“From now on, I’m calling the shots.” Malcolm made the announcement as he threw their bags into the back of the Subaru her uncle had squirrelled away down here by the shore. “I’m calling Hawk, and then we’re getting your arm looked at.”
“No, Malcolm,” Marie said sharply. She started backing up, away from him. And the anger, which had been simmering all evening, came to a quick and fierce boil in his gut.
“Fuck yes, Marie.” In two long strides, he stopped her retreat. Instead of grabbing her arms, he took hold of her, one hand at the back of her neck, so he didn’t hurt her already wounded limb, the other at her waist. “Your little game is over. If Hawk hasn’t already heard about your activities, he will. Hawk Elite doesn’t leave bodies behind them in their path.”
She winced and swallowed, as guilt and regret at his own callousness blinded him. “No,” he said, forcing aside the sympathy. “Your uncle is probably dead. Why? There are police for these types of matters. This is exactly why Hawk works with the police, not against them. You should have reported the armband stolen a year ago.”
“I have to go back and get my uncle.”
“No.”
Holding his arm, she placed her second hand on his chest, resting it over his heart. “I would never ask Hawk to break his code. I swear it. I would have left this afternoon, taking my uncle and the armband with me. Hawk is not responsible for what I did.”
“Something happened in the last year to heighten the stakes. He came after you, guns blazing. He knew who you were as soon as he opened the door to us.” Which, when he thought about it, could have put them both in huge danger.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’ve never met the guy. I didn’t realize—”
“Have ya looked in a mirror, Marie?” His voice rose, but the wind coming off the water drowned their conversation. He let go of her and turned away to run a hand through his hair. Turning back, he held out his hand. “Key.”
Her shoulders fell.
“We do this together from here on out.” He gave her credit for digging into her bag and pulling out a keychain with an old fob-less key attached. “This thing runs, right?”
“Of course,” she said with a sniff. “You know how to drive standard, don’t you?”
Without bothering to answer, he opened the door and sat in the old vinyl seat behind the steering wheel. “Let’s go.”
She hesitated, and he wondered if she’d refuse.
“Marie! Get your fucking ass in this car, right now, or I will leave your uncle for dead.”
She hurried around to the passenger side.
The tank was full. And the car started on the second try.
“Who takes care of the boat?”
“I’ll have to come back in a few days. Next week, if it takes that long to get around Vladimir.” She shrugged, biting her damn lip again. “The neighbors, down the coast, are friends of ours. They keep an eye on things.”
He looked at her sharply. “Will they have called the police after the fireworks?”
“Maybe. They don’t really know…”
“That you’re criminals?”
“Hey, we’re not criminals, not really…sorta— Oh, never mind.” She swallowed and looked out her window, moving over a bit to put space between them.
“Enough, Marie.” Malcolm stepped on the gas, taking them back toward her uncle’s place. “You put my life on the line when you played this game.”
“Stop calling it a game,” she said, but the wind was out of her sails now.
“You’ve worked with us for going on two years. You went overseas with us. How do you not get the loyalty of Hawk Elite? He would have done anything to help you get your precious armband back.”
“Turn up here,” she said, and he followed the direction of her pointed finger, taking the road north until he recognized the area.
He slowed at the dirt road, which led back toward the shore and her uncle’s home.
“Dimitru is probably gone by now.”
“Probably isn’t good enough right now, Marie.”
She nodded. He hated feeling like he’d kicked a puppy.
Especially since he was the one who’d been kicked—by her.
She’d said she would be good. He’d let himself fall for her charms, her insecurities, her family loyalty…
He drove by once, twice, and then, on the third time, pulled in. Slowly, he took the first turn. But his gut was already telling him Dimitru was gone, like she’d suggested. The air was still, and the clouds above remained, finally covering the moon with a darkness that fitted his mood. He rolled down the window, and only the sound of wind broke the silence.
At the front of the house, he pulled in next to his rented vehicle, riddled with bullet holes. Though he hated Marie was even prepared for something like this, he was grateful for the extra vehicle and the way out they’d had earlier. Dimitru had come in ready to take and to kill. A fitting end to this clusterfuck of a weekend.
Marie was out of the car before he turned it off, and she ran up the steps to the front door, also riddled and hanging from its hinges. Shit-storm was the only term he could think of to encompass all the crap raining down on his head. He couldn’t pinpoint exactly when it had started turning south, but he was getting a funny feeling it was when he agreed to spend personal time with Marie and then let himself fall for her.
He climbed the steps and stepped over a broken board on the front porch. He breathed, looking up as he sighed, and opened the door to go in.
Marie stood in the living room, dripping blood on the old, worn, yet expensive-looking rug in front of the fireplace. Defeated. Exhausted.
And Bert was gone, a dark pool of blood on the floor where he’d fallen.
“They wouldn’t have taken him if he was dead,” Malcolm said, coming up behind her and putting a hand on her shoulder. He still wanted to comfort her.
She turned into his arms and grabbed him around the waist, squeezing as if her life depended on it. By reflex, his arms circled her shoulders and drew her in. “I’m sorry, Marie.”
She sniffled. “What have I done?”
“Probably what your uncle expected of you.” Malcolm hadn’t given voice to it yet, but he held little respect for a man who put a girl, like Marie had been, into this line of work. As good as she’d been—and was—at acquiring things, she might have been good as a lawyer or teacher or…whatever the hell she wanted to be.
Now, here she was, broken by her own actions.
Broken because someone had reaped retribution on her family in the worst way—again. “We’re going to do whatever we can to find Uncle Bert. We’ll get him.”
She nodded. “I wanted the armband so badly—for my parents, for Uncle Bert. He always said not to let my heart lead, but I didn’t listen. I had to do it. He’s dying, Malcolm.” Anguish coated her words, and her weight shifted as she leaned into him. “So mad.” She slurred a little. “And the way that asshole showed it off, like it was his to brag about, fueled my fire to get back at him. To get my family’s armband back.”
Malcolm ran a hand down his face, squeezing his eyes closed. Uncle Bert had given up a secret. The old man was dying. Fuck. He wanted to punch something, anger and sorrow a mangled mess inside of him. Instead, he brushed a hand over her hair, not wanting to feel the sympathy at all.
“Mal?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m going to pass out now,” she said as her knees gave out. He used his upper body and an arm to keep her upright, and then crouched to put another arm under her knees, carried her over to the couch, and laid her down.
Pulling his cell, he called Hawk as he went for the first-aid kit he’d seen in the kitchen. “Hey, boss. We got a problem.”
“No shit, Malcolm. I got a call from the FBI, telling me there was a break-in at the Dimitru estate. What the hell is going on out there? I thought the systems were all up and running?”
The FBI. So Benson had been right about a man on the inside. “Um, there’s been a turn of events.” Malcolm hesitated. Why? To protect her? She’d be revealed soon enough. Better it came from him than from Hawk’s government source.
He returned to the living room where she was unconscious on the couch, and then scowled. “Fuck,” he whispered to himself before clearing his throat. He opened the freezer and found it stocked—meats and frozen bags of vegetables and fruit. He grabbed two bags of peas.
“Marie had a bone to pick with Dimitru, sir. Things got a little out of hand, and Dimitru retaliated. We’re holed up at her uncle’s on the coast. Marie was shot at our own rendition of the OK Corral, and she’s passed out on the couch.” He set the kit down next to her on the couch then went to the hallway bathroom for a towel.
Hawk’s silence was pregnant, but for the first time, Malcolm couldn’t tell with what. He didn’t hear disapproval. Hawk spoke to someone, moving the phone away from his mouth for a moment, and then came back. “I thought she’d come to me, ask me for help.”
“You knew about her connection out here?” Malcolm took the towel and pressed it to the wound on her arm then placed one bag of peas under her arm and the other on top of her arm.
“Suspected.” Hawk’s tone softened. “Is she okay?”
Malcolm dabbed at the blood and saw the flesh wound. “Yeah. She’ll be all right.”
“West Coast Security has an office and safe house up there.”
“Benson.”
“Yeah. You ever meet him?”
“We talked earlier today.” Did he take a chance on tangling with Dimitru’s former security company? What if Dimitru was keeping tabs on them? What if he was a completely paranoid bastard…because he was. “I’m taking her somewhere else.”
“Okay, where?” Hawk said; he trusted his men.
Relief washed through Malcolm, and he grinned. “Marie’s got just the spot.”
He explained the bunker, mentally going through a list of what he would grab from the house to take down with him. Dimitru wasn’t stupid, but he’d been fooled by the hidden panel. He’d be back…and by then, Hawk would have a team here and they’d be ready.
“I’ll have John out there by morning, along with a team. My contact at the bureau will need to know what’s going on.”
“What’s going to happen to Marie?”
Hawk hesitated, and as if she knew they were talking about her, Marie stirred. “I don’t know,” he finally answered. “She broke the law.”
Marie moaned and half rolled to her side as if to get up. Malcolm put a hand on her shoulder.
“How is she?” Hawk asked.
“It’s not as bad as it looks.”
“Take care of yourselves. We’ll see you first thing in the morning.”
“I’ll be glad when you get here.” He didn’t know what he needed, but a buffer between him and Marie would be a good start.
“Watch your back, brother,” Hawk said, and hung up.
Malcolm took a second to text their address.
“I’m sorry about all of this.”
“So you said.”
“What a cluster.” Marie groaned and fumbled to sit up. When he went to help her, she scowled at him. “You knew I’d gone in for the armband.”
He ignored the show of emotion and shrugged. “Got a call. Here,” he said, then helped her out of the hoodie and the shirt. He touched the skin through the armband. “Swelling’s gone down a bit. Want to try to get it off?”
With a grimace, she nodded.
“I’m going to press the armband from your underarm, take the pressure off the bullet wound, and then we’ll slide it down—hopefully.” He grimaced. “Sorry—”
“Do it.”
Marie relaxed her arm, and he applied firm pressure to the back, lifting the band enough to get it to move down. The first ring got caught on the wound, so he took his other hand and helped her skin lie flat with his finger. She moaned, squeezed her eyes shut, and then blew out a breath. One more ring over the wound, and the band slid down past her elbow to sit at her wrist.
Tough. He’d expected no less. The wound spilled blood again, and he grabbed the towel next to him and pressed it against the gash. “Hold it there.”
Her fingers brushed his hand as she took the towel, and he ignored the ache that went through him at the touch. He took the gauze and tape from the box on the floor at his feet and went back to the first-aid job.
Under the gauze in the box, he found a bottle of alcohol. Opening it, he looked into her eyes. “Ready?”
She nodded, and he poured quickly then dried it with one of the gauze. He was liberal with the Neosporin, then wrapped the arm in gauze, taped it, took the Ace bandage, and wrapped the arm again. “Want some Tylenol?”
“I can get it.” She scooted forward, getting her feet under her. “I’m not an invalid.”
“You did pass out, though…weakling.”
Marie blew a raspberry his way.
“We have to leave.” She opened her mouth, an argument in her eyes, but he stopped her. “To the bunker.”
She relaxed. “Hiding in plain sight?”
“No. Just hiding,” he said. “Hawk has a team coming tomorrow, and you need rest. We’ll be safe enough down there until then.”
“How can you be sure?”
Was he sure? Not really. But at the same time, Vladimir was gone. Malcolm only had his experience in situations like this…and his gut. And his knives and her guns. “I guess we’re taking our chances.” He shrugged. “I believe the chances are good Vladimir will hole up. He’ll need to take account of his losses and try to figure out where we are.”
“Not exactly a sure thing.”
Why was he being so protective? She’d lied to him. “There’s a safe house—”
“But you don’t want to go there,” she said, and he looked at her in surprise.
“No,” he admitted. “I don’t trust that West Coast Security isn’t being watched by Dimitru. And I’ve never worked with them, so—Hawk aside, because he’s all the way on the other side of the fucking country right now—”
She snorted a laugh.
“—I’m not ready to put our fucking lives in anyone else’s hands.”
She nodded. “Okay.”
Just like that.
“I’ll take first watch so you can sleep,” he added. In Qatar, he’d watched her stay awake for an entire twenty-four-hour stretch. They’d all reached their limit over there. But she’d shown she could be part of the team. It had been the first operation he’d done with her, and he’d had to trust her.
She’d had his back.
Now, he didn’t know. “Come on.”
Marie followed him upstairs, and he tried to ignore the warmth of her behind him. He went to open the closet door then added an extra shove with a grunt. Old jackets had been tossed aside. The stack of boxes, off to the side before, were the reason for the grunting. Lots of books. Some photo albums. And Christmas decorations cluttered the small space.
“Geez,” she said, a little breathlessly.
“But they didn’t find the access door.”
“They were close, though.”
True. He couldn’t deny it. Luck or ingenuity. He was going to have to go with ingenuity. Uncle Bert had done well to protect her…in this regard, anyway.
They took what little they’d brought, hauling their few items into the earth below the house and cliffs. Malcolm grabbed something to tide them over in the food department as well, a bag of apples from the fridge and a box of snacks. It wasn’t exactly a luxury suite, but Marie brought down an old army mat and settled on it under a wool blanket. Her eyes slowly closed.
He ripped open the box of Oreos and opened a small sleeve of the cookies.
“Do you think he’s alive?” Her question forced him to stop chewing. She’d propped herself up on her elbow.
“I don’t know, babe,” he answered truthfully, the endearment coming off his tongue with little regard for the fact he wasn’t happy with her.
Marie cleared her throat and looked him in the eye as she hadn’t since she’d walked through the door. “I never wanted this.”
He wasn’t sure what she meant… this, being a life of crime? Her uncle hurt? Being stuck here with him? The armband?
Maybe it didn’t matter. She’d made her choices, and they felt oddly familiar.
He’d had a long time to learn how to guard against this kind of betrayal and had been sure no woman would affect him the same way again.
Well, he was right.
This time hurt way more.