The Scent Of Shadows Part 2

I blushed even more. Ben cleared his throat and picked up a crystal paperweight, flipping it in his palm. "Saw the article on your family."

I studied him for judgment or sarcasm but found none. I licked my lips slowly and watched him watching me. Interesting. "So you read how I'm a slacker with no ambition and few abilities or admirable goals?"

He scoffed as he put down the paperweight, then skirted the table between us to take me by the hand, and led me to the window that overlooked the glittering Las Vegas Strip. His palm was warm and dry, and my own looked dwarfed inside of it. Even as a boy he'd had great hands. "They should have interviewed me. I have my own theory about the 'prodigal daughter of the Archer dynasty.'"

That quote stung. I withdrew my hand and turned on him. "Why? Because you know me so well?"

"I think I do."

I folded my arms over my chest. "I can't wait to hear this."

"Okay." Ben mimicked my pose, leaning on the gla.s.s wall, looking as though he were reclining against the night. "First, it's your birthday. Twenty-five years old. Happy Birthday."

He remembered. I glanced down at my watch so he couldn't see the sudden moisture in my eyes. "You're about twenty-four hours early, actually, but thank you."

"You're welcome. Second, you're not aimless, merely restless. You battle between a fleeting need for security and a constant one for complete freedom. You can't lie about who you are, and therefore you can't feign interest in your father's business, or imitate your sister's social grace, regardless of how successful they are."

He paused, brows raised, and I motioned for him to continue. In a quieter voice he added, "You think too much, and you're haunted by things you can't change. You have a strong sense of right and wrong, with little tolerance for the in-between, and zero patience for deception."

"Anything else?" I said, a bit tightly.

"Just one. You're a photographer, but not as a means of commerce or even as a form of communicating with the world. The lens is actually a barrier shielding you from the rest of us. It's a way of distancing yourself from your subjects so you can study them. Or hunt them."

"That's a bunch of c.r.a.p!"

Ben grinned. "You're also quick-tempered."

Hunt them, I thought, shaking my head, annoyed. It was the same wording I'd heard earlier that evening. We've been hunting you for a long time, Ajax had said. He'd been trying to scare me, of course, but now Ben was saying it as if I were the predator, like some sort of skulking vampire, on the lookout for O-positive. "You're reading too much into it."

"You've been out every night this week."

"Wait," I said, holding up my hand, but otherwise going very still. "You've been watching me?"

"You're using yourself as bait, aren't you?" he persisted, ignoring the question. "That's why you go out alone, at night, in the most dangerous parts of town."

I clenched my teeth together, hard. "I go out at night because it's quiet, and because light and shadow are a photographer's main tools."

"You seem to be more in the shadows than the light."

"So what?" I tried not to sound defensive, but it was hard.

"So, why?" he said. "Why spend your days training like you're going into battle, and your nights on the streets seeking it?"

I know that's what it looked like from afar, from the outside looking in, which was the only way Ben could possibly see it, but it was more than that. Not that I was going to explain it now. "Maybe I'm just dedicated to my craft," I said, lifting my chin.

"You haven't been taking your camera."

I whirled away from him, turning as much from the understanding his face held as from the shame that my secret-what I thought was a secret-had been so easily found out. I rubbed my arms, trying to erase the chills that had shot along them. A part of me was thrilled; he'd kept up on me, hadn't forgotten me, still cared. Another part was furious. How could I have not seen him? Part of the point of these nocturnal excursions was to look for men-a man-who were looking for me.

"Joanna?"

"I can't believe you've been following me." My voice cracked. I cleared my throat, but it felt scratchy and dry, like all my words would stick to its walls.

At least he had the grace to sound apologetic. "It was an accident the first time. I was on a stakeout and I just saw you. I trailed you to make sure you'd be safe, but it didn't take long to realize you weren't trying to be safe." His voice loomed closer, just behind me. "Why, Jo-Jo?"

"I've just been feeling...restless lately," I finally said, which was the truth, if only half of it. Most of the time I felt like I was being bitten by a thousand fire ants buried deep beneath my skin. Or like someone was stoking a fire in my soul. "I feel like something's going to happen, but I won't know what it is until it's too late."

Ben put his hands on my shoulders, which I wouldn't have tolerated from anyone else, and turned me so I was facing him. "You're looking for him, aren't you? Tempting him. Testing him."

I clenched my teeth so hard my jaw ached. It had been such a good cover too. Confirmed slacker. Lazy little rich girl. Token black sheep of the Archer dynasty, the one others could point to and say, "See? All the money in the world can't buy you happiness."

The writer of the Fortunes and Fates article hadn't caught on. Neither had Ajax or any man I'd dated before him. Not even my family, or Asaf-who knew only that I slept badly-were aware of what I did, or why. n.o.body had seen that it was all just a cover. Until now.

I shook my head. "I'm just taking pictures."

"And if you happen to find him locked between the crosshairs of your lens?" Ben asked, watching me again with his cop eyes.

I didn't have to ask whom he meant. I met his gaze as I'd met Ajax's, unblinking. And just to see who this new Ben Traina was, I said, "I kill him."

His answer was immediate. "Good. Any other long-term goals?"

That jerked a laugh from me. I was surprised my throat had even let it escape. More surprised at Ben for laughing with me. Where was the lecture? Where was the warning that should've followed? The PSA about the long arm of the law? Then again, I didn't really need it. Despite my words, my actions were all defensive. But I think the real reason we both let it slide was because the "him" we were referring to was the one who'd ultimately driven us apart.

"Long-term goals?" I repeated, before shaking my head. "Just survival, Traina. I'm just trying to survive."

Which wasn't entirely true. I already had the survival thing down pat.

Ben turned back to the gla.s.s wall and looked out with a sigh over the city we both patrolled. I joined him, pressing my forehead against the cool gla.s.s, and let the lights below blur into a blinding stream of nothingness. We call it camera shake in photography; when the camera moves and the shutter is open long enough to cause an overall blur. The effect was mostly undesirable, except for times like this.

Together we looked out at this strange city where the play of shadow and light was more p.r.o.nounced than in any other until finally he said, "There has to be more to life than survival."

There hadn't been for me, I conceded, not for a long while. But with Ben standing close, knowing about my past and not flinching, I began to think there might be. I raised my eyes to find him gazing at me. Not just gazing, but seeing.

How long had it been since I'd been truly seen?

And the look on his face was so soft and clear it was practically translucent. Probably, I thought, a good reflection of my own. Just then, I would have loved to frame that face with my camera lens. Capture that moment, and him, forever. G.o.d, what a beautiful man.

I froze suddenly. "Please don't tell me I said that aloud."

Ben straightened, grinning wickedly. "You did. You said I was beautiful."

Embarra.s.sed, I turned away, but his hand, wide and firm and warm, grasped my shoulder. He turned me toward him again and held all of me there; body, eyes, and mind.

"If I'm beautiful," he said, thumbs tickling against the inside of my elbows, "then you're the most stunning woman I've ever seen."

I ducked my head automatically, though my pulse points hummed. "My sister's stunning," I said, "I'm strong."

"You're stunning and strong," he murmured, and moved in closer.

I lifted my head and leaned into him. It felt natural, and my pulse throbbed. "Go on."

His lips quirked up at one side as he drew me against him. "You're stunning and strong, Joanna Archer, and you're about to be kissed."

And I knew exactly what he would taste like. Ambrosia. The breaking of a fast. Water, pure, clean, and spring-clear after a ten-year drought. All the relevant cliches applied.

How m.a.s.o.c.h.i.s.tic, I thought, sighing as his mouth molded to mine. Instantly back in love with a man I'd spent a decade trying to get over. Anyone have a dull razor blade? Cat-o'-nine-tails? Old, rusty nails?

Yet this was also a first. The first taste of a man whose lips and arms and body touched the expected places in unexpected ways. The first hint of underlying pa.s.sion, like touching a battery to the tip of my tongue, that metallic zap of pure power just aching to course over into me. The glory of a man whose flesh and cellular structure spoke to my own but, biology and chemistry and pheromones aside, one who just felt f.u.c.king great wrapped around me.

"Jo-Jo?" Ben finally said, breaking away.

"Hmm?" I still hadn't opened my eyes. It'd been so long. Why hadn't I known I needed this, wanted it-had been missing it-for so d.a.m.ned long?

"You're groping a senior officer."

I smiled against his shirt and moved my hand. "Gonna put it in your statement?"

"Gonna ask you for a date." He pressed a kiss to the crown of my head. "You never say no, right?"

I pulled back and peered into his face. "I object to the implication. I say no to some things."

"Gonna say no to me?"

"No."

He smiled, lifted a hand to my face and caressed it, his touch impossibly gentle. I wasn't used to being handled gently. In truth, I wasn't used to being handled at all. Certainly not by a man who could be both as hard as granite and as soft as a feather. So much new to discover here, I thought, lifting my head to kiss the hollow of his neck.

"Your cheek is bruised," he murmured, voice hoa.r.s.e.

I leaned into him, offering up that cheek for feathery kisses and pointed attentions. All wit and sarcasm and guarded inhibitions fled-in Ben's embrace I wasn't an heir to the Archer family empire, as so many others saw me, or a wounded warrior bent on vengeance, as Ben had claimed with such certainty. I also wasn't a woman fighting for normalcy-fighting, but losing-which in fact was how I saw myself. I was just a woman. So often that was all a woman wanted to be.

"I didn't think you'd ever want to see me again," he murmured. His heart cracked through that voice.

Startled, I stared up at this man, so unflinching and honest and whole, and saw-for the briefest moment-the boy who hadn't had the strength or experience to be any of those things.

"I didn't either," I admitted.

"But you'll go on a date with me?"

I nodded.

"Tomorrow night?" he asked urgently, as if to make up for lost time.

I nodded again.

"So, what's changed?"

I shrugged. "Now I have seen you."

And that was it. Life sometimes flips on you like that. One minute you're looking at your reflection in the water, not entirely sure you like what you see, and the next minute you're upside down, submerged in a world where even familiar things look new. I put a hand to Ben's cheek just as he'd done to mine and softly said good-bye. It was a fragile and new beginning between us, and like a new parent cradling life, we were both being gentle with it.

But I smiled as I left Valhalla. Of all the qualities Ben had attributed to me earlier, he'd forgotten flexibility. I'd grown up as well, and had learned to adapt to the situation and to the moment because I'd had to. That's how I could rebound from being attacked to being kissed in the same night. If I hadn't possessed the ability to roll with the punches, I might as well have died facedown on the scorching desert floor.

Exactly as I'd been left to do over a decade ago.

But here, on the eve of my twenty-fifth birthday, I decided I was ready to look at my world anew. Perhaps Ben was right, I thought, his kiss still fresh upon my lips. Survival was all well and good, as was the elusive search for normalcy. But maybe neither was enough anymore.

3.

It was midnight as I made my way home, exactly twenty-four hours before my next birthday, and the nightly baccha.n.a.l that was Las Vegas was in full swing, a strange cross-culture of midwestern hedonism and foreign bafflement. The Strip was a neon necklace strung from one end of the valley to the other, like gaudy costume jewelry dressing up the desert night, and despite the sharp November air, every street, walkway, and aerial tram was packed with tourists. Their gazes were wide-eyed and expectant, like they expected someone to drop money in their lap at any given moment.

I bundled into my wrap, then my car, and ga.s.sed it past Bellagio and Caesar's before hurtling over the wash that flooded the Imperial Palace's parking garage every monsoon season. Lowering my window halfway, I allowed the cool air to bite at my cheeks and ruffle my hair. Even if my mind hadn't been buzzing with thoughts of Ben, or images of Ajax writhing on the floor-and then, again, more thoughts of Ben-I'd have been wide-awake. Vegas came alive at night, and so did I.

I'd often thought how boring it'd be to grow up in a place where everyone was the same...until I realized that everyone really was, essentially, the same. They watched the same television shows, ate at McDonald's, had their coffee at Starbucks, and hopped the same airplanes to return to whatever state or country they thought made them different. While they were here, however, no matter what color, shape, or accent they sported, they wanted identical things. To be entertained. To get lucky. And to be allowed to dream, just for a while, that anything was possible. Despite its checkered past and dubious press, Vegas spoke to people of hope. And hope, as they say, makes fools of us all.

I left all that frantic hope behind me and turned onto an asphalt-slung back road only the cops, locals, and well-tipped cabbies knew about. Within five minutes I was coasting along Charleston Boulevard, the glitter of the Strip replaced by littered alleys and underpa.s.ses, where the unlucky huddled in wary groups rather than optimistic ones. These were the people tired of playing the fool, and the dichotomy between these two faces of Vegas was not lost on me.

That was how I first spotted the homeless man pawing through a steel trash bin, his tattered duster whipping violently around his calves...on a wind-free night. He glanced up as my headlights arched over his graffiti-tagged domain, a giant rat reclining on two legs, beady eyes following my vehicle until the possibility of danger had pa.s.sed.

Two minutes later, as I turned onto an unpaved shortcut, another vagrant appeared-dressed similarly, no less-and half scuttled, half walked toward my racing vehicle, gazing right at me through the window as I pa.s.sed. I trailed him in the rearview mirror, wondering at the way he followed my path into the middle of the road and just stood in the dust, watching as I sped away.

I didn't see the figure in front of me until it was too late. Tires squealed, the windshield cracked with a sonic boom, and a body careened over my roof, thumping and wheeling overhead before disappearing into the inky night. Tumbleweeds sc.r.a.ped my doors like fingernails, rocks battered the tires and underside of my car, and I spun twice, carving dizzying whorls into the dry desert bed before miraculously coming to a rest without flipping.

The pitch of night-complete on this barren desert side street-couldn't mask the smell of burning rubber, or the ragged sound of my breath breaking in sharp spurts from my lungs. It took a moment to get oriented again, but when I did I found myself facing the direction I'd come. In the background were the circus lights of the Strip.

In the foreground was a man crumpled on the desert floor.

I began to shake. Then, before shock could set in, I began to move. Grabbing my cell phone, I pushed from the car, the screech of door against bramble arching in the air like a lonely cry for help. My headlights illuminated the person I'd hit, but it seemed to take me forever to run on jellied limbs and slide to a crouch beside him.

I don't know how I recognized him, perhaps it was the long coat, but even before I reached the crumpled figure I knew I'd find that beggar. The one I'd already seen. Twice.

Multiple smells. .h.i.t me at once. Pungent body odor, the man surely hadn't washed for weeks; vomit, sour and smelling of the bottle; and something greasy, whether his hair or clothes or the dinner he might have unearthed from that trash bin, I didn't know. There was another scent too, one I couldn't name. I knew only that it was him, and I tried to ignore the voice in my mind telling me there was no way he should be here. That it was impossible. That I'd left him miles back in the dark.

His face was turned away from the beam of my headlights, and a wiry beard kept me from seeing if a pulse beat in his neck, but his limp limbs were turned in impossible angles and gruesome directions. It didn't look like an ambulance would be necessary. Shaking, I touched his skin for a pulse. I had just killed a human being.

His head rocked, eyes opened wide, and he screeched in my face. I fell backward, gasping, and quickly scrambled out of reach. His cry hadn't been one of pain. It even sounded joyous, like he'd made some sort of discovery. It sounded, in fact, like he'd cried, "Eureka!"

He hollered again, this time drawing out the syllables, and I couldn't tell whether he was laughing or crying, but that twisted, mutilated body began to shake. "Euareakaaaa!"

I reached for the cell phone I'd dropped, but was stopped by the man's voice; throaty, strong, and surprisingly authoritative. "Don't touch that phone!"

"I-I'm just going to call an ambulance."