Twenty-Two
Kori
Ian kissed me, and I kissed him back. I couldn’t get enough of him and how good he felt. How eager, but…safe.
Kissing was fine. Kissing was good. There was no kissing in the basement, and kissing Ian made me feel like I was fifteen all over again, and just discovering the art. Innocence and adventure. Power, because he wanted to kiss me, but I could pull away and he’d still want me, but he’d let me go.
Kissing Ian was like starting all over. Clean slate. No memories. No past. Just…us.
When I finally pulled back, desperate for both air and perspective, I couldn’t hold back a groan. “You’re playing dirty,” I moaned, letting my forehead fall against his shoulder.
He laughed, his face pressed into my neck, and his words seemed to melt right into my skin. “Not yet. But I’m open to that.”
“I mean you and your words. You always know exactly what to say.” That he wanted me. That he’d take what I was willing to give. “Does that silver tongue work on most women?”
Ian leaned back so I could see his eyes. Or maybe so he could see mine. “I’m not feeding you lines, Kori. If I were I’d have told you how hot you are and how badly I want you. Both of which are true. But neither of which are how I want to start this.”
This.
This is a mistake. Alarm bells were going off in my head. I knew better than this. This was going to get us both hurt, and not just emotionally. But for the first time in my life, the risk felt worth it.
“So, how do you want to start this?” I couldn’t believe the words, even as they came from my own mouth.
“I want you, and not as a signing bonus. I want to be with you. I want to fall asleep touching you, and I want to see you first thing in the morning. I want you to answer the phone and smile when you hear my voice. I want to be the only one you ever look at like you’re looking at me now. That’s what I want. What do you want?”
“I want…I want to try it. No promises and no hard feelings if either of us changes our mind,” I said, and though he nodded immediately, I couldn’t help wondering if he would have agreed to anything right then, just to make me happy.
Then I realized it didn’t matter. If he was that determined to make me happy, who was I to complain?
I kissed him again. Then I kissed him some more. And somehow, we made it from the floor to the leather couch, where he let my hands explore hard planes of muscle through the soft cotton of his shirt. My mouth trailed over the rough stubble on his chin and down his neck.
Ian groaned, and his hand glided over my hip. He felt so good. Sooo good. But then his fingers slid beneath the hem of my top, and—
“Wait…” I sat up, pushing him away, and after less than a second, the confusion in his eyes gave way to caution and understanding too raw for me to look at. I didn’t want his sympathy. I didn’t need to be coddled like a baby or seduced like a virgin.
I needed…time. Just a little more time.
“I’m hungry. Let’s get some food.”
“You okay? Is this too much?” That look—pity—lingered on the edge of his understanding smile, and I couldn’t stand it.
“Don’t look at me like that,” I snapped, and I could hear the anger in my voice, but I couldn’t control it. “I’m not fucking broken. I’m just hungry.”
But that was a lie. I was broken, and there was no bandage in the world big enough to fix me.
“I’m sorry. I was just trying not to—”
“It’s fine,” I said, purging the anger from my voice with a staggering effort. “I really am hungry. I was going to take you to this awesome steak house in the south fork, but after what happened in the park this morning, we probably shouldn’t leave the west side. There’s a place a couple of miles away that’s not too bad…?”
“Let’s bring the food back. I don’t feel like sharing you with a restaurant full of people.”
I called in our order and gave the restaurant Jake’s credit card number, and since our food wouldn’t be ready for twenty minutes, we decided to walk. It was a beautiful night, cool for early summer, and the cloud cover had lifted, so if we’d been anywhere but the middle of the city, we could have seen the stars. Not that I knew what any of them were. But suddenly I missed the suburban sky view I’d grown up with, because as I walked next to Ian on the sidewalk, I realized I hated the city.
But that wasn’t quite right. It wasn’t the city itself I hated. It was how much of Jake Tower I found represented on the west side, everywhere I looked. His sentries stood on most corners of the main drag. He owned several apartment buildings and businesses. And everywhere I turned I found another arm bared to show tattooed chain links.
They all knew me, even the ones I couldn’t have named for my life, because for years, I’d been at Jake’s side, responsible for his safety and elevated by the job. And they all knew those days were over.
I could feel them staring. A few looked sympathetic—no one wanted to be on Jake’s shit list—and that was almost worse than those who gloated, pleased by my fall.
Ian could tell I was tense, and he tried to distract me with small talk, but I couldn’t relax, and being with him made that even harder. I wanted to touch him, but I was hyperaware that anything we were seen doing would be reported to Jake, who would either understand that we’d excised him from our relationship—which would piss him off—or misinterpret the reports as me seducing Ian on his behalf. Which would piss me off.
Finally the restaurant appeared in front of us. Inside, we had to wait for several minutes before the hostess handed me a receipt to sign, then exchanged it for a thick paper bag with twisted twine handles and an embossed logo. I resisted the urge to stick my head inside the bag and inhale the scent of beef grilled with onions.
Ian looked like he wanted to do the same thing.
Outside again, we headed for the alley behind the restaurant, intending to return to the apartment through the shadows so the food wouldn’t get cold. But the minute I stepped into the alley I knew something was wrong.
I stopped, one hand clenching the bag handle, the other groping at my waist for a gun I wasn’t yet allowed to carry. I reached for Ian’s arm to warn him silently, but before I could, someone grabbed me from behind and hauled me away from him, nearly jerking me off my feet.
I grunted in surprise, and Ian spun toward us, but before he could reach for me, someone stepped between us, gun—plus silencer—pointed at the ground, but ready to take aim at either of us in an instant.
Cam.
I dropped the food bag and started to twist away from the hands holding me, but before I could, my right arm was released and something cold and sharp was pressed against my throat, just beneath my jaw.
Shit. Another alley and another knife fight. A blade at my throat could spill my blood and sever my vocal cords in one stroke—a silent death, in the middle of my own territory.
“Mr. Holt, no one needs to get hurt here, and if you come with us now, no one will,” Cam said. “But you should know that if you refuse, my associate has instructions to kill Kori in an effort to motivate you. Should you still refuse, we have instructions to kill you, as well.” Because like Jake, Ruben Cavazos didn’t want someone as powerful as Ian working for his enemy. “I’m sorry, Kori,” Cam said, and I could hear the strain in his voice.
I shrugged his apology off. He was the foot soldier, not the commander, and I could certainly sympathize. And it’s not like I’d never been threatened with death before.
“Liv…?” I called softly, moving my throat as little as possible, because of the blade pressed against it.
“Ruben rarely makes the same mistake twice. Unless it’s a mistake he enjoys,” said a female voice with a familiar Hispanic accent. Anger flared inside me when Michaela Cavazos stepped out of the shadows next to a large Dumpster, and I understood how they’d gotten into the west side without being spotted. Cam had tracked us, probably waiting for us to leave the hotel, and Meika was a Traveler. She was also Ruben Cavazos’s wife.
Fuck. Without Olivia, who was obligated to help if I asked her to, we were screwed.
“I didn’t know Ruben ever let you off your leash,” I snapped, but Michaela only shrugged.
“It’s a very long leash.”
“Your husband still fucking every bitch with a gap between her thighs?”
Another shrug, like she didn’t care, but I could see the truth in her eyes. In the perpetually angry line of her jaw. “He sets them up, I knock them down,” she said, and my temper burned hotter. She wasn’t kidding.
I owed Michaela Cavazos a knife to the gut, and the one currently pressed into my throat would do the job nicely.
“Holt?” Every muscle in Cam’s body was tense and ready for action.
“I’m not leaving her,” Ian said, looking straight at me, his hands open at his sides, his stance steady and confident.
Cam glanced at me in surprise, then back to Ian, and comprehension surfaced on his features, obvious even in the near darkness. “I understand,” Cam said. “But if you don’t go with Michaela right now, Stan will kill Kori, and I couldn’t stop him even if I were allowed to. Please go. I can’t do anything for Kori anymore, but you can.”
My mind raced, looking for a way out. If I could get the knife away from my throat, I could take Stan—I was sure of that without even having seen him. I could take down most guys twice my size in a fair fight.
“If I leave her here, Tower will kill her,” Ian said, and I flinched. That wasn’t something I’d planned to broadcast.
Cam glanced at me again, brows raised in question, and I could only nod carefully to confirm the fact.
Michaela whistled, and what little light made it into the alley glinted off the knife she spun over and over on her open palm. “Sounds like you signed on with the wrong side.”
“There is no right side,” I said, and I’d never believed that more.
“What’s it going to be, Holt?” Cam asked, and at my back, Silent Stan’s grip on my arm tightened, his knife shaking almost imperceptibly at my neck. He was nervous. Or maybe eager.
“There’s no good choice here,” Ian said, and Cam nodded in acknowledgment. There was nothing he could do about that. “If I go with you, Tower will kill Kori. If I opt to stay here, you’ll try to kill us both.”
“Try isn’t in my vocabulary,” Michaela said, and Ian’s brows rose.
“I suspect there are a great many words missing from your vocabulary,” he said, and she bristled. “But my point is that in the absence of a good choice, a bold one will often suffice.”
Meika scowled. “What the hell does that mean?”
Ian drew a gun from his waistband and aimed over my shoulder before I’d even realized he’d moved. Before Cam could even lift his own weapon. Ian fired, and the flash from his gun blinded me as gunfire echoed through the alley. I didn’t have time to be scared or surprised, which was good, because if I’d realized what was coming, I’d have ducked, and that would have pulled Silent Stan out of Ian’s aim.
The bullet thunked into flesh inches from my head, and for a moment, the knife pressed harder into my skin. Then Stan’s hand fell from my arm and his blade slid lightly across my neck in a downward arc.
I shoved the knife away, but not before it sliced a long, shallow cut from the left corner of my jaw almost to the center of my throat. I hissed at the sudden pain, then cursed over my own spilled blood—the biggest security risk possible.
Turning, I glanced at the still form on the ground behind me, then another gun flashed in the dark, and I heard the muted thunk of a silencer as Cam returned fire. But Ian was already moving. Cam’s bullet slammed into the brick wall just behind him. Ian fired again, and Cam shouted in pain. His gun clattered to the concrete and he slapped his left hand over his right arm.
“Leave, before they come for you,” Ian said, both his gun and his gaze trained steadily on Cam, and I could already hear footsteps pounding our way from across the street.
I gaped at him, one hand pressed to the sticky, bloody wound on my neck. Ian was fast. And he was good.
Systems analyst, my ass. Ian Holt had serious training.
“I can’t go back without you,” Cam said, and movement on my right drew my attention to where Michaela stood with her back to the Dumpster, feet spread for balance, a knife in each hand, ready to be thrown.
Ian shrugged at Cam. “Stay and let Tower’s men kill you. I don’t give a damn.” He turned to me then, his free hand open and waiting for mine though his aim at Cam never wavered. “Kori?”
I took one step toward him, then froze when gravel crunched behind me. I spun, one hand still pressed to my wound, and kicked the knife from Michaela’s left hand as she lunged for me. She swiped at me with her other hand and I kicked her in the chest, afraid that any use of my hands would splatter my blood all over the alley.
Michaela stumbled back and I kicked again. Her knife arced toward my leg. The blade hit my boot and snagged in the leather, but didn’t break through. I kicked one more time, and her knife clattered to the ground, then slid beneath the Dumpster. She howled in pain and clutched her arm, and as the first onlooker appeared in the mouth of the alley, I wasted one precious moment hoping her arm was broken. A lot.
“Stay back!” Ian shouted, waving his gun at the crowd starting to gather. Several ducked out of sight again, speaking into phones, but no one came closer. Not even Tower’s men, and surely there were at least a couple already reporting the incident.
“Michaela, take Cam and get out of here!” I whispered, as anger at him battled with my sympathy for the position he was in.
“I’m bleeding,” he protested as she tried to pull him into the darkest patch of night, on the other side of the Dumpster.
“Give me your bleach, and I’ll clean it up,” I said, holding my free hand out as Ian retrained his gun on Cam. He wasn’t taking any chances. And I couldn’t afford to use my own pocket-size bleach solution on Cam’s blood. But neither would I leave a viable sample of it in the alley to be used against him.
Cam hesitated, glancing from me, to Meika, to Ian, then back at me. Then he dug in his pocket with his good hand and tossed me a small clear plastic bottle, just like the one I carried at all times. Because you never know when you’re going to be attacked in a dark alley by a psychotic bitch and a former friend and coworker.
“Thanks,” he said, then he and Michaela stepped into the darkness and disappeared.
“Got a light?” I said to Ian as soon as they were gone. Then I realized I couldn’t open Cam’s bottle—not to mention my own—without the use of both hands.
“No.” Ian flicked the safety switch on the gun and shoved it back into his waistband, then glanced at the mouth of the alley, where the crowd was reforming. “Anyone got a flashlight?”
After a moment of hesitant silence, three people produced key chain penlights and a fourth pulled a sizable LED flashlight from the pocket of his cargo pants. With their help—I recognized chain links on the arms of two of the men—we scanned the alley quickly but thoroughly for blood and poured bleach everywhere we spotted it.
Only once we’d destroyed both mine and Cam’s blood did I realize that Ian was bleeding, too. Cam’s bullet had grazed his upper arm before slamming into the concrete wall and his sleeve was dark and wet. None had dripped beyond the cloth, that I could tell, but that couldn’t last forever.
“Let’s go,” I whispered, even as my phone began to buzz in my pocket. I thanked the flashlight volunteers, then pulled Ian into the darkness with my good arm. A moment later, we stepped into his hotel bathroom, and I flipped on the light to see him holding the paper bag from the restaurant. Somehow, in spite of killing one man, shooting another, and being shot himself, he’d managed to salvage our dinner.
I laughed out loud. I couldn’t help it.
“What?” Ian shrugged and set the bag on the marble bathroom counter. “You said you were hungry.”
“Wow. What would you do if I said I was angry?”
“I would make fire rain from the heavens to smite your enemies with the flames of our shared rage.”
My eyebrows arched halfway up my forehead. “That sounds like poetry and feels like war. I like it.”
“I thought you might.”
“You don’t see that very often in the city. There isn’t enough smiting with flames.”
“No, but there’s more than enough blood.” He held up his arm, which was still dripping blood down his sleeve, and one glance in the mirror showed me what I’d already felt—that my neck and shirt were soaked in my own blood. “I’ll call down for another first-aid kit,” he said.
“I’m going to run home and clean up, but I’ll be back as soon as I can, okay?” I said, and he nodded from the hall, already heading for the room phone.
I turned the bathroom light off, then stepped through the shadows and into my own room.
“Kenley!” I shouted, before I even had the light on, and she called back from the living room.
“In here.”
“I need some help.” I pulled my shirt off on the way to the bathroom and dropped it into the tub, then grabbed a clean rag from the rack over the toilet and pressed it to my neck.
Kenley stepped into the hall and her eyes widened with one look at the rag and the blood staining both my chest and my bra. “What the hell happened?” She took the rag from me and gasped at the sight of my wound.
“Looks worse than it feels.”
“Good, because it looks like someone tried to slice your head off.”
“Pretty much. And I think Jake’s already heard about it,” I said when my phone buzzed in my pocket again. A headache had already started—resistance pain from not answering his call immediately.
“Want me to talk to him?” She pushed me toward the toilet, where I closed the lid and sat while she dug beneath the sink for first-aid supplies.
“No, just patch me up and I’ll call him myself.” I didn’t want her to have anything to do with Ian. Jake didn’t need any more of an excuse to hold her responsible for my failures.
Kenley poured peroxide onto another clean rag, then pressed it against my neck. I hissed at the sharp sting, but I let her hold the rag in place while I reached back to unhook my bra then tossed it into the tub with my shirt.
Then I took the rag from her and returned Jake’s call while my sister dumped bleach into the tub to destroy my blood.
“What the hell happened?” Jake barked into my ear, in lieu of a greeting.
“Cavazos moved on Holt,” I said. “Ambush in the alley behind Sutherland’s. One dead, two wounded, on their side.” No need to mention that Cam was one of them… “We had to leave the body because we’re both bleeding, but two of your men were there.”
“They’re already on it,” Jake said, and some small measure of tension eased inside me. Even on the west side, where Jake’s authority was almost absolute, gunfire could bring the police. “Witnesses say Holt fired two shots.”
“Yeah. I’m unarmed, remember? Perhaps you’d care to revisit that issue now?”
“I’ll take it under consideration. If Holt fired two shots and hit two people, that means he didn’t miss.”
“Yup.” That’s as much as I was willing to commit to.
“Any thoughts on why a pencil pusher from the suburbs knows how to shoot?” His voice was steady, and the silence that followed it was expectant. He knew something. Or he knew I knew something.
I closed my eyes and took a quick, quiet breath. “He’s a man of many talents?”
“Obviously.” But that wasn’t the end of the issue. It couldn’t be. “Where’d he get the gun, Korinne?”
I closed my eyes, bracing for what would follow. “I took it off Olivia Warren in the park this morning.”
Silence.
Dangerous, tense silence, during which my stomach tried to devour the rest of me whole.
“What park?”
“The south side of Durham Park, at the fork in the river.”
More silence, and I could almost picture Jake sitting behind his desk with his eyes closed, controlling his temper on the outside while it raged unchecked just beneath the surface.
“How badly was Holt hurt?”
I shrugged, though he couldn’t see me. “He wasn’t, this morning. From tonight, just a graze. He’s fine. I am, too,” I added, though he hadn’t asked.
“I have a body to get rid of and witnesses to deal with. Get Holt patched up, get yourself patched up, and consider yourselves grounded for the night. Neither of you are to leave his suite before the sun rises. And I want you in my office alone at eight in the morning, or you’ll be back in the basement five minutes after that.”
Fuck!
“And, Kori, if I have to come looking for you, there won’t be enough of you left to bury.”
Shitshitshit! I hung up my phone and immediately set a timer for seven-thirty the next morning, because I knew from experience that Jake would be setting his for seven fifty-nine, and I couldn’t afford to be late.
“Go on.” Kenley took the bloody rag and handed me a thick gauze bandage to replace it. She looked sick, and I wondered how much of that she’d heard. “I’ll take care of this.” She dropped the rag into the tub with everything else I’d bled on and lit a match, then dropped it onto the pile. Flames flared behind me as I hurried into my room.
Holding the gauze in place with one hand, I plucked a hand wipe from a package on my dresser and carefully wiped all the blood from my neck and chest, then dropped the used wipe in the trash. The blood on it wouldn’t be viable, thanks to the sanitizer. Then I left the gauze in place—it was stuck with drying blood anyway—while I put on a fresh bra and carefully shrugged into a clean shirt.
“Here. Wear this.” Kenley stepped into my room with a gauzy blue scarf. She taped the bandage to my skin, then arranged the scarf around my neck to mostly cover it. Tower would still notice, and Ian knew what had happened, but with any luck, no one else would notice anything wrong.
“Thanks.” I hardly recognized my own reflection with the scarf on. I looked like Kenley, only skinnier. “Where’s Van?”
Kenley flushed. “She doesn’t live here, you know.”
But suddenly I kind of wished she did. I didn’t want to leave my sister alone when Jake was pissed at me.
“Call her. See if she’ll come hang out with you.”
The blood drained from her face with one glance at mine, and she nodded without question. If I sounded worried, she knew she should be, too, and she rarely wasted time arguing. For which I was grateful.
“I have to stay with Ian, then report to Jake in the morning. But I’ll check back in afterward, just in case.”
“Okay. Be careful, Kori.”
I hugged her, then she flipped the light switch for me and I tried to step back into Ian’s apartment, only to find the opening blocked by blazing light in the visible spectrum, which could only mean one thing. He was in the bathroom.
Frustrated but not really surprised, I closed my eyes and reached out mentally until I found a patch of darkness in his suite big enough to step into. I walked forward and a moment later I slammed right into the inside of the closet door.
I opened the door and stepped into the bedroom, and was greeted with the sound of water running in the bathroom. “Hello?” I called, but there was no answer. “I had to come into the closet since you’re—”
Half-naked and dripping wet…
Ian stood in bathroom doorway, hair dripping, wearing nothing but a towel he was just then tying loosely at his waist. His chest and stomach were bare, dark and defined against the thick white cotton, and beaded with clean water.
Carton of hard lemonade, my ass. That was a full-on six-pack.
I couldn’t stop staring. He was beautiful.