The Mammoth Book of Hot Romance

by Sonia Florens

  The next thing he saw was Leah on the floor in front of him, beside an overturned couch and table somebody had been using for cover.

  She was crouched, one knee jammed into Preston’s scrawny back. Her blue eyes looked calm and focused, and her braid, uniform and body armour were barely mussed. With very steady hands, she held the barrel of her SIG against Preston’s temple. Good. At least if she had to shoot the meth-addled fucker, the bullet wouldn’t trace straight back to her assigned weapon.

  Preston had his toothpick arms stretched above his greasy brown hair. Sweat soaked through his white T-shirt, and the stench of urine rose from his perpetually dirty jeans. Carson saw that the man was shaking.

  He strode over to the prone figure, crammed the barrel of his MP5 against Preston’s other temple and said, “The kid that got snatched from the valley today. Where is he?”

  “I don’t know nothing about—aaaahhh!”

  Carson knew Leah had used her leverage to increase the pressure on Preston’s spine. He could almost hear bones grindi beneath her well-placed knee.

  “He’s my nephew,” Leah said in the coldest voice Carson had ever heard. Shit, she could scare him in a blind alley, sounding that pissed.

  “Who the fuck are you?” Preston whined.

  Carson gave the bastard’s head a little punch with the snout of the MP5. “She’s with me.”

  Right about then, Preston must have processed just exactly how fucked he was, and his jaw came unhinged. “It’s none of my guys – Christ that hurts! Cut me a break here, Taylor. I didn’t do nothing to your woman or her people. It wasn’t me, I’m telling you. Not me or any of my guys.”

  “You don’t have any guys,” Carson told him. “They’re gone.”

  Preston went silent for a second, then mumbled, “I thought you and me was tight, man.”

  “You don’t need to think,” Leah said. “Just talk. Who is it in Walker Valley that likes little boys? Who took my nephew?”

  “Nobody.” Preston talked so fast Carson figured he was pissing himself more with each word. “I mean – I don’t think they’re keeping the kids around here.”

  Not good. Carson moved the barrel of the MP5 back a fraction. “Selling them?”

  Preston let out a little whimper of relief. “Yeah, maybe. Through the internet and stuff.”

  Leah didn’t cut the man any slack. She pressed her knee in tighter, making Preston squeal. “Where do they hold them until they’re bought?”

  “I … I don’t know! Christ on a cracker, Taylor, make her quit. Make her stop!”

  Carson ignored him. “Who does know where the kids are held?” He nodded to Leah, who pressed harder.

  “Simpson or one of his people!” Preston yelled each word louder than the last. “That’s the talk. That’s all I know!”

  Leah bent down, her own words loud and sharp. “Which officer do you pay to never notice your meth cooking?”

  Way past any games or attempts to protect himself, Preston’s teeth chattered before he did. “Bennett. But just once, I swear it. Ah, fuck, Carson, did you really blow up my works?”

  “The barn’s gone, along with everything in it.” Carson yanked a restraint cuff off his belt and fastened Preston’s wrists behind his back. Leah moved almost as fast as he did, locking her flex-cuffs on the man’s ankles.

  “Do we call somebody?” she asked as she tightened the cuffs.

  “Already did.” Carson pointed to the ceiling and saw Leah’s expression shift to one of surprise.

  She could hear them.

  Chopper blades slicing across the night sky, still a ways off but moving fast towards their position.

  Carson jerked the nose of the MP5 towards the door. “Let’s move, honey. Now.”

  Seven

  Two minutes later, safely belted into Carson’s truck and almost hidden behind her still-strapped body armour, Leah had so many questions she couldn’t begin to ask them. Instead, she held tight to the panic grip above her window as Carson ploughed down the valley-side slope of Grace Mountain, sometimes taking roads and sometimes motoring through tree-choked short cuts that would have made her scream before Iraq.

  Of course, throwing her career out the window, setting herself up for arrest on about a thousand different charges, and shooting a bunch of assholes running a meth lab would have made her scream back then, too. She’d grown up a lot since she and Carson melted the leather off the back seat of her mother’s car.

  Stupid, idiot kids. We were so careless. It was a plain wonder she didn’t end up pregnant. But would that een such a terrible fate?

  Leah closed her eyes. Opened them. Enough of that shit. She had to keep her mind on nothing but Kevin, nothing but their next move. “How visible were those explosions?”

  “The far side of Grace Mountain’s always been no-man’s-land.” Carson’s low voice cut beneath the roar of the truck’s engine as he gunned down a long stretch of straight pavement. “The Walker Valley locals won’t know unless somebody phones in to complain, and they won’t come out to investigate unless God himself raises a stink.”

  “God.” Leah sucked in a breath. “I did a lot of talking to God late at night in the desert. At the time, I thought nobody was listening.”

  Carson’s hands visibly tightened on the wheel. “You got out alive. Somebody up there did you a favour.” His soulful glance burned her like dark fire. “I’m glad.”

  Leah tried to take another breath but couldn’t. Not for a long few seconds. The truck cab seemed way too small, and Carson felt way too close. As soon as this was over, she had to get the hell away from him.

  Damn it. What’s it been, an hour? And I’m already not sure how far away I want to get.

  She had to be real about this. Whatever Carson was into, it was dangerous and deep and not something she wanted in her life. So why did sitting here next to him feel so natural?

  Giddiness. Just a rush from the emergency, from the battle.

  Yeah. Keep telling yourself that.

  Leah couldn’t believe Carson was affecting her like this after so much time and separate history, and with Kevin’s safety occupying most of her mind. Maybe Walker Valley really was cursed land, with Carson as its relentless Witch King, watching his minions from on high.

  The truth probably wasn’t much better. “Back at the farmhouse with Preston, after we finished – the helicopters?”

  Carson’s face seemed to turn to chiselled granite in the eerie red light of the Ford’s instrument panel. His dark eyes stayed fixed on the road, and instead of discussing who or what was coming to get Hank Preston and the wounded and dead they left behind, he said, “So, about Bennett. Are we going to have to shoot him?”

  “I can handle Bennett.” Shit, that came out fast. Leah wondered if she was lying. She kept herself motionless in the truck seat. One bounce of her knee and Carson would know she was uncertain. He’d make his own plan – and blood would definitely be involved. She didn’t care what happened to her or to her career at this point, not if it brought Kevin home, but she didn’t want Carson in the kind of trouble he couldn’t escape. Busting up a meth operation was one thing, but firing on an officer of the law would be a whole different level of catastrophe.

  Stay calm. Be confident. Bennett had weaknesses. Leah knew she could use those. “Park a block away and help me get out of this armour – but first, stop and get us a six-pack. Budweiser, OK? Cans, not bottles.”

  Carson arched an eyebrow. “When did you take up beer?”

  Leah let go of the panic grip and started unfastening her body armour as best she could, given the seat belt. “About the same time you took up whiskey after swearing you’d cut your own throat first.”

  His frown came so fast she moved towards her door on instinct. This time, his knuckles turned stark white on the wheel, and Leah’s throat went dry.

  Good move, Mays. Piss off a murderer in his own truck.

  But even with the anger boiling out of him, even with that harsh look on hi
s face, Leah realized she wasn’t afraid of him. Despite what she’d heard, despite what she knew, she couldn’t see Carson as a murderer. That was a hell of a note, given that she was supposed to be able to readeople, to judge their capacity for wrongdoing on the spur of the moment.

  After a mile or so of high-octane silence, Carson said, “There’s a lot I can’t tell you, Leah. And a lot I shouldn’t.”

  “You knew I was staying with my sister.” Leah tried to bite back her words, but they spilled out despite her best efforts. “Why didn’t you visit, or at least call?”

  Carson’s face shifted in the shadows. She saw tension and pain, even something like self-doubt. “You came back to Walker Valley clean and free. Seemed like the right thing to do, leaving you that way.”

  Leah pulled at the fasteners on the armour again, getting nowhere. “You act like you’re toxic.”

  “I was always poison, honey. You were just too sweet to see it.”

  That drawl. It gave her chills, made her notice him even more, made him seem even closer – no. No way. “If you call me ‘honey’ again, I’ll kick your ass so hard you’ll have to watch the road through your butt cheeks.”

  Carson laughed. The son of a bitch actually laughed at her. Leah yanked twice as hard at her body armour. Jerk. He’d never taken her temper seriously.

  Her hands went still on her chest protector.

  It was one of the things she had loved about him.

  Eight

  Carson didn’t like this one fucking bit.

  He kept his right eye crammed against the MP5’s night scope, using a couple of straggly pines for cover as Leah “handled” Mack Bennett.

  Meaning, she had her gorgeous blonde hair down, her uniform shirt unbuttoned enough to show cleavage, a beer in one hand, and the rest of the six-pack dangling from the other as she backed the skanky bastard up against the tricked-out red Mustang in his driveway.

  Bennett’s driveway was tucked between his brick house and a fair-sized garage, private, lots of cover – good for their purposes. Bennett lived on a quiet cul-de-sac in the nicer section of town. Lots of manicured lawns, gazebos and porch swings, but nobody was out on such a dark, hot night. Too damned rainy and humid down here in the valley. Carson’s scope kept fogging. Maybe the humidity, maybe seeing Leah pretending to be a vixen on the make. All she needed was a slinky little evening dress, and the woman might kill a man just by walking past him.

  From where Carson stood, he could watch from the side with a good line to Bennett if things got out of hand, and he could hear the conversation pretty clearly.

  “I knew you’d come to see me sooner or later.” Bennett sounded halfway to drunk, like he’d been hitting his own stash of Bud before Leah knocked on his door and lured him outside. “You upset about the kid?”

  “Yeah. I need some comforting.” Leah swayed, acting like she’d had a little too much herself.

  “I’m your man.” Bennett reached out and took the six-pack out of Leah’s hand. She held on to the plastic rings just long enough to tease him, to let him pull her closer. Bennett put his free hand on Leah’s waist, and Carson had to make himself hold his trigger finger very, very still.

  The second Leah pressed herself against Bennett, she dropped her beer and pulled the SIG from where she’d tucked it near the small of her back. She had Bennett frozen against the Mustang, gun to his head, before the idiot even understood he’d been had.

  Carson smiled. Good play, honey.

  Leah’s voice took on fresh force and clarity. “Know a man named Hank Preston?”

  Bennett let the six-pack hit the ground beside his foot. “Yeah, I know him.”

  “His friends are full of bullets and his barn’s on fire.”

  To thiBennett said nothing. Through his scope, Carson saw the unspoken cursing in the deputy’s expression.

  “He said he paid you to leave his meth-cooking operation alone,” Leah continued. “He said that somebody in the department knows where my nephew’s being held.”

  “It’s not me.” Bennett’s words came out in a gruff rush, but he didn’t try to move. Maybe he was smarter than Carson thought.

  Leah’s laugh raised the hair on the back of Carson’s neck. “This gun’s not traceable. I’ll be gone before anybody gets their curtains open to look.”

  “I don’t know anything about Kevin, I swear to God.” Bennett’s voice dropped lower. More definite. More confident. He was sounding like an innocent man. Carson kept his aim steady, beginning to hope he wouldn’t have to fire.

  “I talked to God in Iraq.” Leah pressed the SIG into Bennett’s temple and got even closer to the deputy. “Funny. I was just telling a friend about that this evening.”

  Friend. Well, that’s better than fucking bastard. I’ll take what I can get.

  “Do you know how many people I had to kill in the desert, Bennett? Just to stay alive. And my nephew’s life and my sister’s health and sanity weren’t on the line then.” Smooth and easy, Leah pulled her service pistol with her free hand and lodged the barrel between Bennett’s legs. “I feel a little crazy from the stress.”

  Carson’s lips twitched. He kept his sights fixed on Bennett’s temple just in case, but now he was almost positive he wouldn’t be shooting any cops tonight.

  “Preston paid me once. Just once.” Bennett’s voice stayed steady, and he sounded more honest than ever. “I never should have taken it, but I had to send money to my parents. They lost their retirement in the stock crash.” A pause, and then, “I swear I don’t have a clue where Kevin is. If I did, I’d tell you. I’d drive you there myself.”

  Leah didn’t let up or miss a beat. Through the scope, Carson thought he saw colour rising to her cheeks. “Who does know? Simpson?”

  “He’s an old shithead,” Bennett said. “Incompetent and lazy, but he’s not a criminal.”

  Leah’s mouth opened in surprise. She jammed the Glock farther into Bennett’s crotch, and he groaned. “Are you trying to tell me Jeff Dale’s into snatching and selling little kids?”

  “I don’t know. Fuck! Back off, would you?”

  Leah shook her head once. “No.”

  Bennett’s jaw worked for a few seconds before he spoke again. “I’ve wondered, OK? Even poked around a little, but I didn’t have any proof. Jeff’s old man was a freak. A real perv. He tried to go after me once, and that kind of thing, it gets passed down, right?”

  “Jeff Dale.” Leah didn’t look like she believed Bennett, but she eased back on the Glock between his legs. At the same moment, she shifted her grip on the SIG in her right hand and pistol-whipped Bennett so hard Carson winced at the crack.

  Bennett crumpled like dropped laundry, and Carson had to lower his MP5 and hotfoot it to help Leah drag the deputy inside his house. She flex-cuffed him, but left his arms in front and his ankles free. He’d get help or get himself loose once he woke, if the poor bastard could even see with the headache he’d have.

  Almost as fast, they were both back out of the house, Leah leading the way to the truck. She threw open the Ford’s door and grabbed a piece of her body armour.

  “Dale. Unbelievable.” She struggled into her chest protector, and Carson reached out to help with the fasteners. She let him. Her blue eyes had gone from glittering to feral, and her expression conveyed gut-level worry that made his heart twist. “I’m getting a bd feeling, Carson. Worse than earlier. Worse than ever. I think we’re running out of time.

  Nine

  Leah’s heart jackhammered as Carson’s truck jumped the kerb. Brakes squealed in front of the old Dale place, a clapboard monstrosity in a big field at the end of a tyre-littered road. This was the junky side of the valley, where nobody spoke to each other and nobody saw anything, ever, no matter what.

  Damned good thing, because anybody looking was about to see plenty.

  Both of them bailed out of the cab, MP5s fully loaded, ready for anything, ready for everything.

  Leah saw Carson reach in his pocket. Wondere
d if he had another weapon. His hand reappeared empty, but he pulled a flashbang canister off his belt and held it out to her. “I’ll get the door,” he mouthed, and she understood him despite the earplugs they had inserted before they turned on to Dale’s road.

  Leah raced up the porch steps behind Carson, MP5 raised but trained slightly to Carson’s left. They couldn’t blow the door with serious explosives for fear Kevin or other kids or innocents might get hurt. “Police,” Carson bellowed, then kicked the door so hard it ripped right off its hinges.

  Leah lobbed the non-lethal grenade through the opening, and she and Carson ducked and squeezed their eyes shut.

  She felt the impact of the flashbang, felt it in her skin and bones and teeth, and hoped like hell Kevin wasn’t anywhere near the damned thing. It wouldn’t do permanent damage, but the sound and light were enough to stun grown men for five or ten seconds.

  Leah ripped out her earplugs and leaped through the ruined door, swinging her MP5 left, then right as she searched the dark living room for targets. Wound and capture, she repeated to herself. They needed Jeff Dale and anyone who might be helping him alive in case the kids weren’t stashed here. They had to watch out for kids being used as human shields. Her nerves jumped and burned, and her mind kept shifting to Iraq, to the hundreds of houses she’d helped clear, to the shouting insurgents, to the sobbing innocents.

  Stay in now. Kevin needs you. Keep it together, damn it!

  She didn’t see anything in the house. “Kevin?” She stopped. Listened. Didn’t hear anything. “Kevin! It’s OK, honey. Answer me if you can.”

  Carson came through the door and stood beside her. Nothing. More nothing … and then running footsteps to her right. A figure darted through the blackness of the hallway, headed towards a dimly lit kitchen and, presumably, a back door. Big. An adult. Leah tried to track the running figure for a shot, but Carson stopped her with a quick, “Got it.”

  He hurled a sting grenade that hit the floor in front of the running man. The grenade blew, blasting hard rubber balls right into the guy’s guts. He let out a howl and pitched forwards, grabbing his belly.