Rules in Defiance

by Nichole Severn

  “Such a gentleman.” Waylynn took position behind him, the wild rush of geraniums still clinging to him after their close call with Mabel the Moose.

  He led her toward the SUV, senses at an all-time high. He doubted whoever’d framed her for Alexis Jacobs’s murder had followed them all the way out here, but he wasn’t going to take the risk. Not with her.

  Movement registered off to the left, past the tree line, and her long fingers latched on to his nondominant arm. Elliot slowed, trying to hear anything past the hard pounding of his heartbeat behind his ears. Not from the possibility of danger—he’d tear anyone who came close to her apart with his bare hands—but because Waylynn’s touch had rocketed his awareness of her ever higher.

  “Are we going to have to outrun a moose again?” Her question wisped against his earlobe.

  Iridescent white eyes shifted in the bushes. Most likely a fox. A laugh vibrated through him. His nerves had run a bit too high for his taste. “Come on. I’m sure Mabel and the calves have had enough excitement for one day.”

  “They’re not the only ones.” She released her grip on his arm and moved to the passenger-side door.

  They took the ride to Alexis Jacobs’s apartment in silence. Tinted, bulletproof windows cast them into darkness and, despite the fact he could see her clearly in the front seat, Elliot felt her all around him. In her scent still imbedded in his clothing, to the memory of her pressed beneath him as Mabel charged. Hell, even the skin beneath his hoodie burned with memories of her touch.

  He’d kept his distance, no problem, for the past year, but over the last twenty-four hours, she’d defied the single rule he’d set for himself when it came to wanting her. The only change? She needed him now more than ever and he’d been stupid enough to hide her in his own damn cabin while he hunted the bastard doing this to her. They hit the highway and headed back toward Anchorage, the combination of road and rubber pulling him back into the moment. Get control. Solve the case. Move on with their lives. That was it. They’d go back to the way things were once her apartment was cleared as a crime scene. He’d pay off his debt to Blackhawk Security and move on and she’d probably work the next decade trying to recover her research.

  He squeezed his knuckles around the steering wheel for some semblance of an anchor. Who was he kidding? There was no going back. Waylynn Hargraves had worked herself beneath his skin a long time ago. Once he’d taken on her case, he’d known nothing between them would be the same.

  Alexis Jacobs’s apartment wasn’t far from the cabin. Fifteen minutes, tops, but it sure seemed like an eternity before they hit the complex’s parking lot.

  “I need to make one thing clear before we go any further, Doc.” Directing the SUV into a spot at the back, away from curious neighbors, Elliot pushed it into Park. He hung on to the gear shift. “I’ll work this case, I’ll find out who framed you for murder, who destroyed your research, no problem. I’ll protect you with my life if I have to because that’s what you’re paying me for. We’re friends, but that’s it. I’m not interested in anything more.”

  Her arched eyebrows drew together. “Did I give you the impression I wanted more?”

  “No.” Which only made this easier. “Just making sure we’re on the same page.”

  “Friends.” Waylynn shouldered her way out of the SUV but turned back before she closed the passenger-side door behind her with a nod. “We’ll always be friends.”

  “We doing this or what?” A mountainous shadow crossed in front of the SUV, arms wide. Vincent Kalani, all six foot six of him, closed in on the driver’s-side door as Elliot stepped out onto the pavement. Blackhawk Security’s forensics expert kept a relationship with Anchorage PD, which was the only way he and Waylynn were getting inside that apartment. And the only reason Elliot had invited the former cop along. “Generally speaking, you’re not supposed to bring the client with you along for the ride.”

  Elliot extracted his black duffel bag all operatives were required to carry and swung his gear over his shoulder. Motioning toward Waylynn as she rounded the hood of the vehicle, he smiled. “Try telling her that. Waylynn, this is Vincent. He’s the forensics expert on my team.”

  “Nice to meet you.” She shook Vincent’s enveloping hand. “Thank you for helping.”

  “I’m only doing this because Elliot promised he’d stop stealing my lunch out of the office fridge.” The forensics expert collected a bag identical to Elliot’s from the pavement a few feet away.

  “Hawaiian barbecue is my favorite.” Elliot winked at Waylynn, then hauled his Kevlar vest over his head and strapped it tight. He handed her an extra vest from his stash. “He still has his lunches made by his mom.”

  “Well, since you kept me waiting here for thirty minutes, I decided to take a look at the place myself.” Clapping his hands together, the former officer widened his stance as Waylynn donned the protective gear. “Do you want the good news or the bad news first?”

  Elliot crossed his arms over his vest, tugging one hand down his beard as he focused on his teammate. “Depends on how bad the bad news is.”

  “The seal is broken on the door,” Vincent said. “Someone’s already been here.”

  * * *

  “WHO WOULD WANT to break into Alexis’s apartment?” Anger was better than tears, better than grief, better than guilt. Somewhere, deep inside, Waylynn suspected everything that’d happened to that poor woman had happened because of her. She didn’t know why, didn’t know who. She’d have to live with that fact for the rest of her life unless they solved her case. She studied Elliot’s and Vincent’s faces in the dim streetlamps peppered throughout the parking lot. “Aside from us, I mean.”

  “I can think of one person.” Elliot hefted his duffel bag back into the SUV, then slammed the door closed, gun in hand. “Whoever wanted you to take the fall for her murder.”

  A shiver raked down her spine, shaking her shoulders, and Waylynn wrapped her arms around herself. “Could they have been looking for the hard drive, too?”

  “They’d had to have known about Genism’s policy to become suspicious if they saw the same photo as I did.” Elliot pulled back the top portion of his gun, presumably chambering a round. She didn’t know anything about guns. Didn’t know why he needed one now, but the confidence rolling off him in waves helped settle her nerves.

  The reality of his words cleared. She unfolded her arms and stepped into him. “Wait. You think someone from Genism is doing this to me?”

  “I don’t know. Seems too much of a coincidence. First, Alexis is discovered dead in your bathtub, then there’s a break-in at the lab, where only your research is destroyed.” His expression softened, but the intensity in his eyes remained. “I made you a promise, Doc. I will protect you. Whoever is doing this might be dangerous, but I’m worse. Because they’ll never see me coming.”

  A second shiver climbed along her back and it had nothing to do with the investigation or the danger closing in on her. For an entire year, she’d relied on Elliot Dunham’s sense of humor to get her through the rough patches. She’d catch herself smiling at work when she remembered a joke he’d told a day earlier. Every night, after she left the lab, she couldn’t wait to get home and find him in his cheap folding chair outside his apartment with two beers and that gut-wrenching smile so she could hear about his day. He had a gift and he didn’t even know it. The gift to help her forget the nightmares. But the man standing in front of her wasn’t the Elliot she’d known. His expression was harder, his voice dropping into dangerous territory, yet she couldn’t stop the explosion of traitorous desire in her lower abdominals.

  “I really want you guys to have your happily-ever-after—” Vincent hiked a thumb over his shoulder “—but we have an apartment to search before someone calls the real cops.”

  Waylynn blinked to clear her head and dug her fingernails into the center of her palms as a distraction. The heat ru
shing through her dissipated. For the moment. Her mouth dried. “We’re friends—”

  “She’s my next-door neighbor.” The tendons along Elliot’s neck flexed. The sharp edge etched into his expression cut through her. He nodded once.

  Oh. Disappointment wrapped around her heart and squeezed the air from her lungs. Next-door neighbor now? That was quite the demotion.

  “Great. Then let’s get going.” Rolling his eyes, Vincent shouldered his duffel and led the way up the nearest set of stairs. The sound of the forensics expert’s cargo pants shifting faded. She and Elliot were alone under the streetlamp.

  “You should hang back, Doc. We don’t know what we’re walking into up there.” He tossed her the keys to the SUV. “If I’m not back in ten minutes, drive to Blackhawk Security and talk to Sullivan Bishop no matter what happens. Only him, understand?”

  She closed her fingers around the keys. What was he talking about? He was coming back. If he didn’t... No. She didn’t want to think about that.

  Elliot turned his back to her, heading after his teammate with gun in hand.

  “Is that really all I’m ever going to be to you during the investigation?” Her mouth dried, but she had to get the words out. She’d never been good at handling her impulses, couldn’t stop herself from closing the small space between them as he slowed at the bottom of the stairs. They’d always kept things friendly. No romantic entanglements. But his pulling away from her now, after everything that’d happened? No. She needed him. Needed that damn smile, his sarcasm. His friendship. Because without it—without him—the chances of her fighting back the darkness that resided deep inside grew smaller every day. “Your next-door neighbor?”

  He turned his head over one shoulder without facing her. “I can’t do this with you right now, Doc.”

  “Vincent said someone’s already searched the apartment. You think going up there in two minutes rather than one is going to make a difference?” She was part of the investigation, too. She was the investigation. She knew the risks, understood the importance of any evidence left behind in Alexis’s apartment, or what would happen if she was caught here, but Waylynn needed an answer now. If this friendship couldn’t handle the strain... She inhaled slowly to steady her pulse. She’d spend the rest of her life behind bars for murder. “We’ve been friends for almost a year. At least, I thought we were. We start working together and all of a sudden, you’re pushing me away. I want to know why, Elliot.”

  “No, you don’t.” He started back up the stairs. As though that was the end of the conversation. “It would only make this harder.”

  They weren’t done. Too much counted on his being in her life. Waylynn shot her hand out, wrapping around his arm before he could escape. “That’s not good enough.”

  He spun around, closing in on her until he’d sandwiched her between his body and the side of the SUV. Despite the lingering sunset around them, his eyes burned bright. Every muscle in his upper body strained tight beneath his Kevlar vest as he bracketed his hands on either side of her head.

  “You’ve been the one constant in my life. The one person I can count on to keep me here when all I want to do is get the hell out of this city.” The tension drained from his shoulders, from his expression. His voice softened as he studied her, his body heat tunneling through her clothing. “But I haven’t been free in a long time, Doc. I left the commune when I was fourteen, then spent over a year in an Iraqi hellhole until Sullivan Bishop pulled me out. Getting more attached to you than I already am? That puts me in a position I don’t want to be in. So if looking at you as a friend instead of anything more helps me keep that distance, I’m going to do it.” His hands slipped down the driver’s-side door and he backed off. “I have to. For both our sakes.”

  She fought back the burn in her lower lash line. She wasn’t a crier. She’d survived too much to break down every time something went wrong in her life, but this cut deeper than when she’d been accused of her father’s murder, of Alexis’s murder, of losing her entire life’s work in the blink of an eye. This was Elliot. The only person she trusted. The only man who’d actually made her feel. Her friend. She swallowed to keep her voice steady despite the chaos battling inside her. “Then friends it is.”

  Her hands shook. One breath. Two.

  “Vincent is waiting on us.” Waylynn clenched her back teeth and everything inside her went cold. Circling around him, she headed for the stairs. He didn’t want to be more than friends? Fine. She’d focus on the investigation, then move on with her life. With or without him. All that other stuff like relying on him to lift her mood with a joke or looking forward to that beer after she left the lab every night... Her throat got a bit tighter as she climbed the concrete steps. She’d get over it.

  His boot steps echoed behind her, but she didn’t dare look back to see how close he followed. Find the hard drive. Solve the case. That was all that mattered. Her life depended on it. She passed blue door after blue door on her right until the one with a broken crime scene seal came into view. Alexis’s apartment. Waylynn pulled up short, not sure if she wanted to step over that threshold. Vincent had already gone inside. The sound of his search reached her ears.

  Alexis Jacobs had worked directly under her for three years. Receiving and processing DNA samples from the studies they ran, recording their findings, running the needed tests to distinguish which of their subjects carried the warrior gene. Her work had been integral to the lab, integral to Waylynn. But it’d been more than that. Alexis had been a friend. They’d spent late nights together, ordering in Chinese food while they worked. They talked about each other’s lives, love interests, vacations they wished they could take. Talked about Elliot. Alexis had been five years younger, but Waylynn had gotten along with her assistant better than most researchers her age in the industry. She took another deep breath and glanced back over her shoulder, a hint of bleach on the air.

  “You don’t have to go in there.” His clean, masculine scent worked to drown the burn of bleach from her nose. Someone must’ve dumped an entire bottle in the apartment.

  “Yes, I do.” She needed to know why. Why the killer had targeted Alexis and not Waylynn directly. Why they were trying to set her up for murder. Why they’d gone after her research. Maybe whatever was on that hard drive would give her the answers. But most of all, she owed it to Alexis.

  She pushed inside, covering her nose with the crook of her arm. Blinking back against the onslaught of chemicals, she searched for the black hard drive Elliot had described. The smell had soaked into the walls. They wouldn’t be able to search the apartment long before it went to their heads. “Do police normally soak the place in bleach?”

  “Not unless there’s a body.” Elliot covered his mouth and nose as well as he moved into her peripheral vision. Watching where he stepped, he moved toward the kitchen at the back through debris from a busted coffee table, an overturned bookcase, glass from picture frames. There’d been a struggle here. “Even then, they’d never leave the place inhospitable. Vincent, what you got?”

  The former NYPD officer came around the corner, with a briefcase he must’ve stashed in his duffel bag. “Nothing. Place has been wiped down. No fingerprints. And I’m sure you didn’t miss the fact everything’s been soaked in bleach.”

  “We noticed.” Waylynn used her sweatshirt over her hand as she pulled drawers and checked under unopened mail. No sign of the hard drive around Alexis’s desktop computer. Nothing in her desk. She moved down the hall toward the single bathroom there. If Alexis had broken Genism corporate policy by loading private research onto a foreign device, she’d hide that hard drive the last place police or the company would find it. The last place a man would look. She centered her attention on Vincent. “Did you check the bathroom?”

  “Checked the vents, the medicine cabinet, everything while you two were taking your sweet-ass time in the parking lot.” Vincent shook his head. “No
hard drive.”

  She didn’t want to think about her conversation with Elliot right now. Finding the hard drive mattered. Clearing her name of murder mattered. Waylynn moved down the hallway and into the bathroom. Focusing on the blue-and-pink box beside the sink, she reached inside. Bingo. Pulling the solid piece of black plastic and metal from the thin cardboard, she stepped out into the hallway. She’d found the hard drive, and was holding it up for their inspection. “This is why you never send a man to do a woman’s job.”

  Chapter Five

  No identifiable fingerprints in the victim’s apartment. Nothing to help them put a face to whoever was gunning for Waylynn. The entire place had been bleached down. DNA gone. Elliot exhaled hard to get the chemical burn out of his nose. Didn’t help. The only lead they had now was the hard drive they’d handed off to Vincent to give to Elizabeth Dawson. In Liz’s own words, Blackhawk Security’s head of network security would love to have something to do other than change diapers and wash bottles all day. But even checking in with his favorite teammate out on maternity leave wasn’t enough to pull Elliot out of his own head.

  He caught sight of Waylynn on the balcony, staring out over the parking lot, and closed the door to Alexis’s apartment behind him. Long blond hair shifted across her back, but she didn’t look back at him. Hell. He’d messed up. Hurt her. Sliding his forearms across the iron railing, he took a position next to her. “You okay?”

  “I am very not okay, Elliot.” She intertwined her long, delicate fingers together over the railing and rounded her upper body, stretching back. Then she straightened, her bottom lip between her teeth. She unlocked her hands, then relocked them. “In the span of two days, I’ve lost everything. My coworker, my research. Now I’m losing you. All because someone put a body in my bathtub.”