by Elle Keaton
The voices from the kitchen rose aggressively before the back door slammed open, nearly bashing him in the face. Micah had the presence of mind to cower to the side, but nothing could hide Bear with Matveev in a headlock. The man had to be 6’5”, with massive arms and tree-trunk legs, but Matveev was big and strong as well, so Bear did not have full advantage. The size of the kitchen meant that when Matveev rammed back, Bear was propelled directly into the mini-fridge and the cabinets above it. Spices and glassware flew everywhere, smashing on the tile flooring and creating a wicked homemade mustard-curry powder. Bear and Matveev were both coughing, but neither released their grip. Bear ground forward, slamming Matveev’s head into the cabinets above the sink when Matveev tried to dislodge him. Bear was starting to get the upper hand, using the confines of the kitchen to his advantage, slamming the other man into every surface available. Blood and sweat mingled with the spice detonation.
At first Perla had been kind of hanging off Bear’s arm trying to stop him. If it hadn’t been so intense, Micah would have laughed. Now she was screaming at Bear in what Micah thought was Tagalog. When it was clear Matveev was done, she latched back onto Bear until he let go and Matveev slumped to the floor in a heap. Perla knelt beside his body, her fingers at his throat checking for a pulse. Despite the blood streaming from his broken nose and a deep gash on the side of his face, Micah didn’t think Bear had managed to break the man’s neck. The entire exchange had been eerily quiet (except for the spices), and Micah wondered where the other two guys were.
The pounding on the front door did not bode well.
By unspoken agreement the three of them left Matveev lying in a pool of his own blood (and a dash of saffron) and bolted out the back door. Bear was surprisingly agile for a man his size, leaping off the porch and quickly disappearing into the growing darkness. They would at least have the cover of nightfall. Why Micah had decided this odd couple was safe he couldn’t say; he only knew if they stayed behind they would be added to the body count.
They crashed through the bushes that lined the backyard, tumbling out into a yard mostly identical to the one they had left. Panting with exertion and fear, they ran for their lives, putting as much space as they could between themselves and Matveev’s henchmen. There was nothing quiet about their escape; they kicked rocks, knocked over recycling bins. Micah tripped over a set of plastic lawn chairs, but Bear grabbed him by the collar before he could face-plant in the wet grass.
Perla was fast, but her legs were short. As she began to fall behind, Bear scooped her up and kept running like he was carrying nothing. They crossed several more yards. All the cabins seemed to be deserted, and no helpful neighbors came out to see if they should call the police. Eventually they crashed through another bramble, this one Himalayan blackberry with thorns the size of hummingbirds. Micah caught one in the face, but fear kept him moving onto the two-lane highway.
He almost sobbed when he saw the Duke parked about a hundred feet away and the lone figure of Buck at the wheel. No time to look behind them; Micah pointed at the car and they kept going.
Buck had the monster car running and the doors unlocked. Bear threw Perla into the backseat with little protest before following headfirst. Those were gunshots Micah was hearing now; he was not a country boy, but those popping sounds were terrifyingly unmistakable. The Duke was moving before Micah could get the passenger door shut. None of them spoke as Buck expertly handled the massive car around the sweeping curves of the highway as it followed the river back toward Skagit.
Micah anxiously checked the rearview mirror for signs of following cars. He didn’t realize they had exited the compound farther east until the Duke passed the entrance to Glacier Creek where the humongous black SUV was just pulling out. Even in the gloom Micah saw Matveev in the passenger seat; he had a bloody cloth pressed to his face. He looked right at Micah, his eyes widening with recognition.
“Crap. We need to get away from that car—those are really bad men, Buck.”
Buck smiled grimly as they negotiated another set of turns down the mountain. “We have the Duke on our side.”
Never in his life would Micah forget that ride. Later, Buck would inform him that the Marquis had a very-well-taken-care-of eight-cylinder engine, acting offended that Micah would think otherwise. They raced down the mountain, an avalanche with gravity on their side, breaking every speed limit along the way.
The problem lay in the highway itself, which was one lane in each direction.
Micah was sure the only reason they lived and didn’t take out any innocent bystanders was because it wasn’t camping season, or eagle season, or any season that he could think of other than storm season. Only one RV dared to get in their way. Buck pulled out into the opposite lane, barely tapping the gas pedal, and the beast’s odometer floated up to 100 mph, the RV soon a speck in the rearview mirror.
Phone calls had been made, though. About halfway down the mountain, when Micah could breathe again, another black SUV coming the other way peeled out a U-turn and began chasing them.
The mountain and hills flew by. If there had been any color at all left on the trees it would have blurred together like a child’s finger painting. The Duke and Buck roared down the highway like they owned it. Micah whimpered and crouched down in the passenger seat. He heard Bear crooning to Perla in broken English. No doubt a prayer. They hit the top of a grade and the enormous car lifted off the ground for a few seconds before slamming back to earth with a grunt to continue its wild ride.
His butt was vibrating—someone was calling or texting, but Micah could not bring himself to let go of the oh-shit strap to drag his phone out of his back pocket. Thank God they’d only seen and passed that single RV. The SUV was lurking behind them but couldn’t seem to get close enough to cause damage. Micah had seen a hand out the passenger window, but if they had taken shots at them the bullets had missed.
Buck tapped the brakes and laid on the horn—which, having been designed in the 1970s, was incredibly loud—as they screamed through a four-corner intersection, a closed-up inn on one corner and a tattered stop-and-go across from it. The two other corners hosted tiny espresso stands, hand-lettered signs declaring them closed for the season.
The black SUV used that moment of hesitation to draw closer. Micah could see two men in the front seat now. Both were wearing dark ski caps; their faces were exposed, but all he could see were white smudges. His phone started to vibrate again. He knew it was Adam. Taking a deep breath, he swiped his finger across the screen to answer.
“This is when you tell me you are not in the Mercury Marquis wagon that has been reported speeding west on the Mt. Baker Highway. And by speeding, they have clocked the driver going over 100 miles an hour on the straightaways. Also,” Adam growled out, “I’d like it if you confirmed that the car is in fact not the Mercury Marquis that Buck Swanfeldt owns and Ed Schultz has assured me he would never risk in a fucking high-speed car chase!”
Micah was thinking he didn’t need Adam yelling at him while he was in actual danger of losing his life. He hung up without answering.
“Your boy isn’t too happy with us?” Buck murmured, keeping his eyes on the road.
“Yeah. No.”
Turning in his seat, he tried to see how close the other car was. Glass exploded and the Duke rocked forward, swerving left. Buck fought the wheel, trying desperately to correct the path of the careening vehicle, as the flashing lights of an oncoming police car hurtled toward them. Micah’s life flashed before his eyes. Bear was screaming, roaring even, in his guttural mother tongue. Micah couldn’t see, but thought the Matveev thugs had managed to blow out the Duke’s back window and maybe a tire, too, from the way the car was swerving. Buck was swearing. They’d been forced to slow down, but the speedometer still showed them going over sixty miles an hour.
Bear lunged from where he’d been crouching over Perla. He had the biggest handgun Micah had ever seen outside of a James Bond movie. He took aim. With no silencer, the shot
was deafening. A breath and the windshield disappeared from the car behind them. It swerved, slamming into a drainage ditch along the side of the road.
Micah had never in his life been so glad for sirens and lights. Buck had barely come to a stop before the patrol car reached them. The Duke’s engine ticked as it cooled. Just another day.
Forty-Seven
Nothing in his years of service responding to crime scenes prepared Adam for the all consuming terror he felt knowing Micah was in a car careening down a mountain being chased by ruthless killers. When the report had come that there was a car chase, the lead vehicle identified as a Mercury Marquis, Adam knew somehow Buck Swanfeldt had been roped into being Micah’s chauffeur.
Adam had liked Buck. Until now.
How stupid was it to suddenly understand, really understand, all the romantic crap people spouted? About hearts hurting, breaking, having your breath taken away merely by looking at someone? Those college boyfriends had been right; he hadn’t been invested in them, he hadn’t opened himself up to them. Something maybe others understood intrinsically had taken Adam thirty-five years to comprehend. Micah had done that to him. His heart no longer lived safely inside his chest; it lived outside his body, where it could get hurt, where it was vulnerable to whim, where it could, perhaps, disappear forever.
Adam’s actual heart, a muscle he had never appreciated before for more than doing its job pumping blood around his body with regularity for thirty-five years, felt like it had been ripped out of his chest without anesthesia, stomped on, then set on fire when he realized Micah had left the motel room. It was such an intensely visceral feeling that Adam kept looking down at himself to make certain he wasn’t bleeding out in front of his team. The aching black hole left where his heart had been almost floored him. He was in agony. Literally. He kept trying to take a breath, but he couldn’t get his lungs to expand enough for more than a short, tight gasp.
Weir, of all people, finally interrupted the briefing, telling everyone to take five. Grabbing Adam by the elbow, he pulled him out into the hallway of SkPD headquarters.
“Dude, you have to get a hold of yourself. What is wrong with you?”
Adam could hardly hear him over the rushing sound in his ears.
“Seriously, what is wrong with you? I’ve never seen you like this before.”
“Micah.” Adam jammed his hands in his pockets to hide the trembling.
“Okay.” Weir trailed off for a second. “Don’t, ah, take this the wrong way. Did you only now figure out that you care for him? Maybe even—”
“Do. Not. Say. It,” Adam ground out, cutting Weir off.
“I’m going to take that as a yes. It will be our little secret for now. But lemme tell you something else. You better tell him when you see him, or you’ll never forgive yourself. Focus on seeing him again so you can tell him. Try not to think about the things you can’t control.”
Adam couldn’t believe Weir, man-child-surfer-dude, was having this conversation with him.
“I haven’t known him long enough to feel this way. It’s…it’s…
“Scaring the shit out of you? You thought you were in control? And now your guy has gone off all badass and you finally had your come-to-Jesus moment? All I can say is, it’s good to know you have a human heart. There’s been an on-going office pool for years that starts up whenever you start seeing somebody.”
By the time Adam had arrived at the spot where the speeding Marquis had thumped off the road, the EMTs had carted Micah, Buck, and some other passengers to off St. Joe’s, leaving a dead guy and the driver of the SUV. Another set of EMTs were taking care of him, although by the looks of his face he wouldn’t be talking anytime soon.
Even though Adam was still technically on leave, he took point for the investigation along with a detective from SkPD. David Chambers seemed like a decent investigator, but if he took any longer looking at skid marks and measuring distances Adam was going to Taser the guy and toss him in the trunk of his car. Which was funny because normally, as much as he bitched about it, Adam was the one who left no stone unturned.
He needed to see for himself that Micah was okay. Chambers obviously had nobody waiting at home for him. He was trying to ease away when some other industrious crime-scene investigators discovered a second abandoned SUV, no bodies, but there was significant blood both in and outside the vehicle. No sign of Matveev. It was several hours before Adam could remove himself from the scene and head to the St. Joe’s emergency room.
Forty-Eight
Adam stalked into the hospital waiting room, a panther amongst pigeons. Micah saw him coming and had to squash the instinct to run the other direction. He knew it had been impulsive, and risky, to go up to the cabins. He should never have put Buck in danger like that, either. Couldn’t Adam chalk it up to insanity? That’s what Micah was going to do. He steeled himself for the lecture he saw in Adam’s eyes as he strode closer.
He wasn’t prepared for Adam grabbing him by the shoulders and pulling him tight against him, fingers digging desperately into his flesh, squeezing so tightly there would be bruising. Adam’s face pressed into Micah’s neck and his body shook. Micah found himself soothing Adam, rubbing comforting circles on his back. Murmuring nonsense.
It could have been a minute or it could have been an hour before Adam pulled himself together enough to yell at him the way Micah had expected.
“Never, never do something like that again.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”
“I just found you. I just now know what it feels like to have someone. I don’t care about anything else.”
Oh.
Ohhhhh.
Weir had followed Adam into the waiting room at some point, though Micah hadn’t seen him arrive. He was watching them with a guarded fascination.
“Klay, I hate to interrupt but, uh, we’ve still got work to do.” Weir’s deep voice shattered the moment. Micah kind of wanted to kill him.
Adam inhaled. “Yeah, I know.” Loosening his grip on Micah, he continued, “Matveev and his driver haven’t been found yet. The two guys that were following are not going to be talking for a while, especially since one is dead. The big guy with you clammed up. Nobody seems to know who he is or how he fits in except that he is Eastern European. The woman is still unconscious; docs aren’t sure why. We had to put the big guy in a holding cell because of the gun and the no speaking.”
Micah nodded, emotion making it difficult for him to speak. He didn’t even know her. He only knew that Bear protected her.
“Bear,” he whispered. “She called him Bear. Her name is Perla.”
“Weir and I need to take care of some things. Will you please be here when I get back?” Adam asked.
“Can I go home?”
“We need to find Matveev first. He is dangerous and his nest has been disturbed. He’s not going to go down without a fight. I need you safe.”
Micah still wasn’t entirely sure what Adam meant by that. But if actions were an indicator he hoped it was a substitute for something stronger. A clammy hospital waiting room with yellow walls and fluorescent lighting was probably not the place for deep conversation. And Weir was still standing there listening.
He knew he was going to capitulate even before he said the words. “Okay. Where, then?”
Adam sighed with relief. “The rest of the team has arrived. Mohammad had Weir here working another side of the case; if you hadn’t figured out where he was first, we would have been there in a few hours.” He shook his head again in disbelief. “Anyway, they’re setting up at the motel. You’ll be safe there.”
Weir’s phone rang. “Yeah? Are you fucking kidding me? Yeah, we’ll be right there. Five minutes.” He ended the call. “Come on, lover boy, we have work to do.” Weir snickered.
An agent Micah hadn’t noticed moved to his side. She gestured toward the exit. “I’m Hannah Rourke. Let’s get going. I have to say, while I am not pleased to be babysitting you, it’s nice to see that A
dam Klay’s heart does actually beat.”
Weir let out another inelegant snort.
Not even the chance to eavesdrop on a team of real CSI-type investigators could keep Micah’s eyes open. The adrenaline had long since left his bloodstream, and he crashed hard. Once Agent Rourke deposited him back in the suite, he ducked into the closest unoccupied room and passed out. The next thing he registered was the mattress dipping and a warm body spooning up behind him. Adam pulled him tight against his body and pulled the covers over them both. Micah slept like the dead.
Adam was gone when he woke up, but Micah could hear his voice in the main room. There was a cup of lukewarm coffee sitting on the nightstand. Glowing red numbers told him he had slept through the night. He hadn’t even had the energy to take his filthy clothes off. A shower was the highest priority. He couldn’t believe Adam had held him tight all night; he smelled like a twelve-year-old boy who believed hygiene was a concept and not a necessity.
He dropped his crusty shirt and jeans on the bathroom floor in disgust. If he didn’t need clothes to wear home he would have thrown them in the trash can. The shower felt incredible, the hot sting of water on his shoulders and face flushing away the terror of the day before. He turned the water off as the bathroom door opened revealing Adam holding a pair of jeans and some other stuff Micah didn’t care about. He would never get tired of Adam looking at him like that.
“No funky stuff in there, Klay,!” he heard Weir yell through the bedroom door.
“What he doesn’t know won’t hurt him.” Adam grinned wickedly, moving toward Micah with intent.
With nothing to cover him, Micah’s desire was on display for Adam.
“Fuck me, that is incredible.” Adam adjusted himself in the confines of his slacks and groaned when Micah twitched and a drop of moisture pushed out from his reddened tip.
Adam went down onto his knees in the steamy bathroom, grabbing Micah’s ass with one hand and his dick with the other, licking and sucking it like it was the most delectable ice-cream cone he had ever had. He licked and nuzzled until Micah was going to go mad. One more pass and he would come, and he hadn’t even gotten into Adam’s mouth yet. Adam must have felt him, because he grabbed his thick base and squeezed until Micah could hold back—but he still felt his balls tighten; he was hot inside. The sensation of Adam’s tongue again made him pulse, and he had to grab the shower door so he wouldn’t collapse. Finally, Adam put his molten, wet mouth around Micah. It was so incredible he almost screamed. He had to shove his fist in his mouth. Adam was looking up at him with a glow in his eyes that Micah could not, would not, deny.