Renegade

by Lora Leigh

  They didn't care how they embarrassed her, but she was lucky. They cared. For all their overprotectiveness, for all their irritating ways, her brothers loved her. Nik's gaze slid slowly back to her. She imagined she saw a war waging in his gaze, whether to release her or to hold her, to ignore her brothers or to tempt her further. Finally, between one breath and the next he eased up, straightened, then lifted her from the table.

  His hand slid the strap of her dress up as the other adjusted the neckline, hiding the rounded flesh of her breast as he stepped back.

  "A lucky save," he told her, his lips quirking. "Go do what you have to do, pretty girl. We'll talk later."

  Talk? She could just imagine where that conversation would lead.

  "I think the best thing I could do is stay away from you," she said softly. "I don't need a broken heart, Nik."

  "Do any of us?" He glanced behind her. "There are your brothers."

  "Mikayla." Suspicion laced Beau's voice as he opened the gate. "What are you doing here?"

  Nik stepped back. "Good night, pretty girl."

  He turned and stepped into the house, the doors sliding closed behind him. Mikayla turned, faced her brothers, and breathed out wearily. A lucky save? Or simply a reprieve?

  52

  Chapter 5

  Maddix Nelson's home was in the most exclusive part of Hagerstown. The rising mansions and gated estates were lavishly rich and heavily secured. The Nelson home was on the lower end of lavish, situated in a gated community, surrounded by other similar homes, just as expensive, just as secured. As Nik pulled the Hummer into the Nelson driveway behind several other vehicles, he was clearly able to see why his neighbors had been so certain Maddix had been home the evening Eddie Foreman had died. They were intensely curious. Even now Nik counted no fewer than half a dozen watching as he stepped from the vehicle and made his way along the precisely placed sidewalk that led to the front door. The door opened as he stepped onto the ornately decorated front porch.

  "Nik." Maddix opened the door and stepped inside. "They're all here." "They" being the two city council members, chief of police, and mayor, as well as Maddix's son, Luke.

  Nik followed Maddix through the quiet, understated luxury of the house to the back of the house where the office was located.

  Nik stepped into the room, paying particular attention to the heavy, closed drapes, the dark wood walls.

  "Nik, Councilman John Cooker, Mayor Dempsey, Chief Daniel Riley, Councilwoman Caroline Faulkner, my wife, Glenda, and my son, Lucas. We were all here the night Eddie was killed."

  "This is ridiculous, Maddix." Glenda Nelson, Maddix's younger second wife, was clearly his trophy bride. At thirty-three the former model with her dark chocolate skin and rounded dark eyes was an exotic beauty who was clearly put out at being asked to attend this meeting.

  His son, Lucas, sat slumped in a chair in the corner, his brown eyes narrowed with spoiled defensiveness. His expression bespoke a man who considered himself far beyond being required to attend to anyone else's schedule.

  The councilman and -woman watched in interest from their places on a love seat. There was a heavy sense of familiarity between the two that bespoke of lovers, despite the fact that they were married, to other partners.

  The chief of police sat in a chair next to a cold fireplace, his lips set in a thin line, his hazel eyes watching Nik suspiciously as Mayor Dempsey nodded his head in greeting. The gang was all here.

  "Thank you for meeting me," Nik said, making an attempt at a polite greeting.

  "It wasn't as though some of us had a choice," Maddix's son sneered.

  "No, it wasn't," Nik agreed. "But I'm certain we all appreciate your cooperation." Cooperation his ass. Nik had warned Maddix he would drag the son there by his 53

  hair if he wasn't in attendance. It was a threat Maddix had evidently relayed.

  "Why must Luke and I be here, Mr. Steele?" Glenda crossed her arms over the soft pale cream blouse she wore with stylish white shorts. "I'm certain we weren't needed."

  "You were all here the night Eddie Foreman died," Nik said. "I have some questions I wanted to ask."

  "Yes, we were all here, which means Maddix obviously killed no one," Glenda continued to protest. "That makes this an exercise in futility if you ask me." So much for cooperation.

  "Did I ask you?" Nik queried with cool softness.

  "Enough, Glenda," Maddix growled. "Let Nik do his job. If he asked you to be here, then it's for a reason."

  "We should have invited Mikayla." Luke's lips tightened into a smile of clear male appreciation. "Then perhaps I wouldn't be so bored." Nik turned his head and stared at the other man. "And why do you say that, Mr. Nelson?" he asked.

  The smile shifted to one of anticipation. "Once this is over, it would be nice to take what's owed me. The little bitch was teasing the hell out of me before she dropped me cold after she accused my father of murder."

  "Shut your damned mouth, Luke," Maddix ordered his son furiously before Nik would make a move to shut his mouth permanently. "I told you to stay away from that girl before any of this happened. She's too good for your spoiled, whorish ways." There was an edge of contempt in Maddix's tone that surprised Nik. Luke was Maddix's only child, a son at that, and obviously spoiled past redemption. The fact that Maddix was taking a stand when it was obviously too late made no sense to Nik.

  "His mother raised him," Maddix explained with a glare toward his son. "Until she couldn't do a damned thing with him, either."

  "He's twenty-seven years old. Throw his ass out and let him figure it out on his own," Nik stated coldly. "For now, he can sit tight and keep his mouth shut or he'll deal with me."

  He slid Luke a cold, hard look as the other man opened his mouth to speak again. Just as quickly, Luke settled back and merely glared mutinously back at them.

  "Why are we here, Mr. Steele?" the councilwoman asked then, clearly as bored with events as Nik was becoming.

  Nik turned his gaze to her, revealing nothing. "To satisfy my curiosity, perhaps," he stated.

  The real reason was to gauge the honesty of Maddix's alibi. Guilt was never as cleverly hidden as others believed it was. Bringing them all into the same place as they had claimed they had been the first time gave Nik a chance to decide if they were lying or if that meeting had truly taken place.

  "I wasn't even in this damned room," Luke muttered. "I was upstairs. If I remember correctly, Dad was rather insistent that I not stay." Maddix's lips tightened as his expression turned reproving. "He was drunk."

  "I was." Luke smiled sardonically.

  "I was by the pool." Glenda waved a graceful hand toward the pool outside the office. "I don't involve myself in Maddix's business affairs." 54

  No doubt. Not for the first time Nik was amazed at familial interactions. They were nothing like his family, back in Russia, before he'd lost all he held dear. His may not have been willing to stand up to their government to help Nik, but they all knew better than to disrespect their parents. He and his brothers and sisters had worked from an early age and learned to take care of themselves. Nik had never been able to make sense of men and women like Luke Nelson and Maddix's trophy wife.

  "Was there anything in particular that you needed to know, Mr. Steele?" The chief of police watched him with barely disguised animosity. "Or are you just checking us out?"

  Nik allowed his lips to quirk mockingly. No doubt the police chief had investigated him. Nik could see it in Riley's eyes, in the hunger to make an arrest that could possibly be the turning point of his career. Possibly. If he could actually come up with any proof to back the rumors that circulated in certain circles where Nik Steele was concerned. Thankfully, they were rumors. Even the U.S. government, armed forces, and law enforcement agencies often depended on the information he provided and even, at times, his services.

  "Just checking you out," Nik agreed as he crossed his arms over his chest and turned his gaze back to the son. "You know Ms. Martin then?"


  "I spent the better part of three months wining and dining her," he grunted. "She was ready to put out when she decided to try to ruin Father for whatever reason." He glared back at Maddix. "Not that I could blame her much." Nik watched Maddix roll his eyes. "He begged that poor girl for a date for two years. She finally gave in to him just to shut him up."

  Luke snickered at the comment, his gaze filled with sarcasm as he stared back at Nik. "She's a frigid thing, I have to say, but I could have melted her." Frigid? Mikayla?

  There was no doubt in Nik's mind that Luke Nelson hadn't had a chance at Mikayla. She had been anything but frigid the week before on Nik's back deck.

  "Did any of you know Eddie Foreman?" Nik asked as he turned to the others in the room.

  "I rather doubt it," the councilwoman informed him as she smoothed back a strand of her carefully colored blond hair. "Our meeting that night concerned city business interests that Maddix is a part of, not his construction business." That was pretty much what Nik expected. His reasons for being here had very little to do with the questions or any information that could be gained on the foreman. Nik was learning quite a bit, though, more than he had expected. There was a lot to be learned from simply watching.

  "What do you have so far, Nik?" Maddix rubbed at his forehead at he cast the others a disgruntled look.

  "Nothing yet." Nik cast Luke Maddix another look, one he was certain was filled with confidence. "I've moved in next door to her, though. She's a nice girl."

  "I told you she was." Maddix shook his head. "I thought she was too good for this."

  Luke was glaring back at him now.

  "How long before she learns why you're here, do you think?" Luke grunted with bitter amusement. "It's not as though you're hiding it. Do you think she's going to thank 55

  you for lying to her?"

  Nik arched his brow. "In this situation, lying isn't an option." He shrugged. "She'll learn soon enough and I won't deny it. I've told her no different." He would give Luke Nelson no ammunition against him, or Mikayla. It wouldn't matter whether others knew why he was there or not. Maddix had called Nik to find out why Mikayla was lying. The problem was, he couldn't tell which one of them was lying, her or Maddix. It was a disturbing realization.

  "Do you think we haven't checked you out, Steele?" Animosity thickened Luke Nelson's voice.

  "Enough, Luke," Maddix growled.

  "Tell him, Riley." Luke's sneer in the chief of police's direction was snide and filled with derision. "You can't arrest the bastard, though, can you? Can't or won't. Maybe you're just too damned scared?"

  Chief Riley's wide, square face tightened in anger as Nik merely shook his head.

  "He can't arrest me." Nik stared back at the chief. "I have yet to break a law." Which wasn't entirely true.

  "That we can prove," the chief muttered. "You know, Steele, I'm only here because Maddix is a friend and I want this cleared up just as much as he does. Otherwise, I'd be trying to find a way to fry your ass, no matter the fact that certain government agencies find you useful."

  "That you can prove. And fortunately for me, I have many friends," Nik agreed as he inclined his head mockingly. "And on that note, before I murder this little bastard of Maddix's, I'm leaving."

  Fury stiffened Luke's expression as he jumped to his feet and turned to his father.

  "I feel sorry for you, Maddix," Nik stated, pitying the man. "Try suspending his allowance for a while. Maybe he'll act like a decent human being rather than the disgrace he's turning out to be."

  Nik walked out of the room as Maddix lowered his head and pinched the bridge of his nose. Almost simultaneously Glenda and Luke began raging. It didn't surprise Nik that Glenda was joining in on Luke's side; like the two council members, Glenda and Luke Nelson were making a little happy time between the sheets. Nik wondered if Maddix was aware of it.

  On second thought, Maddix wasn't a stupid man; he probably was. Leaving the house, Nik walked back to his Harley, swung on, and twisted the key. The engine flared to life with a heavy, deep roar.

  Maneuvering out of the wide driveway, he headed for the security gates and what he considered freedom beyond. Hell, he'd prefer to pledge the rest of his life to the Elite Ops than to live like this. Accepting deceit and selfish bickering such as what he'd glimpsed in Maddix Nelson's life.

  The man hadn't raised his son with the same values he lived by; that was for damned sure.

  But Mikayla had those values.

  Where the hell had that thought come from?

  Nik felt his enter body tense, tightening involuntarily at the thought of the toosmall, too-fragile woman he had held in his arms the past week. He hadn't been able to get her out of his mind, nor had he been able to keep from 56

  watching her. He was spending more time tracking her than he was tracking a killer. And that wasn't even Nik's job. His job was to figure out why she was lying about a man who hadn't, or at least who swore he hadn't, committed murder.

  This was turning into a hell of a job, and one that was clearly going to take more time than Nik had anticipated. His commander, Jordan, was already questioning how much longer it could possibly take. The team had already been sent out to the next mission without Nik. That was something that hadn't happened in all the years they had fought together.

  It was something that shouldn't be happening now. Except Nik couldn't seem to pull himself away.

  The bruises on Mikayla's face were only now beginning to fade a bit. He knew that because he spied on her. As disgusting as it seemed to him, he couldn't help but watch out for her, to check up on her.

  Someone much larger, much stronger, had dared to attack her in the darkness. Because of what she had seen or because of what she thought she saw?

  Nik knew the surrounding area was divided on the subject of Maddix Nelson committing murder. Many thought he was capable of it. Some thought he was capable, but that in the case of Eddie Foreman he hadn't actually acted. Others thought the idea absurd but were amused by the battle being waged over it.

  And at least one night, someone had decided to put a stop to the small woman who had instigated that battle.

  A cold, hard knot of rage formed in Nik's stomach at the thought of the harm that could come to her. Something dark and protective welled inside him despite his battle against it.

  Hell, he'd lost enough in his life. Did he really need to allow himself to become attached to a woman he knew he could never allow himself to have fully?

  He could fuck her. He could take that shining innocence she had saved for so long and mar it with the darkness that lived within his soul, but he couldn't keep her. For a brief moment in time he could let the warmth and light that flowed through him when he touched her fill his soul, but he would have to walk away soon. His life wasn't his own for two more long years, and even then he couldn't call it his own. There was no chance that once that time was past he could ever live a life even resembling happy.

  He'd made enemies. He'd walked a line that no man could walk and expect to find peace later.

  He was known in many dark corners of the world as a killer, a purveyor of war and destruction. And he wanted to bring that into the life of a woman who seemed to vibrate with warmth?

  And yet how could he walk away?

  His jaw ached at the force of his teeth grinding together. His hands flexed deliberately around the handgrips of the motorcycle handlebars as he turned toward town and the shop he knew Mikayla would still be working in.

  Creating dreams. That was what she did there.

  She created dreams in the form of dresses for both the innocent as well as the jaded. In each stitch of each design that she created herself, she lived her own dreams. Dreams of romance and adventure, dreams of candlelit nights and passion. 57

  And he knew, in a back room of her own home, she was creating her own dream. The first fragile form of a white gown that she would one day wear as she walked down the aisle herself.

  He'd seen it when he had slipped
into her home. His fingers had touched the fragile lace of the underskirt she had begun as his eyes had memorized the sketch on the table.

  Mikayla was making her wedding gown. A creation of satin and lace, of beads and ivory. A gown she would wear for the man who would claim her heart forever. Nik couldn't allow himself to be that man.

  There was a part of himself that clenched in fury at the thought of any other man claiming that place in her life, though Nik knew it was a place he could never claim himself.

  Damned if he did, damned if he didn't.

  His job here was to find out why Mikayla Martin was lying about what she had seen.

  His opinion was, if she was lying, then she was the best damned liar he had ever laid his eyes on. Or simply a woman he wanted more than he had ever wanted any other woman.

  The potential for destruction was only growing.

  Mikayla stared at the plate-glass window of her shop, feeling the tears that threatened to flood her eyes.

  "LIAR." The word was brilliant crimson. The defacer wouldn't be caught. Mikayla had been through this too many times now to even bother calling her lawyer to once again demand the security tapes from the bank across the street. They always showed the same thing. Whoever used the paint wore a now-familiar black face covering. They had run across the street, painted, and run back while Deirdre and Mikayla were closer to the back of the store.

  "LIAR." The letters were like a brand on her soul as the door opened and Deirdre stepped out with a bucket of hot sudsy water, a scraper, and sponges.

  "I'm sorry, Mikayla," Deirdre said softly as pedestrians walked by slowly, whispering.

  Everyone whispered.

  "It's not your fault, Deirdre." It was her own fault, she thought. She must not have been careful enough when she stopped by the new foreman's house, a friend of her father's, and tried to discuss Eddie Foreman with him.

  That or he had called Maddix Nelson after she had left.

  "Luke Nelson told some of the guys at the bar that his father had hired a private investigator," Deirdre said as Mikayla dampened the window, then went to work with the scraper. "Have you seen anyone?"