Bounty Hunter Ransom

by Kara Lennox

  “I have both. It would take an army to get into this place. You can sleep soundly here.”

  Aubrey doubted that. “Oh, Beau, you’re bleeding.” He had a huge gash on his left arm. She hadn’t noticed it in the car because it was facing away from her. “Do you have something to put on that?”

  Beau looked at the cut without much concern at first. Then he frowned. His arm was covered in dried blood, and the cut was still oozing. “Damn, I hope I didn’t bleed all over my car. I guess it wouldn’t hurt to clean that up a bit.”

  “Stitches probably wouldn’t hurt, either.”

  “Come on, it’s not that bad. But I could probably use some help patching myself up.” He left her duffel bag at the bottom of the stairs, then led her down a hallway where she assumed the master bedroom was. She had a few qualms about joining Beau anywhere near a bed, but she supposed they were both a bit too battered and exhausted to care about sex.

  His bedroom was huge, dominated by a king-size bed. The bed had been made up, more or less, with a fluffy down comforter smoothed over the top. She’d never known a guy who made his own bed. Which led her to wonder if he’d had overnight company recently.

  The thought was highly displeasing.

  The master bath was done in blinding-white tile with black accents. Lots of fluffy black and red towels hung on the racks. One was on the floor, and the single concession to male untidiness was almost comforting.

  There was, indeed, a big square tub with whirlpool jets. She couldn’t help but picture Beau there. She quickly looked away.

  Beau stuck his arm in the sink and ran warm water over it, then soaped it up with liquid antibacterial soap. “It’s not that bad. Couple of butterfly bandages should take care of it.” He smeared some antibacterial cream on it, then rummaged through a drawer until he found a box of the bandages he wanted.

  He handed them to Aubrey. “Here you go, nurse.”

  She had second thoughts about agreeing to bandage him up. He seemed to be handling the first-aid work fine on his own. But if she backed out now, he would know she didn’t want to touch him. She wished she’d changed her clothes first. The silly leather bustier and short skirt suddenly felt more indecent than before.

  She opened the box of bandages with nervous hands and selected three butterflies. Beau sat on a stool and held out his arm, watching her closely. Her mouth was dry.

  “So how much did you make off my brother?” she asked, deliberately stirring up the one subject that was sure to keep them angry at each other.

  “Aubrey…”

  “No, I want to know.”

  Beau sighed. “His bond was a hundred thousand dollars. I got ten percent.”

  “Ten thousand dollars. It seems like a lot of money, but when you compare it to the value of a lifelong friendship—”

  “The money had nothing to do with it,” Beau said, his voice dangerously soft. “I brought him in because he was my friend.”

  “You don’t shoot friends in the leg.”

  “You do if you don’t want to kill them.”

  “You should have let him go. You know what they do to cops in prison.”

  “He’d have never gotten away, Aubrey. Every cop in the city was looking for him, not to mention the FBI. And if the wrong cop found him, he’d have been dead—even if he didn’t shoot first.”

  “What do you mean? Are you saying Gavin shot at you?”

  “Look, just forget it, okay?”

  “No, I won’t forget it. I heard your testimony in court. You said you saw he had a gun and you shot first. Now, are you trying to tell me that’s not true?”

  He remained stubbornly silent, but she could tell by the set of his mouth, and the muscles working in his jaw, that she’d infuriated him.

  Beau literally had to bite his tongue to keep his temper from boiling over. Aubrey had a real blind spot where Gavin was concerned. She would never believe her precious older brother had done the things he’d been accused of. And she would never in a million years believe that Gavin, half-insane with desperation and cornered in an abandoned barn, had fired the first shot.

  He hadn’t intended to kill Beau, but the shot had come too close for Beau to take any chances. A much better marksman than Gavin, Beau had hit what he aimed for, quickly putting an end to the standoff.

  Aubrey’s hands were gentle as she squeezed the cut on Beau’s arm closed and applied the butterfly bandage. But her words were like a dull stick poking an old wound.

  “The firearms expert said his weapon hadn’t been fired,” she said smugly.

  “Yeah, but the idiots who arrested him didn’t swab his hand, did they?” If they had, they’d have found gunpowder residue, and an inconsistency Beau would have found hard to explain. But he’d been counting on some incompetence, and he’d lucked out.

  “What are you talking about?” Aubrey asked impatiently.

  “Nothing. Forget it.”

  “I want to know!”

  “Why? You’ve already made up your mind. I’m the bad guy, Gavin is the misguided scapegoat. Nothing I could say would change your opinion, so why should I bother?” He suddenly realized he was on his feet, that his hands were gripping Aubrey’s upper arms. He’d stopped himself just short of shaking her.

  Her eyes filled with tears as she looked up at him. “Because I don’t want you to be the bad guy.”

  The next thing he knew he was kissing her, and his hands were all over her, and hers were on him, sliding under his shirt, raking him lightly with those long red nails. And he had one hand on her bottom, and the leather felt so sexy and she smelled so good. Though her hair still held a trace of cigarette smoke from the bar there was something better underneath it, like vanilla and cinnamon, yeah, cinnamon, and her mouth was hot and wet and ripe, and he could just imagine what it might feel like if she kissed him there and there…

  His hand wandered beneath her skirt, and his runaway fantasy came to a screeching halt. She wore cotton panties. Not that cotton panties were a turn-off. He’d seen them in the Victoria’s Secret catalogue, so it wasn’t that. It was the reminder that this hot babe in leather wasn’t real. This was Aubrey, his best friend’s little sister, who wore wholesome cotton underthings.

  He stopped abruptly and pulled his mouth from hers. Moved his hand to her back. Pushed her gently away from him.

  “What?” she almost shrieked, and he recognized that the need they’d kindled without meaning to was as strong in her as in him.

  “If you don’t get out of here in about five seconds, we are both going to be very, very sorry.”

  She stiffened, and he was already sorry. He never should have let this happen. Aubrey wasn’t a woman to ravish on the bathroom floor. She was all that was good and honest and sweet that had ever been a part of his life, and he’d been about to ruin that. Yeah, he wanted her, but it was the kind of desire that ought not to be indulged.

  “Where do you want me to sleep?” she said, chin up, defiant in the face of his rejection.

  “Pick any of the rooms upstairs.”

  She stared at him a moment longer, and he prayed she wouldn’t push it. His willpower was only so strong. He turned away from her, reached into the drawer where he’d found the bandages and pulled out a jar of burn salve. He handed it to her.

  “This should help those whip stings.”

  She took it and walked out of the bathroom without a backward look.

  AUBREY DIDN’T HAVE a prayer of getting a good night’s sleep. Even after a warm shower, even after applying the soothing salve to the pink stripes on her skin and slipping on a soft cotton nightshirt, even after climbing under the covers of the soft bed in the room she’d chosen and listening to the rain patter on the roof, she could hardly bring herself to close her eyes.

  Her thoughts whirled in her head like leaves chasing each other in the wind. Patti and Sara, still missing…the assault at her house…Cory, the drug dealer, threatening to kill her if she didn’t tell him where Patti was. All of today’
s unsettling events were mixed up with the mental image she’d built of Beau shooting Gavin, of how it must have happened, based on the evidence and testimony she’d heard in court two years ago.

  And wondering, What had Beau meant when he pointed out that the police hadn’t swabbed Gavin’s hand? Granted, it was an oversight. But what difference did it make, if his gun hadn’t been discharged?

  She must have finally slept, because the sun woke her up. Last night’s storm had blown over, leaving the world outside looking pristine and cool. That would last about ten minutes, she figured, until the summer heat turned Payton into a steam bath.

  The first thing Aubrey did was check her cell phone for messages, and she had one. She’d left the phone on all night, in case Patti tried to call, but apparently she hadn’t heard it ring. She dialed in to get the message, praying it would be Patti.

  Instead she heard Lyle Palmer’s voice, low and serious.

  “Aubrey, please call me as soon as possible.” Nothing else but his phone number. The call had come in at 6:42, less than an hour ago. Early for Lyle to be at work. She called him back, her hands shaking.

  This wasn’t good news. She was sure of it. Had he heard about the debacle at Kink?

  “Aubrey, good. Are you all right? You weren’t at home. I was hoping you’d gone to stay with a friend, like I advised.”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “I need to meet with you. Where are you?”

  She wasn’t about to tell him she’d spent the night at Beau’s house. “I can come to the station. But what’s this about? Have you found Patti?”

  He waited a fraction of a second too long before answering. “I really don’t want to go into it over the phone.”

  Oh, God. She suddenly had a very, very bad feeling. Her rubbery legs refused to hold her up any longer, and she sank onto the bed. “Just tell me now. It’s Patti, isn’t it?”

  “I’d really rather—”

  “Just tell me! Is she dead?”

  “She…I’m so sorry, Aubrey. She was found at a roadside rest stop, just outside of town. She apparently killed herself.”

  “How?” Aubrey made herself ask.

  “Asphyxiation, with the car exhaust. It’s a relatively painless way to—”

  “Oh, my God. Sara. The baby. She didn’t—”

  “The baby wasn’t with her. She probably left her with someone. Who would she trust with her baby?”

  The only person Aubrey could think of was herself. “I don’t know.” This was too much. It was too awful. Aubrey struggled to hold herself together when all she wanted to do was fall to the carpet in a heap of despair.

  “Does she have any other family in town?”

  “Her father and brother. But she wouldn’t—she’s estranged from them. Lyle, this can’t be right. Patti wouldn’t kill herself.”

  “From everything you’ve told me, she was in some kind of trouble. Maybe it got to be too much for her to handle.”

  Aubrey couldn’t envision Patti ending her own life, under any circumstances. “She would have left the baby with me. Oh, God, what if someone killed her and took the baby?”

  “We’ll do everything we can to find Sara,” Lyle said soothingly.

  “Let me break the news to her father and brother first, please,” she said. “My uncle is ill. I’m afraid the shock of cops coming to his door might…”

  “All right. Why don’t you call me back when you’ve done that? Meanwhile, I’ll put out a bulletin on the baby. Patti was holding a picture of her when she died. We can use that.”

  They ended the call, and Aubrey felt suddenly, achingly alone. She had to talk to someone, and Beau was the closest. That was her rationale as she headed down the stairs in her nightshirt, caving in to a need for the comfort of his arms, so primitive she couldn’t even put a name to it.

  The living room and kitchen were still dark, so she headed down the hall to his bedroom. She tapped lightly on the door. “Beau? Are you awake?” When she got no response she knocked harder, then opened the door a crack. His bed was empty, but looked as if it had been slept in.

  She heard water running in the bathroom. She stepped inside the bedroom and headed that way.

  GET SOME SLEEP. What had he been thinking? The whole night, all Beau could think about was Aubrey’s warm, slender body lying in bed somewhere on the floor above him.

  He hadn’t expected to feel such strong, unrelenting desire for her.

  At 6:00 a.m., he’d given up pretending to sleep. He felt marginally better after a shower. His shoulder was bruised black and blue from trying to bash the dungeon door down, and his muscles ached from swinging the dull ax. At least the cut didn’t hurt much.

  He’d just made his first stroke across his jaw with the razor when the bathroom door opened. He jumped, cut himself, reached for a weapon that wasn’t there.

  Aubrey yelped in surprise, then just stood there. She wore only a pale blue nightshirt that revealed most of her bare legs.

  He recovered quickly. “Good morning,” he said with a slow smile. He could have been a gentleman and averted his gaze when her nipples hardened beneath the tissue-thin nightshirt, but he’d always wanted to see Aubrey’s breasts.

  Finally the catatonia that had frozen her lifted. “I— I’m sorry,” she said, backing out of the room. “I knocked, but I guess you didn’t hear me.” With that she closed the door.

  Finally it registered with Beau what was wrong with this picture. Her face had been damp—with tears? He turned off the water, wrapped a towel around his hips, and left the bathroom. “Aubrey?”

  She was sitting on the edge of his bed, her face pale, her curly hair an untidy reddish-brown cloud around her head. Her back was stiff, her hands clenched in her lap.

  And yes, she was crying. She’d always had this uncanny way of weeping without making any noise, even when she’d been a child. She looked up at him with her huge green eyes, wet with tears.

  “Patti’s dead. I just talked to Lyle Palmer.”

  “Oh, Aubrey…” He didn’t know what to say. So he sat down and put his arms around her and let her cry it out. Women’s tears were one of the few things that could render him helpless. He had no idea what to say or do in the face of Aubrey’s raw grief.

  She didn’t indulge long in her tears, just a couple of minutes. Then her breath came more evenly, and she sniffed a couple of times. “I’ve gotten you all wet.”

  He rubbed her back, refusing to let her go. “It’s okay. I’m not made of sugar. You’re going to be all right. Everything will be fine.” Stupid words of comfort, really. But he couldn’t think of anything else to say. He hated to see her hurting like this.

  “How can you be so nice to me,” she said against his shoulder, “when I was so mean to you last night?”

  “Shh. Never mind about that.”

  But she pulled away and looked him in the face. “No, really. I should explain.”

  “You’re like a terrier with a bone, you know that? No explanation is necessary.” Besides, he had a pretty good idea what was going on with her last night.

  “I was trying really hard to stay mad at you. Because after you rescued me like some knight in shining armor—”

  “Aubrey, really.”

  “All I could think about was kissing you. And there was your bed and that hot tub, and I was touching you and I was wearing those sexy clothes—”

  “You really don’t have to explain this, honey. I understand.” And he didn’t want to think about Aubrey in a leather miniskirt and a garter belt right now. He was already aroused, and with just a towel between him and the rest of the world, Aubrey would soon know it.

  “I was just trying to find a way to keep you at a distance.”

  “It didn’t exactly work, did it?”

  “Why did we stop?”

  Why are you talking about this now? he wanted to ask. She’d just found out her cousin was dead. But he knew from his cop days that people reacted in all kinds of strange ways when
a loved one died suddenly. They cried, they laughed, they went into denial, they avoided the subject, they took off running, they hid in closets, they got violent. There was no such thing as a typical reaction.

  “We stopped because I was angry,” he said. “And I didn’t want to make love with you the first time when I was still angry. That’s not the right way to do it.”

  “But you wanted to?”

  “What do you think?”

  That was all she needed to hear. She closed her eyes and pressed her lips to his.

  He knew this wasn’t right. Aubrey was a little bit out of her head right now. He marshaled every bit of willpower within reach and broke the kiss.

  “Aubrey, honey, you’re not thinking straight.”

  “Yes, I am,” she said emphatically. “I’m not insane with grief or anything. And I’m not trying to lose myself in sex or dull my senses or escape, or reaffirm life or anything dumb like that. I just suddenly realized that life is too short and too uncertain to let stupid misunderstandings get in the way of our connections with each other.

  “I could have died yesterday, not once but twice. I don’t want to die without knowing what it feels like to make love with you.”

  Some part of Beau wanted to argue with her. Despite her protestations, she was trying to reaffirm life. He’d seen it before. He’d once had to inform a young wife that her husband had died in a traffic accident. Her reaction had been very similar to Aubrey’s. He’d gently turned her down, of course, and later she’d apologized and thanked him for being a gentleman.

  But he wasn’t feeling nearly as gentlemanly with Aubrey. The realization that she’d been attracted to him all this time, just as he was to her, bowled him over. Maybe they shouldn’t waste any more time.

  He could rationalize it all he wanted, but the truth was, he was incapable of walking away. Aubrey stared solemnly at him, waiting for him to make a decision. Push her away? Or kiss her?

  He kissed her.

  Chapter Seven

  Aubrey knew full well what she was doing as she wrapped her arms around Beau and kissed him with every ounce of longing she’d saved up over all those years she’d wanted him but couldn’t have him. She was crossing a line, across which she could never retreat.