by Tiya Rayne
“Are you serious?” I ask, even though the look on his face suggests he’s dead serious. “I can’t climb that fucking fence. Who do you think I am?”
“My wife,” he says, waving his wedding band at me. I roll my eyes. He’s milking this whole fake marriage thing. “And don’t worry. I’m going to help you.”
“Unless your help consists of pulling a ladder out of that duffle bag,” I say, pointing to the black bag at his feet. “Then I’m not getting over that fence.”
He watches me without saying a word. He’s testing me. Well, I have news for him, good dick or not, I’m not climbing that damn fence. He takes a step toward me.
“What’re you doing?”
“You’re sexy when you’re being stubborn.” He grabs for me, but I dodge his hands.
“We don’t have time for this,” I scold him. “You need to get into that house before the asshole comes back.”
The entire time I’m talking he’s still approaching me. He has me cornered. My back to the fence with one hand gripping my waist and the other over my head.
“Climb the gate,” he orders.
“No!”
He smiles before bringing his lips to mine, kissing me like he always does, demanding and without apology. I whimper at the helplessness I feel when he kisses me. My whimper turns into a gasp when his hand is suddenly down my leggings and pushing my panties aside. His finger circles my clit before slipping inside me.
“Walker,” I gasp. He drops his forehead to mine.
“When you’re stubborn my dick gets hard. I want to yank these leggings off you and fuck you against this gate.”
“We can’t.” My protest is weak as shit.
“We will if you don’t climb this fence. And baby, right now Lucien is hacked into a satellite with his eyes on us. The way your pussy is squeezing my hands is going to make me give him a good show.”
I pull back from him. That tidbit of info is like a bucket of ice water dumped on me. I stare into his eyes.
“You’re lying, right?”
He cracks a smile.
“Lucien, give her a sign that you’re watching,” Walker says into the air. It takes only a second before the lights near the fence turn on before immediately turning back off. I gasp and Walker smiles. “Oh, FYI, Lucien and Seth share everything. If Lucien sees this, he will tell Seth.”
That’s enough for me. I put my hand on Walker’s chest and shove him back. He moves away, pulling his hands out of my leggings with a laugh.
“You’re going to pay for that,” I warn as I turn toward the gate.
He laughs but doesn’t reply. I start to climb the fence, placing my foot in the thin grates. I get halfway up and I don’t have the upper body strength to go any further.
Walker cups my ass with his hands as he pushes me up further. With his help, I make it to the top and have to be extremely careful not to stab myself on the pointed tips of the metal poles. Once I get both legs safely across and on the other side of the fence, I slowly climb back down. The climb down is a lot easier than the one up. When I’m close enough to the ground, I jump down, landing on my feet—not gracefully.
“Oh my god. Did you see that? I did it.” I do a little dance at my accomplishment.
Walker shakes his head in amusement. “Very good. Now stand back.”
I have only a second to take a few steps back as he walks away from the fence. He grabs the duffle bag securing it over his head and one shoulder like a crossbody bag. He then turns around and runs toward the fence.
Right before he gets near the fence, he leaps up, grabs one of the poles with one hand and uses that hand to pull his body up and over the high peaks. The momentum of his powerful climb brings him back down on the other side, landing on his feet a whole lot more gracefully than I did. He turns to me with a smile. Not exactly the cocky one I would have had if I just did a pole vault over an eight-foot fence.
“Show off,” I joke.
“Hey, I got to let my Karate skills show.”
He laughs then grabs my hand to head toward the house. We move around the backyard and walk past the large in-ground swimming pool. We move in an odd pattern, one that I know is because we’re trying to avoid the motion detectors.
A motion detector coming on near the gate isn’t alarming. I’m pretty sure animals trigger those all the time, but one this close to the house would alert the security company, who would, in turn, call the cops. I’ve had enough interactions with the cops lately.
When we get to the back door we stop. Walker counts to ten then picks the lock before pushing the door open. I walk in first and he follows. The house is pretty dark for the most part.
“Go to the front door, there is a keypad there. Punch in the code 5001. It will deactivate the alarm.”
The house isn’t that complicated of a layout. The back door leads into a large open floor plan kitchen which connects to the large den. Off from the den is a formal dining room and right on the other side is the foyer.
I make it to the white box on the side of the door just as the red light starts to flash. I punch the code in, and the red light stops. I sigh in relief. I didn’t want to be in this house if the alarm started to go off.
“Lucien says we have about five minutes to get situated before the lawyer is here.”
“You don’t see the problem with that?”
“What?”
I follow him out of the foyer into what looks like an office.
“The fact that Lucien can hack into a satellite and watch you.”
Walker is busy checking all the windows. “No, I don’t. I trust him with my life.”
I flop down in the seat behind the large desk in the center of the room. “I don’t know. I think it would make me paranoid. Like, what if he’s watching you on the toilet or something?”
Walker turns to me and laughs, “Babe, if you could hack into a satellite and spy on anyone in the world, would you waste your time by watching me take a shit?”
Put like that I have to laugh. He’s right, with that type of power I wouldn’t waste it on someone on the toilet.
He goes back to checking the windows. “What are you looking for?” I finally ask him.
“Exits,” he says.
“Aren’t we going out the same way we came in?”
He turns back to me and smiles. “You should always have two or more exit plans. Remember that.”
I roll my eyes. “I doubt I’ll need that handy tip when I go back to work in two weeks.”
Okay, I don’t miss that subtle flinch he makes. What the hell.
“What was that about?”
He turns back to me and those amber eyes look almost apologetic. “Brook—”
His words are cut off when the sound of the front door opening draws our attention. Walker runs to the light switch, turning it off
“Stay right there,” he warns.
“We aren’t done talking about that subject,” I whisper shout.
The clicking of two pairs of shoes walking through the foyer alerts us before the voice.
“Look, I don’t care what you have to do. I told you going after that guy was a bad idea. I barely escaped that fucking massacre five years ago. Do you know I almost went to that fucking meeting?”
“I have no intention of getting caught up in it now.” The clanking of something precedes more footsteps. “I don’t give a shit what your boss says. I’m four days away from making the biggest deal of my life, I don’t have time for this bullshit.”
Obviously, this guy is on the phone with the person involved in all this mess and possibly the person that either killed or had my sister killed. Walker flicks the office light on, and I look at him like he’s crazy. The voice in the foyer pauses.
“What the hell? Go check that out.” Asshole says, directing someone. “Hey, let me call you back.”
Footsteps lead toward us. A tall man enters the office walking right up to the desk. He has a gun in his hand pointed right at me.
/> He looks confused. I don’t blame him. A random black woman sitting in your boss’s office doesn’t happen often, I imagine. Apparently, it doesn’t dawn on him until he is fully in the room that there’s no way I could have turned on the light switch and made it back to this chair that fast.
The moment the idea hits, he spins around on the balls of his feet in time to come face to face with Walker’s fist. The big guy goes down as easy as a bottle of wine after a breakup. Damn, his face must be made of glass.
“William,” Asshole calls out to his bodyguard. From the sounds of snoring going on, I’m afraid William won’t be available for a while.
“You might as well come on in here, Russell,” I call out still sitting behind his desk with Walker now leaning against it.
It takes a minute before he hesitantly walks into the room with a gun shakily pointed at us. He eyes us up and down and then glances at the man on the floor. Walker pushes off the desk to stand straight and Russell swings the gun toward him.
“Don’t move, you fucking lunatic.”
Walker turns fully to Russell, placing his back to me, unbothered by the name-calling.
“I know who you are,” Russell continues to say. He’s a little more confident after he discovers it’s only us in here. The way he keeps the gun trained to Walker lets me know he thinks I’m no threat to him.
“Who am I?” Walker calmly asks.
Russell snorts. “I know what you did to those people. I know it was you. I don’t know how you got away with it.”
“You were there that night?” I ask.
Russell cuts his eyes to me briefly but quickly turns back to Walker. “Fuck no, but I know that this motherfucker missed something.” He laughs as if he’s the triumphant one in this. “I guess whoever hired you for the hit is pissed off to know that the research was finished after all.”
At this statement, Walker and I turn to look at each other. Russell doesn’t know that Walker works for the Church. He thinks he’s some ordinary hired hitman. That means whoever this guy is working for is after Walker and not me like the soldiers at the loft.
“They wanted you for themselves. They had plans to find you and torture you, but I don’t have time for that shit.”
The lights turn off right as a shot is fired. I scream at the darkness and the sound of the loud gun going off in the room. A thump and a male moaning in pain has my heart racing.
“Walker,” I call out into the darkness.
The lights come back up and Russell is lying face down on the desk with Walker standing over him. Walker has one hand at the nape of Russell’s neck, holding him down and the other drops the clip out of the gun Russell was holding. He tosses the gun to the ground away from the clip.
I exhale a breath of relief and then smile proudly. Yeah, that’s my fake husband. “You okay?” Walker asks without turning away from asshole.
“Can we go one day without you getting shot at?”
“Come here, baby. Did I scare you?” I can hear the teasing in his voice.
I huff and roll my eyes but go to his side. “It’s not funny. You scared the shit out of me.”
I punch him in the arm. He grabs my hand, pulling me into his chest. Then he places a kiss on my lips that has me closing my eyes and finding his hair with my hands. When he finally lets me go, those amber eyes stare down into my face.
“Don’t worry, Brook. Nothing will keep me from you,” he whispers against my kiss-swollen lips, and the words shoot straight to my heart.
I’m dangerously close to falling hard for this man. I ignore the mocking tone of my inner thoughts that laugh at my denial. She claims that I’m no longer falling and I’m in fact already in love. Funny, that inner voice sounds suspiciously like Albany.
“Can you two stop fucking over my back and let me up,” Asshole shouts, breaking the mood. Both Walker and I turn to look at him.
“Bring me that chair.” Walker points to the rolling chair I had been seated in. I step out of his arms and grab the chair from behind the desk and roll it back to him. He lifts asshole up from the desk and pushes him into the chair in front of us.
“There are handcuffs in the duffle bag. In the side pocket,” he informs me.
I gather the duffle bag off the floor where he left it and retrieve the cuffs. I head back to asshole and do the honor of cuffing one arm to the desk chair.
“Is this necessary?”
“Yes, or did you forget you held a gun on us,” I reply.
Russell glares up at me as I fasten the cuffs so tight, I know they’re biting into his skin. “Before you ask, I don’t know anything,” he says upfront. I highly doubt that.
“Who are you working for?” I ask.
“I don’t know,” he says defiantly.
Walker quirks a brow, then lifts his foot to the desk. He slides up the leg of his pants to reveal a plain holster, but what’s in the holster isn’t a gun. It’s a huge-ass hunting knife. Walker pulls it out of the holster and puts his foot back down on the floor before stepping up to Russell.
“Let’s try this again. Who are you working for?”
“I don’t know.” The defiance is lacking in his tone this go-round. “All I know is I got a call about three years ago. Some new nerd was on the scene and they said they had finished Heimlich’s work.
“I thought it was bullshit at first. Heimlich was very private about his research. He only trusted very few. I was only a part of the money side. I found him buyers and helped him sell to the highest bidder. That was my job.”
“This new scientist comes in and recruits you and you’ve never met them?”
Skepticism coats my words. He swings those flat blue eyes to me.
“After this asshole went in there and killed the entire staff at Heimlich Research, I try to stay out of the limelight. The new scientist wanted to stay on the low as well. I respected that.”
“If Heimlich was secretive with his work, how did this new scientist finish the project?”
Russell looks back at Walker. “I wasn’t lying when I said you left someone alive. The night of the murders, Heimlich was having a staff meeting. He had reason to believe someone was siphoning his chemicals. He believed someone that worked for him was trying to copy his research.”
“But Walker killed everyone that worked for him.” Why did I say that with so much pride?
“Who said it was someone that worked for him?” Asshole sneers.
Walker and I both look at each other and then back to asshole.
“Now isn’t the time to be all cryptic, dipshit,” I say. “Who was stealing the research?”
He shakes his head. “Heimlich thought it was an employee, but it was an employee’s—” We never get the rest of that sentence.
The sound of glass shattering causes Walker to shove me to the ground so fast I hit my elbow on the side of the desk. When we look up, we realize the gunshot wasn’t meant for us. Someone wanted to silence the lawyer, and they did. That bullet hole in his forehead proves he won’t be talking to anyone else.
“Stay down,” Walker warns before taking off through the house.
I don’t listen. I have no real reason to run out behind him. I’m no use to him, but I’m not staying in here with this dead guy and I don’t want anything to happen to Walker.
So I take my non-useful ass to follow him. I get to my feet and run out of the office, following the sound of movement. I race through the back of the house in time to see Walker standing in the middle of the yard firing off at a moving target. The dark figure slips over the fence and gets away.
“Fuck,” Walker shouts, holsters his gun, and comes back toward me. “Go get the bag, we need to go.”
Before I can turn around a man appears behind Walker. I open my mouth to yell for him to duck, but he spins around and tackles the man dressed in all black. They both fall to the ground with an oomph, right before jumping back up and squaring off.
The man hits something on his watch and it emits a low buzzi
ng sound. It’s only slightly annoying, but it seems to irritate Walker. The man takes the advantage. He charges at Walker, but misses when Walker barely steps out of the way.
Since the first time I’ve seen Walker fight, he’s been incredible. It usually only takes him a few seconds to disarm someone, but this is different. This man fights a lot like him, and for the first time, Walker seems distracted. Almost sluggish in his attempts to fight back.
A powerful punch connects with Walker’s face, sending him falling to the ground. The man pulls out a gun and aims it at him. I dash off the porch and charge, despite the voice in my head shouting at me to stay back. Before I can connect with the man and knock the gun out of his hands—which was my intention—he spins around and grabs me around the neck.
Icy blue eyes meet mine. A face so breathtakingly stunning it belongs on a movie screen smiles down at me. Without even having to ask, I know this man is part of the Church.
It’s in his gaze. It’s like everyone in that organization has a certain danger tucked behind their eyes. Though the color in them is so light they look like ice in a glass, they’re deadly.
He tightens his hand around my neck as he pulls me closer to him. He stares at me closely as if he knows me or maybe he’s searching for something. His eyes soften and he pulls me forward by my neck to wrap me up in a hug. I stand there with my arms out, not knowing what to do. The way he holds me tight leads me to believe he needs this hug.
The man is ripped away from me and shoved to the ground. The gun he had been holding flies out of his hand and lands at my feet. The two men roll around on the ground with each other.
Both taking and giving blows. When blue eyes climbs on top of Walker and starts choking him, I realize that if I don’t do something he might actually kill him.
I grab the gun at my feet and stand up. I try to remember everything Walker taught me at the gun range. I don’t even like guns, but I’m not going to let him kill my man.
Wait, I basically admitted to him being my man… Brooklyn, fucking focus.
I aim the gun at the stranger, close my eyes and pull the trigger. The gun goes off nearly knocking me on my ass. I immediately drop it to the ground.
