by Nashoda Rose
Tyler picked up the written report. “He was known to do jobs for Seth Garrett.” He lowered the piece of paper. “Didn’t that asshole die?”
“He went off the grid years ago,” Connor said. “Word spread that he was dead. But I did a search on the dark web and he’s back in business,” Connor said. “Didn’t you have a situation with him, Deaglan?”
Deaglan nodded. “Yeah. Seven years ago.”
Kai let one of the photos slip from his hand and it fluttered to the table. “Don’t know him. What was he into?”
“He’s an exporter,” Deck said.
“Of what?” Kai asked.
Deaglan, Deck, Connor, and Vic visibly tensed, and I didn’t know what was going on, but it was obvious they didn’t want to say anything with me in the room.
“I’m not twelve,” I blurted. “You can say it in front of me. I won’t freak out.” Deaglan’s hand lowered onto my thigh and I turned to him. “I work in a busy downtown hospital. I’ve heard and seen everything.”
Deck looked at Deaglan who nodded. Oh my God, such commando men.
“Human trafficking,” Deck said.
I stiffened, my stomach rolling. Yeah, that wasn’t what I expected and I was silently freaking out. This wasn’t just a not-so-nice guy; this was a disgusting, malicious person with no conscience.
Deck continued, “Seth Garrett won’t be easy to find. No one knows what he looks like, except Deaglan.” My eyes shot to Deaglan, but he was looking at Deck. “There are no pictures of him on the web and we suspect he doesn’t use his real name. He’s been laying low for years, and anyone who works for him is too scared to betray him. Word is he won’t just kill you, he’ll make your life hell for a fuck of a long time then sell your body parts. And that’s if you’re lucky.” He addressed Connor. “Any dark web chatter on his location?”
Connor shook his head. “Nothing.”
Deck turned to Kai. “Vault contacts.”
“I’ll ask around,” Kai said.
I silently freaked while the men chatted about where to find this Seth guy and who might be working for him. Deaglan said something about Ireland, but I wasn’t really listening any longer.
This wasn’t about a mugger. This wasn’t about a low life with a grudge against Deaglan for some hit and run. This was about one of the worst motherfuckers in the world.
How did this happen? And why would Deaglan know a man like that?
Deaglan’s hand lightly squeezed my thigh. “I want more eyes on Eva. I can’t be there all the time,” Deaglan said.
Tyler toyed with the pen between his fingers. “I’m available. Twenty-four-seven.”
Deaglan snorted. “She’s with me.”
“Like with with? Or temporarily with?” Tyler asked, and it was obvious he was trying to get a rise out of Deaglan… and it worked, because Deaglan’s jaw ticked and his back stiffened.
Vic made a gruff snort and Kai chuckled. Connor watched me with curious eyes. I wasn’t sure what it was about, but it wasn’t hostile.
Kai glanced at his phone as it vibrated on the boardroom table. “London needs me home. Hope wants to show me her ballet routine before bed,” Kai said.
“Hope’s in ballet?” Tyler asked. “Thought she’d be at the gun range by now.”
“She’s fuckin’ four,” he replied.
Tyler grinned. “Weren’t you killing people by the age of four?”
My eyes darted to Kai. His brows lowered over his piercing green eyes and I thought he’d punch Tyler or pull out the knife I’d glimpsed under his suit jacket.
Instead, Kai smirked. “My daughter won’t use a gun to protect herself. It’s for pussies like you. She’ll use a knife.” He rose and headed for the door.
Tyler dropped the pen and called, “Or piano wire?”
Kai snorted and vanished around the corner.
Deck shifted his attention to Deaglan. “I’ll ask my buddies at the police station to keep an eye on Eva’s places.” He stood and slid photos and reports into a folder. “Okay. Let’s find Seth Garrett.”
Connor, Vic, and Tyler stood, but Deaglan didn’t. “Anything on the police report?” Deaglan asked.
I tensed and cold shivers pierced my skin like ice picks.
Deck shook his head. “No. But I’ll deal with Curran. You’re too close to it.”
“Can’t do that, Deck,” he said quietly.
Close to it? Because we were sleeping together? Or was it something else?
Deck’s lips pressed together and his brows lowered, but he didn’t say anything. It was obvious he wasn’t happy about Deaglan wanting the police report on Curran.
And neither was I.
I swung my gaze to Deck. “I don’t want anyone to see the police report.”
Deaglan tensed beside me, his palm resting on the table, curling into a fist.
Tyler cleared his throat and Connor shifted his weight.
Deck dropped the file folder on the table. “You need to talk to Deaglan about this, Eva.”
I pushed my chair back and stood. “Curran beat me. He beat me so bad, it put me in the hospital and he went to jail. He’s gone and I want it to stay that way. There’s nothing else any of you need to know.” I raised my chin and looked at Deaglan. “Nothing.”
“We’ll talk about it,” Deaglan said.
I shook my head. “Just like we talk about everything else? Like why you’re too close to it, Deaglan? Or why you were involved with a human trafficker? Or should we start with something simpler like how old you are?”
The room was quiet and the tension so thick I felt as if I was suffocating in it.
I had to get out of here. I couldn’t breathe, damn it.
Deaglan stood and reached for my hand. I ripped from his grasp and rushed by him.
I heard him swear and come after me, but I didn’t stop.
I had to get out of here.
Everything was crashing down around me.
I pushed through the doors and the cool evening breeze wafted into my heated cheeks. I placed my hand on the brick wall and inhaled several deep, ragged breaths.
My emotions were like a live wire as they ping-ponged inside me. God, what the hell was I doing with a guy like Deaglan? Who was he? What had he been involved with to know a man like Seth Garrett? Why was he so intent on finding Curran and unearthing something I’d buried?
“Eva,” Deaglan said, coming up behind me.
I closed my eyes as the heat of his body seeped into mine.
And at that moment I knew why this mattered. Because I liked him more than I should. Because I wanted him. Because this was temporary and yet it felt as if I was slowly being tied to him and the knot was tightening.
Deaglan was too close to the situation with Curran, but I was too close to him. “Why is it so important to see the police report?”
His fingers settled on my hip and it was like a bolt of electricity charged through me. “I want him found, Eva.”
I jerked from his touch and spun around to face him. “That’s not what I asked you.”
“We’ll talk about it.”
I huffed. “Just take me home, Deaglan.” I brushed past him and walked to the car.
He opened the car door for me and I slid inside, my hands shaking as I did up my seatbelt.
We drove in silence, and even though I was desperate for answers, I needed the quiet. My head was a runaway train with so many doubts and questions about what was happening. How I felt about him. How this was no longer a fling. This was more and all of it mattered.
“I can’t do this anymore, Deaglan.” My throat tightened as if threatening to cut off my words. “I know we’re temporary and you’re leaving and you don’t do relationships but….” But it felt like a hell of a lot more. “I don’t want you staying with me. Frank Davidson is dead, and Deck said he’ll have the police watch my place, and I have the alarm.”
His brows lifted as he glanced at me. “You’re freaked. I get that, Eva. And I’ll let you ha
ve that tonight. But tomorrow morning I’m here and we’re having coffee and we’ll talk about it.”
Crap. My determination to end this would be in the gutter by morning because I’d be tossing and turning all night thinking about him not being in my bed. “I don’t need to talk about it.”
“Too bad.”
“You’ve had lots of time to talk, Deaglan. It’s too late.”
He pulled up to my rental house, shut off the engine and turned to look at me. “I’m not leaving you, Eva.”
But the truth was you can’t leave someone you’ve never really been with.
I unclicked my seat belt and opened the car door.
I got out and walked up the pathway. I heard his door open and his booted feet behind me.
I swallowed back the tears and searched through my purse for my keys, but my hand shook so badly I couldn’t find them. “Damn it, Deaglan, just go,” I blurted.
He gently pried my purse from my hands, took out my keys, and unlocked the door. The alarm beeped and he urged me inside with his hand on my back. He plugged in the code and handed me my purse.
I tossed it on the couch and walked toward my bedroom.
“I’m thirty-two,” he said.
My step faltered, but I kept walking. It wasn’t enough.
“I’ll be outside,” he said.
My shoulders sagged, and the parts of me that I couldn’t keep from wanting Deaglan, cracked. Because that hope that he’d maybe give me more slipped away.
We didn’t talk in the morning or for the next five days because Deaglan was gone, although I didn’t know where.
He’d left me with an extra appendage, Luke, my new bodyguard who looked like a freight train. At night, Luke left as soon as the police car parked across the street from my house.
I was a taut thread ready to snap and it had nothing to do with the fact that I had a bodyguard and the police watching me. It was that I missed him. I missed him in my bed. I missed talking to him. And, yeah, I was worried about him.
At work today, I had to ask Ally to draw my patient’s blood because my hands shook so badly. The shaking was because I hadn’t slept in five days.
I walked through the sliding doors of the hospital after my shift and was surprised to see Vic’s Range Rover idling instead of Luke’s black BMW.
I opened the door and climbed in. “Where’s Luke?”
“Emergency with a client.” He put the car in gear and pulled out.
I bit my lip and neither of us said anything for a minute, but I couldn’t take it. I had to ask. “Where is Deaglan?”
Vic glanced at me with a scowl. “He had to deal with some shit.”
I wanted to ask what shit he was referring to, but talking with Vic was hard to do because Vic was uncommunicative and brooding and pretty much what you’d imagine a scary commando guy in a fast-paced, action-packed movie to be like—where one guy goes around pretty much saving everyone in the entire city. Or maybe he’s the guy who single-handily kills everyone. The judgment was still out on that.
“Is he okay?”
He shrugged. “He’s supposed to be back tonight.”
“Back?”
“Flew to Ireland four days ago.”
My heart stopped and it was as if the crushed pieces snapped into tiny fragments and scattered like a box of thumbtacks. He left? Deaglan went home and he didn’t tell me?
Vic pulled into the driveway and shut off the engine. I went to get out of the car and he grabbed my forearm. “Don’t judge him before you hear his reasons.”
My breath hitched. “What?”
“You heard me.”
I had, but I didn’t understand why he’d tell me that. “Reasons for what?”
His fingers twitched on my arm before he released me. “Police car is here.”
I glanced over my shoulder and saw it sitting at the end of my driveway. I threw open my door and got out. Vic followed until I was safely inside, then he left and I sat on the couch with my phone in my hand staring at Deaglan’s text from five days ago.
I wanted to call him. Text him. Find out if he was okay. Why he went to Ireland. And most importantly, if he was coming back.
I must have picked up my phone a zillion times throughout the evening to call him, but I couldn’t. He’d left and I was the one who drove him to flee.
I always knew he’d leave. He’d been clear in the beginning we were temporary.
And this is what I wanted. But it was for different reasons. I wanted more than temporary. I wanted what he couldn’t give me—him.
I curled up on the couch and mindlessly watched TV, attempting to forget him and doing a piss-poor job of it. And when my cell rang just after ten, I fell off the couch trying to get to it thinking it might be Deaglan, which was silly, but that’s where my head was at.
It was my mom whom I hadn’t spoken to in a week because I knew my dad told her about Deaglan and she’d jump to conclusions.
“Hey, Mom,” I said.
“Eva, dear, how come I had to hear from your father about the young man you’re dating?” I inwardly moaned. “Why didn’t you mention you were seeing someone? I want to hear all about him. What’s he do for a living? Is he a doctor at the hospital? You really should date a nice young doctor.”
“We’re not dating, Mom.” Even when he’d been in my bed every night, it hadn’t been dating.
“He met your father and helped you pick out a fridge. Your dad said he was also at your house when the deliverymen arrived so he could install the appliances. That was nice, sweetie. Oh, and he’s Irish? Is he going to move…” Mom went on, and I leaned my head back on the couch and closed my eyes.
I loved her more than anything and respected her for raising me on her own because Dad was gone most of the time. She probably would’ve divorced my dad years prior if it hadn’t been for me. So I was glad she had found a man and lived down south and was happy playing golf with her friends.
We chatted for a while, thankfully no longer about Deaglan, but golf, and it kept my mind off the fact that I hadn’t heard from Deaglan.
I crawled into bed after midnight and tried to sleep. Tried being the optimal word because I tossed and turned and punched my pillow more times than I could count. Several times I got out of bed and looked out the window, for what, I didn’t know because Deaglan was thousands of miles away across an ocean.
I must have dozed off because I woke to the piercing sound of the alarm.
My heart sprang into my throat and sent me over the edge of the bed in a tangle of sheets.
Shit.
I kicked the sheets aside and dove for my phone on the nightstand. I quickly scrolled to the app and checked the alarm.
Back door open.
Holy Christ, someone’s in the house.
Or maybe the back door flew open in the wind? Was it windy? Did I forget to lock it before bed? It was a shitty door, so there was a good possibility.
I didn’t care. I wasn’t being the stupid girl who gets blown up because she thought it was the wind and not an intruder planting a bomb.
“9-1-1, what’s your emergency?”
“My alarm is going off and the app says the back door is open and I may have left it unlocked and the wind blew it open, but I don’t want to go check because if it’s not then—”
“Slow down, ma’am. What’s your address so we can confirm and get someone there right away?”
I gave her my address while I scanned my bedroom for a weapon.
Lamp. I tore the plug out of the socket and grabbed the lamp around the neck, tore off the shade, and held it above my head as I walked to my bedroom door.
“Ma’am, officers are on their way. Can you lock yourself in a room until they get there?”
“Yeah, but there’s a cop right outside.” At least, there had been. Why wasn’t he busting through the door to see if I was okay?
My phone beeped, and Deaglan’s name flashed on the screen. A tidal wave of relief swept over me and I quick
ly tapped the phone to switch calls.
“Deaglan.” My hand shook, and I gripped the phone tighter as I slid to the floor, my back against my bedroom door.
“Eva. What’s going on?”
I shook my head as a tear trailed down my cheek. I wasn’t sure if it was from hearing his voice after five days or the fact that someone could be in my house. Maybe both. “I was asleep and the alarm went off. I called 9-1-1.”
He swore beneath his breath. “Vic’s close. Sixty seconds out. Is the cop with you?”
“I’m in the bedroom,” I said. “I don’t know where the cop is.”
“Okay. Stay on the phone with me until Vic gets there.”
I nodded even though he couldn’t see me. “Okay.”
“Eva. We’re going to talk. I’m on my—”
Bang.
I dropped the phone at what sounded like someone kicking in the front door. I gripped the lamp with both hands.
Was it this Seth guy? Was someone planting a bomb like they did at Deaglan’s?
“Eva!” I heard the muffled sound of Deaglan’s voice in the phone.
The alarm silenced.
Footsteps thumped.
“Eva, pick up the phone.”
I held my breath and tightened my hold on the lamp.
The floorboards creaked.
The hairs on the back of my neck quivered, and my heart pounded so hard I swear the intruder could hear it.
“Eva?” A low rumbling voice sounded on the other side of the door.
“Vic?” I said and scrambled to my feet, moving away from the door to open it.
Vic stood in front of me with a gun drawn, and it was the best sight, second to seeing Deaglan, I’d ever seen.
He shoved the gun in a holster strapped to his thigh. “Lamp,” he said and slowly reached for me, eyes on me not the lamp.
Right. I still had the lamp up above my head. I lowered it and handed it to him.
He set it on the floor and picked up my phone. “Deaglan. She’s safe.” He didn’t wait for a response as he pressed End and handed the phone to me.
But I didn’t take it. Instead, I threw my arms around his neck and pressed my cheek to his chest. “Thank you.” Vic’s arms remained at his side, his body tense and unmoving as I hugged him.
