by Mandy Baxter
Landon massaged the chalk bag in one hand and then the other, stuffing it under the harness strap before grabbing a handhold and hoisting himself up on the wall. The first twenty feet were an easy climb, like going up a ladder. But from there, the wall became steeper and angular, presenting Landon with a more challenging ascent. By the time he hit forty feet, the endorphins should have kicked in.
Usually, a good climb gave him a nice, mellow buzz. His breath quickened and his heart rate increased, but the excitement factor was absent. Landon continued to climb as the angle of the ceiling bent to almost forty-five degrees. His teeth clenched to the point that he could hear the enamel grind as he reached up, his fingers barely making purchase on the handhold and still, he felt nothing. Until his mind wandered to the memory of silky soft lips, supple breasts, and the sound of Emma’s low moan when he passed his thumb over the stiff peak of her—
Whoof ! Landon’s chest made contact with the wall, knocking the air from his lungs. His palms warmed from the friction of the rope as it slipped through his hands during his rapid descent, and his face pulsed where it met the sharp edge of the polyresin hold he’d lost his footing on. Below him, Josh’s amused snicker echoed through the gym, joining in with that of the snarky counter guy. Landon cursed under his breath. Nothing like having an audience when you biffed your face against the wall. Especially when one of those witnesses already thought you were a jackass and the other treated you like a kid at day camp. Awesome.
He never should have let things go as far as they had last night. Hell, he’d known what Emma was up to the minute she’d leaned toward him. He could have pushed her away, taken a step back. Told her to stop. But he hadn’t. No, like the fool he was, he’d taken her in his arms and played right into her plans, effectively distracting him from questioning her about the man at the club. And like the dumb son of a bitch he was, he would do it all over again given the chance.
Landon had been a rookie straight out of the academy when he’d been assigned to the Ruiz case. Despite the guy’s wealth and clout, the case had been cut and dry, with more than enough evidence to support an arrest. A cake assignment to ease him into the job with a senior deputy supervising him. When it came to work, to procedure and protocol, Landon did everything by the book. But the second he’d taken in the sight of Javier Ruiz’s daughter, his brain had gone on a vacation south and suddenly procedure became the last thing on his mind.
Now, he was right back where he’d started. What did he expect? That in six years’ time she’d become less attractive? If anything, she’d grown more beautiful and lived enough to know how to work her feminine wiles. Landon groaned as he reached for a difficult handhold and pulled himself higher on the wall. She’d been making the rounds with celebrities and dating fucking sports superstars for the past six years. And it wasn’t like she’d ever been the innocent, wide-eyed girl, even at eighteen. He thought about the pictures pasted on the Internet and the soccer star’s arms around her as he shielded her from photographers. His stomach burned and his jaw clenched as Landon propelled himself to another hold farther up the wall. The thought of another man touching Emma made him want to break something. Namely, the bastard’s face.
His foot slipped on the hold and Landon cursed. He’d come to the gym this morning for a workout and to clear his mind. But an hour and fifty vertical feet later, he still felt like shit and his brain was nothing more than a tangle of knotted thoughts. The only thing that was going to clear his head at this point was distance. From this case. From her. If he didn’t wrap it up and get a lead on Ruiz soon, it wouldn’t be only his success rate on the line.
It would be his badge.
Landon pushed away from the wall as he fed the nylon rope through the belay. He dropped from the top of the wall to the floor in a matter of seconds, and his stomach gave a pleasant flip with the quick descent. He landed on his feet, unclipped the carabiner, and shed the harness, handing it over to Josh. “Thanks, man,” he offered without eye contact as he headed for the lockers. The only thing he’d gotten out of this morning’s climb was a bruised ego and a shit ton of frustration. He dug his phone out of his gym bag and passed the counter without a second glance at the smart-ass giving him a superior smirk. Sometimes caution was the better part of valor and he didn’t think Morgan would appreciate it if he decked anyone for no good reason while visiting the deputy’s city.
As he hoofed it for his car, Landon called Galen. He needed tunnel vision for the rest of his time in Seattle if he was going to keep Emma out of his head and get down to business. “What did you find out from the prison staff?” he all but growled when Galen answered his phone.
“Wow. Good morning to you, too, sunshine. Rough night?”
You have no idea. “I just want to wrap this shit up and get home, that’s all.”
Galen’s answering silence only served to annoy Landon more. “Oh reeeaaallly?” Galen replied, obviously smug. The bastard. “Who could possibly make you want to ditch the Emerald City?”
“Why does it have to be a who?” Landon asked as he unlocked the car and threw his gym bag in the backseat. “In case you’ve forgotten in your quest for celebrity status, the Portland field office is where I work. I’m not exactly fond of living out of a hotel room.”
“Oh, it’s a who,” Galen responded. “Because I know for a fact that you don’t mind Seattle or hanging out in hotels.”
Okay, so one time he took an unscheduled two-week vacation and shacked up with a park ranger at a Best Western. But it wasn’t like he whored around Seattle regularly. The hiking in Olympic National Park was great. “How about you fill me in on the prison guards before I call Harper and give her the scoop on some of your more questionable past relationship choices.”
“Are you suggesting that there’s someone in Seattle you’d rather not know about yours, too? Because I’ve got some hard-core ammo for retaliation.”
As if Landon would give Galen the satisfaction of confirming his suspicions. And, seriously, why was he even considering the possibility? Of course there wasn’t anyone in the city he cared about. No one. At all. Period. “The prison staff? I haven’t got all day, Galen.”
Galen chuckled and it was all Landon could do not to throw his phone. “All right. Fine. It’s no fun razzing you when you’re in a shitty mood, so let’s get to it. You were right that Ruiz didn’t do this alone. At least, that’s what I gathered after filling in the blanks.”
Finally they were getting somewhere. “Do you think it was an inside job?”
“I think whoever helped Ruiz escape was coercing information from someone who worked at the prison, but I don’t think any employees were actively involved in his escape.” Galen paused, and Landon grabbed a notebook and pen from the glove box and started to scribble down a few notes. “The initial report suggested that Ruiz escaped prison custody without any help. He was being transported to Willamette Valley Medical Center for a chemo treatment, and it’s only seventeen minutes from Sheridan. Doesn’t leave a lot of time for an escape. Plus, dude was not in any shape to overpower two guards and a driver. They were most likely drugged. We’re running tests on blood samples to see if we can find anything, though it might be out of their systems by now. All three guards are reporting gaps in their memory. Anyway—”
“Wait a sec,” Landon interrupted as a thought struck. “Do you think Ruiz could have been kidnapped?”
“Kidnapped?” Galen asked as though he’d never heard the word before. “Who would want to kidnap him? And why?”
Exactly. “Can you e-mail me the complete report from the interview?”
“Sure, but there’s not much more, just a few jumbled details.”
Landon tossed the notebook into the passenger seat and turned his key in the ignition. “And send me the tox reports on the guards’ blood.”
“Can do. You wanna fill me in on what you’re thinking?”
Right now, it was only a hunch, but until Landon discovered the identity of Emma’s grabby
admirer last night, a hunch was all it was going to be. “Not yet. I need to dig a little deeper.”
“Secrets don’t make friends, you know,” Galen quipped, though his tone was light.
“Neither does being a dick,” Landon shot right back. “I’ll call you when I have something concrete.”
“Later,” Galen responded with a laugh and ended the call.
Landon pulled out into traffic, antsy to get to work. Jesus. Until now, he’d never considered the possibility that Ruiz might be a victim rather than an escapee. And if the former judge had, in fact, been kidnapped, Emma might be in more danger than she realized.
An image of the rough-looking gangster grabbing onto Emma’s arm flared in Landon’s mind, and he gripped the steering wheel until his knuckles turned white. Maybe Emma knew exactly what sort of danger she was in. And maybe he was already too late to do anything about it.
“She’s famous for being famous. Sort of like Paris Hilton or one of the Kardashians, but on a smaller scale.”
Emma cringed as she overheard the whispered words of the girls behind her in line at Starbucks and pushed her sunglasses down from her forehead and back over her eyes. For the record, she had zero sex tapes floating around the interwebs, and no matter what anyone thought to the contrary, she was hardly famous for being famous. More like, she was accidentally famous. And on the celebrity radar, she was barely a blip.
Growing up, Emma’s friends had always been guys. And being a sports junkie, she had a tendency to hang out with guys who played sports. Tyson Kennedy had been her best friend since childhood. And because he’d gone on to become a famous pro athlete and Emma was always hanging around, she’d sort of gained notoriety by default.
“I heard she was dating Jeremy Blakely from the Seahawks. And that her dad’s some sort of Mexican cartel drug lord.”
Emma snorted. Jeremy would get a kick out of that little bit of news. And her dad was about as dangerous as a springer spaniel. God, how she hated the rumor mill.
“Venti caramel macchiato for Ella?” the barista called out from the counter.
She’d drop dead the day one of them got her name right. Still, Ella was better than Nanna, which someone had scribbled on her cup last week. Seriously? Nanna? Emma grabbed her coffee and headed for the most isolated table she could find. Most days, this was her go-to place to sit and relax and catch up on work. Aside from her more public notoriety, Emma had built a professional reputation as a general computer-geek-gun-for-hire. One of the top programmers in her field, she was known for constructing practically unhackable security systems. She contracted for multinational corporations as well as mom-and-pop outfits. She’d even consulted for Rosenbaum’s, a large supermarket chain that had made headlines last year after a security breach had occurred, giving hackers thousands of their customers’ credit card numbers. She’d jumped in and restructured their security protocols and it had only helped to elevate her growing business.
Being an independent contractor gave her the freedom of a mobile office as well as setting her own hours. Sure, the gossip sites claimed she was a trust fund brat who lived off Daddy’s money, but that wasn’t entirely true. Her dad had set aside a trust to help her out, but it wasn’t enough to set her up for life or anything. She didn’t have Buffett or Hilton money. Hell, in the course of her obsessive research into McCabe six years ago, she’d discovered that her family didn’t have McCabe money. No, Emma had never been über rich. Her family had simply been better off than most. The trust had put her through college and afforded her the benefit of graduating without the burden of thousands of dollars of student loan debt. And now, that trust helped to pay for her condo in a building that made her feel safe. Until recently, that is. That’s all her dad had ever wanted: that she be taken care of. Protected. And now, it was Emma’s turn to take care of him.
She set up her laptop and angled the screen away from anyone who might’ve been able to glance at the content. It took only a moment to connect to the coffee shop’s Wi-Fi, and she placed her cell on the table beside her, waiting for a call she didn’t really want to answer.
Minutes ticked by. Emma sipped her macchiato, reviewed a couple of client projects, and answered an e-mail. She checked Twitter and her Facebook page—great, someone had tagged her in a couple of candids with Jeremy last night—and, disgusted, she closed the windows, vowing to stay off social media for the rest of her life. She checked the time on her phone, and her stomach did a nervous flip. She’d followed her dad’s instructions to a tee and set up her laptop in a public place, hopefully far from prying eyes. If everything went according to plan, this would all be over soon. But Cesar’s call was now officially ten minutes late. What in the hell did that mean?
“Meeting someone this morning?”
Emma jumped about a foot in her seat at the sound of McCabe’s voice. Damn him and the pushy bastards tailing her! He was going to ruin everything. She pushed her glasses up on her forehead and leveled an icy stare at him. “Not that it’s any of your business, but I’m working. I usually come here to avoid nosy jerks who have nothing better to do than follow me around. Looks like I’m going to have to find a new hangout.”
His sardonic smile jacked her pulse rate up and turned her insides to mush. How he could be equal parts sexy and annoying was a mystery. “We need to talk.”
About what? she wondered. The fact that she was still under investigation in connection with her father’s escape or the fact that he’d kissed her dizzy last night. Would it be in poor taste to bring up the latter first? Probably. “I have nothing to say to you, McCabe.”
His eyes hardened almost imperceptibly and Emma could only guess as to what had triggered his animosity. He apparently expected her to play nice after their escapade last night. Maybe that’s why he’d kissed her back, thinking to buy her cooperation with a few sweet—okay, hot—kisses. Well, toe-curlingly good or not, those lips of his weren’t going to buy her cooperation now or ever.
“You are going to talk to me, Emma. Right now. You’re running out of time and this attitude of yours isn’t getting you anywhere.” He raked his fingers through the short thatch of his blond hair giving it a way too sexy, bed-head look and sighed. “Damn it, if you’re in trouble, I can help you. Why are you being so stubborn?”
“I don’t know what you mean, McCabe. I’ve cooperated with your office.”
Again, when she said his name, his eyes seemed to grow cold, and it only served to further pique her curiosity. “Do you want me to jerk your spoiled ass out of that chair and arrest you like some sort of criminal? Lay you out on the table and read you your rights in front of everyone here? Because I’ll do it and I won’t even think twice about the phones poised and ready to record the video.”
Emma felt the sting of tears at her eyes, but she bit them back. McCabe’s detached cruelty was a far cry from the heat she’d felt from him last night. Then again, after his rebuff, maybe this was his way of setting the record straight and letting her know that what happened was a mistake. He might as well cuff her right here and now. Kick her while she was already down. He seemed to enjoy it well enough. “Just leave me alone, okay?” Emma simply couldn’t muster the energy to snap at him. She checked the time on the bottom of her laptop screen. McCabe needed to get the hell out of there before Cesar called. “I haven’t done anything wrong, and technically this is harassment.” And how deranged was it that what she was the most upset about was the fact that he wasn’t harassing her with his mouth right now. Totally sick. “I’ll call my lawyer if you want.”
“No, you won’t.” McCabe leaned back in his chair. “You would have lawyered up the second you heard Javier escaped custody, and since you didn’t bring counsel with you to your interview, I’m going to go ahead and assume that you’re hiding something that you wouldn’t even trust a lawyer with.”
“I know how you guys operate, McCabe.” Now that she sensed it riled him up, she couldn’t wait to use his last name often and with inflection. Like i
t was a curse word. Ha! “Intimidation gets the job done, right? You pretend like you know all of my dirty secrets in the hopes that I’ll fold like a house of cards and fess up. But see, there’s a problem with that, McCabe. I don’t have any secrets to spill. Sorry, dude, but you’re barking up the wrong tree.”
His gaze burned with a heat that simmered in every pore of Emma’s body. A corner of his mouth lifted, hinting at a smile, and he said, “Am I?”
She flushed with warmth, aware of the turn the conversation had taken and the innuendo in his tone. But Emma wasn’t about to play into it. Not after he’d pushed her away and treated their kiss as something as casual as a handshake. A snappy comeback sat at the tip of her tongue, but when she opened her mouth to speak, the display of her phone lit up, vibrating loudly on the table’s surface.
Shit.
Shit, shit, shit! Of all the crappy timing. Her stomach rocketed up into her throat and her heart beat so fast she was afraid it was going to break a rib. The unlisted number on the caller ID could only mean her late caller had finally gotten his act together. How could she do what Cesar wanted her to do while McCabe was sitting right next to her, remotely connected to God knew who else with the Marshals Service? Should she let it go to voice mail? Answer and pretend nothing was wrong? Warn Cesar somehow? Black spots swam in her vision and her head pounded as her anxiety increased tenfold. Emma’s vision darkened at the periphery as a hundred scenarios played out in her mind. Shit, she was going to pass out. She wasn’t up for this. Couldn’t do it. And she had no one to turn to for help.
Landon’s gaze lingered on her phone before he brought his eyes up to meet hers, pinning her with his stare. “Well, are you going to answer it?”
Chapter Seven
“Answer the phone, Emma.”
Landon refused to break eye contact with Emma and she looked like she might throw up. Her eyes grew wide and her chest inflated with her rapid breath. The expression on her face was a study of indecision. And fear. A protective urge spiked in Landon and he reached for the phone, bound and determined to shut down the cause of her distress.
