On the road now, looking for his exit, he couldn’t shake the image of her standing there in his childhood bedroom watching him go. She had been worried, actually concerned about his safety. There was no sass, no witty remarks or jokes for him to volley back to her. Just pure love emanated from her as she stood there, clasping her hands together beneath her chin.
In the week and a half they’d known each other, there had been plenty of bonding time, plenty of time to talk and flirt and kiss. Perhaps he should’ve spent the time he’d had with her on more serious matters, but getting to know her, and her quirks, was too much fun.
But the danger she was in reared up in that hotel breakfast room when Jansen called him. The bleak reminder shone through the prism of his mind’s eye and he didn’t like the ominous possibilities. Ruger was frustrated with himself that he hadn’t taken more time to brief Layla on what was going on because now he felt he’d been dishonest in leaving her with only half a story.
Colt and Blaser would take good care of her and Lyssa would like having Layla around. The women were both as feisty as each other and so his brothers were no doubt enjoying a triumph of teasing in his absence.
The exit he was looking for was secluded. The road he was on at the moment was long and straight, and although there was still light in the sky, Ruger couldn’t see anything that looked like a break in the trees up ahead.
Just then, an opening appeared. It was lost in the muck beneath and the trees above, and would be easily missed if a person didn’t know what they were looking for. But he knew it. Slamming on the breaks, he backed up to turn onto the dirt road.
Lucky that he had this truck, he trundled along bouncing in the divots caused by weather and other vehicles. The route was overgrown. Bushes crowded in on each side making the road so narrow that he’d doubt it was passable if he hadn’t been told otherwise by someone he trusted.
Then as quickly as the road had come into view there was a clearing and in front of him was a house, no more than a wooden shack really, and an off-road vehicle was parked beside it. This was the place.
Flashing his headlights four times, he warned those inside that he was here because he knew if he omitted that signal he was likely to have his head blown off by those he’d come to help.
The mud under his feet distracted him when he hopped out, but the creak of wood under foot grabbed his attention and just as he’d expected, he saw Rushe at the top of the shack stairs with a shotgun pointed straight at him.
‘I come in peace,’ Ruger said, holding up his hands in surrender.
As soon as Rushe recognised him, he lowered the gun, and Flick was already in the doorway behind him. ‘Help him with the bags, Rushe,’ Flick said, her hand curling around the doorframe near the hinges.
‘I’m not anyone’s valet,’ Rushe grumbled at her over his shoulder.
‘Ignore him, Ruger, he’s in a bad mood,’ Flick called out, and stayed put as Rushe trudged down the stairs and through the mud toward Ruger, who was still behind the door of his truck.
Trying not to show fear, like a man would when faced with a ferocious dog, Ruger tried his best to smile, but didn’t take his eyes from Rushe who was getting closer by the second. ‘Does he bite?’ Ruger murmured, and was surprised that Flick had heard him, but she obviously had because she replied.
‘Only when I’m naughty,’ she called out. ‘Lover, you’re scaring him. Ruger is here to help us, it would be best if he didn’t think you were going to kill him!’
‘The meds?’ Rushe asked.
Ruger had to stagger out of the way of the truck door when Rushe shoved it closed and held out a hand. Going to the rear of his truck, he unhitched the tailgate and pulled out a holdall. Putting it on the truck bed cover, Ruger unzipped it and pulled out a large paper bag.
‘Painkillers, antibiotics, everything you asked for,’ Ruger said, handing over the bag. ‘Birth control pills are in there as well.’ His joke only made Rushe’s glare turn into a growl. Snatching the bag, Rushe headed back to the house. ‘Pays to have a doctor in the family.’ Mumbling to himself, Ruger pulled out another bag and wondered what Rushe would’ve done to him if he hadn’t brought all of the things they’d requested.
‘Come inside!’ Flick called and disappeared into the house when Rushe grabbed hold of her and pulled her inside.
There were still things in the truck, but Ruger wasn’t going to refuse a request from the lady of the manor. Not that the manor was much to look at, in the mucky surroundings, there were trees and bugs, and not a whole lot else. The wooden building was old enough that he doubted it was watertight.
Ascending the stairs, he grabbed for the bannister only to find it more wobbly than the stairs he was standing on. Getting up them as quickly as he could, Ruger crossed the porch and ran through the door. The room was large and T-shaped with a kitchen running away from the living space which was the breadth of the building. There were two doors on either wall flanking the kitchen.
‘There’s a bathroom if you need it,’ Flick said. Rushe was beside her on the plaid couch pulling something from her elevated arm that Rushe had his fingers clamped around.
Taking a step to the side, Ruger saw Rushe peel a bandage from Flick’s arm and the red streak on the white fabric could only be one thing. ‘You were hit?’ Ruger asked, now understanding Rushe’s foul mood.
Hurrying over, Ruger crouched in front of her while Rushe tossed aside the stained fabric and hoisted her arm higher so he could take a closer look.
‘It’s nothing. Barely a flesh wound,’ she said to Ruger while watching Rushe examine her. Although the words were aimed at him, they were for Rushe as well.
In Ruger’s own assessment, she was right. It looked like the bullet had just sliced her skin. It hadn’t even gotten as far as to damage the muscle. The round had just grazed her and no more. Rushe washed the wound and while Ruger wouldn’t correct a guy like Rushe—especially when his woman was injured—he was far from gentle. Rushe made no apology for any of his actions even when Flick bit her lip against the sting of iodine. Tears came to her eyes when Rushe scrubbed dirt from the wound, but she didn’t recoil. She didn’t move an inch.
Flick was from a wealthy family and she had been raised in privilege, but that life was behind her now. To be with Rushe, she’d had to endure a lot of crass behaviour and dangerous situations. Watching her sitting here and allowing her lover to do the work that was necessary, without whimpering or complaining, Ruger garnered new respect for her.
But it was too much to watch a woman in pain. ‘Do you want me to do that?’ Ruger asked.
Rushe kept working and Flick shook her head. ‘He’ll be done in a minute.’
True enough, a score of seconds went by, then Rushe pressed gauze to the wound and taped it on. It had been tough to watch her suffer, but Rushe was doing everything right. The wound might not be deep, but it was still a wound. Rushe had cleaned it and covered it before he shook pills from the bottles in the bag into his palm.
Holding his open palm under her lips, Flick bent her neck to cover them with her mouth, then Rushe closed a hand at the back of her head to toss the pills into her mouth. Flick took a sip of water from a glass, which Ruger hadn’t noticed before.
Since the formalities were out of the way, Flick rested back on the couch. Rushe put a hand on her head and stroked her hair once before he got up and went out of the shack. Ruger was going to go and help him unload, as he assumed that was what Rushe was going to do. But Flick spoke before he could move.
‘How is Bri?’
Letting Flick take the lead, Ruger was confident he’d be sent out of the house to help if that was what she or Rushe wanted. So he sat on the couch in the spot Rushe had vacated. Reconsidering their proximity, Ruger shuffled back a few inches.
‘She’s good. She’s still with Blaser.’
In his conversations with Flick over the phone while he was trying to get in touch with Jansen, he’d learned that she was rational, a far easie
r person to deal with than her boyfriend.
‘From what you told me, they’re soulmates,’ Flick said, cradling the glass of water on her lap.
‘I’m surprised you believe in such a thing.’
‘You are?’ she smiled and her vibrancy echoed against him. ‘If I didn’t believe that Rushe was the only guy out there for me, I’d have run away a long time ago.’
She was still smiling, so Ruger doubted that her statement should raise any concerns. ‘Actually, Bri’s pregnant,’ he said. It might be a secret back home, but he doubted that Flick would come in contact with any of his family members any time soon.
‘Good for her,’ Flick said. ‘That’s great.’
‘It’s a secret, it’s still early but—‘
‘I’ll keep my fingers crossed for her,’ Flick said, sitting up to put her glass on the floor again. ‘We’ll need to send her something.’
‘Send who?’ Ruger turned to see Rushe come in and dump the things from the truck in the middle of the floor. ‘What is half this stuff?’
‘You didn’t write the list, I did,’ Flick said, scurrying off the couch to go and check out her spoils. ‘So, shut up. You can complain when you write your own list.’
She began to unpack the food items and put them in the kitchen cupboards with one hand. When Rushe saw her struggle, he crossed to her and took over the task, following where her finger pointed as to where things should go.
‘Bri is pregnant,’ she said to Rushe. ‘Isn’t that great?’
‘Bri?’
‘The woman I was locked in Victor’s dungeon with, remember? The woman Jansen saved with me when he ran the van off the road that was taking us to be sold.’ With her back to the unit, she propped her hands on it and leaned back to gaze up at Rushe. ‘The woman who is marrying Ruger’s brother, the woman he’s doing all of this for.’
Blaser and Bri weren’t actually engaged, not that he’d heard anyway. Now that she was pregnant, a wedding would make sense, except the couple didn’t even live together yet. ‘She’s still working with Lyssa, you know, working through her issues.’
‘She went through a difficult time,’ Flick said. Leaving Rushe in the kitchen, Flick returned to Ruger, though she now stood behind the couch. ‘The man who touched her, he deserved to die, he was a snivelling bastard.’
Rushe came up behind her and put his hands on her shoulders. ‘We’re done talking about this,’ Rushe said with a tone of warning when he looked at Ruger.
Jansen had saved Flick and Bri, and there were many men who were thankful for that. ‘Jansen said you picked up his sister, Layla, in Miami?’ Flick asked, conceding to Rushe’s command without acknowledging it.
‘Yeah,’ Ruger said.
‘What’s she like?’
‘A pain in the ass. She’s a sassy handful, but she’s smart enough to know that Ashcroft could cause problems for her. So she’s behaving.’
‘Interesting,’ Flick said. ‘Maybe I’ll try that sometime.’
From the way Rushe’s eyes rolled, Ruger doubted that was true. Rushe went back to the supplies and began to sort through the weapons and survival gear. ‘She’s a beautiful girl. She’s got long dark hair and big bright eyes, and her body—‘ Stopping himself, he frowned, and noticed that Rushe had stopped what he was doing to frown too. ‘I’m sleeping with her,’ Ruger confessed and Rushe went back to his work. Flick squealed and bounded around the couch to sit down and snatch his hands.
‘That’s a leap,’ she said. ‘Does Drew know?’
‘Who’s Drew?’ Rushe asked, unsheathing a knife, proving that even when the guy was busy, he was on alert and always paying attention.
‘You know who Drew is. Jansen, Layla’s brother. The guy that hangs around with Serendipity. Not everyone is known by just one name like you,’ Flick said and tsked. ‘You just keep working, thug, and I’ll handle the gossip.’
‘There’s really no gossip,’ Ruger said.
‘Sure there is,’ Flick said. ‘So is it just sex or…’
‘I don’t know what it is. I think she’s great and she can handle my family.’
‘That’s a bonus.’
‘But she doesn’t even have a fixed address and I’m supposed to be getting out of this game. I don’t know where I’m going to end up either.’
‘You’re getting out of the game?’
‘Now that Colt and Blaser know, I think it’s only fair to them. I don’t want anyone to get hurt and Bri did get hurt. If that happened again…’
‘I understand,’ Flick said. ‘So what do you want to do? Have you thought about it?’
‘No. I’ve never been a “future” kind of guy. I just do what needs to be done in the now.’
‘You’ll have to think about it now. You’ll have to earn money somehow.’
‘I’ve got enough to keep me going for a while. But you’re right, it won’t last forever.’
When he had worked for Victor, he knew both Rushe and Jansen as criminals, and formidable ones at that. Ruger had left before Flick got mixed up in the mess, so he hadn’t met her until after the fact. But in the circles that he ran, he’d heard tales of the couple and the terror they could conjure. Since getting to know Flick personally, he was pleased, and surprised, to find that she was actually a sweetheart and not at all scary.
Though the power she wielded over Rushe, and the love she had for him, had caused death and destruction. Ruger could tell by looking at her that she wasn’t at all ashamed or remorseful of that.
‘You’ll figure it out,’ Flick said, patting his hand. ‘You could figure it out with Layla. Maybe you could come up with something together.’
That was an idea, but one which relied on him opening up to Layla about the possibility of a future and Jansen had told him that idea made Layla run a mile. While Ashcroft and his men were a threat, Ruger couldn’t take the risk of scaring her away.
‘What do you know about the Ashcroft situation?’ Ruger asked.
Serendipity had been cagey and hadn’t revealed much. Ruger couldn’t blame her. She didn’t know him at all and she was living under siege. For all she knew, he could’ve been an imposter and she’d said as much to his face.
‘That all the stories are true and that he’ll do whatever it takes to maintain his lifestyle. He’s not a man afraid of law enforcement,’ Flick said. ‘He thinks he’s all powerful and so he underestimated the threat that Jansen and Serendipity caused.’
‘How long do you think this will go on? I mean, what’s the end game?’ Ruger asked.
‘Serendipity is close. She’s been shopping around for a while and now she has a buyer, a newspaper wants to break the story and although Serendipity has only given them tasters, they’re concerned for her safety. It’s going to be bumpy for her.’
‘Like it isn’t already,’ Ruger said. ‘For all of you.’
‘When Ashcroft heard that Jansen’s girlfriend was writing a story and that she was close to selling it, he must have panicked and sent his man in. The one who gave me this,’ she said, twisting her arm.
‘He sent the guy in to take all of you out before the story could get be exposed,’ Ruger said.
‘Yeah,’ Flick said. ‘The guy demanded her notes, and her computer, he took everything that he could get his hands on, Jansen’s files and his photographs.’
Which he would’ve gotten away with had he not started firing. The bullet that hit Flick had sealed the shooter’s fate and Rushe had snapped his neck. At least that meant that Serendipity and Jansen didn’t lose any of their evidence.
‘What did you do with the body?’
‘I didn’t deal with that,’ Flick said, and it made sense because she would have been too busy bleeding all over the floor.
Ruger wasn’t sure what had made him ask the question because he didn’t want to know. Having information like that made him a target and that was the last thing he wanted to be while he was protecting Layla. Maybe he’d asked them because Blaser had asked him, so his
brother had put the question in his head.
‘Time for you to go,’ Rushe said and marched to the couch to haul him onto his feet.
‘There’s no need to get physical,’ Ruger said unsure as to what had caused this change in the man who had been previously silent.
‘He knows where we are,’ Flick said, getting to her feet. ‘If he was a snitch then the cops would be all over this place.
His question about the location of the body would be something that a cop, or someone working for a cop, would want to know. Rushe must have seen a red flag when he asked it, but it just seemed like a logical question to ask, either that or it was his dumb adolescent brain who was excited by the notion of such a thrill.
‘I’m working for you guys,’ Ruger said. ‘I came here to help because we’re all in this together. I have Layla at my brother’s place and I’ll do whatever it takes to keep her safe. I left her there under the care of my brothers but it’s driving me crazy not to be there with her. If something happens to her while I’m not there—‘
‘What?’ Rushe asked, grabbing his jacket and yanking him forward.
‘Put him down,’ Flick said with a tinge of annoyance. ‘Think of what you’ve done to protect me in the past. You know how it felt to leave me open without you at my side. It didn’t matter how many times I told you that I was ok, or that I could take care of myself. You still didn’t feel right about it.’
‘That’s different,’ Rushe said, glaring again before releasing Ruger.
‘Different?’ Flick asked.
‘I love you,’ Rushe said.
‘Yeah, but how long did it take for you to admit that to yourself or to me? Maybe Ruger doesn’t know it yet, but it doesn’t make it any less real.’
‘I’m not in love,’ Ruger said, considering what it would be like to care for a person so much.
Rushe and Flick might be an unconventional couple who lived in an unconventional way. But it worked. Rushe adored her and she was crazy for him. The most dramatic stories that circulated about them were always related to the couple fighting to save each other’s lives or to be together.
Since leaving Layla, she had occupied all of Ruger’s thoughts, and his fear that something lethal could happen to her while he wasn’t at her side tied him up in knots. Maybe it was love, or maybe it could be, but he would never be able to answer those questions until he got himself back to her side.
Game Of Risk (Risqué #3) Page 14