Down & Dirty: Romantic Suspense Series (Dirty Deeds Book 3)

by AJ Nuest

  “No.” He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye and she hesitated, boosting her chin.

  Something about the uneasy set of his shoulders, or maybe the way he shifted around on the bed as if he couldn’t find a comfortable position, had her second-guessing if he’d just fed her a line.

  Not that he would. If there was one thing she was certain of, it was that Ben Archer didn’t lie. Not to her, not to anyone, as far as she knew. But still…

  She squinted. “What aren’t you telling me?”

  He cursed. Low and gruff and filled with enough frustration the hair rose on her arms from a full-body chill.

  Shit. She’d found a lose thread, all right, and she wasn’t about to sit here and play dumb as if her smartest move wasn’t following it through to the source.

  Sitting back, she revisited the past few days with a new set of eyes. The fighting, Ben’s insistence he couldn’t tell her what he was hiding. The way she’d spotted him at the crime scene on the roof of that building. Cutting in at the wedding and how he’d refused to let her out of his sight.

  All of it. Every single time they’d had trouble centered around one person and one person only.

  No. Tanner smacked her hand to the top of her head and Ben jerked, placing his palm on her lower back.

  Casper. No matter which direction she turned, they all led directly toward Casper.

  But that couldn’t be right. Her stomach pitched. She slapped that same hand over her mouth. If the two men were one and the same, not only Trey, but everyone they knew was in danger.

  Scrambling across the bed, she grabbed her cell and pulled up the picture Xander had forwarded in his text. Dammit, now his messages made sense. “Xander texted me that everyone had been locked down inside the manor. But, please, Ben. Please tell me it’s not him.”

  A glance at the screen, and he cursed again before swiping his palm down his face. “In my opinion, Vaheed Shahzar is Casper Addison.” He closed his eyes, posture deflating. “But the son of a bitch is on to me, Tanner, and I can’t prove a thing.”

  Chapter 17

  Of the three military psychiatrists Ben had been ordered to see following his discharge from the hospital, they’d all done their best to shrink-wrap his brain against the side effects of PTSD with the same piece of uninspiring advice.

  Talking about it will make you feel better.

  He blinked and found himself face to face with Molly’s computer-generated image of Adder, the distorted resemblance to Trey and the way Tanner gripped her cell so damn tight her fingertips had whitened around the case.

  No question about it, that suggestion had been as much bullshit then as it was now.

  Prying the device from her hand, Ben shut down the app and tossed her phone to the bed. Reliving the day Vaheed Shahzar had stolen everyone he cared about never brought him any relief. And remembering about how badly he’d fucked up sure as shit didn’t dull the memory of the eight soldiers who had been counting on him to do the right thing.

  The only thing he ever felt was empty. Soul sucked drier than an Afghani desert. Heart shriveled and pruned in the gaping hole that resided in his chest. Stomach churning with the undeniable self-hatred and rage that had always prompted him to never get too emotionally attached.

  “I’m assuming Molly sent that picture along once you guys figured out I was missing?” He turned and alarm dove through the acid swilling in his gut.

  Bright shock had whitened Tanner’s cheeks to an exact match of her fingers, a perfect replica of the disgust he’d carried with him every day since glittering in her eyes.

  Jesus, he was an asshole. He never should’ve laid out his past like some post-apocalyptic battle plan. At the very least, he should’ve held back some of the details in an effort to keep her from getting upset.

  He knew where his failures would lead them, and the idea he’d let her down along with everyone else jammed him up worse than the endless guilt over how he should’ve been the one to die that day in the desert.

  “Oh, my God.” She launched across the mattress and a grunt punched from his lungs as she wrapped her arms and legs around him, raining soft kisses over his cheeks and eyelids, his forehead and temples, covering every available inch until he couldn’t think straight.

  “He did it to you again, didn’t he?” Leaning back, she slid one hand into his cow-licked hairline and ran her thumb along the deep scar that notched the head of his left eyebrow. “He lured you into a trap just like he did the first time. When he got you here.” She dotted her lips over the crease, angled his jaw and found a small divot in his beard where the hair refused to grow. “And here.” Another shower of kisses, and she moved on to a pit that rode the slope of his neck. “And here.”

  His eyes slid shut as she tended the raised bump marring the top of his shoulder. Good Christ, the woman made it impossible not to love her with every part of his broken-down, undeserving soul.

  The memories slowly ebbed to an ache he finally found bearable. His heart kicked and sputtered back to life. And with each mark she found littering his body—the gash denting the inside of his bicep, the small burn hole staining his pec—the unrelenting void in his chest groaned and the vacuum collapsed under the strain of being filled.

  By her. Always and forever her.

  Cupping her cheek, he brought her to the one place she’d missed, kissing her until nothing but her lips and tongue and the way she helped him battle his way out of the darkness remained.

  Damn, he was so far gone on her, it was like she’d placed some weird hex on him that had rewired all the connections in his head. Keeping her close, he rested his forehead against hers and took a few short seconds to breathe her in. He’d only ever wanted what was best for her, whatever and however long that took up to and including his help in locating her family. But inside, reason and worry had taken up two opposing sides of a very wide battlefield, and neither one was looking to budge an inch.

  Logically, he’d be the last to argue she’d more than proven herself capable. Not that he’d even needed her to do that in the first place but, shit. If it wasn’t for her, there was every chance he’d still be tied to a pole under that maintenance building, doing everything possible to keep his lip zipped while his recruits took turns wearing out their fists on his face.

  And yet, emotionally, she meant everything to him. The minute he told her the few things he was sure of, he knew exactly what she would do.

  For him to stand around while she concocted some screwy plan to face off against Adder landed right around the same place as if she’d told him she was prepping to grapple up the side of the Sears Tower. Without a safety harness. Or a net. Or a roll of fucking duct tape so she wouldn’t careen to her death from the high wind.

  Easing away from her, he stroked his knuckles down the side of her cheek. Hell, maybe he should’ve followed his instincts and grabbed his tools to nail the front door shut while he’d had the chance. With the way she owned him, he’d be happy to stay marooned in this bedroom with her until they were old and gray.

  “Why, Ben? For God’s sake, how?” Gripping his shoulders, she searched his face. “When I got to your condo, the doorman said you’d left so fast he assumed you’d gotten a call. But what happened? Why did you even drive out to the preserve in the first place?”

  He grunted. At least she’d started them out with something that had an easy answer. The same one that seemed to handle every other question in his life. “Because of you.”

  Confusion creased the flawless patch of skin between her brows, and he stretched across the pillows to snatch his phone off the nightstand. “About a forty minutes after I got home from the wedding, I received a text that contained the address to the preserve along with this, sent as an attachment.”

  He tapped the recording and then hit speaker, waiting…and watching…as Tanner’s voice echoed from his phone.

  “I’m not stupid. And I’m not about to sit around, waiting for you to make a decision. Tell me what y
ou’re hiding, Ben. We’ll have it out right here, right now. All indicators point toward pull the trigger. It’s only a matter of time.”

  Her mouth dropped open, expression blank. A second later, she grimaced and a shiver shook her hard enough, her ass shimmied over his thighs. “Okay, that sounds like me, all right, but the way it jumps around is downright creepy. Like snippets of a conversation got mixed up and…” She startled. “Wait, play it again.”

  He cocked a brow and tapped the recording a second time, listening as she narrowed her gaze and stared at a patch of wall over his head. The message ended, and he closed the app before returning his phone to the nightstand. “It’s from—”

  “The wedding.” She snapped her fingers, then wagged a sharp nail in his face. “That fight we had behind the curtain. But it’s been cut up. The words rearranged. Geez, hearing myself talk like that is freakin’ me out.”

  “Yeah, I had the same reaction.” Not that his anxiety over the way someone had been listening to them argue had made a difference.

  It was the message itself that had lit a fire under his ass. The meaning hidden inside it that had him scrambling for his truck without one thought as to whether or not he was heading into a trap.

  The minute he’d heard those words, he’d known whoever would go to the trouble of cutting up her voice and splicing it back together had done so to communicate one thing.

  To levy a threat. Using Tanner as bait. And the idea she might be suffering the same torture Charlie had survived just a few months back had been more than enough motivation for him.

  “Casper.” A harsh breath gusted from Tanner’s lips, and she shook her head. “He must’ve followed us and caught everything we said on his phone.”

  Unless, of course, he’d managed to draft a few of Byrne’s lackeys onto his team. Ben shifted uneasily against the pillows. “Either him or someone else who was working for him at the wedding.”

  She snorted. “Like who? None of the guests would’ve gone to those lengths without mentioning it to Eden or Kelly, even if they thought eavesdropping on us was some sort of practical joke. And, besides that, Xander had the place surrounded by…” Her shoulders fell. “Oh, Jesus. You think Casper somehow got to the Feds?”

  Ben pulled a measured breath and slowly exhaled. Nearly twenty-four hours of being interrogated by his recruits, and he wasn’t about to dismiss involvement at any level of law enforcement. Especially when it came to Tanner and making sure he didn’t repeat the past at the expense of everyone at Dirty Deeds.

  “You were the one who broke into the building and got me out.” He jerked his chin at her. “Any of the guards seem familiar to you?”

  Another frown, and she propped her elbow on the back of her hand, pinching her bottom lip. “You know, now that you mention it, yeah. I could’ve sworn I’d seen the one outside the back door before.” She squinted. “I didn’t think he was from the wedding, but maybe…” Tipping her face toward the ceiling, she tapped the edge of her chin. “God, why can’t I place him? It’s driving me nuts.”

  Ben had to hand it to her. It was a sheer testament to her observation skills she recognized the guy at all. Far as he knew, she’d spent minimal time with the group, and across the board, they’d done a decent job of concealing their identities under those black ski masks. “I’m thinking you may have knocked his lights out once or twice on the sparring mat.”

  Tanner’s hand hit her chest with a loud smack. “Holy shit. Are you now saying the Chicago PD has been compromised?” If possible, her huge blue eyes grew bigger still. “Oh my God, Ben. If that’s true, there’s no telling who we can and can’t trust.”

  Exactly. Though knowing she’d finally grasped the epic clusterfuck they were in certainly didn’t increase his comfort level. When it came to facing off against Adder, Ben could only hope and pray that realization went some way toward getting her to listen. “The short list is you, me, Xander, Charlie, Molly and Trey, of course. Eden and Kelly, Mocha and the DeFrancos, and based on the conversation I had with D’Avella, I’m guessing the cap and ADA Phin Fiore are both a safe bet.”

  The question was whether or not those few would be enough. Ben rested his hands on Tanner’s hips. They certainly wouldn’t be when compared to the number of men who’d been at the preserve. Shit, if his instincts were right and Adder turned out to be Shahzar, he probably had half the thugs in the city under his thumb. “As for the why, they wanted my access codes to the manor.”

  Tanner lifted her brows. “The ones Xander gave us?”

  Ben nodded. They each had their own, personalized and handed out by the Brofessor in a show of good faith. Along with a firm handshake and a penetrating stare that guaranteed certain death if a person ever got it in their head to leak the information.

  To Ben’s knowledge, Xander had yet to offer Adder those same keys to the kingdom, and despite not knowing if the Brofessor had held off on purpose or doing so had been nothing more than an oversight on his part, there was no denying Adder’s similarities to Trey made that missing piece a valuable asset to have in his possession.

  “Well…” Tanner tossed her hand in the air and it hit her thigh with a slap. “The access codes are one thing, but what about the retinal scanner?”

  “What about it?” Ben held her gaze as the gears wound to full steam ahead within the frame of her dark lashes. Understanding slammed into place, and she clapped that same hand over her mouth.

  Her response stayed muffled by the tight clamp of her fingers, and though he couldn’t state with one hundred percent accuracy, whatever she said sure sounded like I think I’m gonna be sick.

  There. He dipped his chin even though spelling out the details had twisted the shit out of his gut, too. Tanner needed to know. So there’d be zero doubts left about the demented element they were dealing with and just how critical things were bound to get.

  If Adder had really masterminded the plot to get Ben alone at the preserve, there was no doubt the asshole had never planned to let him walk out of there alive. The risk was too great. And that was all the evidence Ben needed to know Adder wouldn’t hesitate to take out anyone who got in his way.

  “We have to leave. Right now.” Tanner tipped off his lap, but Ben firmed his grip and eased her back down to his legs.

  Neither of them was walking out of here until he was confident she understood exactly what was at stake. His days of the blind leading the blind were over. And if he had to piss her off in order to prove it, then that was the gamble he would take.

  Their chance at coming out the other side of this mess unscathed was worth the fight.

  “What are you doing?” She grabbed his wrists and tugged. “We need to get to Charlie and Xander and figure out a way to fix this. To try and come up with a plan to keep Trey safe.”

  A second tip and, yet again, he guided her back to his thighs.

  “Okay.” She sighed. “I’m pretty sure I know where this is going but, Ben, this is who I am. Even if it means putting myself in the line of fire, wanting to help our friends is one thing that’s never gonna change.” Scooting higher, she bracketed his hips with her knees, hands framing his face as she leaned in. “You can’t control this. I know you’re just trying to protect me, but I’m not Felicity.”

  No, she wasn’t Felicity. To him, she was much, much more. And knowing that, he wasn’t sure the who, or why, or how even mattered any more.

  They were still preparing for war.

  “I don’t want you to change, Tanner.” His fingers instinctively flexed at her waist. She was already perfect the way she was, and the real brain bender was how she’d nailed the crux of the problem right there. Good Christ Almighty, the thought alone she’d disappear from his life was enough to have him fighting for air. “And I don’t think you’re Felicity.”

  Another screwy idea he wasn’t about to let race unchecked through her head. Yes, he’d loved City, and at the time had been fully committed to taking their relationship to the next level. But he’d al
ready surpassed that point with Tanner, and while he sure as shit didn’t have the answers to everything, there was one thing he was certain of without fail.

  “I never loved her half as much as I love you.”

  * * * * *

  Tanner stiffened, Ben’s words echoing in her ears like that weird double orchestra pump that accompanied every scene change in Law & Order.

  He loved her?

  She released his face and sat back, hands hanging in the air as if he’d aimed a loaded semi-automatic at her chest. But the deliberate resolve never left his expression for a second, and neither did the telling spark of hope hinting in the flecks of his warm mahogany gaze.

  Had he honestly just said he loved her more than he’d loved Felicity? She lifted a skeptic eyebrow and a part of her died inside as the hope faded from his eyes and doubt crept in to take its place.

  No. He misunderstood. It wasn’t that she didn’t believe him…exactly. Heck, if anything, her heart was squeeing all over the place at just how much she did.

  She knew Ben. Believed he would never admit to something that could potentially make or break what was happening between them unless he truly meant it. In fact, she had more faith in him telling her the truth than she did the sun would come up each day.

  Yet deep down, another louder voice kept shouting above her excitement, and based on the way it was jumping around, waving a red flag in warning, something told her she’d be a complete idiot if she didn’t at least consider the timing.

  There was absolutely no question in her mind that he loved her. Same as there was zero doubt she was going to do everything humanly possible to stay worthy of that amazing gift until the last of her dying days. But whether the light bulb had just flicked on a moment ago or he’d been holding out on her for a while, it seemed pretty damn convenient he’d waited for the subject of Casper to come up before launching that L-bomb on her.

  She crossed her arms. And if the man thought saying the one thing she never, ever could’ve imagined coming out of his mouth was going to turn her into some gushing girly-girl who was ready to stand around waiting for his orders, he was about to be sorely disappointed.