“Ah-huh,” Darrin said, tiptoeing another step closer, his neck stretched to see past the equipment on the table to his dog. “His name's Nugget and he’s my bestest friend in the whole world.”
“Well, isn’t that a coincidence? He’s one of my best friends, too! Come on up.” Harley lifted Darrin into his arms, high enough he looked down at the unconscious dog. Harley pointed at Nugget’s mouth. “See that tube I taped between his teeth? That one right there?”
Darrin nodded, wide-eyed, taking it all in. Nugget panted like a beast, his ribcage already cleaned and shaved. Where Harley had gotten the medical equipment now positioned around the dog, Roxy didn’t know. She was just grateful that each of these men treated Darrin like he was important instead of just a kid in their way.
“Well, that’s in there because I had to intubate good old Nugget so he wouldn’t swallow his tongue or anything else while I’m stitching him up,” Harley explained, his voice kind and gentle. “You know, like spit or his teeth. You know what intubate means?”
Darrin shook his head.
“It means I was real careful, when I placed something called an endotracheal tube, an ET, down Nugget’s throat so he can breathe while I operate. Medical doctors do that with people sometimes, too.”
“They do? Well, then…’kay.”
Harley definitely had a way with kids. “Want to help me?”
Darrin’s eyes grew wider. “Can I?”
“Why sure! You’re the man he listens to, aren’t you? Who else do you think he wants at his side while I fix him up good as new?”
The little boy in Harley’s big arms wiggled, this time with a measure of excitement instead of grief. “Okay, but you have to tell me what to do cuz I never done this before.” He said that so seriously that Roxy’s heart clenched again.
“I can do that.” Harley grinned a beautiful lopsided grin, and it was easy to see that he truly loved saving dogs and the little boys who loved them. “Well, all righty then. Let’s get to work and save this best buddy of ours, shall we?”
It took patience and around ninety minutes, but finally, Harley finished, and by the looks of it, he had a new partner in the veterinary business. Darrin all but glowed. When the last stitch was nipped close to Nugget’s shaved ribcage, Harley offered Darrin a knuckle bump that brought more tears to Roxy’s eyes. “I think we’re done here, Pardner. Nugget needs to sleep for a while, but in a day or two, he’ll be ready to play ball. Now how ’bout we hop on over to the local saloon and swallow a couple pints of root beer while we wait for this fellow to wake up?” Harley leveled a stern eye at Tucker Chase. “You do have root beer here, don’tcha, Sheriff? Maybe a bag of barbecue chips to go with it? A fellow gets mighty hungry when he’s saving lives and busting broncs.”
Oh, God. Roxy wiped a finger under her leakiest eye. This gentle giant cracked her up.
With a chuckle, Tucker rolled off the chair he’d taken residence on while watching the surgery. “If we don’t, I’ll go get some. How’s our patient?”
“He’s gonna be just fine,” Darrin announced with a genuine smile from the chair beside Harley. He’d stood and watched every incision and every stitch, and not once had he cried or winced while Harley did what he had to do. He’d dabbed Harley’s forehead with a tissue when Harley asked him to. He’d even stuck a bottle of water with a straw in it—courtesy of fast-thinking Tucker Chase—in Harley’s face when he’d said he was thirsty.
After Tucker left to rustle up some root beer, Isaiah sidled next to Roxy. Tugging her backside away from the wall, he stepped in behind her, circled his arms around her waist and dipped his chin to her shoulder. “Thank you,” he whispered in her ear, “for being here. For trusting me.”
Of all things, she got goosebumps just from the sound of his voice. “I do trust you,” she admitted quietly. “More than you know.” And way more than I ever expected.
He nipped at her ear just before he whispered, “Harley found a note rolled inside Nugget’s collar when he prepped him for surgery.”
Roxy leaned back to look up into Isaiah’s eyes. “What now?”
“A warning.” He stuck his hand in his back pocket and pulled an evidence bag up for Roxy to see. The hand scrawled paper was bloody, but the caps were clear.
I CAN GET TO YOU AND YOUR KIDS, DOLL FACE. ANYWHERE. ANYTIME.
Chapter Seventeen
“Was that the same collar you took off of him earlier?” Tucker asked.
Now that Nugget rested comfortable and warm in the padded crate Harley’d brought with him, Harley had left. He’d left instructions, a plastic vial of pain meds, and his bill, which Tucker had promptly folded and stashed in his rear pocket. Nugget’s crate was now situated just inside the formal dining room where they could all keep an eye on him.
Darrin was back in his room sleeping with his mother and sister. Isaiah had tucked him in—one last time—for the night that wouldn’t seem to end.
Isaiah was beyond exhausted, not having slept since the night before. Roxy looked as bleary-eyed as he felt. They were both in need of some serious downtime. Unfortunately, that didn’t seem to be in their near future when Tucker called an earlier-than-shit, three in the morning meeting. The only man not present, Tate Higgins, remained topside, poised to shoot the next person who came within walking distance of the front gate.
Whoever’d built this house had installed electric wrought iron fencing around the entire yard, all except for the front stretch. What were they thinking? Even now, Tucker had a MICAP, a Mission Impossible Capability Awaiting Parts purchase order into the higher ups at FBI Headquarters to solve that critical issue first thing in the morning. If approved for funding, workmen were scheduled to arrive at eight in the morning, and wouldn’t that just make guarding the Brattons a whole lot easier? Hell, no.
Isaiah didn’t relish the reality of more people traipsing through what had become an impossible assignment. Easy day, nothing. Whoever’d come up with that phrase was a moron. Must’ve been a Navy SEAL. Probably Tucker.
“No, Boss. It’s not the same collar at all.” He shook his head as he produced Nugget’s other collar from his pants pocket. “This is the one someone wired to track Nugget’s whereabouts. Somebody out there’s using this dog, and I think I know where he’s been all this time. Mr. G’s, the hamburger joint on the east side of Kingman Park. Nugget’s been known to wander off there. Now I know why.” Just wish I knew who that person was.
He’d intended a more thorough examination of the altered original collar, but Kitty’s asthma attack had precluded his good intentions. Honestly, so much had happened in the last twenty-four hours, he’d completely forgotten the collar. Was Randall using Nugget or was that guy in the chapel responsible? Or—perish the thought—was Mrs. Bratton involved? And with which man? Both of them?
Roxy nodded, and for an instant, Isaiah wasn’t sure she hadn’t honed in on his inner questions. “That explains why Nugget didn’t bark when he heard the shots that killed your agents earlier. He knew who was out there.”
“It also explains why he charged the plate glass,” Tucker agreed. “Randall probably signaled him.”
“If it was Randall,” Isaiah interjected. “We don’t know anything for certain, yet.”
“Son-of-a-bitch.” Tucker’s fist hit the tabletop. “Gibson’s wife delivered a nine-pound baby boy last Monday. Their sixth son. We know that much. Now what?”
Now those boys grow up without their dad, Isaiah thought, sick at heart all over again. The rhetorical question hung like a dark cloud over the three of them. Gibson and Torrance were the agents who’d been murdered in their car just hours earlier. All the eulogies in the world could never adequately describe the loss of a father to his sons. Isaiah hated the human cost of fighting crime.
Pushing past his own memories, he tossed the evidence bag with the collar and note to Tuck. “Forensics needs to work their magic on this, and they need to do it tonight. Harley found it wir
ed to Nugget’s new collar. We need hard evidence to nail whoever’s behind this before he strikes again.”
“To the wall,” Roxy murmured. “The sooner, the better.” She’d gotten quieter as the day—and night—had dragged on.
“You kids look like shit,” Tucker muttered, his dark eyes unusually sharp and alert. The man was a damned fighting machine. Close encounters like tonight’s seemed to energize him. “Go to bed. Tate and I will stand guard until noon, then you’re up” He stuck one palm in Isaiah’s face before he could protest. “I said beat it, Zaroyin. Take off. Now.”
Weary of the world of men and sick of Garrett Randall in particular, Isaiah pushed away from the table. “G’night then. Night, Roxy.”
She didn’t answer and she didn’t move. He was glad for the stall tactic, if that was what it was. With Tucker inside the mansion for the rest of the night, they’d be wise to sleep in separate beds, not like they’d done much sleeping when they’d been together so far, but it could happen.
Isaiah retrieved his duffel from the front entry. After closing his bedroom door, the room one door down from Roxy’s, he dropped his butt to the end of his bed, more tired then he’d ever been. Fumbling through the bag at his feet, he pulled out a pair of navy blue boxers and his shaving kit. A shower before bed helped him sleep better, and man, he needed that tonight, er, this morning.
Lightheaded and fighting a migraine in the front left quadrant of his brain, Isaiah stumbled into the mega-sized bathroom, his eyes half-closed. Pastel blue marble tiles with veins of what looked to be real gold lined the floor and extended halfway up the wall to delicate one-quarter coving. Crystal cups in golden sconces over the sink provided blinding visibility that Isaiah promptly turned off. His retinas couldn’t take it. Not tomor-r-r—this morning.
Cranking the shower faucet to hot, he stripped out of his clothes and folded them neatly on the counter. Folded clothing fit his duffel better. A man needed organization and order in his life, and Isaiah was all about that kind of self-control. Okay, so he hadn’t done so well in the self-control department as far as Roxy was concerned today, but tomorrow, that would change. It had to. Mostly because tomorrow was already here, and he wasn’t kidding anyone.
If it hadn’t been for him being distracted, Nugget wouldn’t have gotten hurt. If he hadn’t had his mind on Roxy, the day would’ve gone smoother. The kids would’ve been safer. It could’ve ended up being one of those easy days. He would’ve tuned into Randall’s Neanderthal brainwaves sooner, and known the man’s plans before anything happened. No doubt he would’ve unlocked Mrs. Bratton’s mental block too, maybe identified the mystery man in the chapel. Yeah. Things had to change and they had to change now. Before anyone else got hurt.
Pressing his forearm to the tiled wall beneath the showerhead, Isaiah leaned his forehead to his arm. Hot water streamed down his back, and he let his mind wander. Damned if the thing didn’t wander straight through the wall to his favorite distraction. Roxy.
Licking at the rivulets running over his lips, he growled at himself. This was the first time in his life that he couldn’t explain why he couldn’t control himself. Just one look, one touch—hell, all Roxy had to do was breathe, and his brain disconnected from the mission. From sunup to sundown, he wanted her in his arms and in his bed, preferably naked and sweaty beneath him. Groaning with pleasure. Screaming his name. Bucking against him as he feasted on her lush body. Raking her nails down his back when she came and came…. and came.
But they’d been playing with fire, and the flames had finally raged out of control, bringing consequences Isaiah would blame himself for the rest of his life. A boy had been hurt today and his dog had nearly died. Two agents were dead, and the weight of all that loss sat like a stone in Isaiah’s gut.
As the lead agent in charge of this mess, everything that went wrong was his fault. He hadn’t been himself since Roxy burst into the bank in all her tough-chick glory, wresting control from him at the bank with just one lift of that cocky chin. One toss of her ponytail. One take-no-quarter spark in the sexy, brown eyes that told him to back off, she was in control. That she owned him.
Damned if she wasn’t right. From that moment on, his psychic depths had gone shallow. He couldn’t get through to Bratton and he had no game—other than to get into Roxy’s panties, which he had. Like Samson in the Bible, Isaiah now knew his greatest weakness. It seemed he couldn’t have both, his psychic power and the woman of his heart at the same time. There was just one thing to do. He had to tell Roxy this thing between them was over. Done. It had to be. For everyone’s sake. Tomorrow.
A little flirtation was one thing, but this had gone way past flirting. Volcanic was more like it, catastrophically, exquisitely explosive in a Krakatoa, blow an island off the face of the map, kind of way. Just like that heard around the world explosion, she’d blown his sedate, well-organized mind clean off the planet. And he’d been lost in space ever since.
It had to stop. Isaiah stood there staring at the gold-veined tile, wondering how to tell the woman he cared for more than himself, that he couldn’t risk the lives of everyone involved just to satisfy his craving for her. They had to stop meeting. He wouldn’t choose her over them. His job came first. She’d understand, wouldn’t she? She was a professional. She had to know they were both screwing the pooch, as Tucker would say.
Isaiah knew the precise second she entered the bathroom. The glass shower door opened behind him, and she was there. “Roxy,” he murmured, needing her so damned bad even as he wanted her to leave him alone.
Two slender arms slid around his waist. Her long hair draped over his backside as she laid her cheek against the waterfall sluicing over his shoulder blades. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered. “What happened today is my fault.”
“No,” he hissed as he turned around to face her. He’d never seen such a glorious sight. She was naked. Her black hair now hung in wet ringlets over her shoulders, cupping her nipples, both lovely shades of pink perfection in the centers of two lush, kissable breasts. “None of this is your fault,” he said as his gaze wandered to the sight of her tempting feminine parts below, and his randy cock sprang to attention.
“Yes, yes it is.” She looked up at him, blinking into the shower spray splattering off his shoulders, missing the stand-up show happening below his waistline. “If I hadn’t been preoccupied… If I’d kept closer watch on Darrin and his dog…” She stomped one bare foot. “Ah, forget the excuses. If I’d been better at my job, none of this would’ve happened, and you know it, too. I can see it in your eyes. We’re not good together.”
Isaiah squared his shoulders to keep the spray from hitting her sad face. “No, baby, no. If anyone’s to blame, it’s me. I’m the Psychic Dude, remember? I should’ve known what Randall was up to. I should’ve seen everything.” I just can’t seem to see anything, when I’m near you.
He licked his lips, his mind suddenly more intent on savoring the steady streams running in wild abandon over her satiny skin than in solving the mystery of why his psychic sight wasn’t up to its usual clarity. The water dripped off her lips and ran down her chin to her neck to the plump cushion of her waiting breasts. His cock had proudly noticed the way her nipples hardened into tight little diamonds. His hand lifted to cup her breast, but first…
He should step away. And he would have, but Roxy beat him to it. Her chin came up. Her wet, succulent lips parted, and she said, “Don’t touch me, Isaiah. I can’t control myself when you do, and that’s why I’m leaving first thing in the morning after I request to be removed from this case. You need a detective on your side, not someone like me.”
There went the last of Isaiah’s good intentions. “No,” he ground out. “You can’t do that.” Even though he knew she should. “We can make this work. I don’t need some big-mouthed detective like Harmon in my face. I need you. We’re good together, Roxy. Damned good, and you know it.”
Biting her bottom lip, she shook her head. “Y
-yes, I can leave, and I will, Isaiah. My mind’s made up. I’ve been thinking about it since Nugget got loose. It’s the right thing to do. Mrs. Bratton and her kids need the best protection they can get, and I’m not it.” With a quick hand, she swiped her hair out of her eyes, and he knew how hard saying that was for her because Roxy Thurston, the toughest beat cop on the District’s streets, was crying. “It’ll be for the best,” she said, her voice bereft of the customary snark he’d grown to love. “You’ll see.”
Aw, hell. Isaiah couldn’t take the sight of her standing alone, her hair gleaming wet and teardrops beaded on her lashes. She’d always been his dream come true, and he couldn’t give her up. Not now and not tomorrow. Tugging her gently into his arms, he held on tightly to the only woman he’d loved—yes, loved—in a long time. He was done denying it.
Genuine warmth infused his entire body with her inside his arms, a raging fire that knew no bounds and that filled him. Only this fire was different. It was more about her and less about him. It was pure. Feral, maybe, but utterly—pure. He wasn’t falling, yet he was dizzy, and he couldn’t catch a breath. He wasn’t a caveman, yet his muscles flexed with a fierce primal need to protect her. To shelter her. His blood burned, not with testosterone to ravage her lush, sweet body, but to claim her with devotion and—his soul.
So this is love, he thought, even as, “Don’t go,” blurted out of his heart. Thinking fast so as not to say too much, too soon, he added, “Why should you leave now when we’ve got Randall right where we want him?”
“We, we do?” she asked, rubbing her cheek over his left pec like a cat marking her territory—or a woman savoring her last moment with her man before she left him forever.
The pesky guy below sagged to half-mast at that very real possibility.
“Of course, we do,” Isaiah went on, making things up as fast as he could. “Randall thinks he’s got the upper hand. He thinks we’re scared of him, well, are we? Are you?” Isaiah didn’t mean to call her out like that, but desperate times called for desperate tactics, and Isaiah was as desperate as he’d ever been.
One-Eyed Jack (The Deuces Wild Series Book 3) Page 15