Stolen Vengeance: Slye Temp book 6

by Dianna Love

  “Just show me my car,” she demanded in hushed voice.

  Dingo muttered something unintelligible, but towed her over and put her hand on the car. She carefully opened the door and the light inside came on.

  Dingo cursed lividly.

  But thank God, the guy who’d carjacked her hadn’t been the sharpest tool in Navarro’s shed, because her purse was still there on the seat. She snatched it and closed the door just enough to kill the light, but without making a noise.

  “You didn’t get your matching shoes,” he grumbled.

  “I needed my purse,” she hissed low at him. “It has my phone and gun dammit.”

  “Shh.”

  She wouldn’t have let him shush her but their lives were at risk after all.

  Dingo towed her along, guiding her away from anything she’d fall over. When he stopped again, he said, “Pull out your Walther. I need both hands to open this overhead door slowly.”

  “They’ll hear you.”

  “Only if they’re standing on this side of the building.”

  “That’s a big only.”

  He kissed her cheek gently. “That’s why you’re holding the gun so you can cover me while I handle the overhead door. Just be ready, and if I don’t take down whoever might be out there once my hands are free, you get the second shot at him.”

  “I might shoot you. I can’t see shit.” She fished out her gun and held it at her side.

  “Don’t shoot unless I tell you. If it comes to that, I’ll hit the ground before I tell you to shoot.”

  No he wouldn’t.

  Dingo would stand between her and a wall of bullets. How had she ever convinced herself that she’d stopped loving him? Being with Henri had been a Band-Aid on a deep wound, a cosmetic attempt at patching up her emotions.

  Dingo positioned her exactly the way he wanted her standing and trusted her not to kill him.

  Or maybe it wasn’t trust, because Dingo didn’t trust.

  He probably thought allowing her to cover him gave her a comfort level, but she’d bet his first concern was making sure she was in a position to defend herself in case he died.

  Oh, God, don’t let him die.

  She had to stop thinking and just pay attention.

  This overhead door sounded smaller than the one she’d driven her car through, but it still made a soft metallic whine as he pulled it up slowly. Sounded like he’d only moved it maybe a foot, not high enough to get a vehicle through.

  She could hear him moving and then he was up against her ear, talking so low someone standing on the other side of her wouldn’t hear. “The door is up two feet. I see a man seventy feet away toward the rear of the building and facing the back corner. The street access is ten steps away on our right. We need to get out of here fast and silently.”

  She hoped he had some plan once they were outside this building or Navarro would catch them before they made a mile.

  Rolling under the door when he told her, Valene pushed up on her knees, one palm in squishy stuff. She hoped it was only mud that she wiped on her pants.

  She’d been moving blind until they reached the street where light fought its way down through the rain driving sideways.

  Looking over to the right, she saw men crowded around the entrance to Navarro’s building. More men than she’d seen when she first arrived.

  Navarro was calling in reinforcements.

  How did Dingo expect to get past that?

  Dingo tugged her to the left and they were off again, hugging the front of the next building and sidestepping to minimize their profiles. Then Dingo dropped out of sight, yanking her with him into an empty parking lot.

  She squinted to make out the hulking silhouette of some vehicle.

  Dingo opened the unlocked passenger door, tucked her in and ran around to climb in behind the steering wheel.

  The inside smelled old, really old, and a smoker had owned it, but she’d had to clean that smell out of her T-bird when she bought it. “What is this?”

  “’68 GTO.” He said it with pride. Men.

  The car was almost fifty years old. “Are we stealing it?”

  “I did that earlier.” He cranked it and the old engine rumbled to life.

  “That’s just wrong.”

  “I’m not keeping it, Val. I won’t screw the people who owned it.” Then he made her day when he said, “No one will question this car driving through the hood. Lie down so there’s only one silhouette.”

  She eased her way down onto her left side, since that side hadn’t hit a hardwood floor with nothing to block her fall. For the first time since getting carjacked, relief flooded her, and her tight muscles started griping from the abuse her body had been through.

  Dingo drove slowly down the street.

  She wanted to see where they were going, but not enough to struggle back up to a sitting position. His hand came down on her arm and he started stroking her, soothing the tremors that still hadn’t stopped. Her eyelids fluttered once, twice, then she was gone.

  ~*~*~*~

  Dingo watched for headlights running up behind him, but none came.

  Valene’s chest rose and fell with gentle breaths. She no longer shook like a leaf in a hurricane. He couldn’t take his hand off her. Needed that connection of knowing she was here with him. Alive. Safe.

  What the hell had she gotten herself into?

  He should have been here to help her with money and figuring out how to deal with her dad. Hard to do that when he’d avoided the very person who needed his help, too afraid that seeing her happy without him would have stomped on the last pieces of his heart.

  Still, coming back around with no intention of staying would have given her false hope. He’d done that before and then sworn he wouldn’t do it to her again. Bad enough that she’d married some bloke less than a year after Dingo had left. The time they’d spent together before that had been ... hell, he didn’t know how to label that time since he’d never stayed around anyone else that long, but he hadn’t expected her to grab the next guy she met and marry him.

  He wasn’t bailing on her this time. Not without making sure she was in a better place than she was right now.

  She needed someone to depend on.

  He was going to be that man and damn the consequences.

  She slept for the next seventy minutes while he drove northeast to the only place he knew would be safe for both of them.

  He was yawning by the time he pulled off the main highway, drove another ten minutes to a gravel road and grimaced when the GTO bottomed out as the road climbed for a quarter mile.

  When it ended, he lifted his phone and entered a code into a text then hit send. In six seconds, what appeared to be an old fence gate with a rusted chain fanned open. Vines and weeds hid the machinery.

  As soon as Dingo passed through, the gate returned to its nondescript position.

  He drove a twisted path through trees until he reached a hill camouflaged with overgrowth that would make it pretty impossible to detect from the air. The garage door opened the minute a sensor picked up his approach.

  He’d written the computer security programs for these buried safe houses, and the garage door would rise at this point only if the gate code had been entered correctly one time. He’d intended to talk Valene into hiding out here the minute he arrived in LA this week, so he’d rewritten the program during his flight. If he hadn’t, opening the gate would have alerted Josh or someone else at Slye keeping an eye on their assets.

  Sabrina had four safe houses closer inside LA, all better equipped for missions. This was one of ten special ones she’d set up during the two years she’d gone underground after the busted UK job. She wanted to know she had places her people could hide that were fully stocked and hidden from the air if things got too hot.

  When Dingo parked the car in the garage and turned it off, the quiet jarred Valene awake.

  She sat up as the garage door was closing. “Where are we?”

  Here came
the questions.

  He’d disengaged the interior light on his way to find Valene, so it was dark as a tar pit. “Sit still and I’ll come around to get you.”

  On his way around the car, he flipped on a light that hung over a worktable and turned to see her door open.

  He met her at the car door when she pushed to her feet. Right as her knees buckled. He caught her and she hooked her arms around his neck.

  Finally, he could pull her close and hold her next to his chest, feel her heart pounding. Very much alive.

  After a couple of long breaths, she eased away and stood on her own. “Back to my first question.”

  “We’re safe.” He tried not to be stung when she pushed away from him. He still wanted to hold her. Instead, he opened the door to a contemporary kitchen with white cabinets and stainless steel. With a couple of switches flipped, lights came on under cabinets and into the great room on the other side of the kitchen. Big overstuffed sofas and chairs covered in tan leather were strewn around with an eye to decorating that Dingo had never had.

  Not a lot of call for it when there was no one place he called home.

  Valene strode past him and entered the big room. “How many people live here? This is huge. You could easily seat fifteen with everyone slouching.”

  Four big-screen TV monitors hung in different places and the ceiling peaked, held up by thick teak beams. Dingo said, “It sleeps twelve comfortably in six bedrooms.” Three large bedrooms with two oversized single beds in each one plus three master bedrooms with king-size beds.

  Taking in every nuance of the room as she turned in the center, Valene said, “I don’t understand.”

  “It’s built into the ground, we’re on the top floor...”

  She shook her head. “No, I mean you. This. Everything.” She followed that up with a look that waited for an answer.

  His voice held a gentle warning. “Val–”

  “Never mind. We’ll never get past your secret life. I don’t know why I do this to myself. Are we still in LA?”

  “Pretty much. We’re on the outskirts.”

  She smiled with a look of someone who just realized she’d been fooled. “But you’re not going to tell me exactly where, are you? I’m surprised you didn’t put a sack over my head.”

  He should have.

  If it’d been anyone else, he would have, but she’d been through enough for one night and thankfully slept the whole way. “Would you like a shower?”

  “Yes.”

  After setting her up downstairs in one of the master suites that came with an assortment of new clothes, he backed out and stood there with his hands on the doorframe, staring at the closed door and wanting to shove it open again.

  Chapter 27

  Valene dried her hair on a towel that belonged in the Ritz and tossed it on the closed bidet. This place was as spacious as any mansion she’d been in and she had a feeling that on the outside it would look like somewhere a hobbit lived.

  Not a window in any room so far.

  She’d avoided the mirror since stepping in here and finally gave in to see the damage.

  The bruise on her cheek smarted, was purple and blue, but would turn lovely shades of yellow and green by tomorrow. That hadn’t concerned her.

  She ran her tongue over the split inside her lip. Tolerable. Not as bad as it had felt earlier. She’d suffered her share of dings when training.

  None of that had stopped her from facing the mirror.

  All the damage along her side and sore shoulder could be overlooked.

  She’d been avoiding peering into the eyes of the woman who had wounded Dingo upstairs. “He risks his life for you and you still complain. What’s wrong with you? Yes, you’re hurt. Yes, you want him back the way it was before. Yes, he’s still elusive and distant.”

  Her conscience thumped her between the eyes, forcing her to admit, “But he never misled you, Valene Eklund.” Dingo might not have told her who he was or what he did, but neither had he pretended he was any more than what he presented.

  Would admitting the truth hurt?

  Maybe. If she told him what she really felt, everything she’d tried to hold inside and keep hidden would be out. She’d have to accept that no matter what she said, he was going to leave again. One of her panicked thoughts during the kidnapping had been that she’d failed to tell Dingo she loved him.

  The mirror blurred from fog billowing out of the shower and she closed her eyes, seeing her dad’s face in her mind.

  You’re no coward, Hot Shot.

  I might be, Dad.

  Always remember that there is nothing more important than this moment.

  He’d said those words to her all the time, reminding her that she was in charge of her own destiny. How many times had her dad tried to get her to lighten up and go with the flow?

  Not her. She ran straight ahead, bulldozing her way through life and expecting everyone to think the way she did.

  In a moment of frustration with her, Henri had pointed out, “You can’t force the world to fit your plan. No one can. Confucius said, ‘As the water shapes itself to the vessel that contains it, so a wise man adapts himself to circumstances.’ You expect a man to shape himself to the vessel you choose and be happy while he’s doing it. I’m not able to fit the confining image you have of marriage and, to be honest, I don’t want to be the man who does.”

  Henri had closed the door on their marriage the next day.

  She was hurt, but not the soul-crushing pain of when Dingo never returned. Henri had been her friend since high school. They’d been confidantes.

  In hindsight, she missed that more than she missed the marriage.

  Was it so wrong to be passionate about life and expect others to step up their game?

  Or was Henri right when he accused her of masking her flaws by thinking of them as righteous dedication when a more accurate description would be stubborn and inflexible?

  She ran her hands through her damp hair and opened her eyes. The mirror had cleared and the same unhappy woman stared back at her. When was the last time she’d been genuinely happy? Seven years ago.

  What she wouldn’t give to be as carefree as Henri, to take life as it came at her.

  She had responsibilities. Henri did, too, but he ignored his business goals, left them sulking in the corner, while he built a world around Geoffrey.

  But Henri was happy when he gazed at Geoffrey.

  Grabbing her hair, she stalked to the bedroom. She’d love to let go of everything, just climb into Dingo’s lap, tell him how much she missed him, how amazing he was, how all she’d like to do was spend the night tangled in sheets and warm in his arms.

  Her father had tried to teach her how to let go and throw her cares to the four winds on occasion, but she was too driven to be so casual. Bad things happened when she let go of the reins as she had in the last few months she and Dingo were together. Her father became very ill without her realizing it. Everyone gave up on him, said he would be gone in six months.

  Not her. She didn’t walk when the going got tough and she wouldn’t give up on her father.

  Then don’t give up on Dingo whispered through her mind.

  But how long was she supposed to hold out hope? Seven years? Ten years? A lifetime?

  Enough of this. Dingo would never change and neither would she. Two powerful forces on a collision course would destroy everything around them. If nothing else came of being in this seclusion, she was not leaving without answers.

  After digging around in the closet where clothes had been shelved, she pulled on sweats that fit and a T-shirt she could sleep in later.

  A teak chest of drawers held unopened packages of underwear for both sexes, but she was picky about hers and would just have to go commando until the freshly washed pair dried.

  She looked like hell and shouldn’t care, but she’d pictured being with Dingo again many times in her head and she’d envisioned being irresistible when he walked in.

  Not
a battered wet rat wearing someone else’s frumpy clothes.

  When she made it back up the stairs and across the great room, she inhaled an aroma that had her close to drooling.

  Wouldn’t that be attractive?

  Dingo had on a pair of jeans and no shirt. Three scars marred his toned back. She’d known about the one on his shoulder and on his lower back, both knife wounds from what he’d told her, but the obvious bullet wound was new.

  Not raw new, but new enough for her to wonder if that came from when Dingo had gained the attention of Navarro’s father by saving his life.

  Some men worked out to the point of bulging muscles that were hard as the slate floor she stood on, but Dingo had developed muscles that were powerful and fluid at the same time. She’d seen plenty of attractive male physiques back when she had time to surf often. None of those bodies had drawn her the way Dingo had the first time he’d shrugged out of his clothes.

  What woman would gain Dingo’s heart some day?

  A streak of jealousy a mile wide slashed through her.

  He should be hers. No one would ever love him the way she would, if only she had a chance. But that would happen when hell became the new Antarctica.

  Dingo was busy stir-frying something in a wok that looked as if someone had beaten the metal with a hammer. Two glasses of red wine waited on the center island, with a bottle of merlot.

  A rice cooker steamed on the counter.

  Where had this domestic version of Dingo come from?

  Not a recipe book in sight. Bottles of spices and a half can of green curry paste crowded near the stove, all waiting their turn.

  He whipped around to check the rice cooker and caught sight of her.

  Time stilled, stretched and turned clumsy.

  He cleared his throat. “Hi.”

  “Hi.”

  “Grab a wine.” Then he was back to cooking.

  But not before she saw the uneasiness in his eyes.

  Or had that been sadness?

  Valene reached for one of the wine glasses the way a drowning man went after a life preserver. With enough wine, she could convince herself she hadn’t put that forlorn look in Dingo’s whiskey-colored eyes.