Wanted by a Dangerous Man

by Cleo Peitsche

  “Wait.”

  I’d never seen him look panicked before, and I had to bite my lip to keep from begging him to talk.

  He handed the phone back. “Did he mention Florida to you before?”

  “No. What’s wrong?”

  “Audrey, I hate to do this, but I need you to call him. Ask him for details.” He nodded slowly, but there was a wary, dangerous look in his eyes. “You can do that without agreeing to go with him.”

  “Tell me what’s wrong!”

  “I… don’t want to involve you. Especially now.” His attention was a million miles away.

  “A bit late for that.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  Our silence was interrupted by the toast popping up. I cleared my throat. “I am, you know. Involved.”

  Corbin scrubbed his hand over his face, muttered a curse. “It seems someone has been running their mouth. Please, call him. I need to know where in Florida.”

  “Yeah, of course.” It was such a small request, but I understood why he was acting like this. I’d made it clear that I didn’t want to be involved in the shady, illegal things that he did.

  But this was different.

  I hit a button and waited for the phone to connect. I didn’t want to see Corbin get arrested by anyone, and while I knew I needed to examine my relationship with him much more closely, nothing would change the fact that I would rather die than let Henry be the one to take him away from me.

  “Audrey,” Henry said, his voice crisp. “Sorry to pull the ‘I know you’re getting my messages’ line.”

  “I’m driving. Had to pull over to make this call.”

  “And last night?” It wasn’t a rhetorical question.

  If I could have jumped through the phone and strangled him, I would have done it in a heartbeat. “Worked until late, made an arrest, then crashed at Rob’s place.” Like it was any of his fucking business. “What do you want?”

  Corbin pressed down on empty air in the universal sign for calm the fuck down before you ruin this, Audrey. My parents had done it a lot, especially when I was a teenager.

  “Sorry,” Henry said. “I’m not trying to be nosy.”

  I forced a smile on my face and hoped it would come through in my voice. “Nothing to apologize for. How was your night?”

  Corbin nodded. He was still tense, but at least it wasn’t because of me anymore.

  “Great. I’ve been thinking about how you want to bag one of the big ones. I got a lead that my guy is going to be in Tampa. Thought you might want to come along.”

  When? Corbin mouthed.

  “Oh. Um… when are you going?”

  “Leaving tomorrow night. Should have him the next day, but I thought if you came, you could watch, enjoy the spectacle. Afterward, we could hang out a little. You know, beaches, theme parks, the works.”

  Corbin inhaled and closed his eyes as he pinched the bridge of his nose. It had to be serious. I’d never seen a hint of this from him before.

  “Oh. Wow. It’s such short notice.” A cruel smile played on my lips. Henry had been sometimes fun, sometimes annoying, but now it was personal. Drag me along and then allow me to watch? That was the kind of shit my father pulled. “If only you’d given more notice, I would have loved to come,” I purred. “Too bad, Henry, we would have had so much fun—”

  Corbin snatched the phone out of my hand and ended the call. “Easy,” he growled.

  I snatched the phone back, knowing that Henry would be calling again. “Oh, please. What should I ask him?”

  I saw the conflict in Corbin’s eyes. He wanted to know everything that Henry knew, but he really hadn’t appreciated my mean little game, and I was sure his disapproval had nothing to do with protecting Henry’s feelings.

  “Nothing,” he growled, his voice ragged with frustration. He leaned on the sink, his knuckles white as his fingers tried to choke the stainless steel. “I’ll handle it.”

  The phone rang. To his credit, Corbin didn’t punch or throw anything, but I could tell he really wanted to.

  “Sorry about that,” I said. “We got cut off. So who’s the bounty?”

  “Can’t tell you unless you come, sweet cheeks.”

  My eyes darted to Corbin’s face just in time to see a cold mask settle over his features. A chill ran down my spine. He’s a murderer, a voice whispered. You see it. Admit it. He scares you.

  I swallowed. “I have to work. My dad is cutting back at work, one of our investigators is out sick, and it’s me and Rob, or the monkeys will take over the office.”

  “I’m sure Rob can handle it,” Henry said. “You deserve to be spoiled for a bit.” He did this raspy thing with his voice that I imagined he thought was sexy but really just made him sound brain damaged.

  “Are you sure your tip is good? You said that with some of the big bounties, there’s conflicting information.”

  “Oh, I’m sure. Friend at the FBI told me.”

  Corbin’s hands tightened into fists. He caught me looking at him and drew a finger across this throat.

  “No!” I gasped, thinking he meant he was going to kill Henry.

  “What?” Henry said at the same time that Corbin mouthed hang up.

  “Um, this car behind me almost went off the road,” I said. “I’m sitting on the side of the highway. I need to go.”

  “It’s my treat.”

  “Oh, Henry, that’s so sweet. Next time—”

  Apparently Corbin didn’t believe in politely getting off the phone, because he hung up on Henry.

  “Eat your breakfast,” Corbin said. Even though he was inches from me, his mind was elsewhere. “You’ll have to excuse me a moment.”

  I grabbed his arm. “You won’t still go to Florida, will you?”

  “No. But I’ve got a leak. I know it’s someone in the FBI.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “Why would someone in the FBI be a leak?”

  He opened and closed his mouth. “Technically, they would be, because I’m…” He sighed, but his expression was more furious than resigned. “I’m government. Sort of.” He gritted the words out between clenched teeth.

  I stared at him. Puzzle pieces started to fall into place. Yup. It made so much sense. It was so obvious, I should have figured it out. Henry had practically given it away when he said that he received conflicting information through his official channels about Corbin, but I’d concluded that Corbin’s business associates had a lot of people in their pockets.

  “So when you said you wanted to hire me…?”

  He was quiet. I waited, knowing he would answer when he was ready.

  “We could use people like you. But who I really work for doesn’t matter. For all intents and purposes, it’s an illegal organization. And murder is murder, regardless if it’s sanctioned or not.” There was a biting anger in his voice when he said this last bit, and his gaze hardened.

  “But still. If a marine has to kill a sniper—”

  His eyes went cold. “In August, I choked a man in his living room while his wife and children slept upstairs. I killed him with my bare hands because it was quieter. But if his family had heard, if his wife or sons had come downstairs…”

  I took a step back. My heart beat so fast that I felt dizzy. “But—”

  “Who I work for doesn’t change a damned thing. I’m a killer. I know what it feels like to choke the life out of someone. After his body went still, I staged a break-in, framing an innocent man who also needed to be disposed of.”

  “Corbin—”

  “What we have, this thing between us, isn’t going to work if you’ve got delusions about who and what I am.” He walked out of the kitchen.

  After a moment, I followed him through the house and down the chilly hallway to his office. I would freak out later. “What about Henry?”

  He punched the security code and the door opened. “What about him?” He sat at his computer and logged in. Whatever he was doing seemed to make his computer extremely slow, but Corb
in didn’t seem to think it was unusual.

  “Don’t murder him.”

  Corbin laughed, but he was distracted. “Henry isn’t a threat. If I get arrested, I’ll simply disappear, like it never happened. Then I go underground and finish my project that way.” He paused. “Hopefully. You never know when you’ll be sacrificed for the greater good. To a chess master, even the king is a tool to be readily sacrificed if it means a win in the end.” If this chilling fact disturbed him, he hid it well. “The immediate problem is that there’s a leak. Actually, there would have to be at least two.” While he spoke, his fingers flew over the keyboard. Green text scrolled on black screen.

  “Corbin? What’s your mission? Or project, rather.”

  “Go eat. I’ll come in a minute.”

  I returned to the kitchen, my brain struggling to sort through everything I’d learned. So he was telling the truth when he said that I had no chance of really capturing him. I could accept that because I’d already come to realize it was true. But I didn’t know what to do with the knowledge that he would have murdered children if he had to. I wasn’t even sure I believed it. No, I had to trust his actions. He had saved my life. The man who did that could never kill an innocent. I knew it in my heart of hearts.

  The desire to know more had ignited in me, though, and I paced, waiting for Corbin to return.

  After ten minutes, I distributed the toast between the plates, then sat down and started eating. The omelet, though cold, was a work of art, fluffy and delicious.

  Corbin. He was a work of art, too. I felt stupid because all along, I’d thought he was one thing. And he really was that, but it was so much more complicated.

  He came back into the kitchen and sat. “I’m afraid I have to cancel our snowshoeing excursion.”

  “I gathered as much.” I gnawed on my lip. “Cancel or postpone?”

  “I have to disappear for a bit. And I would have liked to allow you to stay here, but I can’t be sure what’s safe.” He delivered this last bit of news with a current of sorrow underneath his tightly controlled anger. “Not until I get everything cleaned up.”

  Cleaned up. I didn’t want to know. I really didn’t. “Um… in that case, should we be sitting here?”

  Corbin squeezed my hand, but the gesture felt mechanical. “My perimeter alerts are functioning. If something is headed this way, we’ll have a ten-minute head start.”

  “I was thinking. If someone launches a missile and it blows up innocent people, how is that any different? And you didn’t kill those kids.”

  He turned to me. The set of his shoulders made me brace for something horrible, but there was an unidentifiable softness in his eyes. “Eat.” It was pity, I realized. For me? Or for himself?

  Despite his assurances that we had nothing to worry about, I was anxious to get away. Not from him, despite what he’d confessed, but from the possibility of being caught with him. My pulse galloped as we cleaned up and left the house. It wasn’t until we were on the highway, anonymous among the other vehicles, that I finally relaxed.

  It was a gorgeous winter morning, perfect for doing whatever normal couples did on their days off. “If the FBI would turn you free, why do you officially not exist? Why are you on the list at all?”

  He sighed. “First of all, I don’t work for the FBI, or the CIA, or any other three-letter organization. It’s more complicated than that. So the FBI wouldn’t initiate the protocol to release me. And second, to answer your question, that’s a long story involving an unfortunate incident last year. My company decided to turn it to our advantage, though, using the unexpected notoriety to insinuate me into some exacting situations. It all worked out until now.”

  Exacting? Sounded like a euphemism for dangerous. “What do you do for your… company… exactly? When you’re not, uh, clearing the path forward.”

  “You know I can’t tell you that.”

  “Unless I work for you.”

  “No. Not everything, not even then. You wouldn’t have clearance.”

  Wow. “How bad is it that you told me this?”

  “It’s not ideal.” His voice dragged out the final word. He took his eyes off the road to glance at me. “But I trust you. I hope you trust me.”

  “I do trust you. And I’m glad it’s mutual.” I took a deep breath, intending to ask to see the wallet, but suddenly I changed my mind. Because if I asked for that and he showed me, I’d have used a lot of goodwill. And I very much wanted Corbin on my side for what I was going to do. “I’ve decided to get that information from Henry.”

  “No.”

  “Yes. You can’t stop me. Henry will tell me things he shouldn’t. Like everyone else, he thinks that I’m harmless, that I’m not real competition. Not so long ago, we were both tracking the same bounty, and I could tell that he thought that splitting it with me was doing me a favor, like it was a foregone conclusion that he would have won if it had become a competition.”

  Corbin’s hand fumbled for mine. His strong fingers closed, trapping mine against his palm. “I don’t think you’re weak. Quite the opposite, so I’m asking you politely to not go investigating Henry.”

  “I’ll consider it,” I said.

  “Fair enough.” Those two words, delivered neutrally, went a long way toward convincing me that Corbin really did respect me.

  He pulled up in front of my building, reached into the back seat and handed me my new designer bag. “I don’t know how long I’ll be gone, but I’ll call and text when I can. I’ll do better than before.”

  “Which phone?”

  “As many as it takes to reach you.” He pulled me close for a kiss, and the heat between us turned into an inferno. The time we’d spent together had been kindling, and I wanted more, over and over until the hunger inside of me was sated.

  Corbin pulled away first. “Hey, Audrey. I’m really sorry.”

  “Don’t be.”

  I got out of the car and went to my apartment, then watched through the curtains as Corbin drove away.

  Then I called Henry. It was time for me to visit Florida.

  ~ ~ ~

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  SAVED BY A DANGEROUS MAN (By a Dangerous Man #3)

  As Audrey struggles to keep Corbin’s identity secret, the rest of her life spins out of control. Rival bounty hunter Henry suspects she’s playing him for information, changes at work leave her stunned, and her father crosses her one time too many.

  Audrey doesn’t approve of what Corbin is, but he proves that he’s been paying close attention to what she needs. When an unexpected situation explodes, Corbin can reassure her, but only the other Corbin, the one with secrets and a dark past, can save her.

  EXECUTIVE PACKAGE (Office Toy #6)

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  It’s an impossible decision, one that’s destroying Elle. She’s been submitting to her bosses for months, but she’s never felt so helpless. Deep down, who does she love the most?

  USE ME HARD (Standalone story, but is included in the Take Me Hard compilation)

  Even before Alyssa meets Eric at a party, she knows all about him. That he likes to tie up submissives, that he has a dungeon somewhere, and that he breaks more hearts in three months than most guys do their whole lives. As far as she's
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  When Eric overhears her claiming that he can't possibly be good in bed, he challenges her to prove it—one week, no sex necessary (unless she begs). Instead of slapping him, she accepts. She can't pass up the opportunity to make him publicly admit that he's clueless about women.

  If he wins ... but he couldn't possibly win. Could he?