by Cynthia Eden
Oh, Rick had just been waiting for her? Lurking so he could catch her? Because he knew her so well? For the moment, Kat ignored the fact that he had caught her. “You were in the chair, hidden in the dark. The sniper wouldn’t have been able to take a kill shot from that angle. He waited on you to move, to come into his range, and then he fired.” She knew her shots. A sniper had been one of her best buds back in the day. “Like I said before, if I hadn’t miraculously saved your sorry butt, you’d have a bullet in the brain right now. I still haven’t heard a thank you.”
“You didn’t save me! You attacked me! You thought you could knock me down and run away!”
Kat rolled one shoulder. “Call it what you will, the result is the same.”
“Call it what I…” Rick shook his head. “No. For now, I’m done with this.” He spun toward the other agent.
At least, Kat figured the other guy was an agent. Though with all of those dark, swirling tattoos, his tousled hair, and those bright eyes…he didn’t look like the boring security type she’d seen before.
Kat gave him a little wave.
Without looking away from the other man, Rick reached out and grabbed her hand. He swallowed it in his bear claw. “You are not to flirt with Cole. You are not to do your routine of winding security personnel around your little finger.”
“Are those rules six and seven?”
His hold tightened. She took that as a yes.
“Kathleen…” Rick snapped out her name. “This is Cole Vincent. He’s my partner on your case.”
“Hello, Cole Vincent.”
His eyes gleamed for just a moment with humor. “Hello, Kathleen O’Shaughnessy.”
“My friends call me Kat. You can call me—”
“He is not your friend,” Rick interrupted. “He’s an agent who is going to do his damn best to keep you alive.”
Kat nodded. “Good to know.”
Rick’s body moved a little closer to hers. His attention remained fixed on Cole. “How the hell did the shooter find her?”
“No idea,” Cole replied.
“How did he get past the agents?” Rick’s frustration was obvious.
She knew how he’d gotten past them. “Because he’s a professional,” Kat muttered. “Because he gets paid to kill people for a living. This isn’t his first time. He’s a hired gun who knows how to do his job. Appear and disappear, just like a…” Oh, crap. “Ghost.” She swallowed, twice. “Ghost. It could be him. He always did like the hard cases.”
Rick and Cole were both staring at her. Waiting. What? Oh, right. Ghost was known in criminal circles. Most civilians didn’t know about him. “Ghost is a hired gun who used to work for my father. Very much a rogue kind of fellow. I thought he’d quit the business, but for the right money, I guess anyone can come out of retirement.” She shoved a lock of hair behind her ear. “He specialized in getting access to remote locations. The guy could sit still for hours before he took a shot and after he took the shot…” She snapped her fingers together. “Bam. He was gone. Vanished in a blink, and you did not see him again.”
Cole whistled. “No wonder the Feds want you testifying in court. Just how much do you know about the East Coast crime families?”
Pretty much everything. She’d been extremely good at watching and listening. At staying quiet and out of the way. After a while, everyone had seemed to forget that she was there.
She’d never forget all the things she’d seen.
The screams still haunted her.
So, yes, there was a long line of people who wanted her dead. Rats died, after all. That was known in her world. But she had always hated that world, and she couldn’t just let the guilty keep getting away with what they’d done.
“Does Ghost have a real name?” Rick’s expression was thoughtful.
“I’m sure he does, but not one that I know. But maybe you can use those Wilde connections of yours to figure it out.” She’d been more than helpful already.
“On it,” Cole said as he yanked out his phone.
She tried to pull away from Rick. He didn’t let her go.
“How did he find you?” Rick demanded.
“I have no idea.” Her stomach twisted. She ignored the twist. “I guess the multiple SUV plan wasn’t as fool-proof as you thought. I mean, he must have followed us from Wilde.”
“No. We weren’t followed.” His gaze swept over her.
“Uh, well, we must have been followed. Not like I had a phone so that I could call and give away the location. And I didn’t get to sneak off anywhere—”
She stopped. His expression had just darkened. Cole was in the corner, talking quietly into his phone. Rick edged toward her. Because she didn’t particularly like the look in his eyes, she backed up. She kept backing up until her butt hit a drawer.
“You were sneaking off when I caught you on the porch. Was that the plan? Did you make arrangements to meet up with this Ghost person?”
“He was shooting. Not waiting to take me on a date. And, no, I didn’t make any arrangements with him.” If it had been Ghost.
“But you were trying to sneak away.”
Guilty. “Because I thought I wasn’t safe here with you. Obviously, I was right. The Feds can’t be trusted. Wilde agents can’t be trusted. Everywhere I go, people are selling me out.” Didn’t he get it? Frustration tore at her. “I can’t trust anyone. There is too much money on my head. For the right price, most people would sell out their own families, much less a stranger. I’m a dead woman walking. If I’m going to survive this thing, I do it on my own. I do it—”
His hand rose and curled round her throat. What in the hell?
His fingers stroked lightly along the column of her throat. “Your pulse is racing like crazy.”
“It does that when I’m scared as hell.”
His touch was oddly soothing. “You keep getting tracked. The FBI changed your location multiple times, but you were still hunted…”
“Because agents were selling me out!”
“There are no FBI agents here. The shooter arrived too fast. There has to be something else…” His callused fingertips slid down her throat.
She shivered. Couldn’t help it. Her throat had always been way too sensitive.
“You didn’t bring anything with you but the clothes on your back,” he murmured. His fingers were at the base of her throat. “I searched those while you showered.”
What?
“But you also brought this necklace.” He caught her pearl necklace with the edge of his index finger.
Cole wasn’t talking on his phone any longer. He was edging closer to them.
Her hand rose and closed over Rick’s. “It was my mother’s necklace.”
“And you got it…when?”
“When she died,” Kat bit out. “My father gave it to me. It’s the only thing of hers that I have.”
His expression darkened. “Let me guess, you wear it all the time.”
“Yes.” She did.
“Princess, I’m sorry…” She could feel his hold tightening on the necklace.
Horror flooded through her. “No! Don’t you dare do anything to my necklace! Don’t—”
“Take it off.”
“Get your hands off me!”
“Uh, Rick…” Cole cleared his throat. “How about we all settle down?”
Rick didn’t even spare him a glance. His dark stare was locked fully on Kat. “Take the necklace off or I will take it off you.”
How had she thought there was anything good or sexy about him? He was a straight-up monster. One bastard of a beast. “Are you insane? This was my mother’s!” She’d told him that already. “My father wanted me to have it. He gave me one thing. One good thing to remember my mother, and this was it. It was the only time my dad ever got sentimental with me. The only time he seemed to care.” She was saying too much. She needed to stop. Needed to pull the hell back.
But this was important. The necklace was the only link she had to h
er mother, and it was the only thing that let her believe her father had cared at all.
Rick’s face could have been carved from stone. “Your father, by all accounts, was a sadistic psychopath.”
She flinched. The truth freaking hurt.
“So for him to give you a sentimental necklace doesn’t fit with what I know about him.” His words were soft, yet they hit her with a brutal impact. “That doesn’t fit, Kat, and I’m sorry. But you know what does make sense to me?”
She didn’t want to know.
“He was a control freak, and I could see a man like him wanting to lojack his daughter. I could see someone like him wanting to have the ability to track his only child at every single moment. That goes along with the control freak that I think he was.”
She couldn’t breathe. “No.”
“The shooter shouldn’t have been at the farmhouse. You shouldn’t have been traced this fast. I don’t make mistakes like this. Wilde doesn’t. The necklace is the common denominator between Wilde and the FBI agents.” His jaw hardened even more before he gruffly ordered, “Take it off or I take it off you.”
“You are such a dick!” Why had she kissed him? “I should’ve let you get shot!”
She shoved at his hand. Their fingers tangled. She felt the clasp of the necklace bite into the back of her neck. Then—
No!
The pressure at the back of her neck was gone. He’d pulled the necklace off her. Fury poured through Kat as she grabbed hard for his hand.
She saw the flash of remorse on his face. He should feel remorse. Their hands tangled again—and the pearls fell to the floor.
A slow motion, please-God-no fall to the floor.
They hit. The pearls rolled across the floor. She stared in horror and felt her eyes welling. The only thing she’d had from her mother. The only time her father had seemed to not be a cold-blooded monster.
“Kat,” Rick’s voice was even rougher. “I’m sorry.”
She was going to make him sorry. “Not yet, but you will be.”
He bent. Picked up a few pearls. Fisted his hand around them. “I can get the necklace back together, I can fix it. I can—fuck.” He surged toward the kitchen counter. In a lightning-fast move, he put the pearls he’d just gathered on the marble surface and then slammed his hand on the pearls, crushing them.
“Stop!” Kat yelled. Hadn’t he done enough? Damn him! She grabbed his arm and wrenched back. The pearls were a mess and…
“Lojacked,” Rick muttered as he stared at the pearls he’d just crushed. “We have to get the hell out of here. Now.”
There was something inside one of the pearls. It was small. So tiny, but it looked like…like a…microchip? Yes, some kind of computer chip. It was incredibly small. It was—
“A tracking chip,” Cole spoke from behind her. “Looks like your father always knew where you were, Kat, every minute of the day and night, and now that he’s out of the picture, someone is using his tech to hunt you down.”
Their words beat at her. She couldn’t look away from the chip. So small. It had been hidden in a fake pearl. When the necklace had broken, when the pearls had hit the kitchen tiles, the fake pearl had cracked, revealing the truth.
Not even that one moment with my father was real. He lied then, too.
“Has to be someone in his inner circle,” Rick mused. “Someone who knew how he kept track of his daughter.”
She backed away from them.
Rick’s hand flew out and curled around her wrist. “I’m sorry.”
“Screw you.” Her only response. Pain was knifing through her. For some reason, his apologies made her hurt more. “Don’t say you’re sorry again. You were right, weren’t you?”
His lips thinned before he said, “I’ll fix the necklace, I promise. I’ll send it to Wilde Securities. I’ll get them to make sure no more trackers are in any of the pearls. I’ll get it back for you and then—”
“I don’t want it.” Didn’t want another lie around her neck.
His fingers slid along her inner wrist. Moved over the faint bruise there with a careful caress. “I have to get you out of here, Kat. This location is compromised.”
Everything in her life was compromised. Didn’t he get that?
“The shooter could’ve seen the sports car. We can’t take that ride.” His gaze shot to Cole. “The bike ready to go?”
Bike? Her ears perked up a little.
Cole nodded. His expression seemed extra grim. “You need to haul ass. Now. I’ll wait with a clean-up crew to see if anyone else shows for the target.”
Then things happened fast. Very fast to her numb mind. They ran out of the farmhouse, with Cole beside them, his gun out. Other agents were there, too. She caught glimpses of them right before Rick shoved open the garage door. Once inside, he threw a tarp to the side and revealed a gleaming, black beast of a motorcycle.
Right. Ah… “I’m not riding that.”
“You are because it will get us out of here hell fast. We can go off road, we can snake through the dark before dawn arrives, and I can keep you safe.” He pushed a helmet at her. “Put this on and climb onto the bike.”
“No ‘please’ from you?”
He looked at her in confusion.
“Right. Because you don’t know how to ask. You just give cold orders. You are so charming. I can’t believe women aren’t beating down your door.”
His brows lowered. “Would you please put on the helmet and please climb that hot ass of yours onto the motorcycle so we can get out of here before more people with guns come to try and kill you?”
“You have an obsession with my ass.” She fiddled with the helmet. Couldn’t think of any other way out of the situation except the bike. “Since you asked so nicely…” She climbed onto the bike.
“Scoot up.”
Why? She’d left plenty of room for him in front of her.
“I’m your human shield, baby. You think I’m going to put you behind me? No way. I cover you.” He patted the seat. “Scoot. Up.” A pause. “Please.”
She scooted up. Her hands curled around the handlebars.
He slid on behind her. Rick immediately covered her back, her side, her pretty much everything. “I’ll drive. I can reach easily from here.”
Yeah, because he was huge.
“You just sit back—” Rick began.
“If you say ‘and relax’ then I will have to hurt you.” Her shoulders pressed back against him. “I’ll be doing the driving. You just hold on.”
“You can handle a motorcycle?”
She laughed at that question. “I can handle anything.”
His hands moved to curl around her stomach. “I’ll remember that.”
She revved the bike, enjoyed that purring engine, and she nodded toward Cole.
“I’ll tell you where to go,” Rick said, voice rising over that purr. “And you don’t stop until we get to the next safe house. No matter what, got me?”
“Just hold on,” Kat replied. “Because this ride could get rough.”
His hold tightened. “Tell me something I haven’t already figured out.”
Chapter Five
“Yeah, yeah, I want eyes on the farmhouse. Make sure the GPS is still transmitting, and let’s see who the hell shows up. Make sure the FBI is invited to the party. They might want to welcome some of those visitors.” Rick kept a tight grip on the phone as he stared out at the city and the rising sun. They’d double-timed it back to Atlanta and rushed into another of the Wilde safe houses before the city woke up. They were nestled in an old bar, one that had shut down last year. From the exterior, the building looked normal. A little ramshackle. Not much to see. But inside, Wilde had tech-blinged the hell out of the place.
He was currently on the second floor, staring out of one-way windows.
“So are we thinking that the FBI didn’t sell her out?” Cole asked, his voice filling Rick’s ear. “That she was just tracked by the necklace?”
“I’
m not ready to say that. I don’t trust the Feds, not completely.”
“Neither do I.” Cole’s response wasn’t surprising. The man was definitely anti-Fed most days.
“The shooter got away, and that pisses me off.”
“Was he gunning for you—or her?”
I hate to say this but… “I think Kat was right. I think he was shooting at me.”
“Why? She’s the big game. The price on her head is supposed to be sky high. Why waste a bullet on her protection detail?”
A good question. One he wanted answered. In the meantime…“Let me know who gets caught in the net.” Someone else would be showing up at the cabin, he was sure of it.
“Keep your eyes on her,” Cole tossed back. “Eyes, hands…looked like you had all kinds of things on her earlier.”
“Go fuck yourself.”
Cole laughed before he hung up.
Rick tossed the phone onto the table. Then he glanced at the wall of security monitors to the right. Everything was quiet outside. Nothing unusual. Nothing suspicious. The motorcycle was parked downstairs, inside the building. Out of sight and ready to use if they needed to flee again.
He didn’t want to run blindly. He wanted a plan.
He wanted—
Her. I fucking want her. Rick had a flash of being back in the kitchen with Kat. With her on his lap. His hands on her hips. His tongue in her mouth. He’d been ravenous for her. Blind to everything but the lust he felt. And she—had she felt the same way? Had she only been playing him? Hell, he didn’t know what she’d been doing.
But it was time to find out.
He spun around and marched for her room. She’d gone in there shortly after they’d arrived, and he’d left her alone because he knew that he had to check in with the other Wilde agents. He’d needed to get a security detail on the bar. Rick wanted other agents watching the building. Not that other agents had done much good the last time they’d been attacked, but he still wanted those extra eyes on the exterior scene.
He reached her door, twisted the knob, and swung it open. “We need to talk, right the hell—”