“Look at me,” he said in that deep, dark voice.
His eyes seemed to glitter in the semidarkness.
“Come. Come on,” he chanted at her.
He’d hold back until she came. Even when she tried to make it about him, he turned it around. God, he was amazing. Her heart and body were so full of him. The need for release coiled low and tight in her belly. She rolled her hips and he thrust up to meet her. He reached up and cupped the back of her head, bringing her down on top of him until their tongues tangled in a kiss so deep she didn’t know where one ended and the other began.
This was love. How could it not be?
Her body must have sensed the revelation. Pleasure so deep she wanted to scream unfolded within her, spreading into every cell of her body. He thrust again, the motions rougher, the hand between them clenching at her hip. He groaned his release. Emery stilled and she collapsed on top of him, wholly spent.
He wrapped his arms around her and she smiled before she ever felt the kiss to the top of her head. Such little, sweet gestures from a man so used to being cast aside. If the FBI ever did pressure her into leaving him, she’d have to. She couldn’t ask him to go down with the proverbial sinking ship.
“You hugged my penis with your pussy.”
The statement was so unexpected it made her giggle.
“I did.” She peered up at him and her heart clenched at the look of utter completion on his face. Had she ever seen Emery happy? How could she leave him?
“I liked it.”
She grinned and tightened her lower muscles. He groaned.
“Don’t do that or I’ll get hard again.”
“Oh really?” She chuckled and kissed his frowning lips. “Fine. I’m sleepy anyway.”
“Next time we can use a bed. It’ll be a novelty and then you can do that as much as you want.”
She liked the sound of next time. Of making plans with him. They’d agreed to see where the attraction went. Maybe she wasn’t strong enough to walk away from this. She laid her head on his chest and hugged him with her arms this time. They’d become entwined sometime in the last few days. It could be the situation they’d found themselves in, or just maybe it was meant to be.
Tori kissed his chest, above his heart. She didn’t know what the future held, what the FBI would do or if the hit team would attack again. There was no point in making promises to herself without knowing the future. She’d love Emery while she could.
“I’m going to put my pants back on. I’d like to keep my ass a private matter.” She pushed herself up and he hissed as his cock slid from her body. The physical connection she missed immediately, but the truth was they had something deeper, something that went beyond touch or feel.
She grabbed her clothes and opened the passenger door. The warehouse was still silent, save for the lessening rain. The calm before the storm? Maybe. But their lives were in a constant state of upheaval these days.
Clothed once more, she crawled back into the car. Emery had cleaned up and his jeans once more sat low on his hips. Had she ever noticed the dips of muscle along either hip bone, pointing toward his crotch? Another time she’d have to appreciate them more, but now she was too tired.
Emery grabbed her hand and pulled her back on top of him. The Bel Air had a big front seat, and they covered every inch of it.
“I turned the cameras away from the car. They can still see the windows above us in one shot, but not the car.”
She rolled the statement around in her head. On one hand, his attention to detail was sweet. On the other, he’d totally planned on coming here and banging her lights out. She chuckled and squeezed him tighter.
“Wait . . . does that mean . . .” The guys knew? That they were together? A little panic went through her . . . but what were they hiding?
“Julian and Gabriel know.” He went still under her, maybe a little tense.
“Roni is going to chew me out.” She winced.
“Why?”
“She didn’t know first.” She thumped his chest. “Thanks a lot for getting me in trouble. You could have at least waited an hour.”
“They figured it out on their own.” He sounded almost guilty.
“I’m not mad, but Roni might be. She’ll get over it.”
“You’re okay with people knowing?”
“You’d keep me a secret?”
“No.”
“Then why hide it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Neither do I.” She smiled at him. “I like talking to you.”
“I’m tired of talking. It takes effort.”
“Okay.” She kissed his lips. “Go to sleep.”
She settled back against his chest and smiled when he rubbed her back. Yeah, because she could so walk away from this. She was a goner.
Chapter Twenty
Emery stabbed the computer keys with his fingers. The screen could barely hold his attention. Tori had followed him into the security office after a couple hours of deep sleep in the Bel Air and promptly curled up in a bed made of two office chairs situated seat-to-seat. It was beyond him how she could possibly be comfortable enough to sleep contorted into a pretzel, but if he were her size, maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. More than anything, her presence calmed him. Even if all he wanted to do was watch her breathe.
He could watch her sleep for hours if he had the time. Instead, he had hundreds of video files from Greenworks to slog through. His transmitter worked beautifully. Even now he could get a real-time feed if he wanted to watch a bunch of dark rooms. He’d tabbed through the current time stamps to see what, if any, activity was going on at Greenworks, but the factory was quiet.
There were far too many files to go through, so he focused on the cameras covering the gates, writing down license plate numbers of cars in three columns: Eleventh, Staff, and Unknown. On another piece of paper, he kept tally marks in an attempt to figure out how many people might be in the facility at a given time.
He was determined to find out who the old man with the security detail was and how he fit into the picture.
It didn’t take a genius to figure out that CJ would be out for blood. Julian just wanted to cause havoc and knock heads together. Aiden would want to hold back, make a plan, and evaluate the situation. When those three got together, it would explode. CJ had always been somewhere in the middle of things, but now it was hard to tell.
CJ had emerged from the office for a few moments to grab something to drink and use the bathroom. He’d still worn blood-soaked clothing, but the most telling thing of all was his eyes. CJ had always been reserved, but now his gaze was dead. Lifeless. He didn’t care. Whatever happened today, it wouldn’t be good.
A black town car with heavily tinted windows rolled across the frame in triple time. Emery jabbed the pause button and scrolled it back until he could see the license plate—except the digits were obscured. There were a number of tricks, from special covers to clear grip tape, that could do that. Who would want to hide their license plate number, besides a drag racer? Could it be the Geezer?
He let the footage roll in real time. As the car left the frame, he switched feeds, tabbing to the corresponding time code. The car stopped and the driver got out, but before he could open the back door a man pushed it open.
“Who are you?” Emery peered at the image.
He was older, with white hair and a thin build. The Geezer. Unlike most of Evers’s people who moved in and out of the building, he was dressed in a black suit and his eyes were shielded by sunglasses. He scanned the roads once before walking toward the building. Emery scrambled to change cameras, tracking the man and a few of Evers’s people through the building. Who was he? The way people moved out of his way, he was clearly someone important. There were gaps in the coverage, but he didn’t lose them until the group of six men entered something that looked like a set of offices or maybe a conference room.
What was in there?
Emery pushed back, rummaging in the stack of pa
pers and things he’d dumped on the desk until he came up with a tablet. He pulled down a couple files from his cloud storage and opened the blueprints to the Greenworks building.
“What are you doing?” Tori groaned and stretched, sticking one leg straight up in the air.
Huh. He’d have to remember she bent that far.
“Nothing. Go back to sleep.” He zoomed in on the doors where he’d lost them. Beyond there was a whole section of rooms, like a honeycomb, that weren’t covered by cameras. Whatever was back there was a mystery.
Evers’s operation was predominantly drug-based. This could be the new warehouse for the merchandise the street thugs would sell. Having the expendable Eleventh on the payroll meant a direct line to customers and a highly mobile fleet of deliverymen. It could be a perfect reason for the perceived lack of activity on the part of Evers’s people during his incarceration. Once more Emery kicked himself for letting the Eleventh fall through the cracks.
“What’s this?” Tori wrapped her arms around his neck from behind. Her breasts pressed against his shoulders and she rested her cheek on his head.
“You’re supposed to be sleeping.”
“So are you.”
“I slept. I’m good.”
“What? Two hours?”
“It’s enough.”
“Whatever. What’s this?”
“Blueprints for the Greenworks building.”
“Is there anything you can’t get your hands on?” She kissed his temple and splayed her hands over his chest.
Her heart. He couldn’t touch that. There was no way to make her love him back, though right now knowing she wanted him was enough.
“I have a theory. Tell me how this sounds.” He detailed his thoughts on Evers’s use of the Eleventh. Tori remained quiet while he detailed each reason he thought it was a sound idea.
“That sounds good, except I don’t see Raibel Canales working for Michael Evers, you know?” She pivoted and sat on the desk. “Think about it. Evers took Canales down a few pegs, so Canales retaliated and got Evers busted. They aren’t going to work together by choice.”
He blew out a breath.
“They’re working for someone else. Maybe the guy we met at the docks. What if he’s the real boss behind them all?” He clasped his hands together behind his head and stared at the ceiling.
“I don’t know.” She shrugged.
“What do you think?”
“I think he’s someone important, but he’s not Evers. He doesn’t have the presence to intimidate people. Do you have Evers’s friends on file or a list or something?”
“Yeah. I’ve got files on anyone Evers has ever spoken to. His associates, friends, buyers, suppliers, even the guy who cuts his lawn.” He brought up a digital corkboard where he’d pinned the information of a couple dozen people of interest.
“Okay.” She peered at the screen. “Wait, he was already here?” She pointed at the grainy image of the Geezer he’d just imported to the program.
“No. I just added him.”
“From what?”
“He’s on the tapes from Greenworks.” He pulled the camera footage up on another screen and backed it up so she could get the full impact of the man in the suit with Evers’s people.
“He dresses like Evers does, but not as flashy.” She squinted at the image. “Evers always stuck out because he was so well dressed. This guy’s . . . old. Old money? Mob? Could that be the Russian connection?”
“Maybe.”
“What if he’s a buyer? Or some port official?”
“They take officials out to fancy meals; they don’t show them their stock.”
“Is that what they’re doing?”
“No idea. No cameras in that area.”
“Damn.”
“Yeah.”
“Okay, so he’s clearly someone important, but would the boss come count beans?”
“Probably not.”
“Then this guy isn’t the boss, but maybe he’s Evers’s boss? The person over him? Do we know who has been paying for Evers’s defense?”
“His on-again, off-again socialite girlfriend, Fiona Gonzalez. They’ve been off since January, but she showed up with his lawyers the day he was arrested. Hasn’t been around since, but phone records show he’s gotten a couple of calls from her.” He clicked on the image of an artificially beautiful woman. He also had a list of the nips and tucks she’d had, to obtain such a flawless appearance.
“What’s their connection?”
“Not much. Parties mostly. Some vacations. But she’s not leaning on him for cash.”
“Is he paying her back? Where’s her money come from?”
“Someone might be giving her cash to cover the lawyer fees. Hers comes from family. Rich people stuff. All aboveboard and clean. Believe me, I’ve been all over her life back when we started.”
Tori sighed and massaged her temples. “This is crazy. Why are we doing this?”
“Because we were hired to.”
“I might have liked you better when you didn’t talk so much.” She smiled and that damn invisible hand gripped his heart. She nudged him with her toe. “Kidding. Keep talking. What should we do?”
He’d thought about that. There were options, but they all hinged on CJ, Julian, and Aiden coming to an agreement. Something he wasn’t sure would happen once they were all in a room together.
“Yo,” Julian yelled from across the warehouse.
A car horn blared three short bursts.
Aiden and the rest of the crew had arrived.
Tori pushed off the desk and scampered around, shoving her feet into shoes. He followed at a slower pace. He was glad everyone else was here safe and sound, but the circus was about to start.
The rolling door rose and one after another, three barely legal street rides rolled into the warehouse. Their engines drowned out all other noise and the music pumping in Roni’s car alone was enough to deafen them all.
Tori jogged to her sister’s Lancer and opened the driver’s door. Roni stood, wrapping her sister in a tight hug. John and Aiden killed their engines and slowly got out of their cars. They didn’t appear the worse for wear, though they had taken twice as much time to get home as they should have.
Julian got to Aiden first. The two men clasped hands and slapped each other on the shoulder. Emery approached slowly. Madison was already tucked under Aiden’s arm by the time he reached the two other men. Gabriel and John stood off to one side, their heads together. Roni and Tori weren’t paying attention to the rest of them, and from what he could make out by watching their lips, neither was even speaking English. Looked like he needed to brush up on his Russian.
“Emery, what happened?” Aiden asked him.
“Julian get you caught up?” Emery nodded at the other man.
“Yeah, but where were you? What went down? Where’s CJ?”
Emery glanced over his shoulder at the office. The light was back on. Sooner or later, they were going to have to do something about the agent. He gave Aiden the short version while the others gathered round.
“I’m going to go talk to CJ.” Aiden let go of Madison and took a step toward the office. “Emery, walk with me.”
Together they strode away from the group and through the bays they used for a variety of automotive purposes.
“How bad was it?” Aiden asked.
“Bad.”
“How is he?”
“Don’t know.”
“What about Tori?”
“What about her?”
Aiden glanced at him and frowned.
“You’ve been into her for a while now. Just wondering.”
Emery didn’t reply immediately. He’d tried to hide his obsession, but Aiden was one of the people he spent the most time with. If anyone would have known, it would be him.
“Tori is good. Upset. But we all are.”
“And CJ hasn’t come out at all?”
“Not for anything besides water, coffee, and some fo
od. He hasn’t spoken to us.”
They crossed the last few yards in silence. Aiden stepped up to the door and knocked on the metal.
“CJ? It’s Aiden and Emery. Can we come in?” He tilted his head toward the door, but there was no sound from within.
Emery shrugged and twisted the doorknob. Unlike before, it gave under his grip and swung inward.
CJ sat at the desk Kathy had used. It faced away from the door, was devoid of anything personal, and carried no mark of her presence. Yet, it had been hers. The monitor was off and the remains of the food and drink CJ had consumed lay scattered on the surface along with the firearm he’d taken from their captors. Kathy’s killers.
“CJ?” Aiden said.
“What?” CJ’s voice was gruff and raw.
“Wanted to check on you, man.” Aiden stepped into the room. Emery followed, at a loss for what to say or do.
How did they ease the pain of Kathy’s passing? The loss wasn’t real to Emery, not yet.
“Everyone here?” CJ asked.
“Yeah, we’re all here.” Aiden stood beside the desk, hands on his hips, but CJ didn’t glance at either of them. He just stared straight ahead at the dark screen.
“Good. I want everyone together in ten minutes.” CJ stood and the chair rolled back. “I know you’ve been on the road, but we’ve got work to do.”
“You sure that’s what you want?”
CJ turned toward Aiden. His face was gaunt and his eyes rimmed with red.
“We’re going to kill those bastards. Get the crew.”
Aiden glanced at Emery. This wasn’t going to go well. From Aiden’s frown, it didn’t take a lot to figure out that he didn’t like the plan, and they all knew Julian would back up anything to do with going balls to the wall.
Emery tilted his head toward the door.
“I’ll get the crew.” Aiden turned on his heel and left the office.
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