The Enemy Inside (26 page)

“Who?” he asked, folding his arms.

“Fuck you,” she whispered, realizing he wasn’t going to give up on his quest for information. “It was . . . my father . . . or stepfather, technically.” She fought back tears.

Jay pressed his lips together, the telltale vein in his temple throbbing. He took a deep gulp of air that rushed down his throat audibly. “How old were you?”

“Eleven when it started, thirteen when I ran away,” Berg whispered. “The police brought me back, but judged my mother unfit to care for me because she was a drunk. So I lived in foster homes that weren’t much better before I took myself out of the system, finished school, and studied at college part time in between jobs. But I could never stop . . . hurting myself. I kept on doing it, even though they weren’t around anymore . . .”

Jay looked away, his jaw twitching.
 

Seeing his disgust, a single tear made its way down her cheek. “From that first moment he touched me, I never felt I was worth anything more, or good for anything else. I got so used to feeling used and ashamed that now I don’t know how to feel anything else . . .” Berg fell silent, not telling Jay that she was tired of trying to be strong all the time, that every day she could feel herself unraveling just a little more and soon there would be nothing but loose threads left. That the darkness she had always felt hovering was getting stronger, and she didn’t know how to fight it anymore. She wasn’t even sure if she wanted to.
 

Jay reached over and tenderly wiped the tear away with his thumb. “You’re worth so much more. I never told Renee that, but I can tell you.”

Berg, glancing at Jay’s kind face and trying to smile, looked away as the shadowy voice deep inside bubbled up once more, fierce and unwelcome.
 

Make no mistake; you are nothing.
 

She finished her third beer. Berg’s head, already clouded with ongoing exhaustion, became fuzzy from the alcohol. She studied the numerous happy families in the restaurant, wondering what it would be like to feel that kind of closeness with another person. To not be scared all the time.

“Sad place again. You okay?” Jay asked quietly.

Berg shrugged.

“I think you’re amazing, you know?” he blurted.

Berg looked at him, surprised. “Why?”
 

“Because look at everything you’ve been through. Look at where you’ve come from,” he said. “Look at what you’ve overcome just recently. And you’re still getting up and doing your job. I don’t know how you do it. You are dedicated to helping people and finding justice, and you do it well. You cracked the truckers, and you found the link between the missing women. If I’d been through what you have, I don’t even know how I’d function.”

She squirmed and felt herself blushing. “Thanks,” she said, looking down. “Helps to have such a good partner, too.”

“Of course,” Jay joked, breaking the tension. “I mean, how fantastic am I?”

Berg laughed. “I mean it, Jay,” she said, her head still down. “Not a lot of friends would cope with how you saw me, and not write me off. Let alone a colleague. I really appreciate you giving me another chance to be your partner. More than I can say. I won’t let you down.” Even as the words left her mouth, she was deeply fearful she would let him down. She didn’t know how
not
to. Scared, she glanced up at his face.

“We might be colleagues, but we are definitely friends, Berg. Maybe even more . . .” Jay whispered.

The detectives stared at each other. Jay reached out and touched Berg’s cheek softly, stroking a stray dark hair behind her ear and cupping her face.

Frozen in his gaze, Berg couldn’t drag her eyes away. She steeled herself for his reaction, expecting him to look away, repulsed.
 

Instead, he stared at her like she was some kind of miracle. Nobody had ever looked at her that way.
 

“I told myself I couldn’t go through it again . . . but hell if I can stay away,” he murmured.

Berg licked her lips.
 

“Amazing,” he mumbled, drawing her lips to his.
 

The kiss almost sizzled with static electricity, and Berg felt herself responding before wrestling back control of her feelings.

“I’ve got to . . .” Berg got up and bolted down the nearby restaurant hallway for the refuge of the ladies’ room. She had her hand safely on the bathroom door handle before Jay caught up, grabbed her elbow, and pulled her back.
 

He pushed her up against the wall outside the door with his body and kissed her again, hard.
 

Before she knew it, she was kissing him back and opening her mouth to let in his questing tongue.

Jay ran his hands down her body and pinned her to the wall with his hips. The kiss deepened as they nibbled and sucked each other’s lips and tongues, exploring.
 

Berg felt him harden as he ran his hands up her body from thighs to hips, brushing his thumb over a nipple before grabbing her waist and pulling her closer. Grinding his groin into hers, Berg gasped as she felt his hardness press against her through his jeans.
 

She grabbed his ass and pulled him into her, wanting him closer. Jay moved his hands up under her shirt and ran his fingers lightly down the smooth, exposed skin of her sides, leaving a trail of goose bumps. She shivered.

Totally lost in the moment, they didn’t care who saw them.
 

“I want to fuck you so hard,” Jay whispered in her ear.
 

Berg groaned and rubbed herself against him.

Diners visiting the bathrooms stopped and gawked, open mouthed, at the detectives’ display. An older Asian man making his way down the hallway cleared his throat loudly, offended, and a teenage girl giggled.

After what was in reality only a few seconds, but felt like an eternity, Berg jerked away as if Jay were a hot stove. “We can’t . . .” She pushed him away roughly, and walked back to their table and sat back down on her chair. She tugged down her shirt over her pants and composed herself.

After a beat, Jay followed her and sat down.

“Of course,” he said stiffly, grabbing his beer and having a swig. “Stupid idea. We’re partners. We’re tired and half drunk. We just got lost in a moment, nothing to it.”
 

“Partners . . . exactly,” Berg said. “And you know . . . I’ve got the program to think of . . . I still have to work out what I can and can’t trust myself to do, with anyone . . .”
 

Jay shook his head. “No need to explain. It was nothing. It was a bad idea. Let’s forget it ever happened.” He looked everywhere but at Berg.

“Okay,” she said, frowning.

He clenched his jaw. “Okay, then.”

The tension stretched on between them, Jay turning away from his mortified partner as he chugged down the rest of his beer.
 

Feeling the familiar bite of rejection and shame, Berg fumbled around in her purse, taking out a fifty. “I just realized I need to get home and walk Jess.” She threw the money down and grabbed her coat before bolting out of the restaurant.

Berg ran into the street and hailed a cab. Giving the driver her address, she leaned into the backseat and felt the inevitable tears forming. She brushed them aside with a trembling hand. Her body still tingled from the encounter, except for her pussy. It ached, lamenting the release it had been deprived of.
 

Fuck!
As if her life wasn’t complicated enough.

Back at the restaurant, Jay berated himself.
You fucking idiot!
What the hell was that? I don’t even feel that way about Berg.
He stopped for a moment.
Do I? Sure, I followed her for several days to find out what she was doing, but that was just in the name of the case.
He grimly took a large swig of his fourth beer.
 

This was not good.
Could she have run out of here any faster? You’re losing your touch buddy. The ladies don’t dig you anymore. Or at least none who count.
“Fuck.” He sat at the table, lost in his own shame, and finished off his beer, grimly staring ahead.
 

After a while, a pretty blonde sidled up to him and sat in Berg’s vacated seat.

“That your girlfriend who just left?” she asked.

“No,” Jay replied.

“Wife?” she said.

“No.”

“If you’d kissed me like that, I wouldn’t have run.” She smiled, flirting with him. “I saw. That was so hot.”

“That so?”

“Definitely,” she said, sweeping her hair back.

Jay put down the beer, turned and appraised the woman. She looked young: mid-twenties with a tight little body. “Wanna get out of here?” he asked, not really caring what her answer was.

“Sure.” She stood, ready in an instant.

Jay rose, feeling a little woozy from the four beers he had consumed. He paid the check with Berg’s fifty and headed to the door. “You coming?”
 

She stood at the counter, suddenly uncertain.
 

“Don’t worry. I’m a cop, not a psycho.”

She didn’t need to be asked again.

Safely ensconced in her apartment, Berg couldn’t stop thinking about the kiss and her terrible reaction to it. They needed to talk about what had happened, about whatever it was that was growing between them, but she couldn’t face it.
Am I in love with him?
she asked herself as she paced.
Is this what love feels like?
 

Having never experienced the emotion before, she had no idea what to expect. She remembered she once heard the human capacity for love was boundless. But in her experience, both personally and professionally, this so-called human capacity for love was far exceeded by a capacity for evil.

Her pulse raced as if she were running a marathon, and a thin layer of perspiration broke out on her top lip as she imagined seeing Jay and being alone with him again. Her sex still throbbed.

If this is love, it sucks.

A shot of Jack Daniels later and Berg was still sitting upright on the edge of the couch, legs jiggling, as Jesse, sensing her inner struggle, circled the couch in confusion.

She jumped up and grabbed her keys from the bowl on the mantel and opened the door before stopping herself, closing the door and sitting back down. She repeated the process a couple more times. Up, down. Up, down.

Making up her mind, she went into the bedroom and threw off her work clothes and underwear, replacing them with new underwear and gray sweats. She picked up the white cotton panties she had been wearing until moments ago. They were wet.
 

She wanted Jay in her and on her—anyway she could get him. Feeling betrayed by her body, she threw the panties into the rubbish.

“Come on, puppy, let’s walk it off,” she said to Jesse.