I haven’t had to make an effort since then. All it’s ever taken is my wallet.
But Ivy’s done the tattoo and I’m supposed to go home, and I both can’t and don’t want to.
“A drink? Now? I mean, tonight?” She frowns, her eyes shifting from my bandaged side to the clock. “Aren’t you exhausted? And sore?”
“Nothing a few stiff drinks won’t fix.” I know she drinks, because she had that flask last night. I also know she probably has no plans to go to sleep anytime soon, given her nocturnal habits.
And I know she’s not ready to leave me yet either because . . . I can just feel it.
She bites her lip in thought. “Okay, fine. But I need to clean up here. And you”—she holds up the clipboard that I haven’t looked at since she handed it to me seven hours ago—“were supposed to fill this out. It’s a regulatory requirement.”
“And charging me tax is a government requirement, but you’re not doing that, are you?” My ID says Gregory White from San Diego. I don’t want to have to explain why I introduced myself as Sebastian. I don’t want anything documented about my time with her, period.
She twists her lips and tosses it aside. “If you die of a staph infection, I’ll deny ever having met you.”
“I think that’s best.”
She smirks, rifling through her purse to pull out and hand me a business card. “Meet me here in an hour. Give it to the bouncer and he’ll let you through the line with no questions. I’ll be upstairs in the VIP section.”
Daredevil. “A club?” Deafening music, disorienting lights, a thick crowd of people that I can’t tell apart. Tension slides into my back. “I don’t dance.”
She begins taking apart her tattoo machine, her back to me. “Then you can watch me, because I feel like dancing tonight and this is where I’ll be.”
After seven hours of a different, friendly, more vulnerable side of Ivy, she’s reasserting her cool, indifferent side, and every vibe radiating from her right now tells me that if I want to continue tonight, it’s on her terms. Fuck. She just better not be trying to ditch me as part of that display of power. “I have no problem waiting around for you. I can search for that rat.” And anything else that the cops may have missed.
She shudders. “There’s no rat. I’ve been listening for it. You may as well go. I need to clean this up and then run home to shower and change.” She glances over her bare shoulder at me. “And you’re not coming home to watch me do that.”
I’ve already seen you do so much more than just shower.
“Even though we’re practically married now?” I’ve been saving her earlier words for the right moment.
She lifts an eyebrow but says nothing.
I could step up my game right here, right now. Rub her shoulders again, take her hand again . . . kiss her. Maybe we could avoid the club altogether. I consider this as I watch her methodically wipe down the components of her tattoo gun and fit them into the foam inset of her carrying case. I’m guessing she cares for her equipment like a mother would care for her child.
No. This is on her terms and she bristles easily. I can’t come on too strong. Not yet. “I’ll see you in an hour, then.”
“Yes, at twenty-three hundred hours, Navy Boy,” she mocks as I head out the back door.
Ivy stalks past the lengthy line without a care, a siren amid a sea of commoners in her royal-blue and black dress and clunky platform boots, her jet-black hair hanging like a smooth and shiny curtain around her face. She looks like a small child next to the towering bouncer who has to stoop to hear her, even with her added four inches. They share a few words and then he laughs and waves her in, the thick band of ink circling his biceps proudly displayed. I’m assuming either she did it or her uncle did. I’m betting that all her associations are somehow tied to her profession.
I watch all of this from an alleyway across the street, hidden by shadow, the effects of Ivy’s needle beginning to burn my ribs. But nothing I can’t handle, nothing that will stop me.
Now that she’s inside, I stride forward, card in hand. Just as she promised, it’s a simple wave to the bouncer and he’s unfastening the rope.
The music rattles in my brain as I push through a red velvet curtain, my senses on overdrive. I’ve been trained to block out unimportant distractions and to focus on the important—the target I need to take out, the code exchange I need to catch. But eighteen months of listening to bombs blowing up buildings, gunfire raining down on insurgents, and the screams of anguish when human beings don’t die instantly from their injuries doesn’t simply vanish when you get on that plane for home. That shit tends to follow you wherever you go and manifests itself in everyday life—cars backfiring, people shouting, plates shattering—pulling you back thousands of miles and years in the past in a single heartbeat. Places like this . . . they’re my nightmare.
Forcing that all down, I quickly zero in on the closest set of stairs. I take them up, two at a time, passing several waitresses dressed in sparkly short dresses and garter belts, navigating the dark and the steep steps in their gold heels while they balance cigar trays in their hands.
In my jeans and T-shirt, I’m sorely underdressed, but so is everyone else. Everyone except Ivy, maybe.
My tension eases up a bit when I reach the VIP section on the second floor and see that there’s actually space between bodies, and a soft breeze coming from the fans above. And two exits by conventional means—stairs—plus six more by necessity—the windows lining the walls. A large opening in the center, lined by a glass rail, allows people a view to the main dance floor below and the chance to drop a beer bottle onto someone’s head.
Ivy is impossible to miss. She’s the woman standing at the rail, drink in hand, observing the mass of gyrating bodies below like a queen. An ice queen, who dismisses the line of lackluster candidates for her attention with nothing more than a glare when they attempt to strike up a conversation about her tattoos. I know I should go in and save her from them, but instead I watch from my corner for fifteen minutes as she deftly rejects them two . . . three . . . four times, sneering at one who has the audacity to touch her arm.
I smile, feeling triumphant, because she hasn’t rejected me. Yet.
Her eyes are glued to the crowd below, as if she’s not waiting for anyone. But I notice the two covert glances at her phone as well as the single glance at the stairwell closest to the front entrance, which I took to get up here. She’s almost finished her drink, and by the irritated drum of her fingertips against the glass rail, I know that she’s about to ditch me, even though she made a point of making it sound like she had plans to come here anyway.
It’s time to move in.
Her body, already tense, goes rigid as my hands find her hips from behind. I use the loud music as an excuse to lean in and get my mouth nice and close to her ear. “Anything interesting from up here?”
She relaxes against me for a moment, but then snaps, “I thought soldiers knew how to tell time.”
“I’m not a soldier anymore.” Not the kind that she thinks I am, anyway.
She turns to peer into my eyes, her face inches from mine. “Did they kick you out for tardiness?”
It’s an innocent dig, but it drills me right where it hurts all the same. “No, not for that.” That would have been more palatable than how I got discharged.
She eyes me, curious to know more but not about to ask—that’s what I like about her, she can tell when I’m not willing to talk about something and she doesn’t prod.
“Actually, I’m never late. I was standing right over there for the last fifteen minutes, watching you get hit on.” I point to my hiding spot.
Her brow spikes. “You like watching me?”
I chuckle. You have no idea how much. “I guess I do.”
She tips her glass back to finish her drink, the ice shards rattling in her glass. “Jameson and Coke, when the waitress comes back around.” She twists out of my grasp and shoves the empty glass into my chest, holding it there until I take it.