Even as she sits and I see she’s frowning, her eyebrows furrowed, but she can’t shake the look of unashamed life flourishing through her.
I’m about to remove my palm – where I’ve got the playing card – when she places her hands on the desk and lets out a shaky sigh.
“Mason,” she says, “I’ve got something to tell you. It’s going to be hard for me. I promised myself that I’d never tell anybody, as much for their safety as my own. But – heck – I care about you. I care about you a lot. And I want to be honest. Please? Just let me talk?”
She must’ve seen I was about to say something, to tell her it’s fine, I’ll always care about her no matter what.
But I can’t ignore the genuine plea in her voice if I wanted to.
“Of course,” I say.
She nods and lets out a shaky breath, jumping up and walking over to the window, fingers interlaced, worrying at each other.
“It’s like this,” she says, turning to me.
She doesn’t sit.
She paces up and down in front of my desk, and it takes a herculean effort to ignore the way her dress flutters temptingly around her body.
“My name is Melody Baston. I’m an orphan. I think you already know that. Well, I had a tough upbringing, I guess you could say. I’ve never been one for self-pitying, but it was hard. Because of some of the crap that went on at some of the places I was staying, I was on the streets at seventeen. That’s a different world, Mason, the streets, struggling just to survive. I did some embarrassing, humiliating things, like stealing food from restaurant tables after people had paid their bills.”
She hangs her head.
I stand up and move over to her, wrapping her in my arms and smoothing my hand through her hair.
“Whatever you did, you had to do,” I say. “You’re a good person, Melody. Don’t ever let your past make you doubt that.”
“I never committed any serious crimes,” she murmurs, voice heavy with tears. “But I did steal when I had to. I stole cellphones off park benches. Stuff like that. I’m not proud of this.”
“It’s okay,” I whisper. “You were a child. You were scared.”
“Anyway,” she says. “After some time, I got a job as a courier for this small-time crook. It was easy. Carry stuff from one part of the city to the other. Never look in the packages. That was the rule. And I stuck to it. But one time I delivered a package to this crazy man called Hardhat. Hardhat, he’s … everybody on the street had heard of him. He’s one of those people who just snaps for no reason. He has his own code of ethics. That’s how he sees it. But really he’s just freaking insane.”
I keep stroking my hands through her hair, letting her talk, the pain in her voice makes me want to find every bastard who’s ever been cruel to her and shatter their spines.
“So I deliver this package,” she whispers. “And Hardhat tells me I’ve opened it and looked inside. I didn’t. I swear I didn’t.”
She stares at me, eyes shimmering.
“I believe you,” I whisper, smoothing a tear from her cheek with my thumb.
“But he said I did. I later found out he was just having a bad day. Another lowlife had stolen from him. And then even later I found out that he’d caved that man’s head in with a sledgehammer. That’s his preferred method of killing people. That’s why they call him Hardhat because not even a hardhat can’t save you, he hits so hard. Get it? Very freaking clever, right?”
She pauses, taking a bolstering breath.
“When I told him I didn’t look inside, he started calling me all these names. Then he said I was a good whore and I’d earn him money doing just that. Being a whore. He went to grab me and—I just reacted, Mason. It was a reflex. I’d spent too long on the streets to just let a man grab me like that.”
“Whatever you did, he deserved it,” I whisper fiercely.
“I cut open his cheek with my keys. I already had them in my hand. I sliced him right open and he was bleeding, there was blood everywhere … and then I ran. And I’ve been running ever since. Hardhat never lets anybody get away with anything. This was two years ago and he’s still chasing me. I changed cities. I started going by Melody Smith. Silly, keeping the same first name, but I couldn’t let him take everything from me, could I?”
“No,” I snarl. “You couldn’t. Because you’re strong. You’re fierce. You’re the best-goddamned person I’ve ever met.”
“But don’t you get it?” she cries, spinning away from me and returning to the window, glancing out at the city as though searching the tiny-looking roads below for Hardhat. “This puts everybody in danger. You, Gertrude, everybody, because sooner or later he’s going to catch up with me. And then what? You don’t get it, Mason. He never forgets. It’s his whole freaking thing.”
“Melody,” I say quietly, walking over to the desk and picking up the playing card. “He’s already targeted me.”
“What?”
She spins, staring at the card.
A shiver moves through her when she sees what it is, but not the sort that captivates her when we’re on the verge of falling carnally into each other. This is a tempest of uncertainty, fear, her eyes flitting here and there as though searching for an escape route.
“What do you mean?” she whispers.
I tell her about the espionage and the note, starting with it being an employee who laid the sabotage and ending with the intimidation, and it being Hardhat who initiated it all.
“So what?” she whispers, dropping into the seat with the card
