head. “Naomi gave me this address.”

“Of course she did.” Disgust tempered with a fond sort of patience arrowed straight through Danny’s heart.

His shoulders straightened. “Jonas—”

“Stop,” he cut in, quick.
Too quick.
And he hadn’t met Danny’s eyes once. He hooked his crutches against the desk, powered on the monitor with a touch, and otherwise did everything
but
look at him. “I already explained—”

“Bullshit.”

Now he looked up. His eyes narrowed behind his crooked glasses. “You kiss your grandmother with that mouth?”

“I do a lot of things with this mouth,” Danny told him, walking closer. Closer still. He watched the realization unfold across the man’s features; watched deliberate distance slide into surprise, then into a wariness cut with something Danny hoped to hell he didn’t imagine.

Heat. Need.

Memory.

Jonas’s grip on the desk was white-knuckled.

Danny stopped inches away. Just enough to feel the man’s body heat soak into his; just enough to smell soap and warmth and the faintly coppery scent of the energy boosters Jonas liked so much on his breath.

He didn’t touch. Not yet.

Screw
right
and
gratitude
and
fear.

This was right. And he was grateful, and he was most definitely afraid. But
this
was
right
.

“You ran,” he said.

Jonas’s mouth flattened to a hard line. “I got out before your crush turned—” When Danny’s hand covered Jonas’s mouth, he stiffened. His eyes widened, flecks of green and brown flashing.

“I’m not going to let you poison this.” Danny reached up with his free hand. Hooked the bridge of his glasses with one finger and slid them off Jonas’s face.

He looked too young without them. His thin features were boyishly handsome, all intriguing angles and sculpted jawline.

His lips brushed against Danny’s palm as he took a sharp breath.

“I don’t care what you say,” Danny said, determination turning his voice into something hard. Something not to be argued with. Oh, yeah, he could get used to this. “I want a chance, Jonas. A real chance at this. At you. That’s all I’m asking.” Tossing the glasses on the desk beside the worn keyboard, he removed his hand and pushed Jonas down into his chair.

It creaked.

Jonas caught his wrist. His grip bit, but the heat in his eyes, staining his cheeks, told Danny it wasn’t about anger. At least, not entirely. “Don’t,” he warned. “You’re like twelve years old.”

Danny snorted. “Close. I’m twenty-four.”

“Jesus, I’m eight years older than you!”

“I like a man with experience.”

Jonas swallowed hard enough to hear. To see. “Danny, you can’t fix me.”

Laughter bubbled out of his chest on a tide of disbelief. Of genuine amusement. It washed away the fear, the anxiety. Left only raw determination.