by Tawny Weber
“Get your apology ready,” she said, giving him a snotty look over her shoulder as she grabbed the doorknob. Travis didn’t bother to tell her to forget about it. The doors around here automatically locked on both sides.
She gave it a twist and tugged it open just an inch.
“Quiet,” she whispered. “They might still be in there.”
Huh. Travis frowned at the door, then touched the Glock nestled at the small of his back. He silently followed her inside, first looking toward the door to the kitchen, then toward the office.
“The door wasn’t closed before. And the body? It was lying there in the doorway. Where is it?” she asked, her words so quiet they barely floated on the air. Her gaze slid to his just long enough for him to see the sick dance of nerves in her eyes, then with a sharp breath, she started for the office.
He liked the way she didn’t back down, despite her fear. But Travis still laid his hand on her arm, halting her steps. He drew in a long breath through his nose, noting the faint scent of solvent.
“Wait.”
She stopped and bit her lip, looking at the door, then back at him, then at the door again.
Nobody stormed out with guns blazing, but Travis still had a nasty tingle dancing down his spine.
He didn’t know if they really were standing in a murder scene or not. But his senses told him that something definitely wasn’t right here.
Maybe she felt it, too. Or maybe she simply realized that safer was smarter. But Lila gave him another considering look, then took two steps back and to the side to place his body between her and the door.
“Why aren’t the police here yet?” she whispered.
“They probably don’t see this as a priority.” He didn’t bother to keep his voice down.
“Murder isn’t a priority?”
“We take murder quite seriously, senorita.”
As one, Travis and Lila looked back. A short man stood—posed, was more like it—in the doorway to the kitchen, giving them both enough time to take in his leather pants, waxed mustache and slicked-back hair. Standing behind him was a man so nondescript, Travis was surprised he didn’t simply fade into the background. A handy skill for a cop, he supposed.
Lila gave a relieved sigh, but Travis didn’t figure it was either cop’s looks that had her tension lowering even as his rose. It was more likely the shiny silver badge hanging from the waistband of the man in the lead. The shorter man murmured something they couldn’t hear, but whatever it was sent the other scurrying away.
“Montoya.” Travis grimaced when it was just the three of them.
For a brief second, he considered shifting positions with Lila. The fact they stood at an alleged murder scene where possible killers had been carried less potential threat than the man walking toward them.
“Senor Hawkins. Why would you be involved in this, might I ask?”
“I asked him to come with me,” Lila said, walking forward with her hand outstretched. “I’m Lila Adrian, and I witnessed a murder.”
“Mmm-hmm.” Dismissing her in a single glance, Montoya studied Travis out of dark, beady eyes. “And you, Senor Hawkins? Did you witness this, as well?”
Travis debated. He’d had run-ins with Montoya before. The man had a serious hate-on for members of the US military, considered them all cocky hotshots who should stay in their own country and off his beach. Still, the whole helping a damsel in distress thing was simple enough. But he suspected that the minute he said he hadn’t seen jack, Montoya would toss him out the door, intimidate Lila into recanting anything that’d disturb his comfy existence and maybe grab a drink before heading back to his carefully structured office.
Then Travis could head back to his own carefully unstructured hammock and comfy nonexistence. Which was, after all, priority number one.
He glanced at Lila, noting the way her brow furrowed and the frustration in her eyes at Montoya’s dismissal. He could practically see the smart-ass remarks balanced on the tip of her tongue; she was just waiting for a chance to jump in Montoya’s face. Which was all the excuse he’d need to toss her in a cell and make his point to the town council about the trouble with tourists.
Travis sighed. Looked like his hammock was going to have to wait.
“I’m here with the lady,” he told Montoya. “You want the details of what happened, ask her. She can fill you in.”
* * *
Okay...
Lila’s stomach clenched. Her nerves, already frayed near to breaking with the events of the evening, jangled dangerously. She didn’t know what had caused the tension between the cop and the beach bum, but it felt significant. Was that a good thing or a bad thing?
Lila looked from one man to the other and back again. She couldn’t read either’s expression, but there was enough malice in their words to make her throat dry.
“Senorita?” After a long stare at her companion, the policeman gave her a questioning look. “Why do you claim to have seen a murder?”
“What?” Why? Claim?
Nerves forgotten, Lila scowled. Her fists clenched at her sides. Before she could snap at him to kiss her butt, the beach bum—Hawkins, she had to remember his name was Hawkins—touched her. Just a single finger to the small of her back for barely a second. But it was enough to warn her to reel it in.
So she gritted her teeth and tried to do that.
“Earlier this evening, I saw a man killed in the doorway. That doorway.” She pointed her still clenched fist toward the office. “Someone shot Chef Rodriguez.”
“How do you know Chef Rodriguez?”
“What difference does that make? I saw him fall to the floor covered in blood, right there in that doorway.”
The policeman held her gaze for a long, uncomfortable moment before he stepped around her and Hawkins and walked casually toward the office. Lila cringed, seeing in her head the body fall again, the blood splatter.
Wait.
Her eyes tracked the cop’s steps, not so much to note his progress as to check the walls. The floor. Where was the blood?
Where was the body?
“This is the office where you thought you saw a man fall, senorita?”
The policeman threw open the door and gestured inside. Unwilling to move any closer, Lila craned her neck instead and tried to see the body. But the floor was bare of a body. Nowhere to be seen was a hurricane of scattered papers or broken furniture.
Lila rubbed a hand over her trembling lips.
“There is no dead body. No blood. No evidence of any wrongdoing,” the cop enunciated in careful English. “Perhaps you are used to attention in your country, senorita. But we frown upon such fabrications here in Puerto Viejo.”
He gave the office one last look around, then swaggered over to shift his intimidating stare between Lila and her companion.
“I’m not making it up,” she breathed, shaking her head. Not sure why, since he hadn’t believed her either, Lila shot Hawkins a beseeching look. “I wouldn’t lie about something like that.”
“Why don’t you check on Rodriguez? Make sure he’s not floating facedown somewhere.” The suggestion was made to the cop, but Hawkin’s eyes didn’t leave Lila’s.
“Perhaps you should remember that we have no use for hotshots such as yourself here in Puerto Viejo, senor.” His beady eyes shifted between the two of them again before Montoya smiled.
Lila wanted to ask what the hell that meant. She clenched her fists, ready to demand to speak with the chief of police, the mayor. Whoever the hell was in charge.
But between his flat gaze and those small, sharp teeth, the cop reminded her of a shark. The kind of shark that’d chew her up and spit her out without so much as blinking.
So she kept her mouth shut.
“I will overlook your games this once, senorita. But only this once.” With that, and another snee
ring sort of smile, the policeman strode down the hall and out the door.
Leaving Lila with no dead body, a raging headache and a gun-carrying grouch.
Chapter 4
Lila could only stare in shock as the dapper little cop strode away, his steps as rigid as his attitude.
He thought she’d made it up.
He thought she was lying.
The sexy beach bum with the lousy attitude thought that, too.
Years of being disregarded, of being dismissed or shunted off to the side as unimportant, exploded in her head. She wanted to scream. More, she wanted to grab something—the stapler off the desk, the rolling chair, the computer—and throw it to get him to pay attention to her.
She’d taken only one step, the red haze of fury blurring her vision, when someone laid a hand on her shoulder. Just one hand, but the simple touch calmed her.
Even as the frustration ebbed in her gut, her gaze shifted to meet Hawkins’s. In those dark eyes, she saw the same irritation that she felt. Then again, he’d seemed irritated since she met him, so maybe that was simply his go-to expression.
Regardless, Lila took comfort in his steady gaze.
“I did not imagine it, and I’m not making it up.” Her knees shook, but she forced herself to take three steps toward the office so she could point through the doorway. “I saw Chef Rodriguez killed. Right there.”
“Okay.” It wasn’t agreement, it wasn’t doubt. Lila knew the word was simply acknowledging what she thought she saw. It was enough to steel her spine, though.
So she wet her lips and took a hesitant step toward the office. Hawkins followed, so the next one was easier. Still, when she reached the door, even with Hawkins at her shoulder, she had to force herself to shift her gaze. To look around the office. To check the floor.
The policeman had said the room was clean.
He hadn’t lied.
Rodriguez was nowhere to be seen. The room was tidy, the floor bare.
She pressed her fingers to her lips to stop their trembling.
“Lila.”
The voice came as if from far away, its rumble soothing some of the tension in her belly. It didn’t explain the room, though.
“But...”
Her head doing a long, slow spin, Lila took two deep breaths, then stepped all the way into the office.
It was one thing that the body was gone. But where was the blood? The mess?
“They shot him. He fell. There.” She pointed at the doorway. At the bleached pine planks underfoot. “Blood. It was all over the floor. It smeared on the wall.”
But the floor was spotless. The wall clean.
Lila rubbed her knuckles over the pain throbbing in her forehead, trying to hold back a moan.
“I didn’t imagine it.” She turned to face the beach bum, her voice insistent. “I wouldn’t make something like that up.”
“I didn’t say you did.”
“That policeman, Montoya, he thinks I made it up.”
Hawkins shrugged.
“He does have a point. There’s no body here.”
“I didn’t make this up.”
“Besides a body hitting the floor, what do you think you saw? Who shot him? What’d they look like? Sound like?”
“I only saw a hand. A man’s hand, holding the gun as it shot the chef.” Lila rubbed two fingers over her temple, trying to remember more. “He wore a long-sleeved jacket. Dark. The voices were low. Two men, at least, two, but they spoke too quietly for me to make out what they were saying.”
“That’s not a lot to go on.” His words as casual as his stance, the beach bum crossed his legs at the ankle, propped one shoulder against the door frame and shoved his hands into the front pockets of his jeans. The black tee gripped his shoulders like a tight hug, molded that broad chest.
Despite the confusion, beyond the misery in her gut, Lila couldn’t stop her gaze from taking in the perfect example of male beauty standing there. She’d admired it on the beach earlier today, but now all that perfection was a little irritating. Or maybe it was the look on his face: arrogant amusement and a hint of condescending impatience.
“A lot or not, Montoya still should have done more,” she stated, her frown sliding into a scowl.
“Like what?”
“I don’t know.” She threw her arms in the air. “Something. Anything. He’s a policeman. He should do police work, shouldn’t he?”
“The cops didn’t see anything.”
“The police are wrong.” Lila shot him a sideways glance that was as close as she could get to a sneer. “And you’re wrong, too.”
“I’m wrong. The police are wrong. Everyone’s wrong but you. Sweetheart, you take the cake.”
She wanted to tell him where to shove the cake, but she managed to smile instead.
“I didn’t imagine seeing a man killed.”
“Okay.”
That agreeably sarcastic tone was different, and the single word wasn’t what she was used to hearing. But the subtext? Oh, Lila knew every word. She was an expert on arrogance and well-versed in patronizing disdain.
Her fists clenched so tight her hands shook. She knew it was pointless. There was no reasoning with that subtext. Nothing she said would matter. But she still couldn’t keep herself from snapping.
“How can you guys blow this off? What kind of men just dismiss murder? Just shrug off a man being shot and killed? Somebody took Chef Rodriguez’s life and you just stand there, giving me that I’m so perfect sneer. What the hell is your problem?”
“If I’m perfect, I doubt I’d have any problems.”
“I didn’t say you were perfect,” she corrected meticulously, ignoring the tickle in her belly that argued that if looks were anything to go by, he had perfection down pat. “I said you think that you’re perfect. And some might say that you think incorrectly.”
“Is that any way to talk to the man who gave up his quiet evening to ride to your rescue?”
“You were swinging in a hammock.”
“Yet another example of my perfection. With no preparation or warning, I was able to effect a clean op, mount a rescue and end the mission without incident.” He grinned. “Besides, I was swinging pretty damned quietly.”
“Who the hell are you?” she snapped, squeezing the fingers of her left hand, releasing, and squeezing again.
“Me?” He shrugged, the movement making the muscles of his chest and shoulder ripple. “Just a guy on vacation.”
“No. That policeman called you a hotshot. What he’d said about you thinking you can handle things better than the cops, what’d that mean?”
“Civilians sometimes get pissy when dealing with guys with Special Ops training.”
Special Ops training?
“What branch?” she choked out.
“SEALs,” he said, giving her a curious look.
Lila could only shake her head.
No freaking way.
Mr. Tall, Sexy and Gorgeous was a SEAL? A Navy SEAL?
With her luck, he’d served on the same team as her brother. Probably the same squad. He’d have met her father, been honored by one of Adrian the elder’s kiss-ass dinner parties. Even, God help her, golfed at the club.
Tears—as much from fury and frustration as from self-pity—burned her eyes.
The events of the day won, she decided.
She couldn’t take any more.
Her legs were wonky. Too wonky to hold her up any longer. Uncaring that it was the same spot she’d seen a body fall, she dropped to the floor and wrapped her arms around her torso, hoping the pressure would hold in the pain.
* * *
Seriously?
She was going to fall apart now?
Right here, on the floor where she thought she’d witnessed a murder?
Stridin
g over to the tiny refrigerator in the corner, Travis shook his head. He’d never understand women. She’d thrown herself at him, all but climbing inside his skin.
Not that he had much problem with that, he decided in retrospect. She’d fit damned nice, and all that hair of hers was a silky temptation.
He yanked open the wobbly door of the stained appliance and grabbed a water. Twisting off the cap, he walked back and held it out, waiting in silence.
Lila shifted so her head was resting against the wall instead of on her drawn-up knees. The movement threw her face into sharp relief, the flickering overhead light angling down, accenting that full mouth, with its slight overbite. The curve of her cheekbones and the deep hollows beneath. She’d closed her eyes so her thick lashes fanned out over those cheeks, giving her a look of vulnerability that tugged at his gut.
Then she pulled in one long, deep breath that made her blouse slide temptingly across her full breasts.
And he got a tug a little south of his gut.
Then she did it again.
And Travis realized that yes, indeed, bum knee or not, he was alive and well.
By her third breath, he had to suck in one of his own.
He wasn’t the kind of guy who liked to see people fall apart—especially women. But it was pure pleasure to watch her pull herself together.
Still, enough was enough.
“You got a grip on yourself yet?”
“What?” When those lashes fluttered open, her eyes were fogged with confusion and pain.
“Just checking. Are you finished with that meltdown?”
“Meltdown?” she snapped, pushing to her feet. She slammed her hands on her hips while her face curved in fury. She had a wicked glare, one he figured would cut a lesser man to the quick. But his ego was made of steel.
So he just grinned.
“Yeah. You were crying and babbling and seeing things. In my book, that reads like a meltdown.”
“I saw a man killed,” she said, each word clipped and precise. “I heard the bullet, the sound of it piercing his flesh. I watched his body fly backward, bleeding and ripped. I heard men cussing before one of them aimed that same gun at me.”