by Lisa Kessler
“If I don’t get into the safe-deposit box, then I don’t have any money to pay you back.”
I sent off a text to Vance about a new identity for Natasha and then stuffed my phone into my pocket as I met her eyes. “I don’t care about the money. Bottom line, I just want to know you’re safe.”
Her eyes shone as she blinked and crossed her arms. “I don’t owe any debts to anyone.”
“You won’t owe me anything.” I opened the other nightstand and took out a small yellow legal pad and a pen. “Write down what you need.” I stepped into the walk-in closet and grabbed a black T-shirt. “I’ll run to the drugstore, and when I get back, you can dye your hair. After that, we can buy some new clothes.”
She didn’t respond. When I came back from my closet, she was sitting on the edge of my bed. Her gaze was intense and locked on my chest. “Nothing’s changed except we need to abduct the judge now rather than kill him. I still have to leave Arizona.”
I crossed to her. “You don’t have to keep reminding me.” I lifted her chin to meet my eyes. “But as long as you are still here, I’ve got your back.”
Tears shone in her eyes again, and I knew she would never allow them to fall. I pressed a kiss to her forehead. There had to be a way for us to be together. I just needed to find it before she disappeared forever.
She handed me her list. “Thank you.”
I smiled and went to the door. “Don’t go anywhere.”
She chuckled. “Take your time. I’ll just explore your house and poke through your drawers.”
“Funny.” I laughed. “I’ll be back soon.” I opened the door and looked back over my shoulder. “If you need the computer, the password is werewolf, all lowercase.”
I left her behind and headed out, sending up a prayer to Fate that she’d stay put and wait for me to get back.
CHAPTER 13
Natasha
I watched Dex disappear down the driveway. Once his truck was out of sight, I locked the door and started exploring his house. The way he had brought the colors of Sedona into his home through the geodes and natural wood made me smile. I’d never lived anywhere so spacious with so much room for self-expression. I’d never even had my own crappy studio apartment before.
During the house tour earlier, we’d poked our heads into his office, but hadn’t taken the time to go inside. I settled into his chair. His desk wasn’t messy, but it wasn’t organized either. There were blank invoices, a few pads of Post-its, a couple of tape measures, and on the corner in a small, battered frame was a picture of two shirtless identical brothers in denim shorts holding up fish. I studied their smiles, trying to determine which one was Dex and struggling not to envy those toothless grins. At their age, I had been wearing a uniform and living behind the ivy-covered walls of Brightwood Academy already.
I put the picture back and fired up the computer. I opened Gmail and logged Dex out before logging myself in. First, I checked my sent mail to see if the judge had managed to hack my account to send bogus threatening e-mails.
Nope. I shook my head. Sloppy framing job. It would be simple for me to prove the judge was lying. Of course, he hadn’t thought I’d ever get a trial once the world had watched me shift from a woman into a jaguar. He hadn’t counted on that not happening.
I opened a new message and added Gil’s e-mail address in the recipient line. In the subject line I wrote, Promise you this. I wanted him to be curious enough to open it but be looking over his shoulder. That’s when mistakes would happen. I’d get the judge in spite of his bodyguards.
You backed the wrong horse.
N
I forwarded the message to his partner on the judge’s security detail, Ray, and logged out of Gmail. I wandered back into Dex’s bedroom and lay down on the big bed. Once Dex got back, I’d dye my hair and hopefully Vance could get me some new identification while we tracked the judge. After we made the grab and delivered him to Sloan, I’d leave.
I didn’t want to think about that part of the plan. Instead, I rolled over, breathing in Dex’s scent on the pillows. I smiled and my eyes drifted shut.
The door to the garage opened, startling me awake. I must’ve drifted off. I got up and found Dex in the kitchen.
He grinned as he unloaded the bag. “Hope I didn’t fuck up the dye thing. I’ve never bought it before.”
I took the small box from him and grinned. “This will be fine.”
“Good.” He set his phone on the counter. “Vance thinks he can have your new identification in a week.”
“Before the full moon.” I nodded slowly. “Good.”
He leaned against the counter, looking so sexy it was distracting. He crossed his arms. “Are we going to talk about…anything?”
I laughed at his attempt at subtlety. “I assume you mean sex in the shower?”
His eyes sparkled with mischief, only adding to the heat warming my bloodstream. “Yeah, that.” He sobered. “Before you start telling me you need to leave town, just hear me out.”
I rested my hand on my hip. “All right. But only because it was good.”
“Better than good.” His crooked grin made my hips ache where he’d grabbed them. “So, if we’re only getting a week before the new identification comes through, I’d like to spend as much time together as possible—both naked and clothed. It took me forty years to find you. We’ve got a lot of catching up to do.”
“What about the judge?”
He chuckled. “He’s not invited.”
I laughed and shook my head. “I’m being serious.”
“I know he’s our priority, but when we’re here…I want to know my boundaries. If I pulled you in for a kiss, would you shoot me or kiss me back?”
I tried not to smile, but the corners of my mouth twitched. “Is this you trying to sweep me off my feet?”
He straightened and moved away from the counter, coming toward me with desire burning in his eyes. “It’s me pretending we get forever.”
Oh, I wanted to pretend that could be true, too. But it couldn’t.
Would pretending be so bad?
“I’d like that,” I whispered.
He scooped me into his arms. I laughed and reached over to the counter to grab the box of hair dye. “Let’s start with my hair.”
He carried me back to the bedroom when his phone rang back in the kitchen.
“Shit,” he grumbled and set me down in the bathroom. “I’ll be right back.”
I opened the box and spread out the instructions. I’d dyed my hair black before, but this would be my first time as a redhead. I took down my braid and started brushing when Dex came back with his phone in his hand. He looked pale.
“What’s wrong?”
“We don’t have time to change your hair. We need to find the judge now.” He met my eyes, and all the warm flutters in my belly vanished. “Asher’s been arrested.”
I frowned. “For what?”
“He’s suspected of breaking you out of jail. Guess which judge signed the warrant for his arrest?”
“Shit.” I had warned him if I stayed in town, it would destroy his pack. It was happening already.
“Naomi is with the boys, and Becca, Gage’s mate, is calling her lawyer to see about getting him out on bail, but as long as Judge Jones is still on the bench…”
“He’ll keep coming until he has a shifter locked in a cell during their shift,” I finished. I pulled my hair back into a low ponytail, boxing up my disappointment that our time together was being cut short. There wouldn’t be any hiding in his house and pretending, no matter how tempting it had been.
I was a killer. It was the only thing I knew.
And I knew it well.
We stopped at Vance’s rock shop, and he led us to his back storeroom. My eyes widened as I took in the arsenal on his gorilla rack shelves. Sloan wanted the judge alive so I selected a Taser and a cattle prod, zip ties, a Glock, and two boxes of ammo. I’d do my best to deliver my target alive, but if I needed to, I�
�d protect Dex and myself even if it meant killing the judge.
Dex looked over at Vance with a raised brow. “I thought you retired from the assassin business.”
He smirked. “This is retired, mate. This is a third of my stock when I was working.” He pulled a small cell phone from his pocket and handed it to me. “I activated this burner this morning.”
“Thanks.” I took it and added Dex’s and Vance’s numbers to the new phone. I sent Dex a text so he’d have the number, too, and then grabbed a couple of shoulder holsters. I put the Taser on one side and the Glock on the other. Vance had a belt most people probably used for tools, but for us, it was for weapons. I hooked the belt around my waist and slid the cattle prod through a loop, then stuffed the zip ties in one of the pouches and the boxes of ammo in the other.
The extra weight would’ve slowed down a human, but I was a shifter. I barely noticed. I turned to Dex. “Ready?”
He had his gun in a holster on his hip and two extra clips in his pocket. “Let’s go to Phoenix and find the judge.”
Vance crossed his arms. “Keep me in the loop. While Asher’s locked up, I’m your contact.”
“Where did they take him?” Dex asked.
“He’s at the Yavapai County jail for now, but Becca’s lawyer should be able to get him a bail hearing in the morning.” Vance crossed his arms. “Be careful.”
“Will do,” Dex answered, but his gaze was on me. He didn’t have to say anything. We were both thinking it. As soon as the judge was delivered to Sloan, I’d need to leave.
Dex grabbed my hand and my body responded, aching for more, oblivious to the reality that this connection would be coming to an end soon.
We put all our gear into the toolbox of Dex’s truck, and I got in the passenger side. He started the truck, and a familiar narrative filled the cab. The British voice barely got two sentences out before Dex hit a button on the dash, but it had been enough for me to recognize the moment Elizabeth accepted Darcy’s invitation to dance. My jaw went slack as I looked over at Dex.
His face colored, which somehow made him look even sexier and more adorable. “Sorry about that.” He cleared his throat. “I was listening to an audiobook earlier when I went shopping for you.”
“You were listening to Pride and Prejudice.” I couldn’t believe it. I chuckled. “It’s my favorite comfort read.”
Silence surrounded us until he merged onto the freeway. He reached over and punched the button, and the audiobook came to life again, but I stopped it. “Have you ever read the book before?”
“No.” He shook his head and glanced over at me. “Full disclosure, when I found the key to the safe-deposit in your car, I also saw the book in the trunk.”
“And you decided to read it?” I blinked.
“Yeah, or at least listen.” He kept his attention on the highway. “It looked like you read the book a lot so I thought it must be important to you. I wanted to have something to talk about.” He stole a peek at me. “Does Darcy ever pull his head out of his ass?”
I laughed. “Yes but not until the very end.” My heart melted all the way to my shoes. He’d broken me out of jail, and now he was listening to my favorite book because it seemed important to me. No one had ever cared about what might be important to me before. I swallowed the lump in my throat. “It’s worth the wait.”
His lips curved into a soft smile. “I could see you as Elizabeth.”
“Me?” I tried to picture Elizabeth Bennet with a Glock and a Taser and started to laugh all over again. “I can’t imagine her in black leather carrying a gun.”
He raised a brow. “She doesn’t have guns, but from what I’ve listened to so far, she’s sharp and uses her wits to get what she wants, in spite of having no station in life. She’s a contradiction of everything he expects from her.”
I pondered that for a second and looked over at him. “I think my favorite part is that there’s so much more to all the characters. None of the first impressions are right.” I looked out my window. “I used to imagine I could be like that.”
“What do you mean?”
I kept my attention on the desert. It was easier to talk about real things if I didn’t look at him. “Like maybe there was more to me than just what Nero trained me to be. I guess I proved that theory wrong, though. Even with Nero and Severino gone, I’m still in a cage.”
“You don’t have to be.”
I turned toward him, raising my voice. “I don’t know how to do anything else. I’m thirty-eight years old and I can tell you fifteen different ways to take out a target, but I have no real work experience to put on a résumé.” I went back to watching the world pass by the window. “I have money saved up, and instead of buying a house or a condo, I’ve been sleeping in a dorm room at the satellite facility. What does that say about me?”
“It says you’re doing the best you can.” He reached over and squeezed my thigh.
I appreciated the comfort, but it didn’t change that my best wasn’t good enough to break free and have a real life.
He thankfully changed the subject. “Tell me about your family.”
“There’s not much to tell.” I tugged on the seat belt, adjusting the shoulder strap, anything to keep from looking at him. “My parents were immigrants from Russia. I was born in the States. We lived in Alexandria, Virginia, when I was little.” I glanced his way. “My turn?”
A muscle tensed in his cheek, but he nodded. “Sure.”
He had just lost his brother so I didn’t want to ask something that might poke at his grief. “What made you decide to open your own construction company?”
He rolled his shoulders back, and I cringed. His brother was his partner. Had I touched on a raw spot? He must’ve heard my heart rate speed up because he finally looked at me. “It was Deacon’s idea.” He focused on the highway again. “We both liked working outside, and being werewolves, the heavy lifting wasn’t taxing. Plus, we could do it together.” He looked at me again. “Even if I get choked up a little right now, I don’t ever want to stop saying his name. I want to believe he’s still with me.”
“You should definitely keep saying it. Talking about him will keep his memory alive.” I looked at the road ahead. “Brightwood had rules in place to make us forget our families. We weren’t allowed to talk about them at all. They claimed it was to keep kids from feeling homesick, but looking back, they were grooming us to give them up.”
“Why did your parents send you there?”
“When I was little and babbled about the colors around people, my mother started to notice I was reading their emotions by the colors. We didn’t know they were auras at the time. She took me to a doctor who referred us to a neurologist, and suddenly, my mom got a call from an elite school for ‘gifted’ girls.” A sad smile tugged at my lips. “Full scholarship.” I shrugged and stared out the window. “After working as Severino’s assistant for so many years, I know he paid a premium for information on female children who exhibited any type of psychic phenomena that couldn’t be attributed to a brain tumor or ailment. He probably got my name after one of the CAT scans I had. My parents were poor, and the idea that I could get a private education for free was too good to pass up.”
His grip tightened on the wheel. “Did you ever get to see them again?”
“Once. My mother demanded they let her in on my birthday.” I teared up at the memory. “I can’t even remember her face anymore.” My voice wobbled, and I cleared my throat. “She threatened to pull me out of the school. Both my parents died in a house fire two weeks later. After I was bitten and started training with Nero, I learned about setting fires so they looked like accidents instead of murder. I have no doubt he ordered them killed after my mom’s visit.”
He rubbed my thigh, and the simple touch broke down a barrier around my heart I hadn’t realized was there. I’d been on my own so long I hadn’t understood how good it could feel to know someone else cared if I was hurting. I placed my hand over his. I didn’t
know what to say.
His voice was soft, not quite a whisper, but I had no trouble hearing it. “It’s not your fault.”
A tear rolled down my cheek. I’d been carrying that burden for most of my life. If I’d never been born, they’d still be alive.
Nero had been insidious in their grooming. They were all I had in the world, and they told me that being alone made me strong. I ended lives on a list without questioning because my only security was Nero.
I glanced over at him searching for words, but all I could find was, “Thank you.”
He squeezed my leg. “Happier topic. If we weren’t on the run from the police and tracking a state Supreme Court justice, what would be your ultimate date night?”
I laughed and wiped my cheek. “That’s a huge if, but…” I had no idea. My lovers had all been fellow Nero jaguar assassins. It wasn’t like dating in movies. “I guess I’ve never been on a real date so…”
He arched a brow. “No way.”
“I’m serious.” I shook my head. “Between being a shifter and working as an assassin for hire, it’s not like I could date a normal guy. There were other Nero agents, but those were more like booty calls, not dates.”
He took my hand and laced my fingers with his, warming my entire body. “In that case, if you could dream up a date, what would it be?”
I often read to pass time while I was staking out targets, and usually I chose romance novels that gave me an escape from my dangerous world. His question should be easy, but I struggled. “What if it’s corny?”
He chuckled. “No rules, Tash. Just spill it.”
Tash? No one had ever called me by a nickname before. It felt intimate, like he and I had a secret connection between us. I liked it.
“Flowers? Teddy Bears? Singing telegram?” he guessed.
“No telegrams!” I laughed. “Okay fine. I guess my ultimate date would be…” I tried to envision some movie star in my head, but every scenario, the only man I could see was Dex. “He’d show up at my door with a dozen red roses. We’d have a candlelight dinner at home and curl up on the couch and watch Pride and Prejudice.”
