One-Eyed Jack (The Deuces Wild Series Book 3)

by Irish Winters

  He smoothed one hand over her head, threading his fingers into her hair as he tilted his chin and kissed her forehead. “About that date…”

  Crunch time. He seemed sincere, but she’d been burned before, and trust was always an issue. He’d been right about her leading with her chin. Dusting guys off before they got in too deep had always worked in the past. She nearly snorted at that thought. Hell, Isaiah was already in—deep—and warm. He wasn’t going anywhere soon, but he probably didn’t want a real date. This was all fast talk after a damned hot tumble. Nothing more. “We’ll see.”

  He matched his forehead to hers, his nose to her nose. “That’s not an answer, but I’ll take it,” he said huskily. “When you’re ready, Roxy, I want to be the one you come to.”

  That earned him a well-deserved grunt. “Think I’ve already come enough for one day.”

  “That’s not what I meant and you know it.” His mouth descended in the dark, his lips perfectly aligned with hers, and damned if she could resist… One. More. Taste.

  What was I saying? Going to do? She couldn’t think around this guy!

  “I’m sorry, but I have to leave,” he whispered, breaking the kiss and a tiny piece of her heart, leaving her breathless and dazed and wondering why she had to let him go.

  Lifting to his knees, he let his fingertips trace her centerline, between her breasts, and down her stomach ending at her bellybutton. He leaned over and swirled his tongue into her belly button, sending shivers up her body and pebbling her tender, aching nipples. One touch. That was all it would take to ignite her all over again.

  “A date, Roxy,” he breathed over her wet navel, curling her toes but not going any farther down her body. “With lights and music and enough time to do this…” Another warm breath skated up her belly to her wet nipples. “…right. Satin sheets would be nice. Dinner. Wine. Maybe a can of whipped cream.”

  “Ah-huh,” she agreed because right then, she’d agree to anything if he’d only kiss her again. Instead, he disappeared into the dark and left her wanting that elusive more.

  Standing there in the hall, Isaiah took a quick minute to zip his pants and buckle his belt. He’d doffed his suit jacket in the dining room earlier, but he’d just left his dress shirt in Roxy’s room. At least, he’d thought to grab his holster and weapon before he’d made his exit. But a bare-chested FBI agent on the loose while on duty? Not cool, man.

  He made a hasty exit to retrieve the duffel he’d brought with him and left behind in the entryway. Unzipping it, he made quick work of easing into a black polo with the FBI logo high on his chest. Isaiah made it a rule to always dress the part. That way, there’d be no doubt as to who he was and why he was here. He left the duffel behind the door. For now.

  Thank goodness, the Brattons were still in their suite and hadn’t caught him sneaking out of Roxy’s room like a dog in the night. It had taken all Isaiah’s control to leave her, but there’d been no choice. Roxy was something else and he was just a man. A very stupid man who kept making the same mistake. Only it felt like so much more.

  Swallowing hard, he checked his pistol and adjusted his underarm holster. Would he do it again, make love with Roxy? In a heartbeat. Was it smart? No. Not by any definition of the word. Was she irresistible? Oh, hell yes.

  Lifting his fingers to his nose, Isaiah closed his eyes, savoring the alluring scent that held him spellbound and kept him going back for more. Whatever this thing between them was, he intended to keep at it until he knew for certain if it were fools gold or the real thing.

  Another hard swallow. Roxy’d caught his eye the first time they’d met, and he was damned if that feeling in his gut had only grown stronger since then. No woman had ever sneaked past his psychic defenses the way she had, yet her psychic skills were minimal, nearly non-existent. On the psychic scale that ended with Level Tens, she was a solid three. A normal. Except she wasn’t normal. Not really. Roxy had instincts and courage, and she’d learned early to trust her gut and her intuition until they were finely honed tools in her MPD arsenal. Did the image of her in her uniform still make him as hard as a spike? Damn straight.

  Pivoting, Isaiah looked behind him, through the perfectly aligned kitchen doors between where he stood and the dimly lit hall to the Brattons’ suite. He could easily sense Darrin, Kitty, and Nugget in there. All were asleep and content now that they were together again. But when he pushed for some indication from Candy, the same blank wall came back to him. He couldn’t detect an aura, a shadow, not even the hint of a breath that she might be sleeping in close proximity to her children, or that he might’ve mistaken her signal for theirs. All he got was dead air.

  Disconcerting to say the least. Backtracking down the hall in his stocking feet, Isaiah stopped at the Bratton’s bedroom door and pressed his ear and his palm to the flat wooden surface. In all his years spent honing his own peculiar psychic gift, he’d come across very few individuals who were naturally able to block him. Usually highly intelligent, most had no idea the riddle they posed to a Level Ten.

  Wise old Mother Nature made the human mind a master deceiver, and no two brains on the planet functioned quite the same. Psychics, even Level Tens, were unique from each other, and none that Isaiah had met so far in his life were mind readers. Neither did they have x-ray vision as sweet Roxy had innocently thought.

  Isaiah’s lips curved at her dismay when she’d blurted that question out loud, but it was one he’d heard before. Non-psychics were similar to Muggles in the popular “Harry Potter” series of J. K. Rowling fame. They thought they were alone in the world, when oftentimes, they were pawns caught in a matching of wits between psychics and those who thought to use psychics for the three Gs: gain, glory, and greed.

  That was what had snared Isaiah’s father and why he served time in a federal penitentiary now: the glory of saving American military lives at the cost of their free will. In the end, Doctor Zaroyin realized the threat he’d posed by taking away the right to choose, but by then, his error in judgment had nearly cost his only child’s life.

  Desperate for funding, Dr. Zaroyin had turned to the unscrupulous Senator Bick, who was likewise on the fast track to all three Gs. When the congressional mastermind couldn’t get the elder Zaroyin to fall in line with his plan for global domination, Senator Bick and his evil wife abducted Isaiah and forced him to track other psychics with the intent to breed him with another Level Ten, to build a super race.

  Sound familiar? Not unlike Hitler, they’d eagerly sacrificed the scores of FBI agents who’d innocently volunteered for the surgery that implanted Dr. Zaroyin’s computer chips directly into their brains. By the time Isaiah’s father realized the flaws to his innovative invention, the damage was done. His only son lay restrained in a secret bunker near Boston while the Bicks tortured him to search out other psychics to serve their ignoble end. And too many good men and women died in the line of duty. Some actually ran themselves to death after receiving the command to locate another Level Ten, Eden Stark Winchester.

  That was where Director Tucker Chase, FBI Special Agent Ky Winchester, and Isaiah’s best friend, Special Agent Tate Higgins came into the picture. All psychically gifted in one way or another, these agents along with Eden, now comprised the one of a kind, psychic arm of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

  Ky and his wife were the ones who’d rescued Isaiah and ended Senator Bick’s life in the process. Then Ky, Tate, and Tucker rescued Eden after Cassandra Bick and her lover stole Eden from Ky’s home in the middle of the night. By morning, they’d smuggled her out of the country and all the way to Sierra Leone, Africa, intending to use her as breeding stock the same way they’d done with Isaiah. By the end of that mess, Eden was back in Ky’s arms, while Mrs. Bick, her lover, and dozens of deluded FBI agents ended up in the morgue wearing toe tags. Talk about a nightmare.

  So yeah. The three Gs weren’t all they were cracked up to be.

  Is she in there or not? Isaiah wondered at Cand
y’s bedroom door. Do I dare open the door and check?

  After what his father had done, Isaiah hated invading anyone’s privacy. Yet quietly, he did just that. On protective details like this, privacy took a backseat to safety. It had to.

  And there Candy was, sound asleep on the king-sized bed between her children, her arm around Kitty, and her red hair tied back in a ponytail. Darrin lay with his back to his mother and sister, his arms around Nugget’s neck. It made for a happy picture, and after the kind of day Candy had just survived, she deserved it.

  Isaiah let the door ease shut, satisfied all was well for the night. As many precautions as he and Roxy had taken, this should be what his former Navy SEAL boss called an ‘easy day.’ But what did Tucker always say after that? Oh, yeah. ‘The only easy day was yesterday…’

  A sense of foreboding settled over Isaiah’s shoulders like an invisible wet blanket as he settled onto a kitchen chair. From there he could see both halls, to his left the one where the Bratton family slept, to his right the hall that led to Roxy. It hadn’t eluded him that Nugget wasn’t in the kitchen where Isaiah had left him when he’d gotten caught up with Roxy. But more disconcerting? That Candy slept with her back to her son while she’d snuggled her daughter.

  Perhaps the size of the bed was the reason for the distance between mother and son. Perhaps Nugget had simply scratched at Candy’s bedroom door until someone let him in. Perhaps not…

  Chapter Eleven

  Roxy jolted upright. Shots. Two very distinct shots had just interrupted an erotic dream about her favorite janitor’s closet. Scrambling to her feet, she strapped her holster on her hips, checked her weapon, and exited her room. Rounding the corner from hallway to kitchen, she tucked her shirt into her pants, which were plenty wrinkled after the way they’d hit the floor earlier. Where was Isaiah?

  “I’m in here,” he called quietly from where he stood at the narrow window alongside the front entry doors.

  Damn, he’s reading my mind again. “What’s going on?” she asked as she took in the sight of him standing at the window. How could he look cool, calm, and collected when she probably looked like some whore after a three-day drunk? Self-consciously, she smoothed her hair away from her mouth and swept it behind her ear, wondering where her elastic was when she needed it most.

  Isaiah’s sharp gaze rocketed over her breasts to her feet and back up again. “I can’t raise Agents Gibson and Torrence.”

  “Your undercover guys?”

  He nodded one curt nod before he surveyed the street and front yard again. “You stay here while—”

  “While I what? Bake cookies and let you walk into trouble by yourself?” she bit out. “Not happening, Zaroyin. In case you haven’t noticed, I’m not Suzy Homemaker.”

  “And I’m not asking.” He didn’t break eye contact with whatever or whoever he was watching. “Be right back.” With a twist of the elegant door handle, Isaiah left her, which made sense. Someone needed to stand guard over the Brattons, but damn. Roxy’d rather be out there beating the shit out of the bad guys than babysitting.

  Checking the door behind Isaiah to make certain it had locked behind him, she swept through the entry headed for the Bratton’s suite. Without knocking, she entered the cozy room.

  “What’ wrong?” Candy asked, blinking as if she’d been disturbed.

  “Nothing. Go back to sleep,” Roxy ordered, then thought twice about what she was doing. Her client deserved a better, more courteous answer. “What I meant is, Agent Zaroyin’s outside checking our perimeter. I just wanted to make sure everything was good with you. Need anything?”

  Bratton nodded, her red ponytail bobbing down her back. “Just one thing. I wish you’d call me Candace or Candy. Bratton sounds so cold, like you hate me, or something. Have I offended you? I’m sorry if I did. I just don’t remember.”

  Well, shit. “Sorry,” Roxy offered lamely. “It’s the job, not you. Stay here. Keep your kids company until Agent Zaroyin gets back inside. If you need anything, let me know, umm, Candy.” Argh! Why, oh why, does that name have to irk the hell out of me?

  Stepping back, she made a hasty retreat instead of chatting with her new BFF, thankful Isaiah hadn’t witnessed her comeuppance. It was just possible Candy’s intentions were legit. She certainly looked the part of a damsel in distress at the bank. It was also possible that these, these—these feelings—might stem from the green-eyed troll planted firmly on Roxy’s shoulder, the one that squeezed her jugular with a vengeance every time Isaiah so much as glanced in Candy’s direction.

  Rolling her neck to dislodge that troll’s grip, she inhaled a deep breath, breathing in, breathing out as she forced her self-control to re-engage. She’d never been the jealous type before, mostly because she avoided men, so there was nothing to be jealous over. She simply didn’t need the drama they wreaked in her life and the lives of those she loved. But then along came Isaiah, and suddenly, she wanted to kill another woman just because he’d looked twice at her. What was up with that? Roxy didn’t care if Isaiah and Candace got it on. Let them. That’d save her the inevitable grief of an affair ending before it got started.

  Just the thought of him with another woman left Roxy edgy. Stiffening her spine as well as her resolve to end this thing, Roxy strolled back to the entry, studiously scanning her path as she went to be certain the house was still secure. Where the hell’s Isaiah? What’s taking him so long?

  Once again at the window, she parted the sheer panels and peered outside, careful to peek quickly instead of making herself a target. The manicured lawn stretched quietly to the security fence. The driveway was clear since she and Isaiah had moved their vehicles into the four-car garage after dinner. Nothing looked out of place. So yeah. Where is he?

  She’d just thought that something had to be wrong for him to be gone so long, when, out of the corner of her eye, she caught a shadow standing alongside one of the eight columns to the covered portico. Actually, it was just the shadow of an elbow as if some guy had just raised a pistol skyward. A gasp stole her breath. Isaiah was in trouble!

  “I’m safe,” he murmured behind her, scaring the holy bejesus out of her.

  Pivoting, she had him in her sights without intending to aim at him, shaken that he’d snuck up on her. “Where have you been?” she hissed, lowering her weapon but not holstering it. Not yet. If he could sneak up on her, someone else could, too.

  He had the nerve to put a finger to his lips and tell her to, “Shush. My men are outside. That’s my buddy you saw just now. Agent Higgins will be spending the night up on the roof, so stand down. You’re okay.”

  “I’m not worried about me,” she snapped. “I want answers. Where the hell did you just come from?”

  He nodded to the east side of the house, lifting a shiny gold key ring to her view. “Rear exit through the kitchen, remember?”

  “Then why didn’t the alarm go off?”

  Isaiah’s big shoulders lifted. “It would’ve if I hadn’t disabled it in time. Don’t worry, it’s activated again.”

  She could’ve spit nails at his nonchalance and lack of being forthright. “I’m not worried! I’m mad. Why’s Higgins here? Where’d those shots come from? What’s going on?”

  The smirk in his eyes faded to black. “Someone murdered Gibson and Torrence in their car tonight. Execution style. They’d seen something and had already called for reinforcements, but my guys couldn’t get here fast enough.”

  “Randall,” Roxy breathed. “How’d he know we were here?”

  “That’s what I—I mean we—need to find out. Did you check on Candy and her kids?”

  Roxy wished she couldn’t smell him. She nodded, remembering their last encounter and how he’d ended it with one scorching kiss. Her lips still burned from the stubble on his chin. From his teeth. “I woke her up, but they’re fine.”

  “And you were certain she was sound asleep when you checked?”

  “You suspect her?”r />
  “I suspect everyone.”

  Good to know. Roxy could’ve hugged him for that. “Yeah, I’m sure.”

  “Then we sit tight. My team’s out there. If this was Randall—”

  “Who else could it be?”

  “Ever heard of innocent until proven guilty?”

  “Not when two men die on stake-out. Randall did this, you know he did.”

  Isaiah blew out a deep sigh. “I do, but we need evidence to prove that, and we needed more protection. That’s where my team comes in. They’ll set up a post outside while we cover things inside. Now let’s check on the Brattons again.”

  He led while Roxy followed. Just like before, Candy startled at the sight of them entering her room without knocking. “Something’s wrong, isn’t it?”

  Isaiah told her bluntly. “Two federal agents were murdered while they kept watch in their vehicle. We suspect Garrett Randall. Do you know how he tracked you here?”

  Lifting to her elbows, Candy tugged the blanket up to her chin and shook her head. “He’s… he’s here?” she asked, her lower lip quivering.

  Roxy narrowed her eyes, trying to see what it was that lent an air of deceit to Bratton’s innocent act. Did Isaiah feel it too? The woman was lying, but damn. Her body language gave nothing away.

  “Mom?” Darrin asked, sleepily reaching for Nugget, who strangely hadn’t sounded any alarm. “What’s the matter?”

  Isaiah must’ve zeroed in on that peculiar lack of response as well. “Darrin, everything’s okay. But can you tell me where you got Nugget? A pet shop maybe?”

  “From a guy,” he mumbled as he rubbed a fist into his eye, “at Wal-Mart. He was selling puppies and Mom said it was okay if I got one.”

  “What’d the guy look like?”

  “For heaven’s sake,” Candy whispered. “That was a long time ago. How’s he supposed to remember something like that?”