Caballo Security Box Set

by Camilla Blake

  He walked off without so much as a glance at me. I had no choice but to rush to follow, as unsteady as I was.

  Had I done something wrong? Why’d he just walk away like that? I was terribly confused, but I didn’t have much time to think about it. As we came up over the top of the steps, something rushed past my ear and a chunk of stucco from the building beside us flew off and cut my upper arm. I cried out, not from the pain, but because a second later blood flew from a wound in Akker’s shoulder, splattering the wall beside me.

  What the hell?

  Chapter 7

  Akker

  The bullets came out of nowhere.

  I didn’t even feel the pain. I grabbed Eva and pulled her behind me, pushing her back down below the street level, ducking against the building as I tried to take a look and see who was firing at us. But there was nothing to see.

  I took my cell phone out of my pocket and texted for backup.

  “What’s happening? What do they want?”

  I shook my head. I didn’t know.

  I slid my arm around her, pulling her tighter against my back. There were other people on the portico now, a group of students who were staring at us like we’d lost our minds. That is until one of them happened to notice that something wasn’t quite right.

  “Hey, mister!” one of them called. “You’re bleeding. Do you need an ambulance?”

  Ironically, or not so ironically, our backup showed up just as he said it.

  Oliver came down the steps with two other operatives, the expression on his face tight. Then again, his expression was almost always tight.

  “We’re taking you out through Commerce,” he said, helping Eva to her feet. The moment she was gone, the heat of her body no longer pressed to my back, I felt the pain in my shoulder. Someone pressed a dressing there, wrapping it quickly with an elastic bandage before covering the whole thing with a sports jacket. No need to draw unwanted attention to ourselves. Eva half ran, half walked beside Oliver while I followed with another operative, the last guy pausing to speak to the college kids before taking up the rear.

  The River Walk was more crowded now than it had been earlier, and Commerce ran across one of the busiest parts of the river. The crowd threatened to rip us apart, separate us before we could get to safety. I’d never again look at the River Walk as a nice, relaxing place to hang out. Today, it was a nightmare.

  I spotted the guy just a second before I saw the flash of his gun. Acting purely on instinct, I grabbed Eva’s shoulder and yanked her back, pressing her against the brick wall of some restaurant, nearly knocking over a hostess who was approaching us with a menu in her hand. Eva gasped, but she didn’t scream. I waited to feel a bullet rip through my back, but it never did. When I glanced back, Oliver was standing at the edge of the river and a small mob had formed once again, staring at something in the water.

  I didn’t stop to see what it was. I grabbed Eva’s hand and jerked her up the steps that led to the street-level bridge there. It wasn’t Commerce, we hadn’t quite made it that far, but it was good enough. The street was even more crowded here. We’d easily lose ourselves in the tourist throng that was only getting thicker the closer to evening we got.

  Eva slid her arm around my waist as we walked quickly down one sidewalk and then another, ducking into an alley at one point before joining a group of drinkers as they moved from one bar to the next. A city bus roared past us only to stop less than half a block ahead. I picked up my pace, dragging Eva with me, boarding the massive vehicle just as the driver was about to close his doors. I had to dig around a second for some change, but managed, pulling Eva down into a seat about halfway down the aisle.

  “Where are we going?” she whispered near my ear.

  “As far from here as we can get. We need to disappear for a few hours, regroup.”

  “You need a hospital.”

  I pressed a hand to my shoulder, feeling the searing pain of the bullet wound. “Not right away. Getting you to safety is more important right now.” I brushed a piece of hair out of her face, thinking I needed to get her off the street as quickly as possible. She was too recognizable.

  The bus took us past The Alamo and down a few more streets populated with bars and restaurants before heading out of the downtown area. I watched out the window, waiting to get my bearings before making a decision. When the bus merged onto the highway, taking us toward the poorer part of town, the part where all the fast-food restaurants and cheap motels were located, I realized our only choice at this point was to hide out in a motel for a few hours.

  Eva Rae hiding out in a Motel 6. Who would ever think it?

  When the bus stopped outside a Whataburger, I pulled Eva behind me as I exited, taking her across the parking lot to the motel office, hoping I had enough cash in my wallet to make this work. Thank goodness, I did, and the clerk didn’t seem any more interested in us than he was in the meal congealing on a paper plate in front of him. I asked specifically for a room in the back, hidden from view of the highway. He didn’t ask why.

  I watched Eva’s face as we entered the room, waited for some snarky comment like I might have gotten from any other client I dragged into such a place. The king-size bed sagged in the middle, the comforter stained right up by the pillows. The floors were sticky and the television only got five channels. But she didn’t seem to care. She sank down on the edge of the bed and lay back, throwing an arm over her eyes.

  I pulled the curtains closed and walked around the room more out of habit than anything else, checking all the nooks and crannies for anything unexpected. All I found was a dirty towel that had fallen behind the work desk.

  “Let me take a look at your wound,” I said, wetting a rag in the sink and coming back to the bed. “You’re bleeding.”

  Eva glanced at her arm, shaking her head. “It’s just a scratch.”

  “It should be cleaned up anyway.”

  She sat up, looking at the bulge under my borrowed jacket. “What about you? Shouldn’t we be doing something about your wound?”

  “Not much to do right now but keep the pressure bandage on it.”

  “You say that like you’ve been shot before.”

  I would have shrugged, but my shoulder was burning like it was on fire. I didn’t want to add to the pain. She read the truth in my eyes, though, her own eyes widening so far that they seemed impossibly big.

  “How many times have you been shot?”

  “It depends on what you mean. Do you want to know how many occasions, or how many bullets altogether?”

  “You’ve been shot more than once?”

  I held up three fingers. “Can I clean your scratch now?”

  “You’ve been shot three times? How did that happen?”

  “Let me clean your scratch, and I’ll tell you.”

  She stared at me for a moment, but then stood and removed the filmy thing they’d called a jacket that she wore over her white suit. There was dirt and blood on it now, stains that they would never get out. But her baby-doll top was clean, perfection over her full breasts, the cool material showing more than she’d intended, I was sure. I should have averted my eyes, but I couldn’t make myself do it.

  “It’s over here,” she said, sort of waving her hand at me as she turned to show me the wound on her right bicep. I pressed the rag to it and she gasped, but she didn’t cry out. Like she’d insisted, it was a shallow cut, but it was a long cut that really could have benefited from some hydrogen peroxide. I wished I felt comfortable leaving her to find a Walgreens.

  The wound oozed a little after I cleaned the crusty blood away. I pressed the rag to it for a moment, pulling her toward me to get a good bit of pressure. She turned into me and reached for my shirt, tugging it up as she slid a hand underneath. I wasn’t quite sure what she was after at first, but I didn’t mind the feel of her cool hand against my skin.

  “Where were you shot?”

  Was it wrong that I was a little disappointed? She was looking for scars, not j
ust enjoying the feel of my skin against hers. Then again, I shouldn’t want her touch. I shouldn’t let her touch me this way. This was a client. This was Brock’s girl.

  I couldn’t go down that road again.

  I stepped back after taking her hand from my belly and pressing it to the rag. I removed the sports coat, then my shirt, checking the saturation on the pressure bandage. It didn’t seem too bad, the bleeding. I’d had worse.

  “Here,” I said, touching one small scar on my left arm, just below the heavy bandage. “And here.” Another scar, this one bigger and thickened, just below my fourth rib. “And here,” I said, touching a long, narrow scar above my hipbone.

  “All at once?”

  “No. This one,” touching my arm again, “happened during basic training. Someone was goofing around with his rifle and didn’t check to make sure he’d emptied all the rounds. Caused me to miss graduation, but not deployment.”

  “And the others?”

  “Three years ago, I was working a stalking case. Turned out to be this guy’s crazy mistress—whom he hadn’t told us about. She broke into his apartment one night and fired into his bed without making sure it was actually him sleeping in it. When I tackled her, she managed to get a couple off.”

  “She shot you?”

  “I’m not terribly proud of that one. I should have disarmed her before I got her down, but it was dark and I didn’t want to take a chance of her getting away. Ox has since updated the procedures for dealing with that sort of thing.”

  “You were shot by a girl.”

  “A gun is a gun, deadly no matter who’s holding it.”

  “But you were shot by a girl.”

  She was teasing, this glow in her eyes making them bright and beautiful, even in the dingy light of this dirty motel room. I wanted to smack her at the same time that I wanted to kiss the smirk right off her lips.

  “Shut up,” I said in as threatening a tone as I could manage.

  “What’s it like, being shot by a girl?”

  “Is this how you get your kicks? Teasing the man who’s supposed to be rescuing you?”

  “Rescuing me? Seems like we’ve been running more than anything else.”

  “That mouth is going to get you into trouble, lady.”

  “Is it? Then why don’t you come over her and shut me up.”

  “Don’t tempt me.”

  “I’m not just tempting. I’m daring.”

  “Is that right?”

  I couldn’t stop staring at her, at that light in her eyes, at the way that silk blouse showed off her perfectly perky breasts, the way the expensive material fell over her thin hips. She was a teenager’s wet dream the way she was standing there, the way she was dressed, the way she kept looking at me, daring me to kiss the words right off the tip of her tongue. This woman was a wildcat, walking up to me and yelling at me for something I hadn’t even done, slapping me in front of my colleagues. I should hate her with everything that made me human, but all I could think about was throwing her down on that stained bedspread and showing her everything I was capable of.

  She seemed to follow my thoughts perfectly because she dropped the wet rag she’d been pressing to her arm and came to me, her shoulders thrown back and this determination making her expression almost fierce. I buried my hand in her hair, twisting it around my fingers as I pulled her head roughly back, exposing her throat. I’d wanted to taste the tender flesh there from the moment I first laid eyes on her. I wasn’t going to let this opportunity pass me by.

  She moaned as I buried my mouth against her throat, my teeth gently gnawing at her skin. It was like time hadn’t passed from that moment on the portico, like we hadn’t been separated for nearly an hour, running from danger. We were right back in that moment, back in that cloud of desire that had enveloped us. My blood was already boiling again, my need burning deep inside. I explored her neck, my lips brushing the top of her blouse, moving down over the silky material as I explored what hid underneath. Her arms came around my neck and her lips brushed my temple, moving to nibble briefly at my earlobe before falling to the edge of my neck. I sighed, loving the feel of her, the smell of her. Loving everything she had to offer.

  I lifted her up, taking her literally off her feet, my shoulder burning where the wound ached. I grunted even as I buried my mouth against hers. She tasted like the sweet tea she’d been sipping most of the day, and something slightly spicy, something that I suspected was just her. I slid my hands under the back of her silky baby-doll, loving the feel of her bare skin against my palms. I was drinking her up like she was the best thing I’d tasted in months. In truth, she was the best thing I’d tasted in months, maybe even years. Some women just had this way about them, and Eva was one of them. She was quickly getting under my skin despite all my attempts to keep her at arm’s length.

  I wanted this woman like I’d never wanted any other. There was something about the way she looked at me from across a room, the way she sought me out when she was nervous or frightened. These past few days in her company, just being near her felt different from every other case I’d ever been on, every other client I’d ever protected. I knew a woman in danger often developed feelings for the one she felt was doing their best to save her, but this was different from that. This felt… Did I dare think it? It felt real.

  I lost my mind as I explored her mouth, lost all sense of reality as I pressed her against the wall and buried myself against her. I wanted to taste every inch of her, wanted to feel every bit of her. Her silky skin, the soft but firm roundness of her ass, the slender but powerful muscles in her legs. I wanted to memorize every curve and valley of her ribs, her spine, her perfectly rounded breasts. I wanted to feel her excitement under my palms, her moisture on my fingers. I wanted to know every secret hidden under these expensive clothes, under all that makeup and hairspray. I wanted to know her in a way no one else did.

  No one but my brother.

  That thought was like a bucket of cold water dumped on my head. For the second time that day, I was reminded of why I couldn’t be with this beautiful creature. She was once Brock’s, and some part of her still belonged to him. I couldn’t let anything come between me and Brock again, not now, not after we’d struggled so hard to come back to each other after everything that had happened between the two of us.

  Eva pressed her hand to my shoulder, making me cry out from the pain that rushed through my wound. I let her go, stepped back and practically fell into a single chair that was situated in front of the small, narrow, stained desk.

  “Oh, shit!” she cried, blushing as she stared at me with a hand over her mouth. “I forgot for a second.”

  “It’s fine,” I said, pushing a hand against the wound as I felt fresh blood dampen my skin.

  “You should go to a hospital. We’re wasting time here!”

  I shook my head. “There’s a doctor at Caballo who can take care of it. We just need to wait a few more hours, make sure no one followed us.”

  “What if you bleed to death before then?”

  “I’m not going to bleed to death.” I touched the area around the bandage, looking for any leakage, but didn’t find any. “It’s not that bad.”

  “Akker, I—”

  “Talk to me about your stalker. Tell me when all this first started.”

  “Why? We’ve been talking about it for days!”

  “There might be some clue, something that’ll help us figure out who’s behind this. The sooner we identify whoever is doing this to you, the sooner we can make you safe.”

  She rolled her eyes as she threw herself on the bed, pulling her legs up under her in some sort of crisscross position, like we did when we were all kindergarten students. She looked like she was about to meditate, the way she was resting her wrists on her knees. But that didn’t take anything from the fact that her nipples were still standing to attention, practically calling me back to them.

  “Like I told you, the messages began about a month ago, maybe a little
longer. I ignored them at first, assuming it was just some sort of spam or something. But then they became specific, so I went to Danny with them. He told me he’d go to the cops, that he’d take care of it. I’m not sure he ever did, though.”

  “Why not? Isn’t it in his best interest to keep his biggest client safe?”

  She shrugged, closing her eyes a little as she tilted her head toward the ceiling. “I’m Danny’s only client at the moment. He was small-time when he found me, those early days when I first arrived in Los Angeles. I brought him into a bigger arena, got his name out there. And he got me into the bigger arena, too. But we’ve outgrown each other, you know?”

  “Does he know you feel that way?”

  She shook her head. Her full lips parted as though she was going to speak, but her cell phone—which I totally forgot was in her pocket—rang. “Speak of the devil,” she said as she lifted it to her ear.

  “No—don’t answer it!”

  But she was already speaking.

  Damn!

  “Hey, Danny. I’m not at the hotel. The photo shoot got complicated. I’m with the photographer, trying to decide what to do now… No, you don’t have to come here. You don’t need to be working at all… I know, but you’re here on family business. I’m really sorry about Harry and Lloyd… Yeah, I’ll call you in the morning, maybe we’ll have breakfast.”

  I took the phone from her the second she was done with the call, slipping the SIM card out of the little slot at the bottom of the device.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I forgot you had this damn thing! I should have made you leave it back at the River Walk.”

  “What are you…?”

  I snapped the thing between my fingers and dropped it into the toilet, watching it disappear with a single flush. “Someone could trace you with that. We can’t take any chances.”

  “You think my stalker knows how to do stuff like that?”

  “He murdered two people, didn’t he? He found us at the River Walk even though we took a path no one knew but me, you, and the driver.”