HUNTED: A Bad Boy Romance (Books 1-5)

by Kira Matthison

  My face softened. Something in my chest either felt wonderful, or hurt—I couldn’t decide which—and all I wanted to do was make her smile.

  Well, not all. I had some other ideas.

  The phone was still ringing, though. I dropped my head back onto the pillow with a sound of protest and then eased my arm out from under Lara’s head. I tucked her in carefully, smiling at her sleeping face, and picked up the phone distractedly.

  My smile died immediately.

  Theoretically, there were good reasons Joanna might call me. A fellow assassin and one-time lover of mine, she’d built her career on the same no-nonsense attitude I had. Joanna and I worked well together. She might want to bring me in on something. Hell, she might just be calling to catch up.

  I knew she wasn’t, though. And when I answered the phone with a weary hello, she wasted no time in confirming it.

  “So.” Her voice was just like I remembered it: more melodic than she wanted it to be, which was why she always seemed to bite her words off forcibly.

  “Yes?”

  “You already know, don’t you?”

  “You might as well say it.” I looked around for my clothes.

  She sighed. “I’ve been hired to kill you.”

  Chapter 28

  Lara

  “So, tell me again why we’re gong to see this woman?” I pulled on my shirt and tried not to glower in Jack’s direction. From where I was standing, it seemed pretty clear-cut that when someone announced they’d taken a job to kill you, running away was the best option. Instead, we were apparently going to go find her.

  “She can help us.” Jack didn’t look over at me as he adjusted a gun holster against his side. He’d shaken me awake a few minutes earlier, brusque and distracted.

  So much for a romantic morning after. I sat on the bed and tried to tell myself that these were extraordinary circumstances. It wouldn’t always be like this—this was just bad luck.

  But this was Jack’s world.

  Jack looked over, saw my expression, and misinterpreted it. “Joanna is trustworthy,” he assured me.

  That, at last, made me angry.

  “You just told me she took the job to kill you.”

  “If she hadn’t taken it, someone else would have.” He held up a hand when I opened my mouth. “And they would definitely go for it. Joanna…”

  “What?” I’d seen the doubt.

  “Look.” His voice was tight. “She’s good, okay? She’s really good. She’s not going to tell me she’s coming if she’s hoping to get the drop on me.”

  “No?” I crossed my arms and stared him down. “Or is she trying to flush you out? Let’s remember, you’re not staying in your apartment right now, and you know what she does—if you see her following you, you’ll know something’s wrong. This way, she gets in close.”

  I saw it, the flash of worry in his eyes. Still, he shook his head.

  “It’s not—” But his voice broke off as the door opened and a woman slid into the room. Her brown hair was loose, her small frame dressed in cargo pants and a windbreaker. If I’d seen her on the street, I wouldn’t have looked twice—but then, on the street, I’d probably have missed the split-second once over she gave me. There was nothing friendly in that look.

  “Is this the target?” She tilted her head to look at me. The smile on her lips wasn’t entirely pleasant. “She’s got a brain, Reed. You should listen.”

  And then she stopped. Her eyes traveled around the room, from the dress that was still pooled on the floor, to the heels and the way Jack stood in front of me, shielding me with his body. She let out her breath in a sigh.

  “So that’s how it is,” she said. She sounded genuinely disappointed. “I wondered, you know. And I told myself…” Her voice hardened. “I told myself, Jack Reed is a smart guy. He’d never do something so unforgivably goddamned stupid as fuck one of his targets.”

  I stared at her, at a complete loss for words. It didn’t take much to understand where she was going with this, but on the other hand, I’d never met someone who spoke so frankly in my whole life. Even Cecelia and my mother lied almost constantly.

  Jack looked like he wanted to sink his face into his hands. “Look—”

  “I don’t want to hear it.” She crossed her arms and leaned against the wall, jerking her head at me. “What’s so special about her, anyway? And what the fuck happened? They said you just up and disappeared.”

  Jack said nothing. His face was turned away from me, and when I craned to catch a glimpse of it, I went cold.

  He was embarrassed. He was ashamed that he’d…

  I looked away, trying to calm the racing in my heart.

  “Oh, are you hurt?” Her voice was full of fake concern. “Do you need to cry? Did you break a nail?” I looked up at her, furious, and she only laughed. “Go home, little girl.”

  “I can’t go home,” I said tightly. “My fiancé is trying to kill me.”

  That counted for precisely nothing with her, apparently. “Oh, I see. So you’re hiding behind Jack. And when, exactly, did you two start fucking? Was it when he started to think better of the whole thing?”

  I went hot, and then cold. The thought of last night, of the feel of his arms around me, being reduced to that—

  “Joanna.” Jack’s voice was sharp. “Leave it.”

  “Oh, now you’re going to defend her? Spare me, because we don’t have the goddamned time.” She stared him down, and her voice was trembling with anger. “You fucked up, Reed. I’m not the only one they’ve hired. They are pissed. They’re coming for both of you, and there is one way out of this. You know it as well as I do. If you weren’t so whipped—”

  His face had gone white. “Can I speak to you outside for a moment?”

  Her jaw set. There was murder in her eyes. Finally, she took a deep breath and gestured to the door. “All right.”

  “You first.” His hand was hovering over the side holster he wore.

  She gave him a look, but she pushed herself off the wall and left without another glance at me.

  “I’ll be back,” Jack said to me. His voice was low, and he didn’t even spare me a glance. This was the Jack I had first met, I realized. Whatever had happened between us last night wasn’t even on his radar now.

  He was gone a second later, and I paced around the room impatiently. I knew this woman was bad news. I knew, from literally everything about her, that—

  I stopped, and my knees buckled. I barely made it to the bed, and there, I pressed my hand over my mouth to keep myself silent.

  There is only one way out of this. You know it as well as I do.

  And that one way was killing me.

  Chapter 29

  Jack

  “Look, Joanna.” I pushed my way into the hallway and closed the door gently behind me. “Let me explain.”

  “No, let me. Because you seem not to know.” She stared up at me, 5 feet and 2 inches of pure anger. Mousy brown hair and a cultivated angry expression usually hid the fact that Joanna could be—and often was—drop dead gorgeous. She also tended to hide an incredibly toned body behind clothes that were ruthlessly utilitarian. Joanna only dressed up for one of two reasons: sleeping with someone, or pretending she wanted to in order to get close to a target.

  Right now, she didn’t look in the mood to do either. Her jaw was set and she looked like she wanted to punch me in the face.

  “You,” she said, jabbing her finger at my chest, “have just made the biggest mistake of your life. There are no words for how fucking stupid this was. What the hell were you thinking?”

  “You saw her.” I hissed the words. “You saw her.”

  “Yeah, and?”

  I had kind of hoped that would suffice. I ran my fingers through my hair and tried to come up with something sufficiently compelling.

  “You know the type of people we usually kill.” I could see every target in my mind’s eye: expensive suit, call girls in the room, more money than God. They
had that look in their eye, the look that was one part animal instinct and one part dead. They had forgotten anything beyond pleasure and keeping score with their rivals.

  The difference between that and Lara couldn’t have been more jarring, but Joanna only shrugged.

  “She’s not like them.” I didn’t know what else to say. I didn’t know how to explain this. “She hasn’t done anything wrong.”

  “Great. Good for her.” Her hands waved. A lot of good people die in this world, her eyes said.

  Jesus. “Do you not get what I’m trying to say?”

  “No,” she said flatly. “I don’t.” She stared me down, and I felt a wave of weariness sweep through me.

  “Just tell me one thing: are you going to fulfill the contract?”

  She swallowed at that. “You, no.” Her voice was unsteady. “I wouldn’t kill you.”

  “You wouldn’t try, you mean.” Despite myself, I grinned. Lovers we might have been, and partners, but everyone in the business was in the practice of keeping score. If nothing else, it was good sense—anyone who killed for a living needed to know who might come after them someday. Joanna was good, but I was fairly sure I was better.

  “Yeah, yeah, keep thinking you’re hot shit.” She gave me a look.

  “So?” I had relaxed slightly.

  “I would never kill you,” she repeated. Her eyes were grave, and this time, I understood what she meant.

  My blood went cold. “No.”

  “Yes.” She looked up at me, eyes remorseless. “It’s the only way to get you out of this. It’s always the only way out. Those are the rules, Reed.”

  “These guys don’t play by the rules! They sent me after an innocent. That’s not done.”

  “It is. How do you think those guys do the things you hate them for? They don’t kill everyone themselves, that’s for damned sure. You just like to pretend you’re not a part of that world.” She shook her head. “But you are.”

  “No.” I refused to believe that. “I got into this to make the world better.”

  She snorted.

  “You don’t believe me?”

  “You kill people for money.”

  “I did that in the SEALs, too. People understood it then.”

  She wavered at that, as I had known she would, but she shook her head again. “It doesn’t make any difference. They want her dead, and that’s what they’re going to get. You don’t understand where you are in the food chain anymore.”

  “So why the hell are you here?”

  “To make you remember!” She slammed her hand sideways against the wall. “Jesus, Jack. I’m not heartless. I don’t want you to die. I came to warn you, and I find you…” She turned away at last, and I saw the genuine hurt there.

  “Getting deeper into it. I know. But, Jo…” I let my head drop back. “Jo, please. Please listen. This guy isn’t like our normal clients. He’s just going to keep killing. He wanted to kill her to frame someone else.”

  “So? None of this is new.” She wouldn’t look at me. “You’ve seen things like this before.”

  “Yeah, when I was killing people who would have turned around and done the same in a heartbeat. Everyone I’ve killed in my life is someone the world is better off without. Lara is not one of those people.”

  She slumped back against the wall, and I saw her weighing all of it.

  “Okay.” She lifted her shoulders. “I get it now. Okay.”

  She forgot how well I knew her, though. “If you want to kill her, you’ll have to go through me,” I warned her. “And if you think you can go around me and not have me come after you, you’ve got another thing coming, Jo. I will fucking end you if you think you can just solve my problems by putting a bullet in her head.”

  She looked over at me and I saw the resignation there. “What d’you want from me? I’m trying to help you.”

  “Then help me put them behind bars.”

  She gave a crow of laughter. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  “No. Help me find what I need to convict them.”

  “So you can take it to the cops? We don’t go to the cops.” She spoke slowly, as if for the terminally stupid. “In case you’ve forgotten, cops don’t like us.”

  “We don’t have to, we just need to find the information they won’t get to on their own.”

  “Jesus.” She rubbed at her forehead, and then nodded decisively. “I’ll help you.”

  “You will?” This seemed too easy. I scanned her demeanor for the signs of a lie, and my uneasiness grew when I didn’t see any. “What’s your game?”

  “No game. I’ll do it.” She held out her hand to shake on it. “I’ll help you convict whoever did this, and I will not kill either of you.”

  My mouth twitched. I shook, and went to withdraw my hand.

  “But.” Her fingers clenched around mine, and her voice was like ice. “I am going to say one thing first. You’ve lost perspective.”

  “I know that.” I tried to pull my hand free.

  “No. You don’t.” For the first time, I saw pity in her eyes, genuine pity. “I’ll help you, Jack. I meant that. I won’t hurt you, and I won’t hurt her, either.” As much as I want to, hung unspoken in the air. “But you don’t get it: you’re never going to make each other happy. You think she’ll ever understand what you are? You’re from different worlds. When this is over, and you’re both still alive…it’s going to crash and burn.” I froze, and she pulled her hand away. “But I don’t want you to go out like this,” she said. “So…” She shrugged.

  The door opened behind us, and both of us swung around. I lost my breath when I saw Lara’s face. She was everything, my heart insisted—everything I wanted.

  But how many marriages had I seen fall apart when my guys went home with secrets they couldn’t share, and their wives watched them fall apart from the inside? The petty little fights, the insecurity, the black chaos in their souls…

  “Are you all right?” Lara’s eyes were locked on mine. “Jack?”

  “Yeah.” I knew it wasn’t convincing, but it was the best I could do. “What’s going on?”

  “Adrian’s been brought in murder charges.” She looked between us. “The cops have asked…to speak to me.”

  “And?” Joanna waved her hand for Lara to get on with it.

  “And I don’t know what to do,” Lara said, nettled.

  “Go tell them the truth,” I told her. I shook my head. I could hardly pay attention to this right now. “They must know some of it. Go tell them.”

  “The truth will put you in jail,” she said simply. “How can I tell them, if that’s the cost?”

  At my side, Joanna said nothing. She didn’t need to say a word, though, because I could hear her thoughts as clearly as if she’d screamed them: that this was the beginning of the end.

  Chapter 30

  Lara

  “Thank you for coming to see us.” Two detectives fussed over me, trying to do their best to make the windowless room seem less intimidating. Coffee and pastries were on the table in front of me, and they’d been opening doors for me and offering me sweaters and, in general, being so polite that I wanted to scream.

  But I hadn’t gone to several hundred cocktail parties for nothing. I managed a brilliant smile and met both of their eyes in turn.

  “Of course,” I said sweetly.

  I didn’t quite know how to follow that up—at this juncture, I usually asked about people’s kids and hobbies—but luckily, they had an agenda.

  “What we want to know,” the brown-haired one said seriously, “is what happened on the night of July 19th.”

  “Of course.” I clasped my hands together and tried not to shake. I had to sell this, I told myself firmly. “It was the night before the charity gala, so I went to bed early. Adrian left after dinner.”

  “Tell us about that.” The other, a Korean man, sat with his pen poised. I could hear the faint whirr of the tape recorders.

  I looked down at my lap.
I didn’t know what to say. Now that it came to it, admitting what Adrian had done that night felt…disloyal.

  “Miss Thomas.” Officer Min’s voice was smooth, soft. “We understand this must be emotional for you.”

  “He told me to get some sleep.” I couldn’t look up. I recited the words as factually as I could. “He told me that Damien would be by to pick up the folder, and that I should tell Damien to take the stairs, as the elevators were out.” I didn’t look up, but I could hear the pens scratching. “He had told me this several times, and I…spoke sharply about it to him. He…” I hesitated, and then I pulled up my sleeve to show the fading bruise.

  They both stopped writing.

  Show them. Joanna had been unequivocal. If you want this man in jail, you show them that. He’s going to try to weasel out of this, you know that. They know that. But if they get invested, they’ll try harder. Show them the bruise.

  It wasn’t disloyal, I told myself. If Adrian didn’t want people to see bruises on me, then he shouldn’t have bruised me. Every logical part of my brain knew this was true.

  And the instinct I had cultivated for so long, the one that told me how to be the perfect wife, told me that I was being disloyal, that he’d never take me back now. I had just ruined my chances.

  “Miss Thomas…” Officer Smith cleared his throat. “We understand that you felt you could not come to us before this. We’ll get to that in a moment. For now…was that the first time he’d hurt you like this?”

  “Yes.” My voice was soft. “It was only words, before.”

  “Can you describe that?” Officer Min’s tone was businesslike, but I appreciated it. He seemed to realize that pity was only making it worse.