Never Been Kissed (35 page)

He turned up the volume just as Harrison walked in the front door, looking tired. “Ashley’s parking the van,” he said, but Brody barely heard him.

“Reports have been confirmed,” the middle-of-the-night anchor said. “U.S. Senator Douglas Rawlings has been killed in Saudi Arabia. The details of his death haven’t been released yet; we will update you with more information as it becomes available to us.”

Brody immediately walked outside and called Clint, who picked up on the third ring.

“What the hell happened?”

“It was the woman. Gina Bassili.”

Gina Bassili? The friend of an aide? The oh-daddy woman in Cook’s Bay? With the robe?

“What was she doing in Yetarzikstan?”

“Rawlings wanted her. He wanted her everywhere.”

“But why would she kill him?”

“She was an operative within the Arab Spring movement, supporting the rebels.”

Holy hell. An operative?

“I knew we didn’t vet her enough,” Clint muttered.

“None of this makes sense, the Arab Spring doesn’t have operatives, they have college students from …” Oh, fuck.

The Egyptian accent she couldn’t hide.

“But the senator supported the rebels, that’s what the death threats were about.” Brody still struggled to connect the scattered-to-hell-and-back dots.

“A cover. The senator was selling arms to the government.”

Jesus Fucking Christ. He turned, gripped the railing and would have pulled it to the ground if he could. “Selling weapons?” he asked. “To the government?” He’d known Rawlings was dirty. But this … He’d protected that man while he made backhanded deals with a government that bombed its own people. Women. Children.

He gagged, feeling the blood seep onto his own hands. He was dirty by association. Worse, in some people’s eyes—in his own eyes—he’d be an accessory.
What do I tell Sean? Dad?

Christ, Ashley.

“Did you know?” he asked Clint when he could speak again.

“No. Not until this trip. It was pretty obvious he was into something over his head. Lots of locked door meetings.”

“What was on the block?”

“Stingers, Stinger B’s.”

Missiles, shoulder-launched missiles, developed in Arizona. Senator Rawlings’ home state.

“Is everyone else okay?” Brody asked, staring up at the dark sky. No stars tonight, nothing but clouds over a hazy moon.

“Yeah, we didn’t even realize she’d done anything until morning. He missed his wake-up call, and when we got in there she was gone. He was dead.”

“What did she use?”

“Fatal injection. Cyanide.”

“Who knows about the weapons?”

“It’s leaked. I think she leaked it. Story will break huge on the morning news cycle. CIA, MI-6, they’re all after her. This is a shit-storm of pretty global proportions.”

“And you?”

“Deposition on the Hill tomorrow morning.”

“So … you’re done.”

“I’m done.”

It wouldn’t be jail time, but who is hiring a bodyguard whose last client was selling weapons to some serious bad guys and was then killed by a woman with a syringe?

Oh God, the world was a dirty place. And he was a guy who kept the dirty people safe.

His own blood was acid in his veins. “I’d lie low if I were you. They’ll get around to you eventually,” Clint said and then laughed. “I gotta go.”

“Yeah,” Brody said. “Good luck.”

“No amount of luck is getting me out of this shit hole.”

Brody hung up and shoved his phone in his pocket.

Cool, calm, his heart in total lockdown, he started making plans. His name would no doubt come up in that deposition. He needed to get back to D.C.

If there was any fallout from this that landed on him, he needed to be far far away from here.

From Ashley.

There were footsteps behind him and he hung his head, looking at his hands. Big, wide, strong hands with calluses. His thumbnail was turning black from a run-in
with a hammer. He had been building something here, with these hands.

And now,
he thought,
I have to tear it down.

“Rawlings was who you were guarding when I found you in Cook’s Bay,” Harrison said. It wasn’t a question; he’d connected the dots. Harrison was too smart to be in the dark long.

Brody couldn’t turn around, not yet. He nodded.

“What was he doing in Saudi Arabia?”

He looked up at the moon again, the clouds moving over it a veil being lifted away to reveal the pockmarks and scars on its surface. The shame was so deep, so thick in his skin, he felt sick.

“Selling arms to the Yetarzikstan government.”

“Did you know?” Harrison’s voice was sharp as a knife and it slipped through Brody’s skin, into his gut.

Finally, unable to delay it any longer, Brody turned to him. “Does it matter?”

“To my sister, I imagine. To me? No.” Harrison put his hands on his waist and no longer looked genial and friendly. He was stone cold. “This is bad, Brody.”

“You think I don’t know that?”

“Whatever you were thinking about her—”

“It’s none of your business.”

“You will get subpoenaed on this and if the media connect black-market arms dealing with a brutal dictator to my family, in any way, it pretty much becomes my business! My family is barely afloat after my father’s bullshit, Ashley’s kidnapping, my own mistakes. We can’t handle this. Ashley cannot be mixed up in this!”

Brody didn’t care about the family, but he agreed about Ashley and felt the world come down around him, the ground collapsing under his feet. He’d just gotten here. Just gotten to happy.

“Tell me, then,” he said, because it was going to need to
be made clear. The lines telling him where he could not go were going to have to be drawn for him, because after keeping himself away from her with white-knuckled force of will for ten years, he didn’t have the strength to push Ashley away anymore. Not by himself.

Remind me,
he thought,
remind me who I really am.

“You have to break up with her right now,” Harrison said. “And I’m not kidding. You will ruin her life with this, Brody.”

“I know,” he said. And he did. He’d always known it.

“I love that van. I love that van more than I’ve loved any van in the …” Ashley approached, her smile fading when she saw Harrison’s and Brody’s frowns. “What … what’s wrong?”

Brody couldn’t say it, not right away.

“You tell her,” Harrison said. “Or I will.”

“Someone tell me!”

He looked right into her eyes, connected the dots of those freckles for the last time, wished he could touch her. A last time.

“Brody,” Harrison said.

“A man I was hired to protect was murdered in Saudi Arabia,” he said.

“Are your friends …” She glanced between Harrison and Brody. “Are your friends okay?”

Harrison gave Brody a hard look and then vanished back into the bar.

“What’s wrong?” Ashley asked. “You guys are freaking me out.”

“The man was a senator and he was dealing weapons to the Yetarzikstan government.”

She gasped. “Did you know?”

It would end, right now, if he said yes. If he looked her in the eye and said,
Yes, I knew.
She would never speak to him again. But he had just enough pride left to not want her believing the worst of him.

“Not about this … but I knew enough. He wasn’t a good guy.”

She bent, her hands on her knees as if she’d been punched in the gut. He stepped toward her and she flinched away, so he stopped, useless.

“That’s who you would take a bullet for?” Her voice was a pained whisper. “Men who deal in weapons? In death? The Yetarzikstan government—” She turned away. He knew what the Yetarzikstan government did. He’d seen the pictures, too.

“Does your life mean so little to you?”

He didn’t answer, he didn’t know how to answer.

“I have to go,” he finally said.

Her mouth fell open. “Just like that. You’re gone?”

“I have to get back to D.C., my name will probably come up in the deposition.”

“I’ll come with you.”

He stopped on the stairs, for a moment the magnetic quality of her words, the power they had over him, nearly dropped him. But he shook it off.

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“I want to support you, how is that ridiculous?”

“Your family … your brother cannot be mixed up in this.”

“Did he say something to you? Is that what this is about?”

“The story will be out tomorrow. You show up in Washington D.C. with me, a person named in the deposition, and it’s over, Ashley. What is your family going to do if we’re together? I worked for the company that guarded a man who sold arms on the black market. It’s political suicide. Your brother is running for Congress. If we’re together we could bring your whole family down!”

“I’m not a kid anymore, Brody, and you don’t work for them. I’m not scared. You didn’t know.”

“No one is going to believe that.”

“I believe it.”

Christ, these rose-colored glasses she wore were blinding her. “I knew he was shady. I knew he was cheating on his wife. Lying to the public, misappropriating funds. I knew that, Ashley. And I didn’t care.”

She blinked.

“I didn’t care about anything! Who I worked for, what I did. None of it mattered. You deserve better than me,” he told her for the hundredth time.

“I know you, Brody.” She took a step toward him.

“What about your plans? What about starting something from scratch? I get mixed up in this, it will poison your soil, Ashley. None of your plants will grow. None. Stay away. Honestly, for your own good, just stay away.” He climbed the stairs, the metal ringing under his heavy boots.

“I love you, Brody.”

Her voice carried through the night, wrapped around his heart, and squeezed with such power he was light-headed.

The temptation of her, of believing her, of cleaving his dirty self to her innocence was unbearable and he gripped the railing until his knuckles turned white, until the pain reminded him of who he was and what he was and how he had no business dreaming dreams of Ashley.

“I told you that was a mistake.”

He heard her gasp and he kept walking.

He was throwing his things into his duffel bag, packing up his laptop, looking for his damn keys. Ashley never put them back in the same place. He was searching the futon when Sean threw open the apartment door so hard it ricocheted off the wall.

“Just like that. You’re gone?”

“I was never going to stay, Sean.”

“But I thought—”

“Whatever you thought is not my fault.”

“Own up, man,” Sean yelled. “Own up to what you’re doing here!”

“I’m passing time. I’m always just passing time here.”

“I don’t believe you. I don’t believe that you don’t care. I don’t believe that you aren’t gutted by what you just did to Ashley. That it doesn’t hurt you to leave here.”

Sean had no idea, he said the word
gutted
like he knew, but Brody’s heart was down there bleeding on the asphalt.

“I’ll put the money in your account tomorrow.”

“Fuck the money, Brody!” Sean yelled. “I want my brother! You give me money so you can walk in and out of my life without explanation, like you don’t owe me anything.”

It was painfully true. He was bribing the voters as sure as Rawlings did.

“Tell Dad I said goodbye, I’ll be back around when I can.”

“No. I won’t.”

Brody looked at Sean, who was glaring at him, his arms locked over his chest like he was just barely holding himself back from taking a swing.

“I used to think you were the bravest person I knew. The way you went after guys who called me names, wanting to be a Marine, the way you handled your injury—all of it. You were my hero, Brody. But now I see you’re a coward. I won’t do a coward’s dirty work. And you can keep your money. I’m my own man—I don’t need your payoff.”

Fine,
he thought as Sean walked toward the door. If that’s what he wanted to think, it was a better thing for everyone.

But when Sean got one foot out the door, Brody couldn’t stop himself.

“Why are you acting like I’m just walking away?” he asked. “I’m trying to protect you. Ashley.”

“You think we need your protection? That Ashley needs your protection? She’d stand by you, man. All the way. If you’d let her.”

Brody nearly laughed. “Ashley’s biggest threat has always been herself, Sean. Always. I’m just protecting her from herself.”

Ashley stormed back into the bar, where Harrison was waiting for her. Her blood was on fire with grief and anger.

“You did that, didn’t you?” she yelled. “You told him he had to leave. He had to break it off with me.”

“He knew. I just said it out loud.”

“Screw you, Harrison. You were the one member of my family I liked.”

“What choice is there, Ashley?”

“For you, none. No choices, you don’t get a say.”

“The senator was selling weapons. Brody’s going to get subpoenaed. Do you know what the media would do if you were mixed up with him?”

“Mixed up?” She shook her head, sad for her brother and his black-and-white heart. His right and wrong world. “I love him, Harrison. I love him. Go. Go back to Atlanta. I’ll meet you there in a few days.”

“He’s leaving—”

“But he might come back. He might change his mind. And I want to be here.”

Harrison came close, almost overwhelming her, and looked her straight in the eye. “Listen to me, I barely had to say the word and he was packing his bags. Your
fight is not with me, it’s with him. I just gave him permission.”

“Go,” she said through her teeth.

I’ll be here when you get back.

She clung to his words from earlier. Clung to the idea that he would realize what he was throwing away.

He’s going to be back,
she thought.
He
will
be back.

Brody made it to D.C. just as the world exploded with news of Rawlings’ death. Leaving Dulles, he saw on an airport television that “Gina” had committed suicide when surrounded by U.S. military forces in Cairo.

What a shitty way for Rawlings’ wife to find out about her husband, he thought.