by Lisa Childs
“But where?” Nick asked. “Up north or here?”
Milek shrugged. “I don’t know. I just know we need to find him.” If he’d survived. “We can get him to tell us who hired him.”
Nick snorted. “He’s a professional. Even if we catch him, he’s not going to give up who hired him.”
Milek would make certain he did—even if he had to beat it out of him. “He’ll tell me.”
Garek shook his head. “The only thing Frank Campanelli is going to do is kill you.”
“He hasn’t tried since the other night,” Milek reminded them.
Of course, he hadn’t been out since then. He’d been holed up in the condo with Amber and their son, trying to ignore his attraction to the woman. Succumbing to desire that first night had been a mistake. He hadn’t been able to sleep since then and not because he’d been worried about her safety.
He was worried about his heart. That was the only danger he was in from Amber—of falling even more deeply in love with her.
* * *
Despite the cold wind blowing between the buildings of downtown River City, heat suffused Frank. Part of it was that damn infection Dr. Gunz had warned he might get. He’d had to go back to the doc’s mansion for a dose of IV antibiotics. The infection probably wasn’t gone yet, but painkillers had taken the edge off Frank’s discomfort. They hadn’t affected his temper at all, though.
That was the other reason he was hot. He was pissed. Milek Kozminski hadn’t given him another opportunity for revenge. He’d stayed holed up inside that fortress he called home. Until now...
But he wasn’t alone. Kozminski was never completely alone. There were always other people following him—like the Amazon woman the night he’d trapped Kozminski in the alley. If not for her, this could have been over already.
Frank needed it to be over. He didn’t even care right now who else was following Kozminski. Frank had taken out witnesses right in front of the US Marshals or police officers assigned to protect them. He could deal with a bodyguard or two—in order to deal with Milek Kozminski.
He had to make the most of the opportunity he’d finally been given. So he quickened his pace as he followed Kozminski down the city street. He’d just left the River City Police Department. Ignoring the throbbing pain in his shoulder, he shuddered in revulsion. That was the last place he ever intended to be.
He’d been picked up once—when he’d been a kid who’d had more balls than brains. He was smarter now. He wouldn’t get caught again.
But then Milek Kozminski turned around and stared directly at him. His hand tightened around the handle of his gun. Would he be fast enough to pull it out?
Fortunately the gunshot wound had been through his left shoulder, since he was right-handed. He’d have to draw fast because Milek’s hand was close to his holster—as if he was prepared for anything. Frank would probably have only one chance to get off a shot before Kozminski returned fire.
So one shot would have to be enough. It would have to be the kill shot.
Chapter 11
Milek had been gone a long time. Too long. Was he all right? Amber closed her son’s bedroom door and walked back into the living room.
Stacy and Logan had left a while ago. The former marine Cooper Payne leaned against the wall by the door now, his gun drawn. The metal creaked as the door began to slide open. He swung his barrel toward the shadow stepping over the threshold.
“Damn,” Milek remarked as he pressed his hand to his chest. “Little edgy?”
“I’ve learned not to assume it was you just because the alarm didn’t go off,” Cooper said. “And you seem like the edgy one.”
Milek didn’t argue with the man. He just nodded. “Thanks for being careful,” he said. “I can take over now.”
Cooper shrugged off the gratitude. “Anytime...”
Amber waited until the other man left before asking, “What’s wrong?”
Because something was. As Cooper had noticed, he was edgy—his body tense, his hands shaking slightly.
He expelled a ragged sigh. “I just had a really weird encounter.”
Fear squeezed her heart. “Did Campanelli try to kill you again?”
“No...” He ran his hand along his jaw. “But I think he was close.”
“You saw him?”
“I don’t know what he looks like,” he said. “While someone got his fingerprints off an old juvenile arrest record, there hasn’t been a picture of him taken since then.”
She shivered. “So he could have been close to you.” The thought chilled her, and she wanted—needed—to be close to Milek, to make certain he was all right. She crossed the living room to stand beside him.
“If he was, why didn’t he try to kill me again?” He stepped over to the security panel and pressed a button to bring up the monitors of the area around the former warehouse. He studied the screens.
“Do you think he followed you back here?”
Milek shrugged. “He probably didn’t need to.”
“You think he knows where we are?”
“You know how people talk in this city,” he reminded her. “And he and I know some of the same people. By now I’m sure he knows where I live.”
Her heart began to pound faster. “Then you shouldn’t have brought us here.”
She should have refused to come home with him. But she’d been so scared and alone. If he hadn’t arrived when he had, she would have already been dead.
But, even though he hadn’t sent photos to say so, Frank Campanelli knew exactly where they were again. “We can’t stay,” she said.
He pointed to one of the screens. She stepped closer and peered at it. Near the back of the building, in the shadow of the Dumpster, something moved. She gasped.
“He’s out there now.” Panic pressed on her lungs, stealing her breath. “We need to leave.”
“It’s not the Ghost,” he assured her. “Look again.”
She turned back to the screen and studied the shadow. While long, there were curves to it. Relief shuddered through her. “It’s Candace.”
Milek tapped another screen. “And there’s her husband, my brother.”
“They’re watching us.”
“And maybe that’s why the Ghost didn’t try to kill me today.” One of them must have been following him.
She heard the certainty in Milek’s voice. He might not have seen him, but he was sure Campanelli had been there, too, close to him.
If not for their presence, Milek might have gotten shot at again. And maybe this time the assassin wouldn’t have missed. She involuntarily reached out to him, needing to touch him—needing to assure herself that he was all right—that nothing had happened to him.
“You’re really all right?”
He turned away from the monitors and focused on her, his gaze intense. “No.”
“But you said he didn’t try anything...”
“It’s you,” he said. “You’re the reason I’m not all right.”
And she realized where he’d been. “Agent Rus tried to convince you that I’m involved again?”
He didn’t deny it—just shrugged off the suspicions. Did he believe her—did he believe she hadn’t had an affair with her boss? That she hadn’t wanted the man dead until Milek had told her that Gregory had claimed to be Michael’s father?
“It’s not old rumors that have been keeping me awake every night,” he said. “It’s you...”
Her pulse quickened. Then his hand was there—on the hand she’d put on his arm when she’d needed to touch him. His thumb brushed over her pulse point, making it race.
“I thought you’ve been awake every night because you’ve been protecting us,” Amber said. She’d lain awake, too, but it was because she’d needed him.
&
nbsp; He pointed toward those monitors. “They’re out there. I could have slept,” he said, “if every time I closed my eyes, I didn’t see you—” his silver eyes darkened with desire “—naked.”
“Milek...”
He lifted her and carried her across the living room—to the master bedroom that had been missing the master the past few nights. He was with her now, closing the door behind them. He lowered his head and kissed her, his lips sliding over hers.
She kissed him back, her lips pressing against his as she clung to his shoulders, her arms looped around his neck. So when he laid her on the bed, she tugged him down with her. His body covered hers.
She felt his holster digging into her side, and she tensed for a moment—remembering the danger. Remembering someone wanted her dead.
She just wanted someone to want her. No. Not someone. Milek. She wanted only Milek.
He wriggled free of her grasp, though. And he pulled off his holster and his weapon and set them carefully on the table next to the bed. Within reach if he needed them.
Hopefully he would not need them.
Amber kicked off her shoes and reached for the buttons on her sweater. But Milek’s fingers were there, pushing hers aside, and he hurriedly undid them. Her cardigan parted, revealing she wore only a bra beneath it.
His breath escaped in a low groan. “You’re beautiful...”
Since he was a man of few words, his compliments were always sincere and always touched her. She smiled. But he was the beautiful one—with his blond hair silky to her touch—with his chiseled features and his soulful eyes. She worked at his buttons, quickly undoing them.
His body was beautiful, too—all smooth skin and sleek muscles. She pressed a kiss to his chest. Then she skimmed her lips lower, over the rippling muscles of his lean stomach. His belt stopped her. But she reached for the buckle.
Milek’s hands covered hers. He stood up to get rid of his pants and boxers until he stood before her entirely naked. She wriggled quickly out of her jeans. She wanted him. Needed him...
Even though people had been in and out of the condo the past few days, she’d felt alone. Isolated. Because she’d missed him...
“Milek...” Her heart pounded as desire overwhelmed her.
He touched her. Using his finger like a paintbrush, he swept it across her skin. He teased the pulse point in her throat and stroked the ridge of her collarbone. Then he dipped down to her breasts. His hands cupped them as his thumbs moved slowly across the nipples—back and forth.
She shifted on the mattress as tension began to build inside her. A moan slipped between her lips—then his tongue did, thrusting into her mouth. He moved it in and out, teasing her with the pleasure that was to come.
The pleasure only he could give her.
One of his fingers swept farther down her body—over the slight swell of her belly—to the mound between her legs. His fingertip found the most sensitive part of her body—stroking back and forth. He teased her until she trembled. The tension was too great. She sucked his tongue into her mouth, deepening the kiss. And she clutched at his shoulders and ran her nails down his back to his butt.
“I need you,” she murmured.
Instead of thrusting inside her, of easing her ache, he pulled back. She closed her eyes on a wave of disappointment. But then she heard a drawer open and a packet tear. And suddenly his erection nudged her belly, then moved lower—prodding between her legs.
She guided him inside her, arching to take him deeper. He thrust inside her, filling her. Then he withdrew—denying her satisfaction until he slipped inside her again. In and out. In and out he stroked her.
She locked her legs around his waist and clutched his back, riding him. She moved quickly, trying to ease that tension. He felt so wonderful inside her—so right. But release eluded her.
Milek moved, lifted her and rolled so that she straddled him. Now she could set the pace—frenzied and frantic. She lifted her legs and took him deeper inside her.
Milek thrust up and moved with her—following her frenetic pace. His hands clutched her hips, pulling her up and down—helping her until she found the release that had her crying out with its intensity. Milek’s grasp on her hips tightened and he pulled her down. With a deep groan, he found his release, too.
Satiated, Amber flopped onto his chest—which rose and fell with his pants for breath. She had needed that; she’d needed him.
“It wasn’t a bad idea,” she mused. Not making love again had been the bad idea—trying to stay away from each other.
His fingers stroked along her spine. But he didn’t agree with her. Maybe he couldn’t speak yet. But maybe he hadn’t understood her, because when he spoke, it was to ask, “Coming home with me?”
That wasn’t what she’d been talking about, and she suspected he knew it. But she played along. “Home? It doesn’t feel like home.”
“It’s very industrial,” he admitted.
“I liked it at first,” she said. “But now the brick and steel and concrete have begun to remind me of something else. Of the places the criminals I convicted were sentenced.”
He tensed beneath her. And she wished back her words. Milek had been incarcerated. For six horrible months. She’d been friends with his sister then. She’d helped her through those long months of missing her brothers.
She’d tried once to talk to him about it. He hadn’t been like other ex-cons she’d met. He hadn’t claimed his innocence. He’d actually admitted that something good had come of his experience—his art.
“You think my home feels like prison?” he asked.
“Only because I feel like I can’t leave. That I’m trapped inside.” But was she trapped? She lifted her head from his chest and focused on his handsome face. “You’ve left.”
“And I nearly got killed,” he reminded her.
“But Candace saved you. And if we both went out, we would have more of them protecting us,” she pointed out. “We would be fine.”
Milek shook his head; he wouldn’t even consider it.
Was he her protector or her jailer?
* * *
Coming back to River City PD always felt strange to Logan Payne—especially when he walked past his old desk on the way to his brother’s office. The door was already open, as if Nick had been expecting him. Maybe he had been; the guy seemed to have Logan’s mother’s uncanny ability of knowing things were going to happen before they happened. The weird thing was that Penny wasn’t the parent they shared.
“You showed the reports to Milek,” Logan said. “Why not me?”
Nick didn’t even glance up from his desk. He’d definitely expected Logan. “I only showed him the reports to warn him.”
“About Amber?”
Nick nodded.
“She’s not the danger,” Logan said. “You’re wasting your time investigating her.”
“You haven’t seen the reports.”
“I want to see the reports to find out who’s really behind the hit on Schievink,” Logan explained. “I know Amber isn’t a viable suspect.”
Finally Nick looked up and met his gaze. “I can understand Milek defending her,” he said. “He’s in love with her. Why are you defending her? You couldn’t have known her long before she disappeared.”
“Before you faked her death and hid her and her son,” Logan clarified for him. He wasn’t certain he could forgive him for that—for what he’d put Stacy through. Needlessly.
But Stacy had forgiven Amber. His wife was completely glowing now—with her pregnancy and happiness. But concern for her friend and her brother dimmed that happiness. Logan couldn’t have that; he’d vowed on their wedding day to do whatever necessary to make her happy.
“So you don’t really know Amber Talsma,” Nick said.
“My wife does
,” Logan replied. “And I have learned to trust my wife’s judgment. She’s never wrong.”
Nick snorted. “That’s all you have? Your wife vouching for her best friend? What if this is the one time she’s wrong?” His voice going deeper and gruffer, he added, “Everyone’s wrong at least once.”
It wasn’t an apology—not in words. But in his tone, in his eyes—there was regret for what he’d done, for faking the deaths that had caused so much anguish for the people Logan loved. He suspected Nick had come to care about some of them, too.
“It happened a year ago,” Logan said, reminding himself as much as Nick. “None of us really knew each other then.”
“No, we didn’t,” Nick agreed.
But Logan suspected his brother didn’t trust many people—no matter how long he’d known them. Logan had always had people he could trust—his family. Nick hadn’t even been able to trust his own mother.
She hadn’t been who he’d thought she was. Like Amber, she had gone into hiding—assuming another name, another identity for her and her son. At least Amber had been gone only a year; Nick had lived his entire life away from his family.
“Now you know us,” Logan said. “You know we all work together. We’ve got each other’s backs.”
Nick passed a folder across his desk. He’d had it ready. He’d definitely known Logan was coming. “I hope you’re as good a detective as everyone around here claims you are,” he said. “We’ve got to figure this out soon.”
Or it was going to be too late for those people Logan loved and for whom Nick had come to care.
* * *
“This is a bad idea,” Milek murmured. He didn’t mean making love with her. That hadn’t been a bad idea at all.
This was—taking her outside the condo. Sure, they had bodyguards—ones who weren’t even trying to stay inconspicuous now. But it was still dangerous.
Not just for her and him but for those bodyguards, too. If Candace got hurt...
Garek would kill him before Frank Campanelli ever got another chance.
Amber tipped her face up to the sunshine and giggled. “This feels great...”