“I feel like I’m standing on the muddy edge of my own open grave,” he said. “So, not really.”
“Some people are into that,” Wren said. “You never know. Relax. It’ll wear off.”
“Like I said,” Ledger said. He closed his eyes. The frantic beat of blood through his veins made an audible sound inside his skull. “You’re not my first.”
Wren chuckled and kissed Ledger on the cheek, his mouth soft and warm. That was unexpected. The surprise of it made Ledger open his eyes and look down into that dark, shiny gaze.
“It’s not personal,” he said as he turned away and went back to the search. “I just don’t trust anyone who did business with Conroy.”
“I can understand that,” Ledger said. He swallowed, and it didn’t taste like lemon and ash on the back of his tongue. It really did pass, and quicker than it seemed. “I feel the same about you, and you had a choice about doing business with him.”
Wren just snorted as he carved the suitcase open. When he didn’t find anything other than more suitcase, he closed the blade against his thigh and tucked it back into the pocket of his jeans. While he checked the drawers, Ledger slid down the wall, long legs tented in front of him, and caught his breath.
“I told you,” he said. “This is my job. I don’t rip my clients off.”
Wren picked up the dog-eared local-attractions magazine from under the TV and shook it. An old perfume tester card fell out onto the floor.
“Forty bucks isn’t enough to keep someone honest,” Wren said.
“I already told you, you’re not my first,” Ledger said. “I wouldn’t get much repeat business if it got around that I stole from them.”
Wren tossed the magazine aside. He stood there for a moment as he chewed on the edge of his thumbnail. A frown pinched his eyebrows together, and there was blood on his thumb from his lip.
“How much trouble are you in?” Ledger asked.
Or at least it sounded like him. He’d not meant to ask. From experience, minding his own business was easier on the conscience.
As he looked over at Ledger, Wren seemed very young and very tired. He swallowed raggedly and looked like he very much wanted to take the offer of… whatever it was. Sympathy, Ledger supposed. There wasn’t much else he could do.
Then Wren dragged a smirk up out of somewhere, cocky and blood-streaked on his mouth, and shook his head.
“Not as much as whoever has that fucking deed,” he said. “I hope you weren’t too fond of Conroy because I’m going to give his corpse the same treatment I gave your suitcase. Don’t spend that fee all in one place.”
He let himself out, leaving the door open behind him.
Ledger stayed where he was. He watched the night sky through the crack in the door as the breeze from outside cooled the fear sweat that had broken on him earlier.
What the fuck had Bell gotten himself into?
Ledger thought about that, then braced his feet and used the wall to lever himself up from the floor.
And how long, he wondered, until he could leave town and say it wasn’t his problem anymore?
He grabbed his stuff off the bed and shoved it untidily into the ripped-apart shell of his carry-on. The money shoved into his pants scratched his stomach, reminding him it was there. He pulled it out and counted it as he walked over to close the door.
Fifty dollars.
Great. Ten bucks for the case. Ledger tossed it onto the dresser, under the TV, and crawled back into bed. That would buy him a handful of garbage bags to carry his stuff onto the planeandleave him change for Starbucks.
He tossed the wet pillow onto the floor, rolled to the other side of the mattress, and tried to get some sleep.
CHAPTER3
LEDGER DREAMED ABOUTWren.
He woke up with a hard-on and his heart in his throat, his skin damp with clammy sweat.
“Some people are into that sort of thing,”the memory of Wren’s voice drawled in Ledger’s mental ear.
