Deadly Pursuit

by Ann Christopher

  Jack was out and about in the world doing God-knew-what sort of DEA secret agent business. He’d left earlier and she’d watched him go, feeling forlorn and all but pressing her hands and nose to the nonbulletproof windows and wishing she could go with him.

  Because Jack was her only link to anything approaching normalcy. With him, it was easier to convince herself that everything was under control. Without him, she was scared to death.

  The irony of the situation didn’t escape her. You’d think she’d have a little more backbone by now, but no. Despite all the alleged criminals she’d represented over the years (and who was she kidding with the alleged part? Most of her clients had been guilty of the crimes they’d been arrested for and at least a dozen others for which they’d managed to fly under the radar), she was a coward at heart.

  She’d never been in the military. Never handled a gun. Never feared for her physical safety, unless she counted the five or six times growing up when she’d had to defend herself against her mother’s johns when they’d looked at her with a little too much interest and she’d locked herself in the second bedroom of their tiny apartment.

  They were dealing with a hired killer financed by a vengeful drug kingpin. You didn’t reason with these people. There was no begging and no mercy, no negotiation tactic that could possibly work. It was only a tiny comfort that Jack was the real target and she was only temporarily caught in the middle. There was a light at the end of her tunnel, yeah. One day soon, hopefully, she could go home and resume her real life.

  Jack never could.

  This last thought started the walls closing in on her. That, and the lack of fresh air combined with her increased restlessness now that she was feeling better.

  “I’m going for a walk,” she announced.

  There was a little more sharpness in her voice than she’d intended, and Special Agent Samantha Martinez heard it. She’d been sitting at the dining room table working on some report or other, but now she glanced up.

  Though she seemed young, no more than thirty-ish, with a pretty face and wavy black hair scooped back in a loose bun at the nape of her neck, Sammy looked like she’d seen and heard a lifetime’s worth of bullshit and didn’t plan to put up with any more from Amara. Word was she’d been with DEA for eight years and was a cop before that, so she’d earned a healthy dose of respect from Amara.

  At the other end of the table, Special Agent Anthony Kelleher finished up his call and put down his cell phone. As though he sensed trouble in the making, he shot Sammy a warning look.

  “No walks, Amara,” said Sammy in a falsely pleasant voice that plainly said Amara was a pain in the ass she wished she didn’t have to babysit. “Why don’t you watch cable?”

  “I’m not a TV watcher.” This was a lie. Amara had already missed several episodes of her favorite Travel Channel shows, but she resented Sammy’s trying to shuffle her off into the other room like a kid who could be tempted by an episode of SpongeBob SquarePants.

  Sammy shrugged and resumed scribbling on her stupid little report. “How’s your scarf coming?”

  “I’m tired of knitting.”

  “Then it looks like this isn’t your lucky day.”

  Amara was getting ready to jump down the woman’s throat with both feet when Anthony cleared his throat and smiled.

  “Ah, Amara,” he said, all boyish charm and dimples with a hint of the South in the low drawl of his voice, “when you get a minute, why don’t you go on ahead and put that grocery list together for us? And then we can send someone on over to the—”

  “Tell you what, Billy Bob.” She didn’t mean to be rude, but, come on, was this guy for real? “You ease up on the southern hospitality a little, because I’m immune anyway, and I’m gonna take me a little ole walk. You hear?”

  Anthony laughed, which was the scrape of fingers over the blackboard of Amara’s raw nerves. “We’re all in this together, Amara. We’re going to have a lot of long, tense days here together if we can’t work on getting along.”

  “I’ll be in a better mood after my walk.”

  “That’s a negative, ma’am.” Sammy now reached for her cell phone and punched in a number. “We can’t keep you safe for Jack if you’re traipsing—”

  “I’m not planning to traipse. Ma’am” Amara looked around for her jacket. “I’m going to walk to the corner and back. There’s no one around for miles—”

  “That we know of.” Sammy put the phone to her ear, dismissing Amara.

  This was outrageous.

  The security issue was one thing—Amara got that and she wasn’t a complete idiot, after all—but the disrespectful treatment was something else and needed to be addressed. For all she knew, she’d be holed up here with Crabby Patty for another week or ten days, and Amara certainly didn’t intend to put up with this rudeness.

  Without any real thought, she reached out, snatched the phone and clicked End.

  A startled moment passed during which even Amara thought, wow, maybe I went too far that time, and then Sammy jumped to her feet and got in Amara’s face, looking surprisingly fierce, or maybe it was just the weapon strapped to the holster at her side.

  “Excuse me,” Sammy began.

  “No, excuse me,” Amara said.

  Anthony materialized between them, which didn’t stop them from yelling at each other, but then a new voice joined the fray and Amara shut up the second she heard it.

  “What’s the problem?”

  Oh, God, it was Jack.

  After being gone for hours and hours, long enough for her to begin wondering if he’d been shot or had simply decided to take off on his own and never look back, he’d chosen now, while she was behaving like a bigger shrew than usual, to reappear.

  Amara snapped her jaws shut and felt the flames of embarrassment burn her face.

  Sammy, meanwhile, wheeled around, resumed her seat and looked dignified.

  Jack’s gaze locked with Amara’s. Although he didn’t smile, he didn’t look especially angry, and she’d had enough experience with his dark moods to know. There was a fresh bandage on his poor abused forehead, so she took that to mean he’d had it checked out.

  “Alienated everyone already, Bunny?” he asked. “That didn’t take long.”

  Oh, sure. Blame the prisoner. Like it was her fault. Furious, she pointed to the offenders. “These two clowns,” she said, “Billy Bob and Crabby Patty, are refusing to let me get any fresh air.”

  “Oh.” Jack said it with zero inflection, and yet everything about him screamed reproach, as though he was apologizing for her childish behavior and wished she had the grace to do the same.

  Effectively shamed, Amara sucked in a harsh breath and apologized. “I’m sorry.”

  Satisfied, Jack held out a hand to her and she took this lifeline, grateful for it. He reeled her in and held her against his side, his endorsement and support speaking volumes. These people respected Jack and would therefore give her the benefit of the doubt, even if she was behaving like a raving bitch.

  “Amara takes some getting used to,” Jack said.

  Now wait a minute. She didn’t need a spokesperson to explain her behavior to the world. Hadn’t she just been woman enough to apologize? Frowning up at Jack, she snatched her hand free.

  “Kindly do not talk about me like I’m not here, Special Agent.”

  Still seething, she stormed up to her bedroom to find her coat, slamming the door behind her. These people could not keep her locked up indefinitely with no fresh air and no fresh food and nothing—

  The door opened and Jack came in.

  “I need a minute, okay? And please knock before you come into my bedroom.”

  “It’s our bedroom.”

  Abandoning the walk idea, she went to the window and concentrated on pushing the awful flowered drapes back so she could get as much sunshine as possible. It’d been sleeting for days in Cincinnati and now it was cold but sunny and she couldn’t even see the light with these nightmare drapes.


  “There are two other bedrooms here,” she told Jack. “Pick one.”

  “I’ve already picked whichever one you’re in.” Unperturbed, he leaned against the cheap plywood dresser and crossed his ankles and arms. “What’s this about?”

  That impenetrable calm of his just drove her through the roof. So did his stupid questions, as though he’d thought and thought about it and just couldn’t fathom why she’d be upset about anything.

  “What’s this about? This is about my house being broken into and me being shot. This is about flying all the way across the country to hide in a tiny little safe house for God knows how long—”

  Jack did his best statue routine, absorbing her histrionics with nary a flicker of his eyelids or a ghost of an expression on his face.

  “—and all you stupid DEA agents with your rules and your secret handshakes and your little nonverbal signals that make me feel like more of an outsider than I already am, and you marching in here and telling me that I can’t even choose a bedroom without you controlling my selection. That’s what this is about.”

  Spent and breathless, she brushed her flyaway hair out of her face and waited for him to level her with his temper and call her ungrateful for their protection. Maybe he’d go so far as to say that if she didn’t like the minor inconveniences of temporary living in a safe house, she should go back to Washington by herself and good luck with that.

  She was prepared for that reaction.

  She wasn’t prepared for him to reach out and grab her, but that’s what he did.

  The shock took a long time to register—how could he go from standing there, looking bored, to quick handwork that would make Muhammad Ali proud? By the time she thought to flail and struggle, it was too late and he was all over her. She overcompensated and they toppled to the bed, or maybe that was what he’d had in mind all along.

  He favored her wounded side, but still managed to damage her equilibrium. Every part of him was so strong and hard and healthy, and she was infuriated, flat on her back and helpless. Not helpless to get away, but helpless to resist her body’s insane reaction to him.

  She tried anyway.

  Arching back, she worked to get her arms between them, to plant her hands on the marble-hard slabs of his chest and push. No dice. His gentle hands—God Almighty, how was it possible that such a big man had such an unspeakably tender touch?—cupped her face, stroked it, and she was lost in the sensation and, worse, the emotion.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  That rumbling croon set off wave after wave of shivers down her spine and pooled in her belly and lower, until her thighs were parting because they needed to and there wasn’t a damn thing she could do about it.

  “This is exactly what I never wanted to happen. I didn’t want your life to be turned upside down because of me.”

  In no mood to be gracious, she tried to pull free and said, “Well, it is.”

  “I’m trying to make it right,” he told her. “I’m trying to protect you.”

  “Protect me?” A laugh came out of nowhere and it was bitter, borderline hysterical. “I’m sure I’m safe from all the killers and drug dealers in the neighborhood. But who’s protecting me from you?”

  No one liked to be confronted with his own hypocrisy, Jack least of all. Those heavy brows came together over eyes glittering with splinters of brown and gold, desire and anger.

  “We’re helping each other through. That’s all. We can’t make it more than it is.”

  “More than what?” She raised her brows, wanting to hurt him, to smash his face in the mess he’d made of her so he’d have to deal with it. She shouldn’t have agreed to come. She should have stayed in Washington. She should have stayed as far away from this man as possible because the more time she spent with him, the more time she wanted. “More than me screwing you on demand and then you walking away when you decide the time is right without looking back or giving me a second thought? I think I’m clear on that, thanks. Now get out.”

  Chapter 17

  She’d pushed him too far, and his retaliation was swift and merciless. Without warning, Jack jerked her sweater up to her chin and ripped her bra down. Her breasts, bared to the cool air, bounced free and her nipples tightened down to hard little buttons of throbbing sensation.

  She cried out with some combination of affront and need, and he answered by lowering his head. Taking her in his hands, he rubbed and squeezed, licked and nipped.

  He couldn’t have been more insulting.

  She couldn’t have loved it more.

  Arching for him, she widened her legs further and he was right there, slipping a hand beneath the low waistband of her jeans and stroking her until she went up and up and her panties were soaking wet. As if he hadn’t proved his point to his complete satisfaction, he withdrew his fingers from her greedy body, wiped her juices around first one nipple, then the other, and suckled.

  Amara bowed over backwards, desperate to get away but more desperate to come.

  And then, when she was teetering on the brink of an explosion that would shatter her and then blow the roof off this safe house, he stopped. Let her go, pulled back and stood up, staring at her with the grim satisfaction of a man who had a woman right where he wanted her and planned to keep her there for a while.

  Exposed, both physically and emotionally, Amara knew she’d never been more vulnerable in her life. Only the heavy bulge in the front of his jeans and the sheen of sweat on his forehead saved her from complete devastation.

  He wasn’t immune to this thing between them, thank God.

  “You need to get this straight, Bunny. I’ll be in this bed with you tonight and every other night until the trial is over and we go our separate ways.” His voice was low and untroubled, his tone absolute. “If that’s not what you want, all you have to do is tell me no the next time I reach for you. But I don’t think that word has ever come out of your mouth when I’m touching you.”

  Pausing, he looked her up and down, smiled a crooked smile, and stroked himself with a rough grip that had her hips writhing and her mouth watering.

  “And I don’t think it ever will.”

  Infuriated with him but more with herself, she yanked off her shoe and aimed it right at the bandage in the middle of his forehead.

  Without any appearance of hurrying, he ducked in time for the shoe to hit the door as it closed.

  Where?

  The word raced through Kira Gregory’s mind, faster and faster as the hours crept past, fueled by her paranoia and agitation and the knowledge that Kareem’s retrial started in a couple days and she’d found no evidence of Kareem’s illegal activities to give Dexter Brady.

  Which meant that, despite her desperate plea for help, Dexter Brady, her Plan B, hadn’t worked, and she was on her own. Again. Still. Always.

  Well, she had Max, didn’t she? He was over in the corner under the table, gnawing on a bone. Too bad the little devil couldn’t take his ass out in the world and get a job to support the two of them.

  No. It was up to her. Which was why she was here, in Kareem’s darkened study in the dead of night.

  Where did Kareem keep the combination to the safe, the information about the offshore bank accounts she knew he had, and the unregistered weapons he collected the way boys collected manga?

  Where?

  It was all here in this house somewhere, probably in this room. She could smell it.

  Where, where, WHERE?

  A scream of frustration rose up in her throat, but losing her cool wouldn’t get her anywhere. She had to be as cunning as Kareem if she wanted to make it out of here alive.

  Think, Kira.

  She glanced around the big room, which was illuminated only by a small lamp on the console in the corner, and tried to put herself in the shoes and mind frame of a drug dealer.

  Yeah. Good luck with that.

  The thing was: Kareem had two conflicting considerations. On the one hand, he knew the feds were after him, k
new his property was subject to warrants and searches and seizure at any time, knew that there could be wiretaps and hidden cameras all over his precious house, recording his choice in food, underwear and toilet paper.

  He wasn’t stupid. He had all the trappings of respectability, and he tried, whenever possible, to keep his hands clean and present that face to the world. On the other hand, wasn’t it basic human nature to keep treasures close? To bury your money in the backyard where you could get it quickly if you needed to skip out of town unexpectedly? To sleep with your favorite gun under your pillow just in case one of your bodyguards fell asleep on the job and a bad guy—like, say, a competing drug lord who’d like nothing more than to slit your throat and take over your territory—broke into your house and tried to kill you?

  So—yeah. It had to be here. Somewhere.

  The computer screen glowed blue and the mocking little window asked for a password. Kira wanted to smash her foot through it. Password. Yeah. Like she knew it. Fuck you.

  It wasn’t that she thought she’d turn up anything more than the DEA’s best had back when they’d executed their search warrant when Kareem was arrested. They’d found some money in the safe, a registered nine-millimeter that was pristine as the first winter snow atop Mount Everest, and nothing else.

  But that had been a long time ago and they hadn’t been back since. She’d hoped—prayed—that Kareem had become complacent since then, or maybe outright sloppy or lazy. Maybe he’d temporarily stashed something in the room with the hopes of removing it to a safer place quickly, when he had the chance. Maybe, she’d thought, she’d be lucky enough to stumble onto something during that narrow window of opportunity.

  She should have known better.

  Just then, the clock on the mantel chimed to life and began the belabored process of dinging the hour. Eleven o’clock.

  Oh, shit. Kareem would be back from the meeting with his lawyers soon, if he wasn’t already on his way.

  If he caught her in here, she was dead.

  He had a study, she had a study, and both areas were clearly delineated and off-limits to the other. What would she say? That she had a sudden and urgent need to borrow paper clips at eleven o’clock at night?