“Bull,” he responded immediately. “I have a sister. I know exactly what that look on your face means. You’re plotting something I won’t like.”
“I—” Elle cut herself off and went back to staring at the trees.
Because a denial would be a lie. Even if she hadn’t yet thought through the sequence of events that would be involved in leaving, she had silently used the words sneak off. Which meant that some part of her subconscious knew that Noah wouldn’t like it.
Maybe because you owe him over three thousand dollars in expenses? She winced a little as she realized it should have been a much bigger number. Specifically, thirteen thousand. Because Noah would’ve been paying Dez, too. And now he wasn’t.
Elle balled up her hands. “As soon as we get a tip that’s good enough, I’ll pay you, and you can go.”
The car jumped a little, then jerked to the side. A passing driver laid on the horn, but Noah didn’t seem to notice as he brought the vehicle to a haphazard stop on the side of the road.
“You’ll pay me...” he said woodenly. “Then you’ll go.”
“I wasn’t thinking straight when I hired you,” she replied, knowing full well just how lame the statement came across.
“You weren’t thinking straight.”
“Are you just repeating everything I say?”
“I’m just trying to make sure I get it right,” he replied, his tone just as stiff, his words just shy of clipped. “What I’m hearing is that hiring me was an error in judgment, which you’ve just now realized, and that you’re dismissing me before I can get the job done.”
“I’m going to pay you,” Elle said, trying to keep the desperate edge out of her voice.
Something unreadable passed across his face. “How? Are you going to find the nearest bank? Use your debit card to withdraw thousands of dollars? Do you even have a debit card?”
Her face warmed. “I—”
“Save it,” he said, now speaking with barely confined anger. “Even if you answered yes to any of those questions, do you really think I’d believe it?”
“If you don’t believe that I can pay, then why are you here?” she countered.
He didn’t answer. Not really. Instead he said, “You need me, Elle. If you didn’t you would’ve got yourself a cab or hopped on a bus or stolen a car, and you would’ve made your way to Trey Charger on your own.”
“He wouldn’t have just taken her home!”
“You know him well enough to be sure of that?”
“Yes!”
Elle snapped her mouth shut as soon as the admission was out. She could tell by the look on Noah’s face that she’d only further piqued his curiosity. She needed to backpedal. Find an excuse. But the words wouldn’t come, and she had no idea why it was so hard to just lie to the shaggy-haired man. She’d done her fair share of telling untruths over the last six years. They were especially rampant in the first weeks after her escape from under Trey’s thumb. And even this week, when she’d filled in the application at their new apartment, she’d laced it with false information. Phony jobs. A phony backstory. Aside from her love for Katie, a large chunk of Elle’s life was—by necessity—a lie. So why couldn’t she just spit out something convenient and fitting right then? Why did a pair of hazel eyes, a set of warm hands and a sincere stare like Noah’s change everything?
“Tell me the truth.” His tone rode an odd line between gentle and urgent. “Why are you cutting and running the second you can?”
Her eyes dropped to her lap, and she could barely hear her own whispered reply. “Because he’ll kill you, Noah.”
He didn’t respond. But a second later, the hum of the engine kicked up, and the crunch of gravel and the roll of the tires told Elle they were pulling back onto the road. She lifted her attention to the window and waited for Noah to pull a wide turn. He didn’t. He didn’t take the next exit, either, and Elle’s pulse did a nervous jump.
“Didn’t you hear what I just said?” she asked.
“I did,” he acknowledged. “And that’s my risk to take.”
“You’re just going to sacrifice yourself?”
“I’m going to assume that my death isn’t a foregone conclusion, and I’m going to do my damnedest to stay alive.”
“But... Think about Dez.”
“I am. I’m thinking about him a lot. And his death shouldn’t be for nothing.”
“Noah.”
“Elle.”
“What if I said I can’t really pay you?” she asked, hearing the now-unstoppable desperation creeping into her voice.
He was silent for a moment before answering. “Then I’d have to admit I suspected as much.”
“So why are you still helping me?”
His fingers tapped the wheel. “I don’t know.”
For some reason, the three-word admission made Elle’s heart squeeze sadly in her chest.
What did you want? she asked herself. For him to make some kind of big confession? Maybe for him to say that he was helping you because you have some weird, profound effect on him? You know...the way he seems to have on you?
The long answer was that it was a ridiculous thing to even consider. Elle ought not to care about a stranger’s reasons for doing something—even when that something was helping her. She shouldn’t be biting her tongue to keep from confessing that it mattered to her. But the simple answer was...it contradicted all of that. Because it was yes. Yes, she wanted to hear that there was some weird, cosmic connection happening between them. She wanted him to tell her she wasn’t alone in the crazy feeling.
As she admitted it to herself, a blush spread across her face, and she turned her head to the side in case Noah happened to glance her way and catch the pinkness. But after a few heavy seconds of silence, the heat faded away. Because she realized something. There was one simple sentence she could say that probably would send him running. All she had to do was to announce the truth—that Trey Charger was Katie’s father.
Chapter 9
Noah was used to tension. Used to uncomfortable situations where his personal, physical well-being was on the line. This, though. It was something different.
Saying aloud that he was pretty damn sure that Elle couldn’t meet his payment demands had been an accident. Now he couldn’t take it back. Which in turn meant he had to admit to himself that it was officially true. In the last few hours, he’d broken all his cardinal rules. A kid and plenty of attention. And in spite of all the action, he couldn’t deny that it was emotion overruling the whole thing. The woman sitting beside him made him feel things he wasn’t sure he wanted to put a name to. Worse than that—or at least as bad—was the fact that he had a sinking sensation that she was about to say something that would upset him.
Upset you? For crying out loud. You don’t know her well enough for her to upset you.
The inward snarl did nothing to ease the feeling. He needed to fill the quiet, so he could stop Elle from speaking first. Maybe discuss where they were headed. Ask if she thought they’d need to fuel up. Hell. Any inane thing would do. But his mouth seemed determined to share his thoughts instead, and when he opened his lips, something entirely un-inane slipped out.
“Did you catch that bit that Dez said about me living by a code?” Using the other man’s name gave him a pang, but he kept his gaze on the road and went on. “That night when I met Dez, he asked me how I got by. How I shielded my brain. I told him I had three simple rules to keep myself sane. You want to know what they are?”
“Sure,” Elle replied, sounding anything but.
“On the surface, they all make good business sense,” Noah told her. “Rule one is so basic that I barely even think about it, and that’s that I don’t work for free. Rule two is that I keep a low profile. And rule three is that I don’t get involved in situations that concern kids. I probably don’t need to point out that I�
��m batting zero for three right now, do I?”
“No.” Her response wasn’t much more than an apologetic whisper.
“You most definitely have a kid,” he said, “and I sure as hell suspect that I’ll be getting some unwanted attention from your friend, Mr. Charger. On top of that, you owe me thirteen thousand, one hundred and seventy-three dollars, not including what I should collect when I actually find your kid.” He waved a hand as she frowned and opened her mouth in an obvious protest. “Yeah, that amount includes Dez’s fee. Because I’m going to make damn sure his sister-in-law—his only living relative—gets every cent of it. And we might as well add in gas money and mileage while we’re at it. Let’s say we’re at thirteen thousand, two hundred and fifty dollars for good measure.”
“I’m sorry.” Her response really was a whisper this time, and Noah had to squeeze the steering wheel to keep from reaching for her.
“I don’t want you to be sorry.” The statement came out in a low, emotion-fueled growl.
“I—what?”
“I said those rules made sense on the surface, Elle. The truth is, they go a hell of a lot deeper for me.”
“What do you mean?”
“I want to help you.”
“But if it makes you go against your code, and it might get you killed...”
He hazarded a glance her way, and the misery on her face made his heart ache in a way he’d never experienced before. It made every part of him want to pull over, drag her into his arms and hold her close until she knew everything was going to be fine.
Just hold her? asked a voice in his head, and it took a significant amount of willpower and small, self-directed chastisement to shrug it off. She needs you to find her daughter, not sit around thinking about how good it would feel to kiss her.
“They’re my damn rules,” he told her gruffly as he flicked on his signal and turned onto a long rural driveway. “I’ll break them if I want to.”
For a second, her only response was silence. Then she let out a small sigh.
“Call it selfish,” she said. “But I don’t want to be responsible for your death, Noah.”
He could tell that she meant it, and if he’d thought his heart hurt a second earlier, it had nothing on the feeling now. She was a woman desperate to find her daughter, yet she was worried about his life, too.
“Maybe I do know why I’m still here,” he said.
He felt her eyes lift to his face, even though he hadn’t shifted a look her direction. “Why?”
“Because I’d rather die knowing I did the right thing than live knowing I walked away because of my stupid code.”
Her inhale was sharp, but if she was going to say anything in response, she didn’t get a chance to. They’d reached their destination—an old farmhouse one of his professional acquaintances occupied—and it didn’t take any kind of special training to see that something was wrong. A tall potted plant lay on its side, battered and broken. A string of patio lanterns looked as though they’d been ripped down, then tossed everywhere. That wasn’t the worst of it, though. The most alarming sight was the all but shattered front door. The top half was missing completely. The bottom half was split up the center, and it hung from the hinges, flapping eerily back and forth.
All of Noah’s hackles came up, and he swung his gaze from side to side, searching for the culprit of the destruction. There was no sign of anyone. Not another vehicle, and nowhere to hide one. That still didn’t mean it was worth the risk to stick around and find out for sure. Regretful that they wouldn’t get to use his acquaintance’s considerable resources, he dropped his hand down to shift into Reverse. He barely managed to take ahold of the gear stick before Elle’s fingers closed over his, stopping him.
“We can’t just leave,” she said.
“You want to confront whoever the hell did this?” he replied.
“No,” she admitted. “But you said this guy could help us.”
“He’s likely to be beyond being able to help at this point, Elle,” he told her as gently as possible.
She shook her head. “But you don’t know that for sure. And what if it’s the reverse? What if your friend needs our help?”
“He’s hardly a friend.”
She let his hand go and pointed out the front windshield. “There’s no one around. And you can see the fresh tire tracks spin out and leave in the other direction.”
He eyed the spot she’d indicated and saw that she was right. There were clear marks. Someone had left in a damn big hurry.
“Please, Noah,” Elle added. “I feel like if we leave without checking, we might lose an opportunity to get closer to finding Katie.”
Noah eyed the destruction at the front of the house, then brought his gaze back to her. He stood zero chance of saying no to the half-hopeful, half-plaintive look on her face. Gritting his teeth and cursing his own softness, he cut the engine but left the keys in the ignition.
“I’m taking my gun,” he stated, “but I’m leaving you my phone.” He yanked it from his pocket and set it down in the cup holder. “When I get out, I want you to climb over the console into the driver’s seat, and I want you to wait and watch. If you see anything go wrong, lay on the horn. If you think I won’t get back to you in time, then you just get the hell out of here. Once you’re somewhere safe, use my phone to speed dial a guy listed under the name ‘Spud,’ and if he sounds dubious about our relationship, tell him I said ‘Norah.’”
He knew she was going to argue about at least some of it—possibly all of it, actually—so he didn’t give her a chance to say a word. He lifted a hand to her cheek, leaned forward and placed a soft, slow kiss on her lips. Her mouth was warm. Sweet. Everything it ought to have been. And regretfully, Noah had no time to enjoy it. He pulled back and grabbed the door handle, and as Elle stared at him with wide, startled eyes, he slid from the car. He tapped the automatic lock and closed the door quietly. Then he crouched low and slunk toward the house without looking back.
* * *
Elle was too surprised to react. All she could do was stare in mute, worried silence as Noah made his way stealthily across the yard, slipped up the stairs, then disappeared into the house. Which, she suspected, was fully his intention. And when the surprise wore off, she was just plain annoyed. Except she couldn’t quite pinpoint the source of her irritation. Or maybe it wasn’t that she couldn’t pinpoint it; maybe it was that she couldn’t narrow it down because there were too many things to choose from.
For starters, she didn’t like the orders Noah had issued, and she’d be damned if she would leave him there if that’s what it came down to. It also irked her that he’d kissed her to keep her from protesting. And she disliked his sneaky maneuver in getting out of the car, too. But maybe what pricked at her most was that he’d stolen the moment. It was kind of petty to think about it. Elle knew that. But there had been all those perfect chances before. Heat simmering between them. Eyes on lips. Tension—the good kind—galore. And yet there went the first kiss. Grabbed as a trick.
See? said her conscience. That’s what you get for not seizing the opportunities when they arise.
But as unexpected and slightly underhanded as it might’ve been, it still hadn’t been unenjoyable. In fact, it was the opposite. And as Elle kept her eye on the front door, she could still feel his lips on hers. Firm but tender. Quick but somehow unhurried. Unconsciously, she brought the tips of her fingers up to her mouth. She felt along the edges of her lips, thinking about how the brush of his stubble had added a hint of roughness that she would never have guessed she’d like. But she did. She had. A lot.
“Dammit,” she murmured, her eyes on the empty doorway, and the last of her annoyance slipping away. “You’d better come out of there in once piece. Because I—”
The abrupt buzz of Noah’s cell phone cut her off, midsentence. She dropped her gaze to the screen. The name “Spu
d” was on display. Elle bit her lip, thinking it couldn’t be a coincidence that Noah’s fail-safe contact was texting him that very second.
With an uncomfortable prickle of nerves coming to life between her shoulders, she lifted the phone and swiped a finger across. She half expected a prompt for a password, but instead was rewarded with the most recent text alert—a set of numbers that took her a second to place. GPS coordinates. But she didn’t get a chance to consider what the coordinates might signify before the phone buzzed an incoming call. And Spud’s name was there, too. She let it go to voicemail, but the buzzing no sooner ended than it started up again.
Her finger hovered over the answer button. She bit her lip a little harder, glanced up at the house in search of Noah, then let voicemail take it again. And it started to buzz once more. This time, with another text from Spud.
Pick up the phone!!!
Elle’s pulse jumped, and when the cell alerted a third call, she finally gave in and tapped the answer button. Then she held her breath, brought the phone to her ear and waited.
“What the hell, man,” said a masculine voice on the other end. “Are you trying to mess with me?”
Elle blew out a breath. “I’m sorry. Noah’s not here.”
There was a drawn-out silence on the end before the man—presumably Spud—answered. “I’d ask who this is, but I’m not sure I really want to know. So I’ll just ask this instead. Have you killed, maimed or otherwise harmed Noah Loblaw?”
“Uh. No?”
“Is that a question?”
“No,” she said more firmly. “Noah is helping me. I haven’t hurt him.”
An audible exhale carried through the line. “I really want to believe you.”
Elle’s brain kicked up a reminder. “This is Spud, right?”
“Yeah.”
“He told me to tell you ‘Norah.’”
There was another pause, then a low whistle. “Well, damn.”
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