Gray came to with a start and grabbed her head to keep it from splitting open. Dropped on the floor, somewhere near her bed, the intermittent buzzing of a phone against hardwood made her brain bleed.
With a groan conjured from the depths of a vodka-induced hell, she cracked the mascara-clotted seal of one eye and tried to force the hands on the clock to come into focus. She gave up after a second, slumping onto her pillow as the harbinger of doom cut off.
As she knew it would be, her reprieve was short lived. Only two people ever called her, and the only one she wanted to talk to was sleeping off a night of mojito madness in the next room.
Cursing her freelance partner, Gray hung over the side of the bed and scrabbled around, her fingers searching blindly. When she reached too far, gravity took over, and her body slid to the floor, her shoulder hitting with a bone-jarring thud.
Air knocked out of her, it wasn’t until somewhere around the fifth or sixth callback before she managed to smash the phone to her ear. “What the fuck, Jackson?”
Jackson Lowe’s rumbling laugh did nothing to improve her disposition whatsoever. “Getcha lovely ass up, cranky pants. You have a plane to catch.”
“I just got off a plane, dickhead.”
“Yep, so your bag’s still packed. Meet me at the airport. Eleven thirty. And—”
“Oh hell, no. Nope. Not happening.” Gray shook her head, and her entire body protested with a wave of nausea. At this point, she couldn’t get on her feet, much less on a plane.
“Listen, I have intel on a story that’s gonna win us a Pulitzer. This is the holy grail. And I need you. So don’t make me come over there to haul your carcass out of bed—because you know I will.”
“Like you could.”
A victim of the tech generation, Jackson had a worldwide reputation for his lack of coordination and lousy spelling. In light of his shortcomings, how he achieved the status of an award-winning investigative journalist was a major mystery.
“Hurtful.” Raising his voice about six octaves too high for a man his size, his outburst plunged a knife in her ear. When he continued, it was in a range normal humans could hear. “Rough night, huh? Trying to drown the memory of that karate loser you were hot-n-heavy with in a bottle of Jack?”
“It was Goose, and he was a UFC fighter.”
Well aware she’d ditched the karate loser six months ago, Jackson wanted to provoke her. He hadn’t liked the guy. Not surprising. As her former boyfriend, he didn’t like any of the guys she slept with.
But not the point of this conversation.
When the silence stretched, she caved. “Fine. He was a loser. Happy? Where the hell are we going?”
“Notwe, sweet cheeks. Just you. Eleven thirty, and babe…”
“What?”
“Toss a warm jacket into that disgusting duffel of yours. And bring your climbing gear.”
At the risk of chucking her cookies, Gray shuddered. “Jacket? Gross. Why?”
“I’ll explain at the airport.”
Damn it. Gray sighed in defeat. No point in arguing. When Jackson Lowe called, she grabbed her camera and went—end of story.
He knew it. She knew it. Everybody fucking knew it.
“By the way, the El Koki gang pictures are perfect for theTimesarticle. How’d you get in and out of Cota 905 without getting killed? Actually—scratch that. I don’t wanna know. Good job on the Venezuela gig. Now getcha ass out of bed.” Before she had a chance to reply, his rapid disconnect shot a dime-sized hole in her head.
Fucking Jackson.
With a significant amount of effort, she rolled to her side and groaned when her gaze landed on the bag she hadn’t unpacked. God, she hoped she had clean underwear in a drawer somewhere. But not caring enough to check and incapable of movement anyway, she dragged the duvet off the bed.
An hour later, head hanging loose under the scalding water, she supported herself with both palms pressed flat against the shower tiles while running through a checklist of what she needed and where to find it. With each mental tick, a burst of pain exploded behind her closed lids, and she once again swore off hard liquor.
When the last of the wooziness faded, she shut the water off, towel-dried her hair, and jammed her ass—commando and still scarlet from the heat—into a pair of wrinkled khakis. Then snagging her threadbare Oscar the Grouch T-shirt, she threw it on, grabbed her duffel, and shouldered the load.
She didn’t get far.
