I refused to be barefoot on this disgusting flooring, so my slouchy boots made a harsh shuffling sound across the ratty carpet as I made my way to the door. It matched the offbeat stutter of my heart at the thought of being close to Titus again. I peeked out the little hole in the door and pulled back at the ferocity of the scowl that was already on his face. He hadn’t even seen me yet and he already looked like he wanted to strangle someone.
I barely had the chain off the door and cracked open before he was barreling that big body through the space. I wasn’t the only one who looked like they hadn’t changed clothes since our last encounter. He still had on his wrinkled slacks and wilted button-up shirt from the day before and the bags under his eyes made him look far older than his twenty-eight years. He was only a few years older than me, but right now those years looked like decades. He was missing the tie and his dark hair was messy like he had been running his hands through it.
“We found two dead junkies and busted a drug trafficker at this motel not even two weeks ago. This is the best place you could find to hide out?”
As soon as he was in the room I shut the door behind him and fell back against it. He was prowling back and forth in front of me like an angry animal, and all I wanted to do was reach out a hand and try and soothe him. He was coiled so tightly I could see the ropes of tension in all the hard lines of his muscular build and stamped across his face.
I shrugged lightly when that electric-blue gaze finally landed on me. “Conner isn’t stupid. He’s going to be right on my tail, so I couldn’t risk going home. My folks have had a hard enough time with things in the last few years. They don’t need to be in the middle of all this.”
“Isn’t he going to look for you there first?” He moved like he was going to sit on the edge of the bed and then made a face when he caught sight of just how gross the mustard-yellow comforter was upon closer inspection. Instead he crossed his arms over his broad chest and faced off against where I was leaning.
“I don’t think so. We weren’t close after Rissa died. I was suffering so much and I guess I felt like they weren’t suffering enough. I haven’t really spoken to them in years.”
Titus grunted at me and wrinkled his nose as the people in the room next door decided to start a bout of noisy morning sex that shook the entire wall behind the bed.
“You don’t have friends, any other relatives, no one that can give you a place to hide out while we figure out to handle Roark? The state attorney general is going to think you skipped out on WITSEC. You’re going to be a fugitive until we catch him and put this all to rights and until I can hand over the proof that he’s dirty to the right people.”
I let my head fall back until it thunked against the door. “Tell the feds I’ll still testify; I just don’t want to be in protective custody anymore. They did that for Bax and Race. Besides him being dirty, he slept with me and broke protocol. Why do I have to prove I’m on the up-and-up?” I could see the answer in his eyes. They would believe the best of Conner because he had a respectable job even if he had used it to break the law, and I was just some girl that kept making bad choices.
“Bax and Race weren’t involved in a murder-for-hire plot with Novak and his goons.”
I cringed involuntarily. “No, but they were involved in his other criminal enterprises. I’m still going to hold up my end of the deal, I’m just going to do it here.”
“That’s not safe. I saw the texts on his phone. Roark isn’t done with his rampage and he’s unhinged. He furious about something and it’s driving him to do what he’s doing. He wants the Point to fall and he’s going after everyone involved in holding it up after Novak went down. I’m sure he realizes you’re the one that turned him in and took the evidence needed to nail him. Things are going to be really bad for you.”
I laughed drily and lifted an eyebrow at him. I wished I had the nerve to walk up to him and wrap him up in a hug. I think we both really could have used one. “Things are always really bad for me. I had a few minutes of peace when I was pretending to be someone else and her skin never quite fit right. This is what my life looks like, Detective.”
His eyebrows pulled together and there was a noticeable tick in his jaw. “You do understand Conner will more than likely murder you when he gets his hands on you for double-crossing him? He burned down Nassir’s fight club on a night it was full of people. We pulled ten bodies out of the debris. Most of them were younger than you.”
I didn’t need a lecture about how cruel and coldblooded Conner was. I knew. The bastard had tossed the word love at me like I was an idiot. Like I was some simple girl that hadn’t grown up on the streets knowing what a chore it would be to love someone like me. A good man, a man with a purpose and a cause, would never throw the L-word so carelessly at a woman with a past like mine. Right then and there I knew he was up to something I wanted no part of. He thought he could tell me he loved me and I would be malleable and sweet. Instead I lied right back to him and set about really fucking up his plans. Served him right for underestimating me.
“I know what Conner is going to want to do to me if he gets his hands on me, so that’s why I came to you.”
I looked at him from under my long eyelashes and saw his mouth tighten when our eyes locked.
“You are going to keep me alive long enough to testify, Detective King.” He was going to keep me alive long enough that I could take Conner out before he took me, only Titus didn’t need to know that part of the plan.
“What makes you so sure of that, Reeve?”
I sighed heavily and pushed off the door. I walked over to him so that I had to tilt my head back and he had to look down slightly so that we could continue to meet each other’s gaze. He really was a brute of a man but it worked for him . . . and for me.
“Conner is going to know I’m the one who sold him out. I’m the reason he can’t operate out in the open anymore pretending to be good. He’s going to want me to suffer for that, but he’s not stupid and he knows all your fancy policeman tricks. This isn’t some uneducated thug dealing dime bags on the corner. He’s you, Titus, just the evil version.” I crossed my arms over my chest to mirror his pose and a small thrill raced through me when he couldn’t hide the way his gaze dipped to watch how my shirt pulled across my chest. He might not like me, but there was an attraction there he couldn’t always control. There was an inner part of him that pushed against his rough façade when we were within touching distance. That was the part I wanted to snuggle up with and curl around.
“You want Conner; then you’re going to need me to draw him out. He’s going to come for me regardless of what or who he has to get through to get to me, so you need to put me out there and then grab him when he comes for me.”
He was silent for a long, tense moment and I saw his Adam’s apple dip as he swallowed hard.
“Are you asking me to use you as bait? You want to me to throw you out there in an ocean of sharks when the water is already full of blood?”
I lifted my hands and pushed some of my hair off my face and let my head fall so that I was looking at the gross carpet between our feet. The toes of both of our boots were almost touching and everything inside of me longed to take that little, tiny step closer so that we would be in each other’s space.
“If I don’t testify against the rest of Novak’s guys, then my deal with the state goes away, and I’m looking at spending the rest of my life in jail. I’ve done some really awful things and I can’t let Conner pull apart what’s left of this place for no reason. I need you to keep me alive long enough to do what I promised to do, and you’re going to have to use to me draw Conner out. It’s the only way. If he went into hiding you’re going to have to give him a viable reason to show himself. He’s going to know that not only are you looking for him but so are the feds.”
Titus fell back a step and then started pacing again. I could have sworn the white spot in his hair spread a little wider after my declaration. Since I had spent the night in the fi
lthy bed, I was less squeamish than he had been about sitting on it. I flopped down and watched him as he prowled back and forth in front of me.
“Oh, he has a reason for what he’s doing, I just don’t know what it is yet.” His eyes cut to me sharply. “What about going back into WITSEC under the supervision of another marshal?”
I shook my head and leaned back on my hands so that I was staring at the ceiling. There was an unidentifiable stain I hadn’t noticed the day before. Ugh. I needed to get out of this place before I caught something.
“No. If I go back into hiding then you’ll lose any chance you have of getting Conner to show himself, plus I already told you that clean and shiny skin doesn’t fit me right. I want to be here. I need to be here.” He would never understand that I felt like I not only owed it to Dovie after the way I hurt her, but I also owed it to the city. The Point sucked and there were no redeeming qualities about it, but I felt that way about myself as well and I still wanted someone to save me, someone to love me. The city and I were so similar I almost felt like I had to save it in order to save myself. If I lived that long. Titus didn’t look like he was ready to jump on board with my plan anytime soon. In fact he looked like he was about to pass out cold on his feet.
“Did you sleep at all last night?” The question was more personal than I should get with him but the words just slipped out.
He stopped pacing and his head dropped forward like it weighed a million pounds. He lifted a hand to rub the back of his neck and his chest rose and fell in a huge sigh that sounded like it had the entire fate of the world inside of it.
“No. I was trying to figure out what to do with this Roark noise. I was making sure my dumbass brother didn’t do something now that he knows you’re back in town. I got home and was there for about twenty minutes when I got a callout about a dead hooker in the District. It took me two hours to track down an ID on her. When I went to notify her family I found out not only was she married but also had two little kids at home. She was tricking out because her old man likes to gamble and couldn’t hold down a job. That kind of shit is my everyday, so no, I don’t sleep much, even when I get the chance.”
It made my heart squeeze. Not because the story was heartbreaking or anything unusual in this place, but because he cared so much. He carried those other people’s choices and failures around as his own, and in a place like this the weight of that had to be enormous. He was Atlas. He really was trying to carry the world and all its messed-up ways on his back.
Those crystalline eyes cut over to me and then skated over the bed I was lounging on.
“How about you? This place needs a hazmat team to clean it up. Did you sleep?”
“No. I grabbed the phone and bolted. I didn’t even grab a change of clothes and I don’t even have my real ID. To the rest of the world I’m still Jill Parker. Reeve Black doesn’t exist.”
“Jesus. This just gets better and better.”
“Ohhhh . . . I don’t think we’ve even begun to see the worst of it yet.”
He groaned out a swearword and curled his hands into tight fists at his sides. The tick was back in his jaw but there was something working in his eyes. The color was doing that thing where it started to fade into something lighter and brighter. He was molten hot from the inside out. Man, would I sell the fragmented parts that were left of my soul to burn with him.
“How far are you willing to go with all of this, Reeve? What’s the limit?”
I didn’t understand what he was asking me, so I sat up straighter and leaned forward intently. “There is no limit. What are my options here, Titus? I die or I go to jail, and neither one of those is very appealing. I know I don’t deserve a second chance, but I’m stubborn enough and selfish enough to want to take one for myself anyway.”
“You know Conner is going to come for you, but have you even considered the other threats? My brother is just as dangerous and just as unpredictable as Roark and you had a direct hand in getting the only girl he has ever cared about abducted and sliced up. And I bet you never even thought about Nassir. That guy is a blackhearted monster. He’s mad as hell that his club burned down and that Roark got his hands on one of his girls and worked her over. He’s the type that would use you just like you’re saying, to draw out his prey, only he wouldn’t care if you made it out of the carnage alive or not. You have more than one enemy here.”
His words were chilling in their frankness and they brought goose bumps to the surface of my skin. “I know.” It came out sounding shaky and I hated revealing that weakness in front of him.
He moved closer to me so that our knees were touching. He reached out a hand and put a finger under my chin and lifted my head up so that we were once again locked in an unwavering gaze. His eyes were so light now there was almost no color in them at all. It made him look fierce and wild.
“I am the only person on your side and I am there reluctantly.”
“Ouch.”
I went to lower my lashes so I didn’t have to see how he really felt about me shining out of that reflective gaze.
“But as much as it pains me to say it, we can help each other out. In fact I think the only way to do this with minimal casualties is to work together. I want Roark and you want to keep your ass covered, and to do that, we need to be attached at the hip.”
I frowned at him as he continued to loom over me. “What are you suggesting, Detective?”
“I’m not suggesting it. I’m telling you that you are suddenly and irrevocably in love with me. You are obsessed with me and we are about to embark on a passionate, out-of-control, unexplainable, and very, very obvious romance. We are going to shove our new relationship so far down everyone’s throat that they are going to choke on it.”
I gulped and opened my mouth to tell him how crazy he sounded, but he reached out a hand and placed his palm lightly over my mouth. I scowled at him and contemplated sinking my teeth into the meaty part of his hand.
“Seriously, Reeve, it’s the only way. Bax will rein it in if he thinks I’ve got a thing for you. Nassir won’t back all the way off, but he’ll be less dangerous if he thinks he has to go through me to get to you. Plus, from what you’ve told me, and what I understand about whack jobs like Roark, if he thinks you replaced him with me, it’ll force him to move more quickly. He’ll come out of hiding faster if he thinks you moved on without a second thought. If you understand the risks involved, I’m willing to take them with you.”
I lifted both my eyebrows up and tapped my fingers on my knee until he took a step back as he gauged my reaction. I don’t know what he was expecting but he actually looked nervous as I climbed to my feet.
“What do you think?” His voice was low and he didn’t look away as I walked up so that I was standing directly in front of him.
What did I think? I thought there was no “suddenly” about being irrevocably in something that looked a lot like love with him. I thought passionate, out of control, and obsessive about summed up the way I already felt about him and that it would require zero acting on my part. I reached out and put a hand on the center of his chest. He was warm and hard. He felt like security and strength.
“I think you are going to have a much harder time pretending you like me than I will pretending I like you, Detective. Have you considered that?”
He balked a little and lifted a hand to circle his fingers around my wrist. I wondered if he felt my pulse kick at the touch.
“I do whatever it takes to get the job done.”
Oh, I bet he did. I smirked up at him and lifted up on tippy toes so that our lips were almost touching. I expected him to recoil, to back away in haste, but he didn’t. Instead his tongue darted out to lick across the curve of his bottom lip, and I almost groaned out loud.
“Prove it.” I whispered the challenge and then held my breath to see what this scary, sexy man would do once the gauntlet was thrown down.
He didn’t disappoint. He never did.
Chapter 4
Titus
PROVE IT.
Those odd, dark blue eyes flashed the challenge at me and I couldn’t resist it. Not the challenge or the girl. I didn’t like that she got under my skin. I hated that she was right at the center of this mess with Roark, and it really, really grated across my already taut nerves that even with no makeup on and looking like she hadn’t slept a wink, she was still the most gorgeous woman I had ever seen. I didn’t want to notice that. I didn’t want my dick to twitch when she touched me¸ but it did, which was going to make pretending to be infatuated with her easy and so much harder at the same time. She knew it too.
Prove it.
Okay. I would prove the shit out of the fact that I could do what I had to do in order to make this scheme of mine work. I could pretend to like her, which really was the only thing that would be fake. I couldn’t reconcile the way my pulse leaped every time she turned that midnight-blue gaze on me with the fact that she had orchestrated a man’s murder. She was beautiful but she was also deadly. She was just as hard as this place we came from, and I’d had enough of the city hammering against my foundation, as it was. Lusting after a woman who had it in her to be just as cold, and just as calculating, as any other criminal I locked up on a day-to-day basis was nowhere for my head to be while I was on the brink of war with her deranged ex-lover.
Better When He's Brave Page 5