In Too Deep (Strike Force: An Iniquus Romantic Suspense Mystery Thriller Book 1)

by Fiona Quinn

  Deep nodded. “I really appreciate you telling me this. This is all going to help my client. Did the brown-haired man stay here until rescue arrived?”

  “Yeah, he climbed into the back seat. Ambulance came, fire truck, a couple of police cars. She was awake by that time. Guy was keeping her head from moving and helped put on that white collar that they use. He stayed in the car and held the blanket over her while they were cutting her out. Jaws of Life. Pretty amazing invention. Still, it took a while.”

  “Did the brown-haired man stay and give a report to the police?”

  “He took off in the ambulance with her – so I assumed he was off-duty rescue of some kind. Another car pulled up. Some guys got out and pulled credentials from out of their pockets. Even though I could see all this going on through my binoculars, it wasn’t like I could head on down and tell them what I saw. With the water there in the gully, ain’t a good way for me to make my way down. When I spotted you standing in the road, I had to go get my truck and drive over here. The day of the accident, though, I thought I’d sit tight for the moment. Do my reporting from back at the house.”

  “Leaving a car out on this turn looks like it might be a hazard. Did they tow the brown-haired man’s car?”

  “The other car I told you about, the one that had pulled up, one of those guys, he goes and gets in the brown-haired man’s car and takes off. That left the driver of the SUV. I didn’t get a make or nothing. If it ain’t a pickup, I don’t really pay the new models no mind. The SUV driver goes over to the cops and shows them his badge – looked like a badge wallet from where I was standing, anyway. There’s some talk between them. He’s pointing to the deer, then the police officer’s on his phone, then everyone packs up and goes home. They didn’t do none of the things you’re doing, taking pictures . . . and what’s that thing in your hand?”

  “This does laser measurement. I can put a plastic tent on one end and aim the laser at it, and it will calculate and store the distance. I can put all of this into my computer, where I have software that can analyze distance and speed of the car at impact, things like that. And this camera,” Deep lifted the Nikon and held it out to Horace, “is 3D, which is pretty cool. See when you look through the lens, it sets up the photograph so it’s not a flat picture but you can see dimensionally.”

  “Pretty fun toys.” They stepped to the side as a car inched past. The man driving waved. “That’s the preacher. He’s probably headed down the road to talk to Maud. She’s newly widowed and in a bad way.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that. I hope he can bring her some comfort. You know, I really appreciate you coming down and introducing yourself to me. Standing out here in the cold. You were telling me how the police packed up that day and went away. Do you think that the accident went uninvestigated?”

  “I’m not for sure. I went back to the house, and I had to think through what I saw. I wanted to figure out if I could explain it in my head. But it sure did look like someone was chasing that woman – wanted to kill her. So I called the police to make a report, you see?”

  Deep rocked back on his heels. “They sent a police officer out to talk to you?”

  “Not police. No, sir. FBI.”

  Deep let his camera hang from its strap and reached up to rub his hand over his head. “Do you remember a name?”

  “I got his card back up at the house,” Horace said.

  “I’d be grateful, sir, if you’d let me take a look at it.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Lacey

  Sunday

  Lacey was quiet on the way back to the house. While Horace Taylor had been talking to Deep, she had laid her seat back and waited. She didn’t want the man to pay any attention to her. And when Deep got into the car, she didn’t want to hear what Horace had said. Deep didn’t push her. But she could tell by the way he kept both of his hands on the wheel and his increased vigilance, looking in his mirrors, that what Horace said set off Deep’s warning buzzers.

  When they got back to Lynx’s, Lacey pulled the hood up over her hair, ducked her head, and moved quickly from the garage to the kitchen door and inside. She sat down in the first chair she reached. Her legs were so rubbery they wouldn’t hold her weight. She was scared to know what Deep had found out.

  Deep came inside and crouched down in front of her. “I need you to watch this. And I need you to hear how close you came to being killed. Whoever Steve is, it looks like he saved your life. Whether he turns out to be a good guy or a bad one, right now, you’re breathing because of him.”

  “The accident?”

  “Was more like an on-purpose. Any idea why a guy pulled a gun on you?”

  Lacey’s jaw set.

  Deep leaned forward until their foreheads touched. “Lacey, I’m going to keep telling you this until you can hear me. I’ve never felt the way I feel about you before with anyone else, ever. I can’t imagine these feelings going away. I hope you’ll learn to trust that – and me.” He lifted his head and looked her in the eyes. “Try really hard to believe me.”

  Lacey nodded and waited. Inside, she knew that was the preface.

  “I hope you can tell me what about that day is scaring you so badly. For everyone’s sake, the sooner, the better. There’s backstory. I know it, and you know it.” He paused, waiting for her to start talking.

  She couldn’t tell him. Her silence was the only thing that was keeping her alive.

  “Lacey, not that I can imagine this is true, but if you’ve done anything wrong, we can face it together. I know really good lawyers, I . . .”

  Lacey rolled her lips in so her mouth formed a straight line. Pushing on his shoulders, Lacey got up and tried to walk away, but Deep caught her wrist. “Take this in the living room and watch it.” He pressed his phone into her hand with the video queued up. “I think we both need a little space. I’ll check on you in a little while.”

  An hour had passed. Lacey had watched the video three times. Each time, a few more of Horace’s words seeped down through the protective filters her brain had constructed. She figured that tomorrow, she’d try to listen again and hear about the gun pointed at her head and how Steve had knocked it away. How he had crawled over the seat of the crumpled car, and how he stayed with her until she was away and safe. He had kept watch over her ever since. But why? He obviously knew her. Well, maybe not knew her but knew something about her before the Silverado hit her car, before the gunman pulled the pistol. Lacey’s mind searched back, but she couldn’t find a pickup truck anywhere in her memory of that day.

  It didn’t mean she didn’t know why it was chasing her down. And that was her sticking point.

  Lacey walked over to the TV and clicked it on. It was tuned to some children’s show. She didn’t care; she simply wanted noise that came from outside of her head. Something that would drown out the voice that told her what a royal screw-up she was.

  Deep seemed to take the blare of the TV as his signal that she was done thinking. He walked in and stared at the screen. “Really?” He quirked his brow at her. “Bubble Puppies?” He picked up the remote and moved over to the couch, where he unceremoniously pulled her to standing so he could lay down its length, and then drew her down to lay in front of him. He tucked the lap blanket over her and wrapped his heavy arm around her torso. Lacey lay perfectly content in his arms. She was glad that the discordant emotions that had bump into each other in the kitchen had smoothed out. Her head was pillowed between his shoulder and bicep. He rested his head on the arm of the sofa, where it was easy for him to bend forward and kiss her hair.

  “Comfortable?” he asked.

  “Yes, thank you,” Lacey said, pushing backward and burrowing a little bit closer.

  Deep channel surfed until he got to the weather station.

  Lacey tipped her chin up so she could catch his eye. “The weather?”

  “What?” he asked. “It’s good to know what’s blowing our way.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Deep


  Sunday Evening

  Deep wrapped Lacey tightly against him so he wouldn’t jostle and wake her, but her hip was grinding painfully into his hard-on, and he needed to shift her to the side. She had fallen asleep almost instantly. And not a delicate lady-like sleep—she was snoring, and his shirt was growing damp where drool dribbled out from her slackened jaw. When he met her at the gallery, he could never imagine Lacey being this comfortable.

  She isn’t comfortable, he reminded himself. She’s traumatized. He knew from his work—saving victims from war zones and mass disasters, from hiding witnesses and stealing back hostages—that one of the things that they all seemed to have in common was the sleep of the dead. They swam so deep in their delta waves that nothing brought them back to the surface. And then, as their sleep glided into the shallows, where nightmares could torment them, they’d moan and writhe and talk in their sleep.

  “You don’t know me.” That’s what Lacey had been shouting last night. He had heard her in her bed, pitching around with a nightmare. Listened to her muttering under her breath words that he couldn’t quite make out. He’d pulled on a pair of sweats to go sit by her bed and hold her hand. But by the time he got to her, she had descended into a different layer of sleep—one that allowed her to breathe steadily—and he didn’t want to disturb her. But it was hard to walk out of her room.

  He didn’t know her. That had been the steady drumbeat pulsing in his mind since the day he first laid eyes on her in the gallery, and fell for her. Hard. He had tried to talk himself out of his feelings. But that was kind of stupid. Feelings weren’t something you could wish away, and they sure as heck didn’t listen to rational argument. You had them, and you dealt with them. And when they were uncomfortable, you got busy focusing on something else. That technique had gotten him through many a break-up in his past, but it had done nothing to get Lacey out of his blood stream.

  He remembered back when they met at the gallery, his first thought was “high maintenance,” then she reached out to introduce herself and shook his hand. Her hand was small and soft and absolutely female. When their fingers touched, his heart beat so powerfully that he could hardly speak. Neither one of them let go. He was like that kid with his first crush — completely tossed end over end by her touch. Ever since then, she walked his dreams at night. He found himself playing sappy love songs.

  The day Lacey came by Iniquus to apologize for her role in the art theft, he’d hoped that she’d tell him that Steve wasn’t in the picture anymore and, yes, she would like to go out to dinner with him, if the invitation was still on the table. But she had turned to him, and held out her hand to say good-bye. It had killed him. This was killing him still.

  I don’t know her, he reminded himself for the umpteenth time. He bent his head and brushed his lips over her forehead. Last night he’d gone over the photos again and again – the ones he knew were of her. He could easily tell her from the mystery woman. Lacey had a softer, finer mouth, intelligence instead of cunning in her eyes. He had studied the clothes Lacey chose, and they all seemed to have the same kind of armored appearance. Well-tailored from expensive fabrics, she presented as a refined lady. Her jewelry was always large and heavy around her throat like the gorgets the medieval knights wore into battle.

  Lynx had picked up on that, too. The clothes she brought to Lacey were mostly jewel-toned sweaters that made Lacey’s hair look like sable. The fabrics, though, that Lynx brought were softer and more pliant than the clothes Lacey wore to the office. He thought they suited Lacey better. She had a gentler, kinder spirit than those suits were meant to suggest.

  The sweaters Lynx had chosen all had cowl necks or turtlenecks. All of them covered Lacey’s throat. When Lacey felt threatened, she’d pull the wool up higher and covered her chin. Lacey wasn’t an embattled knight, and she wasn’t a damsel in distress. She was a woman playing out of her league. Whether she was a victim, whether she had committed a crime — that he didn’t know. All he really knew was that even in the heat of the battles he’d waged in Afghanistan, he’d never been this scared before in his life.

  Laying there on the couch, with the weatherman in the background, predicting more ice storms, Deep found himself squeezing Lacey a little too tightly.

  “I’m sorry,” she mumbled, lifting her head, and wiping her wrist across her mouth. “I fell asleep.”

  “You passed out.” He grinned down at her.

  She scooted around until she was laying with one leg running alongside of his and the other tossed over him. She stroked a hand down his chest, past his belt, and smiled as it came to rest on his hard-on.

  She pushed herself higher to kiss his mouth. It started out with soft pressure, but when a little moan parted her lips, Deep’s hormones took over. His fingers tangled into her hair as their tongues danced together. She pushed herself up on top of him, straddling his hips, with her knees bent beneath her.

  When she lifted up so she could rock herself along the ridge of his cock, his breath caught. They stared into each other’s eyes as she moved. She arched back, letting her breath push from her lungs followed by a groan.

  Deep stilled her with his hands on her hips.

  She looked back down into his eyes, her focus hazy. Her panting told him to take her. There was nothing he wanted more at that moment. Nothing.

  Except not to hurt her.

  “Lacey.” He’d meant for his voice to focus her, but in his head, it sounded more like a benediction. He cleared his throat and tried again. “Lacey.” This time it came out more forcibly, and she stilled. “We can’t.” Deep wasn’t able to disguise the regret in his voice.

  “Yes, we can.” She smiled seductively as she bent to kiss him again, long and soft, a woman’s kiss that held a little mewl of need.

  His dick pulsed and drew almost all of the blood from his head, making rational thought nearly impossible. He sucked in some air, hoping oxygen would help, as he lifted her off him so she was kneeling with her thighs wide, her hands on her knees, and a look of disbelief on her face. His focus dropped to the sweet spot between her legs where he wanted to play. He dragged his gaze back up to her eyes. “It wouldn’t be ethical. You’re under my protection.”

  She tipped her head. “Is that an Iniquus rule?”

  “Yes—an important one.” He worked to bring conviction into his voice and gain control of the situation. “Someone in danger might make decisions they normally wouldn’t make — a kind of psychological duress. I wouldn’t make love to someone who had too much to drink for the same reason. They weren’t making their decision from a place of clarity.”

  “Because the person you’re guarding is subordinate?”

  Good. The more he talked from the rational part of his brain, the more he had a handle on the situation. “Only in terms of dependence. Yes, the people I’m guarding depend on my skills to stay safe. It’s not about me being superior. It’s about roles. And getting emotionally involved in cases.”

  “I thought you were emotionally involved,” Lacey said with a scowl.

  Deep let out a wry laugh. “That would be a gross understatement.”

  “So this Iniquus ‘don’t fuck your subordinates’ rule — you remember, don’t you, that I’m not a client? I’m . . .” She stalled out.

  Did she really just say ‘fuck’? His cock pulsed. “What? What are you, Lacey?”

  She didn’t answer him for a moment. It looked, from where he was sitting—as she twitched her lips to the side—like she was searching for a good word to toss out there.

  “I don’t share,” he filled in for her. “As long as Steve’s in the picture, we aren’t going to happen.”

  “Steve’s been out of the picture since I chose to call you and not him. And to be honest, he’s been fading from the landscape since I met you.”

  “But all those months — you didn’t call me until you were in danger.”

  “I didn’t call you all those months because I was in danger, I didn’t want you involved. Then
, I wasn’t thinking, just calling.” She wrinkled her brow and looked at him pointedly. “And you didn’t call me, either. It was your ‘no means no’ rule.”

  Deep caught her words about being in danger and filed them away. He was having trouble keeping his brain in charge as testosterone pumped through his body.

  “If you trust a girl’s no to mean no,” she crossed her arms at her waist and pulled her top off, leaving her breasts on display in white lace and pink ribbons, “why wouldn’t you trust a girl’s yes to mean yes?” She sent him a seductive smile that clipped the last thread of his restraint. She batted her eyelashes. “What if I were to ask pretty please with sugar and cream on top?” She licked her lips as she rocked forward on the couch, leaning in to kiss him. “Please?”

  She twisted until she was in his lap with her arm wrapped around his neck. The “please” became a hum, a siren song. And Deep did the only thing a man in this situation could do. He scooped her up and carried her to his bed to please her.

  ***

  Deep sat with his back against the headboard, looking down at Lacey. He’d been up for a while, but couldn’t bring himself to leave her side after the night they’d spent in each other’s arms. He couldn’t remember ever just lying in bed. Before, when his eyes opened, he was ready to get on with his day. But today, yeah, he wasn’t ready yet to break the spell.

  The room was dim, with the only light coming from the street lamps. Dawn had not yet crawled up from behind the horizon. The sky was still dark. It was really nice to sit here and watch Lacey relaxed and peaceful in her sleep. The longer she could sleep, the better. He smiled at the fan of silky brown hair that draped over her shoulders. Lacey shifted to wrap an arm around his leg, and Deep reached around to tuck the duvet over her.