He fills me as he pauses everything…no movement, no sound. Just silence and bliss. He drops his head onto my chest, the heat from his skin burning through mine. “I don’t care how long I’ve been with you; every damn time it’s like the best time of my life, baby.”
Less than a moment skates by when I hear a knock on the door.
“Yeah,” Tango yells out, breathlessly.
“Ready for round two?” Jags yells in.
God, he’s obnoxious.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
TANGO
I SPOKE WITH ELI and he’s meeting me over here this morning. He got a hold of the men responsible for sending Landon after us. Being smart about things, Eli set up a civil meeting to handle this situation in a way it should have been handled from the beginning. No one needed to lose any limbs over this. Fucker. The only problem is, I don’t want Cali here, and I certainly don’t want Tyler here.
I’m guessing that telling her isn’t going to go over so well.
“Cal,” I shout into the other room. “Can you come here for a second, babe?” Cali comes walking out of Tyler’s room with her on her hip, bouncing her up and down and poking at her nose forcing giggles out of her. “You think you can go over to Sasha’s new place for a little bit today?”
She raises an eyebrow with question. “Why, you and Jags going out looking for chicks again?” She gives me a wink, but I know that’s what she’s thinking when the two of us go out. After not having a friend for the past few years, Jags and I have been making up for lost time. Living here didn’t quite work out for anyone, so he rented an apartment down the street.
“No, we did that on Monday,” I say with a grin. “You should see the chicks we found. Two blondes with biggest—”
“Nice. I’d believe you if you had a thing for blondes, jackass.” She places Tyler down and pats her on the butt, telling her to go play.
“In all seriousness, I need you to go over and spend some time with Sasha this afternoon. Your dad’s coming over and one of those men is coming here to meet with us about the situation.” Please don’t fight me, Cali. Come on, just this once; let me do what I have to do to protect my family. Don’t get me wrong, I love the tough-girl thing, but sometimes I need to feel like the one who can protect everyone. Maybe it’s the Marine in me, but I know what I need to do to take care of this situation.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” she says, her voice piercing through me. “Why can’t I be here?”
“For one, I need you to take Tyler away from here, as I’m sure you can understand the reasoning of that. Two, I’m not leaving her with anyone else again after what happened last time. And three, I’m the reason they’re after Tyler right now, and I need to be the one to deal with this.” She can’t argue with any of that. Well, she can, and she probably will find a way to argue with me, but this is the way it has to be.
“Dammit, I’m sick of this shit.” She clasps her hands around the back of her neck and turns in a half circle, her face turning red. “Should I be worried?” Like it would matter if I told her no.
“Should you ever?”
“Don’t turn my question into another question. Answer me, Tango.”
“I’ve got this under control. I’ve got your blood work papers and it’s all the proof we need to make them go away.”
“You’ve told me you’ve gotten these assholes to go away so many times, and I keep wanting to believe you.”
“Don’t start in with the trust shit, Cali.”
As surprising as this girl can sometimes be, she takes a couple of steps toward me, closing the space between us and yanks me toward her by my collar. “This isn’t about trust. I trust you and no one else, Tango. You get that? You know that. Don’t question it. You hear me?” Her arms wrap around my back as she presses up on her toes to kiss me. “I love you more than I could ever explain to you, and I don’t want anyone ever getting in the way of our happiness again.”
“I won’t let it, babe.” She kisses me again, and then makes her way over to Tyler.
“Come on, baby-girl. We’re going to go visit Aunty.”
“I’m following you over there,” I tell her. I need to make sure those guys aren’t waiting somewhere for her or trying to use Sasha as a decoy again.
“I got this,” she says. “If you expect me to trust you, have a little faith in me, will you?”
“Fine. If you see anything strange on the way over there, turn around and come back. Call me. Do whatever you need to do.”
“Tango,” she shushes me. “I got this.” I wrap my arm around her neck and pull both of my girls into me, giving them each a kiss. “I’ll see you two in a few hours. Stay out of trouble.”
“I love trouble, Daddy,” Tyler says to me. That’s just fucking perfect. God knows my daughter’s going to be looking for trouble with us as her parents. If I can do anything right with her, it’ll be to keep her as far away from trouble as possible.
“I’m sure you do, baby girl. Just stay away from it today.”
* * *
I’ve been playing this out in my head for the past hour, wondering the odds of them letting this go with the very little amount of proof I have. These fucks are so money hungry; they’ll do whatever they have to do. They don’t care whose lives they take or ruin. Money is all that matters to them.
Eli and I have been sitting on the couch talking this out, discussing our plan if things go south. Killing these guys off doesn’t matter anymore, there’s more of them to follow and they’re just going to get more pissed off the more of their men we kill.
The doorbell finally rings and there’s a knot the size of Texas in my stomach. I stand up and blow some of the pent up steam out of my chest before reaching for the door. I open it up, surprised to see an older gentleman who looks like he should have retired at least ten years ago. At least this dude will be easy if we do have to kill him; although Eli and I did just agree to follow the rules of engagement, which is fine—it’s the way I’ve been bred, but there’s just a little more pressure on me when Tyler is at the other end of this deal.
Eli comes up behind me and reaches his hand out to the guy. “Bill?” Yeah, the guy looks like a Bill. “What the hell are you doing here?” Eli takes a step back and runs his hand over his balding head. “Don’t even tell me you’re the person responsible for all this.”
I can see a million things going through Eli’s mind right now. None of them look like good things. “You set this all up from the beginning didn’t you?”
“I knew you were a desperate man, Eli. Your wife was dying and I knew you’d do what you needed to do. Any man would have done the same thing for his wife.”
“You sent me Tango’s name when I was looking for someone to care for my daughter.” Clarity is setting in. This man, whoever he is, knew Cali’s mom and I would be the candidates for this testing. This is unreal, and yet it all makes perfect sense now. One thing I’ve always been forced to accept is that we don’t usually get answers to the hard questions. I should want to hurt this guy. I should want to forget about the rules of engagement, thinking about what this man has single-handedly put Cali’s entire family through. Yet, I feel calm, which is scarier. Why am I so calm right now?
“You’re right,” Bill responds. “I was the mastermind behind all of this.” A proud look outlines his face. “After you and I parted ways, I joined sides with the scientists. Money, of course. Plus, I had the answers they wanted and I became quite valuable to them. What I didn’t plan for was acquiring the privilege to see what those chemicals do to a second generation within the DNA.”
Eli’s breaking out into a sweat and I’m watching his fingers twitch by his side. “Fortunately for us, you won’t have that privilege,” Eli replies calmly.
“Your timing is off, and we have proof,” I tell him. “Cali conceived our child before I ever met Eli in person. Here are the blood work results.” I pull the paper out of my back pocket and hand them to Bill, watching his eyes scan over the date.
“Hmm.” Bill nods with dissatisfaction. He holds his hand up against his head and lets the papers float to the floor. So much for all that money, pal. After a moment of letting it digest, Bill looks back up at us. With a choky voice, he says, “I guess I owe you an apology.” He says it more to Eli than myself. And while I’d like to throw him up against a wall right now and beat him until he cries out the words he’s sorry, because that’s what I need to hear, I want this man and his people away from us.
“You think sorry will undo everything you put my family through?” Eli says, shaking, his face and neck are verging on purple, and his hand is hovering over his waist—over his weapon. I quickly reach over and grab his arm, stopping him from making a really big mistake. “Let go of me, son.”
“Eli, we agreed on how we were going to handle this,” I remind him. It isn’t helping that Bill is standing in front of us with a smug grin.
“You won’t kill me, Eli. People would still be after your granddaughter if that were the case.” Exactly what I was afraid of. Eli is still fighting against my hand even after this asshole just threatened Tyler again. It’s taking everything I have not to reach for Eli’s pistol myself, and it’s taking even more to hold Eli back.
“Get out of my house and tell your men never to come back here again. Are we clear?” I mutter.
“Sure, you’re no good to us now anyway. You were nothing but a test monkey. You should be thanking me for your life, son,” Bill says to me. “Have a little gratitude. It’ll bring you far in life.”
“Out of my house, now,” I growl.
Bill lifts his chin and turns on his heels. “Good day, gentleman. Glad we could handle this civilly.”
That’s where he’s wrong though—neither Eli nor I have ever been known to be civil.
EPILOGUE
CALI
DAD AND TANGO WAITED about two months to make sure no one else was going to show up looking for Tyler. Once they were sure that was the case, Dad paid Bill a little visit one night and shot him dead. Dad doesn’t always like to follow the rules of engagement, like Tango does. Anger runs through the Tate family blood, and we’re protective of our own. It is what it is.
Dad came back to our house that night, covered in Bill’s blood, snarling with retribution. As he stepped through the door, he walked right over to me, looking down at me with a web of red veins filling the whites of his eyes. “Honey, you always remember the one thing your mother and I always taught you—”
“I know, Dad.” It was always more of Mom telling me and preaching it to me than it was Dad, but the words are forever engrained in my head.
“Know everyone. Trust no one,” he warns me.
“Except me,” Tango pipes in. “She promised to trust me.”
Eli looks over at Tango with a proud grin, the anger on his face slowly melting away. “You she can trust, son. You’re the only man I will ever trust too. You are the exception. You’re it.”
TEASER
- TAG -
PROLOGUE
A SHADOW GROWS on the ground in front of me, and I know only one of us is walking out alive. It will be me. The echo of gravel crunching beneath his feet puts all my senses on alert. I hear the hollow short breaths wheezing from his weary lungs. The pursuit is up, and I dig my fingertips into the brick wall behind me, bracing myself to face this asshole once and for all.
The shadow slinks into the light and a knot pinches in my stomach as a translucent red dot wobbles through the space in front of me, which seems to rest directly on my chest. My focus is pulled further into the conjoining street, and I’m able to draw an invisible line between the red glow and the hollow barrel held in his right hand. My throat swells around my tonsils. I can do this.
But then there’s Krissy.
Blood-stained fingers of his left hand are woven around a knife and splayed across my sister’s mouth, the blade pointed straight down into her collarbone. One wrong move and she’s done. I never would have thought her luck would be so poor.
The corners of his lips curl upward into a sinful grin, revealing even more blood. He’s only holding the knife up to her throat for effect—so he can drag out every second of Krissy’s miserable death.
Her dark cobalt eyes are large and appear silver from the reflecting street lights, which illuminates her fear even more. Her chest heaves in and out. In and out, faster and faster, fighting with the last breaths she will take. Time has stopped around us. The world is out-of-focus, and it’s just her and me—the little girl kneeling next to me at our dollhouse, the little girl sitting at the other side of our tea party table, the young woman whose shoulder has gathered so many of my fallen tears. The loss of her will make my life meaningless once gone. I will always protect you, I want to say. But it’s too late.
His hand concealing the pistol lifts again, and the red dot moves up and down from my chest to my neck, swaying with each of his breaths.
“Last chance to tell me where Daddy is,” he snarls in a gravelly shout.
If I knew, I would have told him way before things ended up like this. My sister should not have to die in his place, and neither should I. I would happily take that bullet for my sister, except I assume he has more than one bullet.
I slip my hand into the back waistband of my pants and curl my finger around the trigger. I have one chance. Please, God. Save her. My hands spring forward, and I pull the trigger without having time to focus on the target.
The bullet grazes the side of his torso and a simultaneous bite of pain burns through my shoulder. I’ve been shot, as well. The right side of my body is immediately numb. My knees buckle and my body tumbles to the gravel as if pulled down by a magnetic force.
His grin returns and it glows sinisterly in the dark. He takes one look at my sister and pulls the knife through her throat with one smooth glide. My heart hammers against my ribcage. I can’t feel anything, yet I’ve never felt so much.
Krissy’s thick, wavy onyx-colored hair spills over her flushed cheeks as her head crashes to the pavement. Her eyes are still staring at me, but the girl inside will soon be gone.
The asshole looks back at me. I’m next. And that’s fine. I don’t close my eyes. I will stare death in the face. I am braver than what stands between me and whatever exists on the other side of this life.
Sirens scream in the distance and the glow of lights bounce off the surrounding walls. I had called the cops when I found his note on Krissy’s bed, and I told them where they supposedly were. I’m almost caught up to them, and I’ll do whatever it takes to save Krissy.
While it only took them several minutes to find us, they were seconds too late. Krissy’s neck was already slashed.
As I acknowledge the sirens, the asshole points his blood-covered finger at me, and the corner of his lip pulls up into a sneer as he shoves the knife into a holster on his leg. He darts around the corner, clutching his wounded area with both hands.
I drag myself over to my sister’s lifeless body. I sweep the hair off of her pale flesh and place a kiss on her forehead. “I will kill him, Krissy, even if I die trying. And if I don’t die, I will live for both of us, and I will retaliate on everyone who has done you wrong. I won’t ever trust anyone again. I’m so sorry I let you down.”
I lay my head on her chest, listening to the slow beats of her heart. I pray for the next thump until there is only silence within her.
Now I pray for her peace, and I wish death upon her murderer.
CHAPTER ONE
CALI
LOOK AT ME. You know you want to.
I slide my pen in-between my teeth and arch my left brow slightly. Eye contact. Check.
I love a good first day of college, even if I should have already graduated a year ago. The scent of floor cleaner, paper, and whiteboard markers waft through the air. Everyone is dressed neatly in back-to-school attire and brand new shoes. These are things students seem excited about; looking the new year head on with a fresh start. I look at it as a ticking ti
me bomb. There’s no telling how long I’ll be able to stay at this school. Sometimes it’s a week; sometimes it’s a couple of months—usually not much longer. It’s been a couple weeks since I moved here, and I have a feeling I won’t be breaking any records in this location.
The classroom is moderately sized, fit to seat thirty students at most. The seats are being filled in slowly, and the professor is playing with a pen at the podium, studying each student who enters the classroom. Most professors decorate their rooms with articles, pictures, and diagrams. Not this guy. The walls are all empty except for the whiteboard behind the podium. But even the whiteboard is blank.
“Welcome to Cognitive Psychology,” the professor says. His voice is gruff and intentionally sultry—it sounds forced, like he’s reeling in his bait.
I’ve gotten too good at this no blinking game. It works the fastest; large doll-like eyes are his weakness. Therefore, I earned his attention five minutes ago, and I can see a nervous twitch developing behind his creepy dirt-brown eyes. What an act. A teacher should be used to students staring at him.
I glide the pen slowly out from between my teeth and curl my tongue around it before sliding it out from between my lips.
He clears his throat. Check. “I’m going to be handing out the syllabus now. Why don’t you all take a few minutes to look it over, and I’ll be happy to answer any questions you might have.” He lifts the stack of papers from his desk and wets the tip of his thumb with the side of his tongue. I bite down on the bottom corner of my lip in response. I know he can see me.
Lucky for him, I’m sitting in the front row. He stands before me with an unsteady hand and fumbles through the papers before handing one to me. A strand of his perfectly quaffed auburn hair falls over his forehead. Keeping my focus steady, I inventory every freckle on his face, noting the slight cleft in the center of his chin and memorizing the location of the slight bend in the middle of his nose. I can hear the fluctuation of his breaths. They quicken as his hand reaches out to mine.
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