But Sebastian hasn’t said a word in ten minutes. I’m beginning to think he could go seven hours in complete silence.
I can’t do the same, or I’ll end up thinking about Ned and the night he died, and then this tattoo could go horrifically wrong.
“So, tell me a little bit about yourself.”
“What do you want to know?” It’s like he was waiting for my question.
Everything, I realize. I just don’t want to have to ask. At some point I’m going to bring up the whole military thing again, because that’s interesting, but seeing as he quickly shut the door on that conversation before, it’s probably not the best place to start now. “Do you live in San Francisco?”
“Yes.”
“Whereabouts?” I realize that I forgot to get the personal information clipboard back from him. I was too distracted by . . . well, him. And the idea of rats in here. I’m not even sure that he filled it out yet.
“Potrero Hill.”
“Huh.” I search for something to say as I wipe excess ink off his skin with a paper towel. All I can come up with is, “Very residential.”
He doesn’t answer.
“Did you grow up around here?”
“Yes.”
I give him a few moments to elaborate, until I realize that he’s not going to. Great. He’s clearly not into small talk. “Well, this is going to be a really long night,” I mutter under my breath.
That earns his smile. I’m pulling teeth to get him to talk and he’s amused.
“Which part of San Francisco did you grow up in?” he finally asks, flipping the question on me.
“Who says I grew up here?”
“Did you grow up somewhere else?” He throws this out with a hint of a challenge in his voice.
“Richmond. Until I was fourteen.”
“Huh . . . very Asian.” He’s mocking me for my earlier “residential” comment, I can tell.
“Well, I know this will come as a huge shock to you but I am part Chinese.”
“So I’ve noticed.”
And I’m back to trying to read that calm, even, unreadable tone.
“What do you do for a living, Sebastian?”
There’s a long pause, and I assume he won’t be answering that question. I heave an annoyed sigh.
Earning another smirk from him.
He’s going to drive me insane.
“I’m in security,” he finally says.
Security? “What . . . like a mall cop?” I say, and I regret my condescending tone the second it comes out of my mouth, because what if he is a mall cop? God, I hope not. While I don’t really care what a guy does, just picturing Sebastian in one of those ill-fitting uniforms and hovering around a teenybopper chain store, watching for twelve-year-old shoplifters, has somehow knocked him down a notch or three in attractiveness for me.
Please don’t be a mall cop.
“No. I’m not a mall cop.” He chuckles, forcing my needle away from his skin until he settles down. He has a nice laugh. And nice straight white teeth, I see, watching him from this angle. When his laughter dies down and my needle touches his skin again, he admits, “I’m a bodyguard.”
I have to pull away again, to process. “Really . . .” That is way more interesting—and appealing—than a mall cop. “I’ve never met a real bodyguard before. That sounds dangerous.”
“It can be.”
“Who do you protect?”
“People who need bodyguards.”
I wipe away the excess ink just a touch harder than I probably should. “Are you always so evasive?”
“Are you always so inquisitive?”
“Only when I’m doing someone a huge favor.” I bite my bottom lip to keep from tacking on an extra-acidic remark about his shitty communication skills.
He sighs. “For politicians, for celebrities, for civilians facing safety concerns. Pretty much anyone who needs a shield.”
“That’s . . . commendable.” And brave. “I guess it’s a natural career coming out of the army?”
“I guess,” he says quietly.
It’s all beginning to make sense to me now. No wonder Sebastian is so in shape, so strong. No wonder his movements seem so fluid and measured. No wonder, when he stepped into Black Rabbit for the first time, I felt his looming presence taking control of the entire room. Though I couldn’t have articulated it at the time, I sensed right away that he could protect me from anything.
“So, are you working now?” His schedule seems flexible, if he’s shown up here three days in a row, ready to spend seven hours under my needle on any one of them.
“I’m taking a break,” he says simply.
“A bodyguard on vacation?”
He smirks. “We need vacations, too.”
“I guess. But why’d you stay in town, then? I think I’d be on a beach the second I had a chance.”
He smiles. “Maybe next week. I really needed to get this tattoo before you ran off.”
“Sure you did,” I mock, but I also smile. “Where are you going to go?”
“Greece.”
“Why there? You have family there?”
“Nope.”
“So you’re just going to pick up and go to Greece?”
“Pretty much.”
I grin. Finally, something that Sebastian and I have in common.
FOURTEEN
SEBASTIAN
HOUR TWO
The ink on my shoulder was done by a small shop in San Diego nine years ago. It took four and a half hours to complete. I didn’t feel nearly as vulnerable with the artist—a scrawny middle-aged hipster named Marcus—as I do now, under Ivy’s skilled hands, with her leaning over me, her gloved fingers touching my skin, that intoxicating perfume wafting around my nostrils in seductive waves.
I have no choice but to lie to her about my work—for obvious reasons. She bought the cover instantly. I wasn’t sure that she would.
“How are you doing? Still good? Need a five-minute break?” she asks, a hint of concern in her voice.
She was trying to figure me out earlier. A guy who doesn’t even flinch when he feels the sting from that needle like a knife carving into his flesh. Odd to her, I’m sure. But she saw the shrapnel scars on my back. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that they were serious, that they would have hurt far more than any tattoo.
“Keep going.” We passed the one-hour mark quickly enough, even with my ambiguous answers and her annoyed sighs. But we still have six more hours, and I need to steer this conversation away from the places we’ve traveled—between the two of us I think we’ve covered every continent except Antarctica—and start pumping her for any information that might be useful to me in finding this tape.
“So what made you want to become a tattoo artist?”
“I love doing it,” she answers simply, wiping away excess ink.
I’m careful not to move my body when I turn my head to peer up at her face. She knows I’m watching her, but she seems intent on avoiding my eyes. “Who’s being evasive now?”
Her lips press into a tight line, like she’s trying not to smile. And suddenly I wish I wasn’t having this piece done on my side. I wish I’d picked my chest for its location, so I could lie on my back and stare up at her the entire time.
Because I meant what I said: Ivy is fierce, stunning, and captivating.
“I love to draw,” she finally says. “I’ve been drawing on every surface I could reach since I was able to grip a crayon in my hand. Paper, walls, cars, you name it, my parents will tell you I marked it.” A wistful look flickers past her eyes. “And my uncle. He’s what got me into this career of drawing on bodies.”
“The uncle who owned this shop?”
She swallows hard. “Yeah, him.”
“Tell me about him.”
She frowns. “Why?” There’s a hint of suspicion in there.
I need to tread carefully. “Because sometimes it helps to talk about loved ones you’ve lost to a complete stranger
.” Even though that’s not why I’m asking, it’s still true. I watch her as she seems to think about that, still working away on the outline.
Only when she breaks to clean the ink do her dark brown eyes flicker to mine. “Have you lost any loved ones?”
She’s already figured out that I was in some sort of armed forces. The army, she assumes. I haven’t corrected her because I need to be cautious. With only a few thousand active SEALs at any given time, it wouldn’t be impossible for someone to connect dots that lead to me.
But I also can’t blow her off now. She finally seems to be relaxing around me, revealing more about herself. “One to a sniper bullet, and two to a roadside bomb. I watched all three of them die.”
She settles a gentle, knowing gaze on me. “I saw my uncle, just after they shot him and ran out the door,” she says softly. “But he was already gone.”
Yeah, I pretty much figured that. “It’s hard to get that image out of your head, isn’t it?”
She averts her gaze to my side, but I catch the small nod.
“So tell me about your uncle,” I prod. “It will help, I promise.”
She sighs. “I’m not really sure what to say. No one’s ever actually asked me that question before. I mean, you either knew him or you didn’t. You either liked him or you didn’t. But how to actually describe a guy like Ned?” She chews the inside of her mouth, until a slight smile pushes through. “He was a real fucking asshole.”
I wasn’t expecting that answer, and I can’t help it. I burst out laughing. Luckily Ivy pulls away a second before my entire body starts shaking. “You can’t move!” she yells, but she’s laughing along with me, and smiling. Trying so hard not to smile, by pulling her bottom lip into her teeth.
“Then don’t be funny.”
“I’m not. He really was an asshole.” She shakes her head. “But man, did I love him.”
“Was that a part of his eulogy?”
She snorts. Reaching over, she pushes my head back to its resting place, where I can no longer stare at her. “He always had a soft spot for me. I’d come in here with my cousin when I was as young as six and watch him work on people. Sometimes I’d just sketch in a corner quietly. He never sent me away. I thought he was the coolest, most badass adult ever.”
I’m trying to picture a six-year-old version of this woman and I’m struggling. However she looked, I can’t imagine this place would have been suitable for her. “Your parents didn’t care?”
“Oh, they cared. They hated me being here, but there wasn’t much they could do. My aunt Jun would watch me after school while my parents worked. But she also had a part-time job, and when she was working, I had to go somewhere. My parents didn’t have enough money to send me and my brothers to day care. I was the oldest and therefore easiest to unload on someone else, so I came here. I pretty much fended for myself growing up.”
No wonder she’s so independent.
“By the time I turned fourteen and they realized that I actually wanted to come here, they packed us all up and moved us to Oregon.”
This is good. She’s opening up, and it seems to be comfortable for her. Oddly, talking to her is easy for me, too. Definitely more pleasant than my typical interrogations. “So they moved your entire family away just to get away from your uncle?”
“I guess that’s what it boils down to, yeah.” I can hear the displeasure over that in her tone.
The needle runs over a particularly sensitive spot and I inhale through the pain. “Sounds like they must have had reasons.”
“I don’t know about reasons. Fears, yeah. My dad was raised by quiet Chinese immigrants; my mom comes from an affluent family of accountants in Spain. They’ve always had strong opinions about Ned’s clientele.”
“Are any of those opinions warranted?”
“Well . . .” Ivy has shifted her body to focus on the midsection of the tattoo. I can just barely catch the way her lips twist with hesitation in the mirror.
“The guy yesterday, in the back. The biker who wanted his arm done. I’d say that your parents’ opinions of him might be warranted.” All this talk of parents makes me think of mine, something I never do when I’m on an assignment. They’re no more than a fifteen-minute drive from here.
She smirks. “So you knew who he was when you tried to provoke a fight.”
“Just like you knew who he was when you stepped between us.” Her tiny body, her delicate fingers, pressing into my stomach. The girl doesn’t back down, even when she’s afraid.
In the mirror’s reflection, I see her smile. “I guess it would make sense that you recognize those kind of people, given what you do for a living.”
“It would. And I wasn’t provoking anything.”
“Sure you weren’t.” She pauses to adjust something on her machine. “But I guess it’s all about who you associate with, right? My uncle Ned, he was just trying to run his business and didn’t really give a shit about what anyone did as long as they didn’t bring it into the shop. But he’s been painted with an ugly brush by my parents. And now the cops are only too eager to somehow pin the blame for what happened to him right back on him. Whoever did this is going to get away with killing two innocent men. Or at least one. I didn’t know the other guy.”
Her expression, her voice, the way her shoulders seem to sag with the weight of that reality—she really believes that her uncle was needlessly murdered, probably collateral damage in a burglary gone wrong. And if she believes that, then there’s no way she knows anything about the blackmail scheme.
“What’s wrong?”
I frown. “What do you mean?”
“Your whole body just . . . relaxed. Not that it wasn’t unusually relaxed before, but I felt it shift.”
Because now I know that I don’t have to kill you. I smile. “Yeah, I guess it did.”
FIFTEEN
IVY
HOUR THREE
“Why are you selling the shop if you love this job so much?”
So much for “small talk,” though there hasn’t been much in the first two hours as it is. Sebastian is finally opening up to conversation, but the questions are pointed, the topics hard-hitting. And every time he turns his head to watch me with that penetrating gaze of his, I feel compelled to answer him.
“Because my cousin can’t run it. He lives abroad and he has a lot of commitments over there.” I keep my eyes on my work. I’m more than halfway through the outline already. Another hour and I should be ready to begin filling in.
It’s going to look incredible.
“Then why don’t you run it? Too many other commitments as well?”
“No. I don’t have any, actually.”
“Why not?”
“What do you mean, why not?” I frown. “I don’t know why not. I guess I’ve avoided having them up until now.”
“All commitments?”
“As much as possible.”
“Why?”
“You already asked me that,” I mutter.
He pauses, seems to ponder that. “I thought all women wanted commitment.”
I chuckle at the generalization. For someone who must rely on good intuition on a daily basis, he’s still such a guy. “Maybe all the women you associate with. I guess I’m not like the kind of women you’re used to.”
He cranes his head to see my face. “And what kind of women am I used to?” There’s amusement in his voice now.
I reach over and shove his face back down. “Oklahoma State beauty pageant winners? Cocktail waitresses with boob jobs? I don’t know. Why don’t you enlighten me?”
“Why?”
“Morbid curiosity.”
He opens his mouth and I think he’s actually going to answer. “Why do you avoid commitment?”
I guess Sebastian will not be sharing his preferences in females today. Maybe that’s for the best, because I don’t want to hear about the future stay-at-home, childrearing, Pinterest mommies he regularly screws. “Because I’ve always liked to be
able to pick up and go whenever I want. I like living out of a suitcase and not answering to anyone. I love doing my own thing and being my own person.” It helps that he’s not looking at me right now. It’s kind of like being in a confessional, when you’re telling all your sins to the mysterious voice behind the curtain.
Although I’m committing another sin while saying these words. I’m lying. I actually was enjoying staying in one place. It was nice having four walls and a door that felt like they belonged to me. And I didn’t have to sacrifice doing my own thing and being my own person to have that.
“What about your family?”
“What about them?” He asks like he knows my family.
“They’re okay with your lifestyle?”
“The way I see it, they have their own lives to lead however they want. They don’t get to lead mine for me, too. It doesn’t work like that.”
“That’s a good answer. I like it.”
I smile. His validation feels good.
“But what about when you get married and have kids?”
I start to laugh. “Do you always get this personal with people you don’t know?”
“Only the ones who tell me to unzip my pants.”
I duck away to get a fresh paper towel from the roll and hide my smile. Sebastian is witty, and witty people excite me. And he’s really beginning to open up, probably because I am, too. It’s easier for me to do here, while I’m working. I’m in my element.
So, do I answer truthfully? Will answering truthfully crush any chance I have of getting his pants all the way off him tonight?