by Keta Kendric
My gaze volleyed back and forth between the men before it stopped on the driver. “Toss your weapons across the seat, and please, give me a reason to kill you. My quota on death has been low this year, so two fresh kills is just what I need to get my numbers up.”
The men moved robotically, unsnapping their weapons from their holsters. Each pistol made a solid thud when they dropped at my feet.
“Toss your backups if you have any because they are going to get you killed if you try to use them.”
Two additional weapons fell across the seat as I’d expected.
“Start the car and drive.” I glared, unblinking at the driver. “Sam, keep a close eye on the ladies until I get back. This won’t take long.”
My words were laced with arrogance, but nothing filled me with more energy than impending death. And Desiree. The voice in my head reminded.
“Tracking,” Sam’s voice sounded in my ear through the earpiece that linked us.
“Tywin,” I called.
“I’m already on it,” Tywin answered. I didn’t have to ask him if he was gathering surveillance to see if he could figure out where these assholes had come from or if there were more of them. Tywin was my resourceful cousin who was as adapt in the tech arena as he was in security.
“Which way do you want me to go?” the driver questioned, his body shaking as a mix of fear and regret flashed in his wide eyes.
“Turn left on East 8th and drive until I tell you to turn left, right, or stop.”
Unshed tears flashed in the eyes of the passenger, aware that if they were with me in any capacity, they were going to die.
“Can we work something out? You don’t need to do this,” the passenger pleaded.
He may as well have been bargaining with the devil for his soul. Any mercy I should have had, never surfaced. It never did.
“Who the fuck are you? Why were you spying on the women? Who do you work for?” The questions were delivered to them in a quiet tone, the kind of tone that traveled a hair above a whisper and landed on death’s eardrums.
“FBI. We’re undercover,” the driver lied as smoothly as his shaky voice would allow. In the quickest motion I could muster, I yanked the knife away from the neck of the passenger and sent one quick stab into the neck of the driver.
By the time the driver grasped that he’d been stabbed, I had the knife back at the neck of the passenger, blood from the driver’s open neck dripping onto him now. The driver gasped and hissed as blood trickled past the trembling fingers he clasped over the knife wound.
“Lie again and I’ll open a fucking artery.” My stiff gaze was a promise and appeared to fuel his already amped-up nerves. The gun kissed the back of his head to remind him that I had another option for killing him.
“Who the fuck do you work for? Why the fuck were you spying on the women? I’m not going to keep repeating myself.”
“You’re going to kill us even if we tell you,” the passenger was brave enough to say.
“That’s right.” There was no reason to lie to them. I didn’t play with my food. Fresh death fed a wicked energy into me that I often craved.
“You don’t need to do this. We can work something out,” the driver stated, his voice cracking with desperation as he drove with one shaky hand and gripped his bleeding neck with the other.
“All I’m interested in is who the fuck you work for and why you were spying on those women. The only deal that I can make you is how quickly I’m going to kill you.”
“Please. You don’t...”
I shook my head at the man, cutting off his statement. As many times as I had done this same song and dance, I hadn’t yet figured out why people who were afraid to die got involved in this type of business. I yanked the knife away from the neck of the passenger and slid back in the seat.
I breathed, allowing my eyes to fall closed as I embraced the calm before my storm. The patience I had honed in on was being eaten away by anger, but I’d taught myself to never let anger prevail over me, but to use it as my weapon. Slowly, my lids lifted to the men eyeing me in the mirror with bated breath.
Back and forth, my gaze bounced between them before I plunged the knife with maximum force into the passenger, an upward thrust at his nape. Two additional quick and deadly jabs followed, causing the driver to glance at him and seemingly forget he was driving.
He had chanced a glance at the passenger, but a tap of my gun to the side of his head set his eyes back on the road. The sight of his dying friend had made him forget about his gushing neck wound. Maybe now, he’d be more inclined to talk.
The passenger choked out a series of loud gasps as a mixture of shock and unrelenting horror was playing out on his face. Blood oozed from the corner of his mouth, which gaped open as he started to slump. He reached for his neck, attempting to touch, but failing to reach where he’d been stabbed.
He choked on his gasps, struggling to take in oxygen. The suffocating sound filled the interior of the car as the reality of his impending doom was nailed home.
“Make the next left,” I instructed. Fear-frozen, I don’t believe the driver had blinked since I’d tapped the side of his head with my gun.
“Next left,” I reminded because sooner or later, desperation would lead him to fight for his life by any means necessary. The car swerved across the lines, but he managed to focus enough the keep us on the highway.
He slowed the car with a screech, his shaky legs not working the peddle properly. He turned us with a severe swerve down the back road, the sharp movement caused me to lurch sideways. The car bucked, not built for the rough, hard-packed and rutted road. I had only taken them about ten miles outside the city, far enough to find a good hiding place.
The area wasn’t wooded, but the road wasn’t well-traveled and surrounded by mountain ridges on three sides. The most important part of our location was that there wasn’t a way for our actions to be recorded. It was a dead zone.
The passenger had been embraced by the fiery hands of death, and his body was being tossed about the front seat. His head had smacked the dashboard a couple of times, causing him to bounce wildly in the seat. His limp body gave up the fight with gravity and slid between the seat and the dashboard and stuck there.
“You can stop,” I instructed the driver. The car came to a screeching halt, rocking me into the back seat as dirt and rocks scratched under the tires.
“Are you going to tell me who you work for, or am I going to have to find out another way?”
“You don’t…” I shut him up with a loud resounding whack, not killing him but knocking him out. My patience had evaporated, and the animal that people called me had emerged, seeking a taste of blood that I had decided to postpone. I gave the interior of the car a once over before I peeked at my watch. It was time I got back to Desiree.
A regular phone was spotty due to the mountainous region I had directed the man into, so I retrieved my sat phone from my cargo pocket.
I was about to call for a pick-up, our version of Uber, and for an update on Desiree and Mecca from Sam. I often did my own cleaning, but I didn’t want to risk keeping my eyes off of Desiree for too long, so my second call was to our cleaner.
“Scene, one and a car, at 39.7899 N and 104.002 W. No eyes on.” Pressed for time, I’d decided that the man I’d knocked out was coming with me. Since extracting the information the easy way wasn’t working, I was set to try another way. He needed a little extra coaxing to talk.
“Forty.” Was the only word spoken before the line went dead. The voice belonged to my cousin, Robert Vallin. He was a priest who ran a little church in a small town on the outskirts of Denver. To supplement his income and contribute to the syndicate, he cleaned up many of our crime scenes. He had never killed anyone that we knew of but claimed that he communicated with the souls of the departed. I’m not sure what went on between him and the dead, but he was the best crime scene cleaner we had.
Aside from the women who married into our family, there were
n’t any Vallin women. I had three uncles: Bradford, Donavan, and Leelyn. My Uncle Bradford had died five years ago, hunting down a serial killer that had targeted only members of our syndicate.
The man had turned out to be a scorned member of our organization and had killed over a hundred members before my uncle found him. Unfortunately, his place had been wired with enough explosives to take down a city block, taking both his and my uncle’s life.
My Uncle Donavan and his three sons, lived in Canada, and handled syndicate business in that region. Uncle Leelyn was my cousin Tywin’s father and the one that knew everything there was to know about cleaning money.
Moments after my call and pick up, sound crackled in my earpiece before the sight of the restaurant came into view. Sam was in the same spot that I had left him, as well as Desiree and Mecca.
The first sight of Desiree brought up the question of the day. How was I going to protect her, avoid her charms, and figure out who was after her at the same time?
12
Khane
After we pulled into the garage, I jumped out of my car and marched around Desiree’s to help her out of hers. She was the only woman that I had been this way with, as manners I didn’t know I possessed had surfaced the moment she arrived.
She had a direct line to the innerworkings of my mind and had gotten me to step outside my norm and the routine that had become my daily ritual. I delved so far off course around her that I found myself calling up the details of our interactions when I was alone.
The actions I took with Desiree were telling of how far under she had dragged me as I reached to open her car door. Seeing her smile was all the incentive I needed to keep acting out of character. After all, this was temporary, and I could return to my normal routine as soon as she left.
When her warm, delicate hand wrapped around mine, I resisted the urge I had to yank her from the car and pull her into me. The sight of her enticed my sluggish smile to make an appearance, every time, but thankfully, it was something I was learning to control.
However, touching her made my stomach go tight as my breaths got caught in my throat. My heart didn’t know how to beat normally around her. It thumped erratically, and fluttered whenever she made contact with any part of me. I didn’t like the sensation because I couldn’t control it, yet I craved it.
And if that weren’t bad enough, there were times when she made me weak, setting off an ache on every one of my senses. She was unaware that she had always been the medicine I needed to cope, to free myself from the dark sickness inside, to heal me from the swirling chaos that rested on my heart.
The feelings she evoked were the main reasons I had attempted to limit my interactions with her as I was afraid I might snatch her up and see how far she would allow me to get.
Deep breaths, meditation, prayer, nothing worked. Watching her from a distance was an impulse I could control, but controlling her impact on me up close and personal was a war I wasn’t winning.
Get a fucking grip, I reprimanded myself.
I brushed away the urgent need that had taken over and released her hand. Why wasn’t she moving? Why wasn’t I moving? I reached around her and pushed her door closed before I dropped my gaze to meet hers. Even with her sexy little wedged heeled sandals, I towered over her.
“What’s wrong?” she asked. “Did something happen while Mecca and I were eating?” I didn’t realize her instincts for picking up danger were so keen, but it was probably from being a member of the Evans family.
“Nothing,” I mumbled, unable to think of a lie because her closeness was rendering me useless. Her eyes trailed my body, observing every inch until they stopped on my arm and widened.
“Khane, you’re bleeding. What happened?”
Her soft hand wrapped around my forearm as she attempted to turn my arm to get a better view.
“It’s nothing. A scrape, bumped my arm, dragging a body from a car.” Her touch. She was soaking up my will by the second, stalling my attempt to walk away.
“What? Why were you dragging a body?” Her stern gaze met mine as her hand tightened around my forearm, feeding me more of her pulsing energy. The razor’s edge focus of her gaze dared me to lie. There was a level of care there that I had never seen in a woman’s eyes where it concerned me.
Fuck!
I shook away the daze she had so quickly looped me into and stepped around her, determined to be stronger than my weakness. She turned with me, unwilling to release my arm.
“Did you get into a fight? Is my engagement to your brother already bringing trouble into this city? What happened?” she demanded, shuffling along to keep up with me, her hand clamped onto my forearm like a vice. While she continued to question me, I was contemplating how much I wanted to reveal.
Once in the living room, I dropped onto the couch, finally breaking the hold she had on me. My arm tingled where she had touched, causing me to rub the area and avoid her gaze. Her scent perfumed my house, and the fragrant beauty of it aided her in boxing me in. Like faint hugs, it wrapped around me, making the memory of her touch ghost against my skin.
She stepped closer and stood, glaring down at me, determined to get an answer. She was too close. Like in the hall, she wasn’t going to stop until I gave her an answer. I had to make a decision quickly, give her an update or snap and pull her onto my lap.
“Tell me something, Khane, anything. Am I the cause of whatever happened?”
She sat, and her jean-covered shapely leg brushed mine. Her body heat spread fast, dulling my senses and my will to resist the pull she had on me. She was a hammer to my emotions and havoc to my senses, the most beautiful form of chaos that ever existed.
I was good at fighting monsters and deadly encounters, not this. Not her. The problem was that I didn’t want to fight her when I knew I had to. I focused on the wall straight ahead, determined not to glance in her direction. Hell, I could hardly breathe, each breath coming up short. She was clueless as to how much she affected me, and at that moment, I wasn’t doing a good job of hiding my reaction.
“There were two men staked out across the street from the restaurant, watching you.” I forced the words out, or I’d have to suffer the consequences of cutting those jeans off of her with the knife I had just killed a man with before fucking her against the living room wall.
“Okay,” she urged expectantly.
A huge gust of air rushed down my throat from my deep inhale when her hand slid up my arm. Concern rested on her face, leaving tension on her forehead and a cute crinkle around her eyes.
“I may not be able to cook to feed you, but if you tell me where your first aid kit is, I can fix your arm. My father made us learn first aid and CPR for obvious reasons.”
I aimed a finger at the bathroom as my gaze rested on her hand on me before I lifted it to meet hers. “Under the sink.” It was a scratch that she was making a big deal out of, something I would have washed with soap and water when I showered and then forgotten about.
A deep breath and release eased my tension after she let go of my arm and headed towards the bathroom. She had succeeded in cracking my mind open, rearranging my thoughts and ideas while touching my emotions. I couldn’t allow her to take my body too. My eyes fell closed, as I unsuccessfully sought thoughts that weren’t about Desiree.
“Khane,” she called, glancing back over her shoulder. “I want the rest of the story of how you got hurt.”
I couldn’t reply, not while her lush ass in those jeans was calling my gaze and draining my mental focus. I slammed my eyes shut before I gripped my forehead and squeezed. She had no idea that she was the woman of my dreams in the flesh.
Off limits, I reminded myself. Off fucking limits. The attempts I was making to stamp down my demanding attraction to Desiree were proving to be one of the most difficult tasks of my life.
“Six more days,” I mumbled under my breath. Six more torturous days and I would be able to return her to Arjen and do everything in my power to avoid her afterward.
The light thump of her steps signaled her return.
My view started at her feet. Her pretty, little, red-painted toes that I would suck the polish off of if she weren’t so off-limits. My demanding gaze continued to inch up the legs that I had dreamed would one day be wrapped around my waist. Shapely hips and thighs, the kind of seductive curves that some women were inclined to pay for. Slim waist, full ample breasts, and a baby doll face to top it all off.
She was who had filled every one of my fantasies for the past six years. My obsession with her had been one of my most well-kept secrets. If there was something she liked, I found myself liking it also, living vicariously through her because I’d been trained to only like one thing.
There was nothing about Desiree that didn’t elicit a response from me. I even liked that she had a penchant for flirting with danger, especially where I was concerned. She possessed a savage nature gift-wrapped by beauty and a calming spirit.
She sat, placing the open kit on her lap as she turned to my arm. Her touch, although expected this time, sent a shiver jetting through me.
“Sorry if my hands are cold,” she offered, but a quick glance revealed that she wasn’t sorry at all. The heat in her gaze, the smirk on her face that she attempted to, but failed to hide, wasn’t missed. She knew what she was doing.
My posture remained rigid as she worked on cleaning the scratch that had barely broken the skin. Although I was overrunning with anxiety over our closeness, I relished every second of attention Desiree was bestowing on me. It was a gift I had never received, a caring caress that I had never before sought because I didn’t think I deserved it.
Her eyes were on me. I sensed them scanning my every reaction, but I fought the tightening pull by hiding my view behind my closed eyes. My strength would lead me through these next six days, it had to.
Once she had my cut cleaned and bandaged, she wrapped her hands around my bicep and squeezed, calling my attention to her as more of my strength slipped. Her right knee was pressed into my rigid thigh muscle, adding to the hold she had on my attention.