Holiday Heat

by Janelle Denison

  She narrowed her gaze, peering into the long, matted hair, ratty clothes and hippy sandals to find something that would tell her how she was supposed to know this hobo.

  Then she reached his eyes—gray eyes that weren’t so much a pigment as they were an absence of color altogether.

  She launched herself into his arms.

  “Max!”

  Chapter Sixteen

  He smelled like ass. And yet, Marisela held on a little longer than was hygienically wise. It was Max, after all. To Frankie, he was Ian’s loyal manservant. But to Marisela, he was the one operative within the Titan organization who appreciated her for who she was—and for who she was not.

  “That’s enough,” Frankie said, tugging her off. “Let the man breathe. Fuck, let him back up so we can breathe.”

  “Really, Max,” Marisela said, waving her hand in front of her nose to diffuse the stench of unwashed hair and skin. “What are you, pretending to be forty-days-in-the-desert Jesus for Christmas?”

  His expression was unrepentant, though it was hard to read under a tangle of overgrown facial hair. “Would you have preferred I delay my response to your calls in lieu of a spa day?”

  “No,” Marisela answered. “Find a crate to sit on, downwind, and let me fill you in.”

  While Frankie went back to check on Rick, Marisela told Max everything she knew. She’d never been officially briefed on the nature of Max’s position at Titan, but he was part manager, part Ian’s valet and part secret weapon. She didn’t even know his last name. But after a half-dozen operations with him in command, she knew the one thing that mattered: she could trust him.

  As she recounted the events of the past sixteen hours, Max neither nodded nor commented. As he did with light and shadow—Marisela was convinced he possessed a preternatural ability to appear and disappear at will—he absorbed.

  “So the younger brother, Makoto, hungry for a spot within the yakuza, killed his disgraced sibling and took your sister and the unborn grandchild as an offering to the kumicho,” Max summed up.

  Marisela replayed his assessment in her head. “If kumicho means head asshole of the Japanese mob, then yea, that’s the theory.”

  Max nodded. “It’s reasonable. And it means your boy in there could be a valuable bargaining chip in retrieving your sister before she’s spirited out of the country. Just because his daddy didn’t want him when he was a scrawny kid at Eton doesn’t mean he can’t find a use for the educated, upstanding British citizen he’s become. You and Frankie did a good job by enticing him out of police custody.”

  “Don’t we always?” Frankie’s voice croaked as he reappeared, the nearly-unconscious Rick slumped over his shoulder.

  Max lifted Rick’s head by the hair and gave him a long once-over. “I assume he looked better when your sister slept with him?”

  “You’re one to talk, mountain man,” Marisela replied. “I guess escaping from the police takes a lot out of a guy.”

  “Not to mention the after-effects of your interrogation technique,” Frankie said, grunting under Rick’s increasingly deadening weight.

  “Let’s get him somewhere he can recover,” Max suggested, a tiny and terrifying grin peeking from his bearded face, “and we’ll give my interrogation techniques a try.”

  Frankie’s eyes widened. “You do realize he’s more valuable to us alive, right?”

  Max didn’t answer.

  Marisela decided she didn’t care what Max did, as long as they got answers. If Rick Suzuki had respected her sister’s wishes about her pregnancy, none of this would have happened. She had no idea what Belinda had been thinking in deciding to put her baby up for adoption, but thanks to Rick, she hadn’t had a chance to find out.

  In the twenty-nine years she’d managed to stay alive, Marisela had fucked up a million times. But she’d never gotten herself knocked-up. She’d had a scare once or twice. What sexually active woman hadn’t? But in the end, God or biology or whatever must have agreed that despite her interminable love for all things baby-related, she’d make a terrible mother.

  But an aunt? She’d kick-ass.

  Now, she might not ever have the chance.

  Moving Rick, a fugitive, proved easier now that they had another pair of hands. She and Frankie loaded him into the backseat of Max’s car while the spymaster worked his magic on the area around Hiro’s body, removing all evidence of their presence. By the time they eased out of the parking lot into the moderate morning holiday traffic, Frankie following behind them in his car, which he’d stash at his brother’s garage on their way to a safe house, the sound of sirens, though audible, were far in the distance.

  “We could have burned the place,” Marisela mumbled, not happy with Max’s decision to keep the crime scene intact. She wanted nothing left behind that would tie Rick’s dead cousin to her or worse, her sister.

  Max eased into a parking spot at the mechanic’s shop. “I saw no reason to add arson to the list of crimes you and Mr. Vega have perpetrated in pursuit of your sister.”

  Marisela opened her mouth to object, but couldn’t find the words. She supposed they had fractured more than one local, state or federal statute, including but not limited to, hampering an on-going police investigation. But it had been for a good cause.

  Frankie bypassed his brother’s security system and parked his car in an empty bay. He then climbed into the passenger seat of Max’s car, leaving Marisela to push Rick into a corner in the back and hope he slept off his growing lethargy. He deserved the pain she’d inflicted for getting her sister pregnant and for involving mobsters and thugs in her already complicated life, but she didn’t want him to die.

  Not really.

  “Think anyone’s looking for us?” Frankie asked.

  “Other than the charming Detective Flores?” he said, throwing a sly look in Frankie’s direction.

  “You know her?” he asked.

  Max kept his eyes on the road. “I made a few discreet inquiries about the local law enforcement situation prior to giving my recommendation for the Tampa satellite office.”

  “Any of those inquiries tell you what’s going on with this case?” Marisela questioned.

  “Ballistics testing on your gun isn’t complete, though we both know they’re going to make the connection between you and the round dug out of Mr. Suzuki’s shoulder.”

  “It was self-defense,” she argued.

  Max nodded. “And I expect a good attorney will be able to argue that point successfully. Also, Homeland Security is nosing around for an interview in regards to the destruction of your car, but as it’s the holidays, I’m convinced they can be put off.”

  “I’m not going anywhere near the cops until I have my sister back,” she said.

  “I believe that would be prudent and to that end, we won’t be returning either to the office or Frankie’s apartment, which I understand is now under surveillance.”

  “What about my parents?” she asked.

  “Their house is being watched,” Max said.

  “No, I mean, has anyone told them about Belinda?”

  “On that, I have no idea.”

  She dug out her phone. There were no messages, either text or voice, from anyone. If the police had alerted her parents, she’d have gotten a hundred calls by now. By this afternoon, Aida and Ernesto would be expecting a call from Belinda. That was the tradition. In years past, Belinda did as Rick had said, spending the holidays in Madrid with the distant cousins who had taken her in when she’d gone to Spain for the special school.

  Every year like clockwork, she’d check in with their parents before she went to midnight mass. With the six-hour time difference, Marisela had until five-thirty this afternoon to recover her sister without causing a family panic.

  Max drove them to a home in Town and Country, a neighborhood west of the airport, where Marisela had established a safe house. She hadn’t known that Max knew where it was—but then again, it was his job to know everything. While he showered and ch
anged into spare clothes, Marisela cleaned Rick’s wound and left him to sleep on the couch, gravitating to the kitchen, where Frankie was boiling pasta and warming up sauce from a jar.

  “Look at you, Chef Boyardee,” she quipped, watching her manly ex-boyfriend stir the bottom of a pot bubbling with red, garlicky deliciousness. Her stomach growled. Since she knew the pantry held nothing but protein bars and various boxed and canned foods that she’d stocked there over two months ago, she snagged a piece of al dente spaghetti from the pot, wanting something warm and comforting and familiar.

  “Hey!” Frankie objected, grabbing for the tongs, but she managed to keep them away, even after he pinned her against the grimy kitchen counter.

  “This place is a dump,” she said, trying to ignore the scent of Frankie’s skin, which was infinitely more delicious than that of the pasta and sauce, despite the fact that she was starving.

  “You picked it out, vidita,” he reminded her.

  “I never thought I’d have to use it,” she countered.

  “Didn’t you?”

  She pushed out of his hold, unable to concentrate while his tight body was pressed so intimately against hers. “No. I mean, I was glad when Titan gave me the office, but I never expected any dangerous cases. The way I figured it, when something exciting came along, I’d be jetting off to New York or Miami or LA. Tampa was supposed to be a layover with just enough busywork for me to earn my keep.”

  He shook his head and chuckled. “You’re never going to get it, are you? Titan will never be what you expect, good or bad.”

  Unable to find a colander in the scant supplies under the cupboards, she used the tongs to pull the strands of spaghetti from the boiling water and add them directly to the sauce as she’d been taught by Lia’s mother. A pound of pasta and store bought sauce wasn’t a feast, but for four hungry adults, one of whom was recovering from a serious medical injury, it would do.

  “I didn’t expect Max to show up,” she said, popping open a pack of paper plates and plastic forks.

  “Then why did you call him?”

  Frankie’s voice snapped with more than just a question. He was challenging her and berating her all in the same breath. She understood that his contradictory feelings about Titan stemmed from how the organization had both saved him and nearly sacrificed him at various times through his history with them, but he’d never said a single bad thing about Max before. Frankie’s mistrust focused primarily on Ian Blake, the owner—for valid reasons Marisela would never contradict.

  “Why wouldn’t I call Max? He’s good at his job.”

  Frankie tugged her away from twirling the sauce-coated noodles onto the plates and stabbing forks into the center. With his hands tight on her hips, he forced her close. The heat from his skin and the fire in his eyes held her in thrall.

  “You didn’t need him, vidita.”

  “You mean I didn’t need anyone but you,” she said.

  His frown deepened both his dimple and his scar. She’d hit her target. God, she loved him. She had since she was fourteen. If their spectacular teenage break-up hadn’t severed the hold he had on her heart, nothing ever would. But that didn’t mean she could see a future with him. She was only now spying a glimpse of a future for herself.

  “We were doing fine on our own,” he said.

  “We always do,” she conceded. “You and me, as a team, we’re hard to beat. But this is bigger than just us. This is about Belinda and a baby and now the damned Japanese mob. I would have loved to have busted this up on my own, too, but—”

  Frankie kissed her on the forehead and pushed her away. “I got it.”

  “No—” she said, but he pressed his fingers over her lips to stop her from speaking, which was a good thing because she had no idea what to say. He wanted her to be independent from Titan. She wanted to be independent from everyone, including him. But her quest for self-reliance didn’t give her the right to put her sister at risk.

  “Am I interrupting an intimate moment?” Max asked.

  Marisela curled out from beneath Frankie’s arms, snagged a plate of food and handed it to him. “With us? Always.”

  His raised eyebrow neither approved nor disapproved. Marisela was certain he had an opinion; he simply chose not to share it, just like he wouldn’t tell them where he’d been when she’d gotten his call or why he’d been impersonating a panhandler.

  “Did you find out anything useful from your FAA contact or were you just taking your time making yourself gorgeous?”

  Max rubbed his face, trimmed neatly, but still furred with an overgrowth that didn’t quite fit on his face. “A private plane with a flight origin of Tokyo recently landed at a private airstrip not far from here.”

  “Who owns the plane?” Frankie asked.

  Max twirled the plastic fork in the pasta without splattering a single drop of tomato sauce onto his shirt. “A conglomerate of business interests that we’d waste time trying to untangle. Suffice it to say, this is the first flight of a private jet from Japan into Tampa in over six weeks. The last was an executive from Nippon Steel who came to take his children to Busch Gardens and Disney World. This one is cloaked in a bit too much mystery to be a vacationing family. It could be our guy.”

  “But we don’t know for sure,” Frankie challenged.

  “I can find out.”

  Using the hallway wall for leverage, Rick had dragged himself into the room. As much as it pained her, Marisela swung a chair toward him and grabbed him some food, which he looked at queasily.

  “How?” Frankie challenged.

  He pushed the food away and balanced his head in the hand that wasn’t trussed up in a sling. “I’ll call him. I’ll make a deal. Trade myself for Belinda and the baby.”

  “What if he doesn’t want you?” Marisela challenged.

  “He will,” Rick promised. “I’ll make him want me. Or else, I’ll help you take him down.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Rick’s suggestion that he contact his father bought them a couple of hours. Though the conversation had happened entirely in Japanese, Max verified that Rick offered his father an exchange—Belinda and the baby’s freedom for his loyalty to the family business. Rick had, after all, obtained highly sought-after skills as a student at Oxford, not to mention what he’d learned working at Pro-Tech.

  And bottom line: he was his son. In the yakuza, family was everything.

  According to Max, Rick played his father like a shamisen, some sort of stringed instrument that took a lot of skill. A baby was a nice consolation prize, but dad wasn’t getting any younger. Wouldn’t he be better off with full-grown son with crack hacker skills?

  As Max had translated the conversation and commentary into Marisela’s ear, she measured the man who had fathered her niece or nephew. He wasn’t exactly Daniel Dae Kim or anything cool like that, but he wasn’t the wimp she’d first thought him to be. Though it had been a selfish, stupid, desperate idea, he had put together a relatively good kidnapping plan in a short period of time, using the resources he’d had available. He’d survived a bullet, escaped the police and endured her interrogation and the subsequent murder of his cousin. And yet, he’d stepped up to the plate, confronting the father he’d avoided his whole life and offering himself in return for a woman who didn’t want him and a baby he’d never know.

  She hated to admit it, but Rick Suzuki was the kind of guy who she might not have minded having for a brother-in-law.

  In another time. Or another place. With another sister, if she’d had one, since Marisela was one-hundred percent certain that Belinda was through with him. Belinda wasn’t simply stubborn like Marisela; she was incapable of compromise. If she’d gone to the trouble of getting herself out of England in a bid to put the baby up for adoption before Rick could interfere, then she was finished. For good.

  “What do we do next?” Marisela asked once Rick handed her back the untraceable cell phone and collapsed onto the couch, his good arm flung over his eyes.
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br />   “I sent Frankie to the back bedroom to get a couple hours of sleep,” Max said. “You should join him. And sleep. I’ll make a few calls…make sure that the kumicho has no choice but to leave Tampa on our time schedule, not his.”

  Though she considered diverting to the room with the twin bed for her power nap, she wasn’t one to run from Frankie, so she quietly opened the door to the master. Max’s appearance had cut into their groove, but nothing as insignificant as Titan would ever really come between them. She entered without a sound, noting that while he’d engaged the computer monitors that kept tabs on the house’s front and back entrances before he’d climbed into bed, he’d pulled down the black-out shades and seemed to be sleeping like a rock.

  She stripped off her clothes, leaving her weapon for last, which she put on the scuffed nightstand that had been left behind by the previous tenants. Lia had insisted on stocking the cupboard with clean sheets and though Frankie had done a piss-poor job of making the bed, the mattress felt like heaven under her bare skin and tired muscles. And despite Max’s directive, she slid in close to Frankie, folding one hand across the back of his shoulders. She maneuvered the other under his arm so that her hand rested over his heart.

  “Max ordered us to sleep,” Frankie murmured.

  “I thought you don’t take orders from Max anymore,” she whispered, pressing a kiss to his naked back. Unlike her, he’d only stripped down to the waist, but the feel of his chest hair beneath her palm was warm and inviting and irresistible.

  He shifted, turning so that she was pinned underneath him. “I didn’t say I was following his order. I was just reminding you. In case you wanted to follow his orders.”

  She twisted her hands between them, unsnapped his jeans and shoved them down, freeing the pulsing erection she knew she’d find there. She wrapped her hand around it, loving the feel of him in her palm, so hot and hard and thick.

  “Since when do I ever want to follow orders?”