Jacob swallowed, his mouth sticky with puke and soda, and reached up to put the can next to the sink. If everything had gone according to plan, he’d have been on a plane home for a longer-than-usual visit with his family. So it could be worse.
Last time he’d gone to visit, his sister had left him with the kids, taken off to Mexico, and gotten stopped coming back over the border with contraband. It had been the rugrats’ first visit to court—all in one long weekend.
Compared to that an awkward conversation with an ex was nothing. But he supposed that was true of most things. His family had made him. That was proof enough they sucked.
He dragged himself to his feet, flushed the toilet, and headed back into the bedroom. Simon had stripped his jacket off and rolled his sleeves up, exposing lean forearms and old scars as he braced his elbows on his knees. The black canvas straps of his holster were snug around his body, stark against the tight-fitting white linen of his shirt. It was probably meant to be intimidating, but it was kinda hot.
Simon looked up, his dark eyes narrow over knife-edge cheekbones.
“Who grabbed you?”
“Don’t know.”
“Why?”
“Don’t know.”
“For someone whose job is information, you don’t seem to know much.”
Professional pride a bit ruffled at that, Jacob scowled at him. He regretted the expression as his battered face twinged around the hinges. “I didn’t exactly have my usual prep time,” he said. “They were thugs in cheap clothes and a nice car. They were not particularly nice. That’s all I got. They weren’t interested in talking to me.”
Simon played with his watch and adjusted the strap around his wrist so the fob lay flat on his arm. “What about Clayton? Maybe he just didn’t think you were worth your payslip.”
“No, I don’t think so,” Jacob said. He felt vomit balling up under his diaphragm again and tried to think about something else. Anything else. He rubbed his hand nervously and pressed down on the bruises. “He was… he wasn’t the type. Clayton was out of his depth withme, never mind these guys.”
Simon clenched his jaw.
“I’m very tired of being lied to, Jacob,” he said after a couple of seconds that felt like they dragged on for hours. “So I’m going to give you one chance. What are you hiding?”
Jacob folded his arms and snorted indignantly. “I didn’t lie any more than normal people do. Withheld the truth, a bit, but—”
The last of that sentence caught in his throat as Simon stood up, grabbed his arm, and marched him toward the door.
“Hey, what are you doing?” Jacob leaned back against Simon’s grip.
“Showing you out,” Simon said as he yanked the door open and shoved Jacob through it. “I know Clayton was the one who hired you, and apparently you don’t know anything else. So what good are you to me?”
He waited for an answer. Jacob hunched his shoulders and glanced around. All the peepholes lined up down the hall felt like tiny black eyes on him. At the end of the beige carpet, a woman in pajama bottoms and a white shirt leaned on the ice-machine button and weathered the rattle as she filled a plastic Walmart bag with cubes.
“Look, you know who wanted to steal the data, and I’ll give the packet back to you,” he said. “No harm, no foul.”
Jacob tried to get back into the room and got stiff-armed into the hall.
“Ow.” He hugged his ribs and tried to look pathetic.
Simon crossed his arms. His face was stonily ummoved, but his dark gray eyes were tight with anger. “Either tell me what you’re hiding, or get out and fend for yourself. I’m sure you can spin a good enough lie to talk your way into someone’s bed.”
“Fuck you.”
“You did, and then you fucked me over,” Simon said. The corners of his mouth twisted. “Now fuck off.”
He slammed the door in Jacob’s face. At the end of the hall, the woman in business nightwear had finished filling her bag of ice and watched Jacob with bleary-eyed, unabashed interest.
Shit.
Jacob slapped the flat of his good hand against the door. “Simon, please. You can’t just throw me out.”
Except he could, and Jacob couldn’t even really blame him. He leaned his head against the doorframe, and the molded wood dug into his forehead as he tried to think. Given a clean phone and access to high-speed Internet, Jacob could be up and running—away—in a couple of hours.
