by Avery Flynn
Isaac watched the taillights until they disappeared around a corner. "Thanks Clay. I owe you."
"Your tab is high, but Lash called this one in." Blackfish chewed the end of one of the red coffee stirrer straws he always seemed to have on hand. "I don't know when, but y'all are going to have a huge favor to return someday."
Tamara stiffened beside him. It didn't take a Mensa-level genius to know that she was about as thrilled to owe someone a favor as a struggling surfer was to seeing a passel of sharks headed circling his board.
"We're good for it." Isaac slid his palm across the small of her back, relishing how the tension in her muscles abated even if only a few degrees.
"Better be." Blackfish rolled up the window and drove off down the street.
Isaac turned to Tamara, knowing she wasn't going to want to hear what was about to come next, but the time for keeping the rest of the B-Squad out of this was way past.
She held up her hand and began walking toward her car parked inside the garage. "I'll talk to everyone upstairs first thing in the morning, but tonight I need to go home and get my stuff together."
"You cannot be thinking of going home. Fane's guys could be lurking outside, just waiting for you."
The brake lights on her Camry blinked red and then the trunk popped open. She pocketed the key fob and grabbed another go-bag out of the trunk. "Which is why you're taking me there and staying the night. I have a second car in storage. I'll need a ride in the morning after I say my goodbyes."
The woman was as stubborn as the day was long and as wrong as tits on a boy dog. "You're still determined to leave?"
"I don't have another choice. If Jarrod gets me, he'll do whatever it takes to get Essie's location. Anything. I can't stay here. I need to disappear. It's the only way."
"It doesn't have to be. You have friends upstairs. You don't have to do it alone."
She snorted. "Says the permanent freelancer who won't join the team no matter how many times Taz or Bianca ask?"
Bam. Direct hit. But there wasn't a damn thing the team could do to help him. Some ghosts were impossible to banish.
"Takes one to know one I guess." He swiped the bag from her grasp. "Come on, I'll take you to my place. They won't look for you there."
Tamara didn't even take a single step forward. The bull-headed woman just crossed her arms and got that ready-to-do-battle look in her blue eyes. "There are things at the house that I need."
Something inside him snapped, not at her determination to steer her own ship, but at her refusal to admit even a little that she wasn't one-hundred percent in control.
"What you need to get your head on straight and you can't do that if you're tweaking out on a fading adrenaline rush." He bit out each word. "This isn't a baton twirling concussion. This isn't a desperate attempt to extort money from your ex. This is your niece's life...and yours, damn it, so stop acting like you're the last woman on earth and accept someone's help for once."
The tip of her nose went from pale to raspberry and she gulped. Then he spotted the teary glimmer in her eye. All of the frustration rushing in his veins disappeared in an instant.
Nice going asshole. You're gonna make her cry.
But she didn't. One deep breath and a few inches added to the tilt of her chin, and the ice queen was back—a little thawed but still plenty frosty. Forget giving an inch, the woman wouldn't give a millimeter unless it was pried from her iron grip.
"Wicker and floral prints?" she asked with a snotty sniff.
He won the fight to keep the grin off his face. "There's even a talking fish on the wall."
"You make that thing go off and I'll stab you in your sleep." She strutted past him, stopping at the passenger side of his truck and waited even though they both knew the door was unlocked.
"Just the words every man wants to hear when he's taking a sexy woman home." He strolled over to her side, opened her door, and helped her up into the truck. "Let's go, darlin."
Chapter 10
Tamara
Who would think half a million dollars in twenties could be so heavy? Fifty-five pounds. Tamara knew because she'd weighed it—multiple times—on the digital bathroom scale that had come with her already-furnished rental. When a single woman didn't have television, high-speed Internet, or a library card, she had to make her own entertainment.
She ran her fingers tighter across the duffle bag's nylon straps as she and Isaac sat in his driveway, which was illuminated by the motion-activated security lights that had gone on like a spotlight the moment they'd turned off the road.
"Well, too fucking bad," Isaac said into her cellphone, which was registered to one Margaret Gorman, who'd won the first Miss America pageant in 1921. "She's not coming in right now." He'd swiped it from her hand the second it had buzzed, despite spending the entire drive to his house reading her the riot act for not bringing in the B-Squad from the get-go. "I don't care if you are her boss, Bianca. You're not mine and I'm her ride." After telling Tamara she was a stubborn fool, the last thing she'd expected was him backing her up. "You can pull every last detail out of her tomorrow at eight sharp.Until then, know she's safe." The hard, narrow-eyed look he shot her said exactly how dumb he thought it was that she wasn't talking to them now. One side of his mouth curled upward at something Bianca said on the other end. "No, you smart ass, not all of my dates almost end with a shootout. Then again, I don't normally date women on the run from some crazy-ass cult leader. See you tomorrow."
He hit the end button and powered down her phone before handing it back to her. She slipped it inside the duffle filled with cash, three driver’s licenses in the name of former beauty queens, and passports matching each license. In addition, it held one change of clothes, two wigs, and fake IDs with Essie's picture on them. Without a word, Isaac got out and crossed around the front of the truck.
Normally this was when she hurried up and jumped out of the mile-high truck with planet-sized tires before he could help, but she couldn't seem to move. The reality of what had just happened was sinking in like itchy strands of fiberglass. Taking Essie and running from Jarrod had never been a game, but it had never felt as real as it did now.
She was all that was standing between Jarrod and Essie.
The passenger door swung outward, the smell of warm leather, something woodsy, and a whole lotta trouble wafting in off the man holding it open.
"Come on, darlin', you need a decent night's sleep if you're going to face Bianca tomorrow." Isaac held out his hand. "Saying she's pissed you haven't been one-hundred percent truthful with the team—again—is an understatement."
Accepting his help down, even as she refused to hand over the duffle, she ignored the twinge of guilt tweaking her conscience. Bianca's feelings weren't her top priority. Essie was. And that's why she wouldn't be here come morning.
His palm flattened against the small of her back, not pushing, not guiding, just there in a reminder she wasn't alone. It was a weird feeling. It was a nice feeling. It was one she couldn't afford to get used to.
Gritting her teeth together, she marched to the front of the single-story stone building. The driveway had a separate gated entrance from the street from the main drive they'd passed first. This one ended at the back of the pool house, with its artfully weathered wood shutters bracketing the large windows and the iron rooster weathervane perched on top of the roof. She knew money. She'd slept with plenty of men because they'd had it. Isaac—or at least his family—had it. All the instincts she'd spent a lifetime honing buzzed to life.
"You have to look at them like they're another diamond to add to your tiara. It's not about what you want, Tamara. It's about protecting yourself for later. Do you really think I'd be living in this dump if I'd used what I had when I had it? No. If I hadn't met your father, I'd still be in New York without a care in the world." Her mother looked around the crowded two bedroom apartment, picking up one of Amelia's library books off the thrift-store couch and tossing it aside like trash. "Instead
, here I am with you two."
She closed her eyes and shut out her mother's voice. She'd been twelve when her mother had passed along that little gem of advice to mark the occasion of Tamara's first period.
The duffle's nylon handle dug into her hand, each of the fifty-five pounds wearing on her grip. It didn't hurt though. It was a good kind of pain, the kind that reminded her she didn't need a rich man's money to survive. She had her own and could make it last for a long time where she was planning to go.
"You know I can see the gears turning in that pretty head of yours, right?" Isaac asked as he unlocked the front door and pushed it inward. "But before you put your plan into action, how about a drink?"
"I think I've had enough." Between the sake and the adrenaline rush, she was feeling high enough already.
Isaac followed her inside, shutting the door behind them and arming the alarm system. "When you've just stared down the barrel of an automatic rifle and managed not to get shot or pee your pants, you should have a drink."
She chuckled despite herself. "I guess you'll be having water only?"
"Hell, I only peed a little." He grinned. "I'm getting a beer too." He strolled over to the fridge.
She sat the duffle down on the coffee table and looked around the pool house. He hadn't been lying about the floral or the wicker...or the talking fish on the wall. What he'd failed to mention was the custom-designed mosaic tile floor or the original David Hockney painting that had sold for more than five million at a Sotheby's auction. She'd known because her much-older boyfriend at the time had been hoping to get it himself.
She walked around the floral couch and the dark brown wicker end tables, her heels clicking on the hardwood floor, until she stood in front of the large painting.
Isaac stopped beside her and handed her a beer bottle cold enough to give her a shiver. At least that's what she told herself had caused the reaction rather than being so close to a man who made it damn hard to remember why she was in his house in the first place. She sipped the beer, the crisp taste of the lager doing nothing to distract her from him. Every sense seemed heightened, every nerve primed. Post-adrenaline sex rush, the girls at the office called it.
Neither said a word as they drank in silence and stared at the painting of felled trees done in vivid greens and delicate browns with purple and red wildflowers dotting the bucolic scene. She still she could feel him—the heat of his body, the ghost of his palm against her back, the tangible need vibrating between them.
"Thinking about taking it when you sneak out at dawn?" he asked, curling an arm around her back and letting his fingertips rest on the swell of her hip. "Please do, the damned thing is uglier than a rodeo clown after last call."
The play of his fingers scrambled her brains and sent a rush of heat straight to her core. "What makes you think I'm leaving?"
The handsome bastard had the audacity to laugh. "Like I said darlin', I can see the gears turning."
"So you're a mind reader?" She pivoted on the ball of her foot as she said it, knowing the move was a mistake but unable to stop it.
His fingers slid from her hip, following the waistband of her skirt to the small of her back as she turned and burning a line of fire through her clothes that made it hard for her to breathe, to think. Feeling? Oh that came far too easy when she was with him.
"Nope." He tightened his grip just enough to bring her a few inches closer, enough that she couldn't miss the way his eyes had darkened with desire. "Just someone who recognizes stupid ideas because he's had so many of his own."
Anger sparked. "Leaving isn't stupid." She pressed a hand against his rock-hard chest but made no progress in putting any more air between them.
"Course it is," he said, lazy confidence thick in his voice. "Jarrod has proven he's not giving up. Where are you going to go in the United States that he won't eventually track you down?"
"Who said I'm staying stateside?"
One eyebrow shot up. "Oh, so you want to be a million miles away for when he finally gets a bead on his missing daughter's location. That's an even worse plan."
"He won't find her." She said it like she believed it. She had to. It was the only card she had left to play.
"Yeah, that's what you thought about him finding you."
The words were quiet, said with a soft kindness, but they left her scorched. "So what do you suggest, I give up?"
"Hell no." He shook his head. "What I'm saying is that you use the resources at your disposal to neutralize him."
Jeez, if only she'd thought of that. Too bad she didn't have resources beyond a bag of cash and the ability to take Essie's location to her grave. "Are you volunteering to put a bullet in Jarrod's brain?"
He started, releasing his hold and taking a step back, his moves stiff. "I don't kill people unless there's no other choice."
"Me either, which is too bad because that's what it's going to take to make him stop. That’s why Essie's best option is for me to go so far underground that I don't even make a lump in the dirt." Her voice had risen with each word until she was practically yelling in the pool house's quiet interior, drowning out the soft hum of the air conditioner.
Breathing hard, she stared at Isaac, daring him to tell her she was wrong.
Instead, he laughed. Hard. "A lump in the dirt?" He took a long swig of beer. "That makes no fucking sense."
"Well, not all of us are as good with bullshit cowboy metaphors as you are."
He stepped closer, took her beer so he held both of them in his sure grasp and then sat them down on the end table. "You need to talk to Bianca and the team tomorrow. Together we can come up with a plan."
This again. Didn't he understand? He should. He was the one Taz had turned to for a background check on her after she'd shown up in Fort Worth and tried to extort a million dollars out of him by swearing up, down and sideways that they were still married. Isaac knew how to do his job. There was no way the man hadn't found every skeleton in her walk-in closet—and there were a lot of them, too many. There were people out there who deserved the B-Squad's help to right a wrong, and she wasn't one of them.
"They have no reason to help me."
"They have every reason, but if you can't get that through your thick skull then do it for Essie. Doesn't she at least deserve to have people fight for her?"
Denial. Desperation. Dread. They battled it out inside of her and the only thing she could do to manage it was bring in the cold, the icy indifference that numbed everything. But it wouldn't come. Around Isaac, it so rarely did. So instead she met his fire with some of her own. Worst of all, he was right and she knew it. Belize wasn't going to happen, not until she knew Essie was safe. She couldn't risk being that far away. She needed the B-Squad. Not that this realization made her feel any better. Hell no. It just pissed her off more.
Hands planted on her hips, she glared up at him. "You think you have all the answers don't you?"
"Not even close," he said, his voice as soft as hers had been hard. "But I do know this: running away from bad shit never makes it go away, hiding doesn’t either."
She sank down and half-sat, half-leaned against the back of the couch. "I don't know what else to do."
He hooked a finger under her chin and tilted it upward so she couldn't avoid looking him in the eye. "Let me help you."
Something in her stomach fluttered. Attraction? Hope? Belief? She didn't know. What she did know is that this wasn't how her life went. With only a few exceptions like Amelia and Albert, people didn't help. They were impediments to be avoided and hazards to be guarded against. Anyone who offered help had to have something in it for them. But Isaac didn't—at least nothing she could see—and it confused her as much as it thrilled and scared her.
"You're not going to give up on that are you?" she asked with a sigh.
"I'm always glad to help." His grin was as quick and easy as it was devastating to her panties. "What can I say? I'm a real dick that way."
The angry tension stringing he
r tight evaporated, her answering chuckle genuine. But with every second she and Isaac stayed like that, she became more aware of a different type of tension growing between them. Anticipation made the air heavy, like the sky before the first crack of thunder during a summer storm. His gaze dropped down to her lips, to her cleavage, to the hard tips of her nipples pressing against her thin shirt, then to the apex of her thighs where desire had turned her core slick. She'd been naked before and never felt so exposed. It was totally freeing. What was left for her to hide behind her ice walls if he already knew what she was? She was a bitch. She was an opportunist. She was willing to do whatever it took to get what she needed. He wanted her anyway and God knew she wanted him. Why couldn't they both come out ahead, at least for tonight?
She rose to her feet, lining her body up with his and closing the gap between them. "What if I need help in a different way?"
"Darlin', I'm a full-service kind of helper." His hand dropped to her left hip, sending a jolt of awareness straight to her clit. "You tell me what ache is building and I'll relieve it." His other hand fell to her right hip and he pulled her close. "Tell me where it itches and I'll scratch it." His cock, hard and thick, pressed against her, letting lose a wave of desire that threatened to overwhelm her. "Show me where it hurts and I'll kiss it better."
"You make a lot of promises," she managed to get out, trying to string out the inevitable for just a few moments longer, because once she gave in there was no going back.
"And I'll deliver on every single one." He dipped his head lower, letting his lips brush across hers. "You can count on it."
Chapter 11
Isaac
He loved women. Loved their curves, their softness, their tempting sense of possibility. Tamara had all of that, but that wasn't what shot a bolt of lightning straight to his cock. No. It was her edges, her hardness, her tantalizing cryptic promise. It was that she didn't surrender in his arms so much as throw down a gauntlet and—with a teasing wink—ask him what he was going to do about it. There was no way in heaven or hell he wouldn't pick it up.
