The Way We Burn Read online

  So I’ll just have to be content missing him in that back booth. At least I get to see him at home.

  A smile pulls my lips up. It happens every time I think of him, which is a lot.

  “Stop it. You’re making the customers sick,” Tilly says. She just came on. I ended up working a double for Cheryl, who’s pregnant and called in because of some spotting. Absently, I hope she and the baby are okay.

  “How am I making the customers sick?”

  “All that smiling and mooning. It’s nauseating.”

  She’s teasing. I can tell.

  “Well, then they’ll just have to suck it up. I’m happy and there’s nothing you or anyone else can do about it.”

  “Mr. Perfect. I bet he has a curved penis.”

  I giggle. “Nope. It’s straight as an arrow.”

  “Excess body hair?”

  “Nope. No hair where it shouldn’t be.”

  “Farts in his sleep?”

  “Not that I’ve noticed.”

  “Hmmm,” she murmurs, pondering my boyfriend. She’s determined that he has a flaw. She says he’s too perfect. “Refuses to go down?”

  I blush furiously. “Uhhh, no. Not that.”

  Tilly narrows her blue eyes on me. “I hate you. Have I mentioned that?”

  “Once or twice maybe.”

  “Surely to God the man’s got a flaw. You just haven’t found it yet. It’s there, though. Trust me. He’s a man. He’s bound to have something wrong with him.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe he’s just as wonderful as he seems.”

  “If nothing else, we know he’s got questionable judgment. I mean, he turned me down for God’s sake. As far as I’m concerned, that’s an unforgiveable character flaw.”

  I laugh outright. I can’t help it. “Yep. You’re right. That’s it. That’s his flaw. He wouldn’t take you up on your offer.”

  “Flawed. I knew it, ” she gloats triumphantly. “Told you.”

  “You sure did. Feel better now?”

  “Much.”

  With a wink and a playful bump of her hip against mine, Tilly strolls over to the coffee pot and makes a sweep of her tables, filling up mugs as she goes. She’s crazy, of course, but I love her. This place would be a lot less fun if she didn’t work here.

  By the time six rolls around, I’m a bundle of excitement. I wonder if I’ll always feel this giddy when I get to see Noah or if it will ever feel…ordinary.

  I hope not. I hope it never feels ordinary and I can be this in love every day for the rest of my life.

  Granted, I might be getting a little ahead of myself. Noah hasn’t said he loves me yet. At least not in words. But I think he does. It feels like he does. I could be wrong, though.

  I’ve been wrong before.

  I push those thoughts out of my head and practically run to get my purse from the break room. As I walk out the front door, I ponder what a misnomer “break room” is when referring to that little space. Since I started working at Bud’s, I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone back there actually taking a break. We don’t really get those.

  On my way up the street, I text Noah. He likes for me to text when I’m headed home so he can start on his way over. I’ve told him he is welcome to come over and wait for me, but he prefers to do it this way, so…I do.

  He doesn’t respond right away, but I don’t get alarmed. Sometimes he’s slower than others. I assume he’s working, but I can’t say for sure. He still hasn’t told me much about what he does. Just that he works for the FBI. I don’t ask a lot of questions simply because of what he does. I’m savvy enough to realize that he probably can’t talk a lot about his cases and stuff, so I’ll just have to be content with his ambiguity.

  I check my phone a minute or so later and find three little bubbles jumping at the bottom of the text screen. They tell me Noah’s responding. Patiently, I wait, the ever-present smile still spread across my face.

  Got caught up in some work. Won’t be able to meet until later. Want to come over here around 9? I just bought some chocolate syrup that would look fantastic dribbled on your thighs.

  My face gets hot and I feel short of breath just reading his words. Lordy, that man…

  Sure. Sounds good. I’ll bring whipped cream.

  His reply is almost instant.

  Mmmmmmmmm

  A little thumb’s up emoji appears and then there are no more bubbles. He’s gone. Back to work I suppose.

  Yes, I hate not seeing him for a couple more hours, but at least I get to see him. And he’s obviously planning on making it up to me. This might be a good thing. I’ll have plenty of time to shower and go through Simone’s things. I think something extra naughty is in order. Maybe he’d like a little surprise when he undresses me.

  At a few minutes after eight thirty, I’m champing at the bit, so I decide to leave a little early. If he’s not there, I’ll wait.

  The cab ride is quicker than usual, which puts me at his place almost a full fifteen minutes before nine. When I see a light on in Noah’s window, I pay the driver and let him leave.

  I knock, but get no answer. Maybe he had to run out for something else. Like cherries or sprinkles.

  I stifle a giggle at the thought.

  I knock again. Still nothing.

  I don’t know what makes me try the knob, but I do. And it opens. Noah must’ve left it unlocked because he’s expecting me.

  I poke my head in, calling Noah’s name. I don’t get a response, so I edge my way into the living room and close the door behind me.

  “Noah?” I call again.

  No response.

  What I do hear, however, is the shower running. I grin. I’m tempted to do one of two things—undress and get in with him, or scare him.

  In the end, I decide to do neither. I’m still hanging on to the headache I developed just before I left the apartment. I know there’s nothing I can take for it. Nothing helps. I get them a lot, and I’ve gotten used to them, if that’s possible. It’ll eventually go away on its own.

  I set my things in the living room and go into his bedroom to wait for him to come out of the bathroom, hopefully buck naked. In fact… I think to myself, realizing this might be the perfect opportunity to surprise him with what I confiscated from Simone’s room.

  I strip down and grab the robe-that’s-not-a-robe from my bag and don it, then crawl onto the bed and assume what I hope is a sexy position.

  I change my mind and resituate.

  Then again.

  And again.

  Finally, I jump off the bed so I can start completely over. In my haste, my foot hits the nightstand and his phone goes sailing through the air to land with a crash in the corner. I see the glow of the screen as it pops on, and I hope it’s just because the silent button got triggered. Mine does that, just so that I know it’s on silent.

  “Oh, shit!” I mutter softly, shuffling after it.

  When I pick up the phone, the first thing I check is the screen, to make sure it isn’t cracked. Unfortunately, I see a little more than what I bargained for.

  There, staring back at me, laughing at me, mocking me, is a picture of Simone straddling Noah.

  Naked.

  In my bed.

  My heart stutters to a painful stop before it restarts again at a racing pace.

  Noah has slept with my best friend.

  Nausea, quick and harsh, rolls through my stomach just before it clenches into a knot so tight I almost can’t breathe because of it.

  Questions march through my head like orderly soldiers, but it’s the same three over and over and over, repeating themselves like a skip in a record.

  Why?

  How?

  When?

  Why?

  How?

  When?

  Bitter tears burn the backs of my eyes and my legs become weary of holding me up, dumping me slowly onto my ass in the corner, phone still in hand.

  Why?

  How?

  When?
r />   Some part of my mind that’s still attuned to my functioning senses hears the water shut off, hears the curtain rip back. Moments later, I hear a voice I loved five minutes ago sound behind me.

  “Hello, gorgeous!” I look over my shoulder, turn my accusing eyes on him, holding up the phone in one shaking hand, screen side out so he can see what I see. What I’ll never be able to unsee.

  At first he says nothing. His eyes flick to my hand and back to my face, then back to my hand and stay there. His smile dies a slow death, a lot like my heart just did.

  “Poppy, let me explain,” he begins, holding out one hand, as if to stay me when I might otherwise run. Slowly, Noah eases down onto his knees. “Give me two minutes.”

  He sort of crawls the short distance toward me, not stopping until his hands are curling around mine and taking the phone from me.

  “Why?” I ask, the questions in my head making their way out through numb lips. “How? When?”

  “It’s not what you think. Let me show you. Just please, don’t go.”

  What he doesn’t seem to realize is that I can’t run. I can hardly move. My legs won’t work. As much as I want to get the hell out of here, I can’t.

  His eyes returning to mine again and again, Noah flicks through a couple of screens on his phone and then turns it toward me, for me to see.

  I see a text message from Simone’s number. There is only one word in the message—“Remember?” along with five or six images.

  “That first night I spent at your apartment, I woke up and she was there, doing…that. At first I was confused. I was dreaming and I thought…I thought it was…” He shakes his head, abandoning the thought.

  I can fill in the blanks. He would just say so if he thought it was me. So if he didn’t think it was me…

  “Carly? Did you think it was Carly?”

  Noah goes perfectly still, his eyes narrowing on me. “Where did you hear that name?”

  My laugh is bitter. “From you. Not because you wanted to tell me, of course. Not because you wanted me to know. Not because you wanted to share something about yourself and your life with me. No, I heard it because you said it in your sleep. You said you can’t do this without her.”

  At least he has the good grace to look ashamed. “I’m so sorry, Poppy. I didn’t mean for you to find out about her that way.”

  “Evidently there are a lot of things you didn’t mean for me to find out.”

  “I swear to God, the instant I woke up and realized she was in the room with me, I pushed her off, got dressed, and left. Since then, she’s tried to…tempt me a couple of times, but I’m not interested. That’s why I don’t like to be there when you’re not home. I’m not interested in her, Poppy. I’m interested in you. I love you.”

  And there it is.

  I thought it would feel better to hear those words. I thought it would change everything and the sky would open up and the heavens would sing. But it changes nothing. I feel nothing, nothing but disappointment.

  “Stay away from me. Stay away from both of us . I won’t ask you twice.”

  The most humiliating part of the whole awful scenario is when I try to get up, when I try to pull myself from the floor and make a dignified exit. It’s far from dignified. I’m shaky and my knees wobble, I’m dressed like a hooker in July, and I’m sure I’m pale as a ghost. The fact that I probably look like a lanky colt trying to get to its feet should be the least of my worries.

  My many, many worries.

  But I make it. I finally make it to my feet, to a stable stance, and I walk slowly and carefully to my pile of clothes. I pull them on haphazardly, just so that I don’t have to add getting arrested to the shittiest day in my life.

  Noah follows me to the door. I can see all sorts of things on his face—fear, regret, shame, sadness—but I don’t believe any of it. I don’t believe him.

  When he tries to stop me, I stop him with a palm, held out in the universal stop sign. “Don’t. Just…don’t.”

  “That’s what I told her,” Noah says quietly.

  I don’t have to ask who “her” is. He means Simone.

  It doesn’t matter, though. She’s my best friend. Has been since childhood. Even if she were capable of something like this—which I hope to God she’s not, but still suspect that she might be—I’m a firm believer in putting her before a man. Any man. She’s like my family. We’ve been friends for so long, she’s almost blood to me. I would choose her over anyone or anything. It’s that simple.

  “Poppy, please.”

  I turn to look at Noah before I walk out the door. He looks like the man who first started coming into the diner months ago—haunted, bereft, half alive. Maybe this is why. Maybe he did something like this to Carly and he lost her, too.

  Now I don’t feel so sorry for him. I just feel sorry for me for falling for him.

  “Goodbye, Noah.”

  18

  Noah

  I stand in the center of my living room, draped in nothing but a towel, watching my life crumble.

  Again.

  How could I have let this happen? How could I have been so stupid?

  He warned me. Dr. Cane warned me about what could happen if I got myself in a situation like this, but I wouldn’t listen. I thought I could handle it. I thought I could keep things under control.

  I was wrong.

  My brain is on fire, whirling through options, scenarios, ways to recover this before it’s too late. I can’t scare her off. Jesus Christ, I can’t .

  I run my fingers through my hair, scrambling. My phone dings and I lunge through the door for it. I must’ve left it in the bedroom floor.

  I hope it’s Poppy. I doubt it is, but I can still hope.

  But it’s not. It’s Winston. He’s sending me the details about the blog Simone’s running. I throw on some clothes and take my laptop out of the drawer, logging in to the FBI secure server and retrieving the link from there.

  When I click the link, what opens up to me is interesting. Very interesting.

  The blog is a front for an operation on the dark web, as I suspected based simply on the level of security she’s employing. Most of the world’s population operates on the surface of the web, places where Google and Wikipedia and WebMD exist. They don’t need this type of security. Not normal people doing normal things.

  But the surface web is just the tip of an elaborate cyber iceberg.

  Beneath that layer, there’s a deep web that houses government operations, as well as confidential material like medical records and legal documents. Things that have more security than the surface web, but things that are still searchable. Both of those layers are searchable.

  But then there’s a layer that’s not.

  A deeper, darker layer.

  The dark web is a very appropriate name. It’s a stratum of the Internet that’s so deep, so cleverly concealed and operated that even the world’s most brilliant minds haven’t been able to shut it down. It contains doorways into the most horrific sides of human nature, some so well-encrypted that even the FBI can’t get in. The only two certainties we know about the dark web are that anonymity is non-negotiable and highly advanced security is a must. We’ve managed to infiltrate and close a few sites, but more keep popping up.

  More and better.

  Human trafficking, arms dealing, drug distribution, murder for hire—one could find all that and practically any other vice or illicit activity that the criminal mind can conjure on the dark web. You just have to know how to use it.

  And Simone Allen knows how to use it .

  Although craftily developed, Simone’s site isn’t as unbreakable as she probably thinks. Of course, she probably doesn’t have reason to think the FBI would be looking into her either. If she found out, there’s a possibility she could upgrade. Go deeper. Get to a place where her dealings can’t be found or traced back to her by anyone.

  But right now she’s not that deep.

  She’s definitely that dark, though.


  I sit for hours working my way through the layers of the onion where her site is housed. It appears that she’s offering prostitutes to buyers with very specific—and illegal—tastes. People with unhealthy appetites for harming and debasing a woman.

  All of the people she deals with, as well as Simone herself, remain anonymous, so there’s no way for me to find out anything useful from them. All I can see is the information she was able to collect from her customers. That’s one of the benefits of the dark web—an anonymizer has to be used to be able to access it at all. That’s why it’s so hard to stop. Everyone is no one at all.

  Completely anonymous.

  But, I might be able to glean something useful from what she’s saved, so I make a mental note to revisit her miniature database later.

  When I’ve looked through everything I can find and still have very little more than I did to begin with, I log out and slowly shut the lid to my computer.

  I shoot Winston a message advising him that everything he knows about this is strictly need to know, and that right now, no one except me needs to know. Not even Gregory. Yes, he’s been my partner, but he doesn’t have to know everything about every case I’ve ever worked, and that’s how I frame it for Winston—it’s need to know and Gregory doesn’t need to know.

  I can’t have anyone else looking into this. If I find out that Simone’s doing something illegal, more so than it appears from the very superficial look I just got…I’ll have to handle it myself. I can’t risk what could happen if she gets caught and brought in. That would be a disaster. I’d never get Poppy back.

  My only choice is to dig into her on my own, work it out and resolve it without involving the Bureau. Is it the ethical thing to do? No. Is it the legal thing to do? Right now, no laws have been broken, so…that’s still debatable. Is it what anyone else in my situation would do? I don’t know the answer to that. I only know it’s what I’m going to do.

  * * *

  First thing in the morning, I go by the diner to see if Poppy is working. I thought she worked an early shift today, but I don’t see her inside, so evidently I was wrong. I’ve texted her a dozen times. Of course, I get no response.