by Tori Carson
“Same thing, thank you,” Sasha answered as Sid led her to his usual booth.
It afforded him a solid wall behind his back as well as a clear view of both the entrance and most of the kitchen.
“I see I’m not the only creature of habit,” she teased him.
He shrugged. “If you find something you like, why goes elsewhere?”
Sasha looked at him long and hard. “You sound like you’re speaking about something more important than where to eat.”
Had he been? Probably. She was a very perceptive woman. Before he could answer, the front door swung open and a familiar face walked in. Suddenly the mysterious car made more sense. Instead of grabbing a booth nearby and watching their back as Sid had expected, Teague sauntered up their table.
“Hey, dude. You lose your phone? I’ve been trying to call you for hours.” He grabbed a chair, swung it around backward and sat down like he owned the place. “Hi, I’m Teague. I work with Jake, when he sees fit to take my calls.”
Sid’s heart was pounding double time. For Teague to barge in, some bad shit had to have gone down. At least Teague had remembered his cover.
After grabbing his phone, he scrolled through his messages. There were about thirty of them, most weren’t suitable for mixed company.
“Sorry. I must have had it on silent.” This was awkward as hell. “I’ll be in the office in an hour or so if you want to meet me there.”
The waitress arrived with their teas and took their food order. To Sid’s surprise, Teague ordered as well.
“No dice, brother.” Teague picked up as if they hadn’t been interrupted. “Someone trashed your apartment last night, stole your computers and took your lockbox. I think you know what that means.” Teague scooted his chair slightly.
Sid noticed he’d effectively blocked Sasha inside the booth. Shit, that meant there was more and he wasn’t going to like it.
“Oh, Jacob, I’m so sorry! Is this going to set you back at work?” She sounded genuinely distraught.
He brushed a hand through his hair as agitation swamped him. “I’m not worried about work, baby.” Sid motioned for Teague to continue. He hated waiting for the other shoe to drop.
“Have you been listening to the radio this morning? There was a woman hurled off the 101 overpass this morning. She landed on a big rig.” He grimaced. “Made a hell of a mess.”
“Oh my God.” Sasha’s eyes kept glancing back and forth between Teague and Sid.
He reached across the table and held her hand.
Teague, Sid knew, was waiting on his approval. He’d already said too much to stop now. Sid motioned for him to continue.
“I believe she worked for you.” Teague was watching her closely.
“Me? I only have one full-time employee…”
Sid saw the dawning cross her face. She must have remembered Cheryl hadn’t shown up for work today.
“Are you a cop? How would you know all this?” The vein in Sasha’s neck was pumping furiously. Without waiting for an answer, she tried to push past Teague. “I have to get back to the office. Please excuse me.”
If he let her leave, he’d never see her again. Teague held his ground, as Sid had known he would. “Settle down, baby. No, we’re not with the police. We can help you, if you’ll trust me.”
Immediately Sasha turned her attention to Sid. Her hand went to her throat and tears appeared in her eyes. “You played me.”
“No, not like that, Sasha. Not like what you’re thinking. Listen to me. In my spare time, I’ve been investigating a murder and arson case. A beautiful teenage girl, talented beyond all reason, was framed for the crime. I’ve been trying to find her. If my guess is correct, she’s in grave danger and has been on the run most of her life.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about. It’s obvious you two need time to talk. I’ll take a cab back to my car.” She tried again to get past Teague.
Sid tightened his grip on her wrist. “I’m afraid I can’t allow that…Alexa. It’s too dangerous. If they’ve hacked my computer, they’ll think I work for the FBI. There are files on there no one else should have access to. You have to trust me, baby. Take that leap of faith and let me help you.”
She shook her head vigorously. “You’re wrong. I don’t know what you’re talking about. Please, I need to get to the office.” She tried to break free from his hold.
“Alexa, tell me what happened that night.” He kept his tone calm, hoping to soothe her.
“My name is Sasha Powell. I’m an interior decorator. I don’t know anything about apartments being broken into or girls dying on the freeways.” Her voice cracked and she rapidly blinked. “You have me confused with someone else.”
“Two nights ago I followed you to a storage unit.” Shock and fury skittered across her face. “You slid underneath the door too quickly for me to see inside.” He took a deep breath and admitted another lie. “I went back there yesterday. While I was there I found a dress form. Alexa Desman was a bright, upcoming clothing designer. I also found boxes of drawings along with a laptop. Before I could do a thorough search, a car pulled up outside. I hid in the shelving unit along the back wall. A major badass”—no, he couldn’t sugar-coat it—“a mob-sanctioned killer named Hackman entered the unit. He found something of interest and left. As I was getting ready to leave, he came back and torched the place.” He waved a hand in front of his face. “This is from the fire inside your storage unit, not a sunburn.”
Her gaze flickered over his red, tender skin. “Oh my God, this can’t be happening.” She buried her head in her hands.
“Alexa, we can protect you. Tell me what happened,” Sid urged.
“Was my laptop destroyed?” She looked at Sid as if the weight of the world rode on her shoulders.
The breath stilled in his lungs as her confirmation set in. There could be no going back now. The woman sitting in front of him was indeed Alexa Desman, wanted murder and arson suspect. And he’d spent the previous evening fucking her.
No, he couldn’t distance himself like that. He’d made sweet, passionate love to her and he’d do it again the first chance he had.
“I downloaded all the files before Hackman came back.”
She sat up a little straighter. “You did the same thing to my work computers too, didn’t you? I even helped you do it.” She shook her head and slumped into the seat, looking utterly dejected.
“Don’t play the victim card, Alexa. You had an ulterior motive for asking me to look at your systems. I think you wanted my help.” He refused to let her off easily.
Slowly, she raised her head and met his gaze.
He had no idea what was going through her mind and it scared the shit out of him. He was half convinced she was going to tell him to go to hell.
The waitress appeared, sparing him that agony for a few minutes. She distributed their food and left them alone.
Teague dug in, clearing his plate in no time. Both Sid and Alexa poked at their eggs more than they ate them.
“My real name is Sid Townsend. I work for the National Border Interdiction Agency. It’s a law enforcement bureau that works under the radar to find and shut down, among other things, human trafficking rings.” Sid felt Teague’s gaze bore into him. He waved his hand, signaling Teague to back the fuck off. He was well aware he’d just breached a serious protocol and frankly, he didn’t give a damn.
“When I search through the files from your laptop, what am I going to find?” He wanted her to tell him. It was selfish of him, really. He didn’t want to break her confidence.
“Well, Officer, the files on my laptop were illegally obtained. Unless you had a search warrant, you had no legal rights to enter my storage unit, let alone break into my computer.” A spark of indignation appeared in her eyes.
Teague smirked and Sid wanted desperately to punch that smug look right off his face.
“Ms. Desman, NBIA doesn’t operate under the same constraints as the local PD. You won’t find our
agency on any government ORG chart. When we take you in and interrogate you on the charge of murder, arson, multiple counts of kidnapping and a plethora of charges involving the sex trade, we won’t bother reading you your rights or giving you an attorney nor will one be present during our questioning. We play by a different set of rules,” Teague announced, sounding quite pleased with himself.
“You aren’t helping.” Sid kicked Teague under the table.
“Yeah, well, my dick ain’t clouding my judgment. What I see when I look at this cold fish is a murderess looking to find a technicality that keeps her from growing old inside a prison.”
“Sir”—Alexa turned an arctic glare straight at Teague—“I’ve never much worried about growing old in prison or otherwise. I’ve been too preoccupied with staying alive to worry about some nebulous future.”
“You notice, Sid, she’s spouting a lot of righteous indignation, but she hasn’t denied her guilt.”
“What’s the point? You’re going to take me in whether I plead my innocence or not and once you do…I’m a dead woman. Jacob…Sid, whatever your name is, you seemed to have a fondness for animals. If that wasn’t faked as well, please take care of Dakota for me. You’ll find a stash of cash behind a fake wall in the closet at my apartment.” Her voice was devoid of emotion, as if she was resigned to her fate.
Intellectually, Sid was pleased by her reaction, it was further proof she hadn’t flown into a fit of rage and acted impulsively that fateful evening.
Emotionally, her despondency was killing him.
“Shut the hell up, Teague. Alexa, I’m not going to let anything happen to you. We’re going to get through this.” Whatever trust he’d earned last night, he’d obliterated this morning. Now, he was just one more asshole who had used her for his own gain. He needed to get her alone, to hold her and explain his actions.
Alexa spread her hand out on the table then looked up at him with a quiet loathing. “Those blisters on your fingers are from the reins.” She lifted her hand and showed her calluses. “You’re new to riding. That was part of the deception too.” She tipped her head upward as tears pooled in her eyes.
Teague got his attention and nodded toward a white panel van waiting at the corner. Shit. Teague had called in the cavalry.
“Night night, princess,” Teague whispered as he jammed the syringe into Alexa’s thigh.
Sid lunged across the table, too late to stop him. “You motherfucker! Why did you do that?”
Teague had smoothly moved onto the bench beside Alexa and kept her from falling over. It irritated the hell out of Sid that Teague was cradling his woman.
“There’s a whole restaurant full of witnesses, dumb-ass. Did you really think she was going to come along quietly?” Teague was completely unrepentant.
“Damn it, just damn it.” Sid drew some cash out of his wallet and threw it on the table. “Give her to me.”
“You’re not going to do something stupid are you, Sid? The chief gave me orders to bring you and sunshine in, and in this instance, I gotta agree with him.”
“Fuck you!” God, he wanted to take a swing or three at Teague.
“Dude, you’re thinking with your little head right now. With the big guns in town, that shit just ain’t gonna work,” Teague cautioned him.
“You’ve been hanging around ‘Bob’ too long. He’s got you talking like a moron.” Sid knew Teague was trying to protect him, but that didn’t make his interference any easier to accept.
“Maybe but, man, can he make an engine sing.”
Sid drew Alexa into his arms, snuggling her close against his chest.
As they were leaving, the waitress stepped in front of them. “Is she okay?”
Sid leaned down and kissed Alexa on the forehead. “Hot tea. It gets her every time.”
The waitress giggled. “Me too. See ya next time.” She waved then went back to work.
Chapter Nine
She woke in a strange room with her head pillowed on Jacob…no, Sid’s lap. Her mind felt fuzzy and her tongue too thick.
“I’m sorry, baby. I wish I could have told you the truth from the beginning, but you would have run. I know you would have.” His voice was low and regretful.
Alexa desperately wanted to believe him.
“Last night…it was real, Alexa. I swear it wasn’t a ruse. The connection we made was real. The only bullshit involved was the ‘friends with benefits’ ploy.” His breathing sped up and his hand gripped her hair a little tighter. “I can’t walk away from you. I’m in too deep. I hope there’s a whole lot of Sasha in Alexa because I’m falling in love with her.”
Hearing her real name roll off his lips made her heart trip dangerously, but when he uttered the ‘L’ word she panicked. When something sounded too good to be true, it was. “Do you always drug and kidnap the women you’re in love with…Sid? Cuz, it seems a little counterproductive to the whole trust building thing.” God, help her. She wanted to believe him, but she wasn’t ready to admit it or let him in on the secret.
“I can’t really answer that. I’ve never been in love before.” He fisted her hair near her scalp and gave it a sharp tug.
The sensation was familiar now. Strange as that was, she’d accepted it.
“You lied to me.” She said it out loud to remind herself he wasn’t the knight in shining armor he seemed to be.
“You lied to everyone,” he answered simply.
He had a point. She could, of course, rationalize her reasons, but she supposed he could as well. “It hasn’t done much good. My brother keeps finding me.”
“Tell me about that night,” he said softly.
There wasn’t any reason to refuse. She felt no loyalty toward her brother and maybe, just maybe, Sid could help her stop him.
“How much do you know about my family?” she asked in a whisper. It had been her deepest, darkest secret for so long, shedding light on the truth was scary.
“You’re Daniel Desman’s daughter, heir apparent to the fashion throne.”
She snorted then bit her lip trying to stem the tide of tears. Just the mention of her dad’s name made her ache. She missed them so damn much.
“What happened, baby?” Sid urged her to tell him her story.
“My parents had died in a car accident a few months prior to Fashion Week. It was going to be my big premiere.” She shook her head to clear out the fog. She still couldn’t think about those days and not lose it.
“After their deaths, I couldn’t complete anything. I couldn’t focus. Danny, my brother, was so mad at me. At the last possible moment, he switched the line-up. Danny pulled most of my designs and substituted Ezzy’s, but he didn’t give her credit. He wanted me to say they were mine.”
She shifted so she could see Sid’s face. “Ezzy saw the proposed press releases and was furious.” She tilted her head in acknowledgment. “Rightfully so, too.” Alexa drew her legs into a fetal position.
“Ezzy called me, thinking I’d stolen her work. I told her I didn’t know anything about it and we agreed to meet at the studio and talk to Danny together. What he was doing wasn’t right.”
“How did he react when you confronted him?” Sid moved her bangs away from her eyes. “Was he trying to uphold tradition?”
“I don’t think so. Everything was about money with him.” She sighed and decided to share another painful memory. “Mom and Dad had taken care of every contingency. Years earlier, they’d bought burial plots for all of us, designed the services and prepaid for everything. A friend of theirs had been blindsided by an unexpected death and they didn’t want us to have to go through the same thing.” She sniffled and blinked, trying to keep the waterworks at bay.
“Danny cashed in the plots, canceled the services and had them cremated.” It still hurt like hell that her parents hadn’t received the burial they deserved. He fired tons of long-standing, loyal workers and hired…people with no experience. None at all.” No matter how hard she’d argued, he’d refused to list
en to her. Their parents’ legacy was now in shambles.
“Let me guess, he hired girls, young, pretty girls,” Sid guessed.
Alexa nodded.
“What happened when you arrived at the studio that night?” he asked again.
“It was late. No one was in the office area but Danny. He often stayed till the wee hours ‘working’. Mostly he drank until the afterhours clubs opened then he’d stumble out of the office to go ‘party’. When I got there, I noticed the lights were on in my office and Danny was inside. He was throwing my designs all over the place. It looked like a wind tunnel had exploded in there. I rushed in and that’s when I saw her. Ezzy…” She broke into sobs.
Sid took her in his arms and rocked her. It felt so good to just be held. She took a few selfish minutes and soaked up his heat…and drenched his shirt with her tears.
He gave her a few tissues from the box on the coffee table and handed her a bottle of water.
She savored the cool liquid going down her throat. When she thought too much about that night it was like she was back there, reliving every horrible moment. After taking a few gulps, she knew she had to finish telling the rest or she’d never be able to.
“Ezzy had gotten there before me.” Alexa could hardly tell it was her. He’d beaten her so badly. “She was on the ground between the desk and door. I think her neck was broken. The angle…”
She blew her nose and forced herself to continue. “I tried to run, but he was too fast. It felt like I was running in quicksand or something. He grabbed me and threw me farther into the office.” The memories were choking her. She could still feel the blows and smell the smoke.
“Did he hurt you?” Sid asked gently.
She closed her eyes and tried to come back to the present. She nodded and took another swallow of water. “He must have thought he’d killed me too. He took a hammer to my computer then poured gas all over.”
In her mind’s eye, she watched as he tossed her handspun fabrics into the mess. “He threw a match and the room just exploded in flames. As he ran out the door, he tripped over Ezzy.” Alexa shuddered. “He’d wedged her body in the doorway and I had to move her to escape.” She looked at her hands, remembering how cold Ezzy had felt and how searing the flames had been. “I should have gotten her out of there. I read she’d been burned almost beyond recognition. For a while, they’d thought she was me.”
