by Lexi Blake
Riley groaned. “Fuck. That’s going to cost me a pretty penny.”
The Jeep’s tires had been treated to the same amount of love.
How had she worked so fast? How many people had been out here, watching them, waiting for Josh to make a mistake?
Riley propped Josh against the Jeep. “I think it’s safe to say they don’t want to chance us following them.”
She pulled out her cell phone and pressed the button to dial Shane. When he answered, she got straight to the point. “We need a pickup at the Solstice Canyon parking lot, and bring Declan because we’ve got to move two vehicles, and someone’s got to go back up that trail to find Agnes. Also bring an ice pack. Our client had a night to remember.”
Before he could ask the obvious questions, she hung up, unable to debrief anyone right now.
She was too angry. Too confused. Too scared for him.
“Kay?”
She looked up at Josh. Riley had moved away, as though giving them plenty of room. “Yeah?”
He should thank her, but that wasn’t what she expected.
“Nice boots. Those new?”
Yeah, she had some explaining to do.
Chapter Eleven
“I told you they weren’t my boots.” Kayla enunciated every word because Josh didn’t seem capable of understanding English. She turned the Porsche onto PCH.
“You’re stripping the gears,” he complained. The only way she’d been able to keep him from driving was pointing out the fact that if his ankle didn’t heal quickly, his movie would be put on hold. “And I’m supposed to believe Riley Blade’s girlfriend just happens to be your size and she left her hiking boots in his car? That’s awfully convenient.”
Oh, she had such good fucking news for him on that front. “Not my size, buddy. They were too small. Do you want to check and see how bad the blisters on my feet are? The backs of my feet are completely trashed.”
It was clear Riley thought she had a ten-year-old’s feet. She hadn’t noticed how bad it was when the adrenaline had been pumping through her body. It was only later when she had to peel those suckers off that she realized how tight they’d been.
She glanced down at the clock. How could it only be one thirty? It felt like they’d been in that canyon for hours. Her phone went off. She didn’t even look down at it. Her dad had called earlier and anyone else who was calling this late could leave a damn message. It was probably Tucker, who always seemed to forget that there was a time difference.
Josh sulked in the seat beside her like a big, gorgeous, made-bad-decisions man boy. After wrapping his ankle, he was moving quite well. One of the members of The Reef happened to be a doctor. They had told the doc a complete bullshit lie about Josh falling in the parking lot. The doc had looked him over and found nothing was broken and Josh only had a mild strain of the muscle.
“When we get back to the house, you’ll pack your things,” he said, staring out at the road ahead.
Shane had dropped the two of them off at the club while Riley had stayed behind to help with the vehicles. She didn’t like to think about one of them having to go back on that trail after Agnes, but she couldn’t afford to have the cops show up asking why her SIG Sauer had been found in the canyon. There would be far too many questions.
“So you’re firing me? For doing my job?”
“No, I’m firing you for bringing that asshole with you. Tell me something, Kay, you playing around with him? Having some fun when I’m not here? That’s the only way to explain why you would hop into his car without a second thought, putting my privacy on the line. Maybe this is what the two of you planned all along.”
Such an ass. These were the times she could easily walk away from him. “Yeah, there’s no other explanation. I’m just a whore.”
“Well, give me a better explanation,” he shot back and then shifted in his seat. “And I didn’t use that word.”
“You used that tone. Every woman in the world knows that tone. And my reason? I panicked. I freaked out. I lost my shit when I realized you were out there with absolutely no protection. You didn’t even have a gun.”
He shoved a hand through his hair, sweeping it back. “I wasn’t allowed to take a fucking gun. And guess what, I wasn’t allowed to take a bodyguard either. I’m going to pay for that.”
“You lied to me. What was I supposed to do? Sit back and hope everything worked out? You didn’t tell me anything. You didn’t explain anything. How was I supposed to know you were even leaving of your own volition?”
“Because you were supposed to do what I asked you to do.” He still hadn’t looked at her. The whole time they’d gone back to the club, gotten his things, seen the doctor—who apparently was used to not asking a lot of questions—that whole time he hadn’t looked at her once.
“I did exactly what you told me to do. I got presentable for the party. I’m sorry if I stepped outside to get some fresh air and happened to see you hopping on Jared’s bike.” Yes, this part was a lie, but she didn’t feel bad about that anymore. He’d nearly gotten himself killed. He couldn’t handle the truth.
He went silent.
She squeezed the steering wheel, frustration welling inside her. “You can’t honestly think I was out there to…do what? Meet with Master Riley? Was I making out with him? Did I need more sex after the four orgasms you gave me in the red room? I’m not just a whore. I’m a crazed nymphomaniac.”
“Stop it. I didn’t fucking say those words,” he said. “This is a stupid argument. There’s zero point to it. It doesn’t matter now.”
“Because I’m fired.”
He went silent again.
She was not going to panic. Logic. She needed to bring down the emotional charge and present him with sweet logic. “Are we all fired? Because I assure you Shane or Dec would have done what I did. They wouldn’t have allowed you to run off into the night. Not even if it meant their jobs. They would have been running after you, flagging down anyone they could because the one thing we cannot live with is losing a client.”
He stared stubbornly ahead.
Okay, logic wasn’t going to work. Maybe emotion was the way to get to him, but not anger. He needed warmth. Softness. Vulnerability.
Fuck it. She would give him the truth. As much of it as she could.
“Do you have any idea how it felt to see you facing down that damn snake?” When he didn’t answer, she continued. Even if he kicked her ass to the street, he would hear the truth. “I thought I was going to lose my damn mind. I don’t know that I’ve ever been that scared.”
“Couldn’t tell. That was a hell of a shot.”
That was bothering him? “Josh, my hand was almost shaking too much for me to take it.”
“Like I said, couldn’t tell. You’re cool under pressure.”
“You say that like it’s a bad thing. This is my job. But it didn’t feel like a job when I was out there. I wasn’t some super-agent. I was a freaked-out sub watching her Master try to kill himself.”
“I wanted you to stay out of it.” His tone had softened, a bit of the stubborn will seeming to ease out.
“What is it? What is so important you would pull a stunt like this? And who the hell is that woman? She’s obviously got something on you. How much did she take you for?”
And then it was right back. He straightened up, his shoulders broadening, hands in tight fists. “It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t fucking matter now. Maybe if it had been you I could deal with it. But Riley? Do you think that guy is going to let this go? You think he’s not going to try to figure out what’s going on and use it against me? You might have simply been doing your job, but he wasn’t. He’s like everyone else—looking to make a big play, and guess what? Josh Hunt is a huge play. He can use this. He can manipulate me to get him a job, to get him a foot in the door, or he’ll use it to take from me exactly the way that bitch in the shadows does.”
God, what must his life be like that he thought everyone in the world was out to u
se him? “He’s the Dom in Residence. He signed a nondisclosure. It covers everything that goes on with members in and out of the club. If you like, I’ll have your lawyer send over one that specifically covers the events of tonight.”
“Why would he sign that?”
“Because he’s not a massive ass.” Sometimes Josh was exhausting. “Not everyone in the world is out to get you. There are people in the world who are good and who do good things without thinking about how much they can cash in at the end.”
“I only really knew one of those,” he said quietly. “And even then she got something out of me.”
“Tina?”
He nodded. “Yeah. I sometimes wonder if she would have bothered to help me out if I hadn’t had this face. This face has been my curse. My blessing. I often wonder what my life would have been like without it.”
“We can’t change the past, Josh. We can only face it and accept all the good and the bad it did and move on. Believe me. I understand that.”
Josh’s head shook. “You can’t possibly understand what I went through.”
“I can’t understand the minutiae of it. The details would be different for me, but don’t think for an instant that I don’t know what pain is. That I don’t know how it feels to be locked in a cage with no way out. To be used even by the people who cared about me.”
He went silent again, but some of the tension was gone.
“How long has this been going on?” Kayla asked.
“Almost five years.”
She kept her eyes on the road, finding the turnoff to Old Malibu. “You don’t have to tell me what you’re hiding.”
“I don’t have to tell you anything at all.”
“Except that I’m fired.”
He went silent again.
“I was scared. Does that mean anything to you?”
“Of course it does,” he replied with a sigh. “Do you think I don’t feel something for you? Fuck, you’re all I think about, but that can’t matter now.”
This didn’t feel like she was working a target. Her heart ached. This wasn’t some conversation meant to manipulate her way back into the job. She felt like a girlfriend desperate to fix what was wrong between them. “Why? Why can’t it matter?”
“I…I have to let you go,” he said haltingly. “It’s not about what I want anymore. She could hurt you. She could kill you. You think you were scared? God, Kay, I couldn’t breathe until you showed back up on that trail. I sat there waiting to hear a gunshot, waiting to listen to her kill you.”
Finally, they were getting somewhere. “I don’t think she intends to kill me. I think she wanted to show me my place.”
“What makes you think that? Spy intuition?”
“She had the chance tonight and she didn’t take it.”
He shook his head as though there was no way he was buying that line. “Only because she wasn’t prepared, Kay.”
Oh, but she knew something he didn’t. “I think she’s always prepared. Why else would she have at least two snipers with her? She’s got a team. You might have thought she was there alone, but I doubt she’s ever alone. I bet she’s got muscle around her every time she pulls one of these jobs. Think about that. Two snipers when she thought there would only be one of you. Look, when I was at that shrine thing, she had an easy bead on me. She was there when I made the drop. She had probably hidden there the whole time, waiting to watch you like some icky creeper. I couldn’t see her, but she spoke directly to me. She couldn’t have been more than a few yards away. I was perfectly helpless. All she had to do was pull the trigger and I would have gone down.”
He turned, his face stark white. “She was there with you?”
“In person. And that thing she uses to modify her voice is definitely portable,” she replied. The road was narrow and curved. She slowed down because she wasn’t entirely sure he wouldn’t kick her out of the house the minute they got home. If they got home before Shane and Declan did, Josh might lock them all out. It was important to keep him talking because he was starting to calm down. “She was waiting for me, which means she was waiting for you. She quoted Silence of the Lambs, letting me know I was not Clarice in her opinion. I got the whole ‘you’re nothing but a whore’ speech—it’s the theme of the night—and then she promised to blow your head off if I didn’t get you out of that canyon in way less time than it really took us. She wanted her money. I assume it’s money. I guess it could be information of some kind.”
“It’s money. Only money,” he insisted. “I wouldn’t put anyone else at risk. Not ever.”
That was the first honest thing he’d said in hours. “She’s blackmailing you.”
“Yeah. I guess that’s obvious.”
At least she had that much to work with. “Okay. You know the best and easiest solution is to put it out there yourself. Whatever she’s got on you. We can get you a lawyer and a crisis management PR firm. I can have them here within twenty-four hours. The only way to deal with a blackmailer is to take out the threat.”
“How much would it cost to take out the threat?” Josh sounded numb.
She was going to have to get on the phone with Big Tag. She was fairly certain he would know how to start. His personal lawyer, Mitch Bradford, used to practice in this part of California. He would definitely know how to help. “I don’t know. Probably less than you’ve paid already. It depends on what the threat is and how much work the publicity team will have to do. Do we need a criminal lawyer, too?”
For him, that is. Perhaps he did something in his youth that was coming back to haunt him. She didn’t want to think about it, didn’t want to think Josh was capable of doing anything truly awful.
“You don’t understand what I’m asking,” he replied quietly. “I meant how much would it take for you to kill her?”
Oddly enough, that wasn’t something awful. That was something that needed to happen. Years spent working in the gray areas of morality had definitely had an effect on her. “I would do that for free. I would do that for fun, Josh. Give me the information I need to find her and I’ll make sure she never calls you again.”
He sighed and leaned against the window. “Sorry, I wouldn’t ask you to do that. You’ve been through too much and I don’t want you back in that world. I don’t want you involved in any of this. I wanted to keep you out. I wanted to protect you. I wanted…who the hell is that?”
He sat up straight and Kay turned to see what he was talking about.
Someone was standing in their driveway. Two someones. The light hit them and she gasped. Two men. One black, one white. Both dressed like they were going on a cruise in white pants and casual loose cotton shirts. One held a poodle.
“Reporters?” Josh asked.
“So much worse.” She stopped in the middle of the road. She’d thought the night was as bad as it could get. Nope. “Those are my dads.”
* * * *
The night had been so horrible. He’d known the minute she’d caught up to him on that trail that this night would count as one of the worst of his life because this was going to be the night he lost Kay. One way or another. Earlier he’d been worried sick he would lose her to a bullet and then to the need to keep her safe and away from his trouble. He’d known this would be one of his darkest nights.
But somehow that look on her face—utter horror from a woman who’d looked into the heart of darkness and tried to tickle it—brought him out of his morose brood. He’d been having a brood, as she called it, and now he couldn’t help but feel something lift at that look in her eyes. All this time, she’d been the strong one, the stalwart, never-say-die ex-spy. She’d assassinated world leaders without blinking an eye, but those elderly men and that dog scared the shit out of her.
“Are you going to drive by them?” Somehow her complete and total shutdown stopped his own. One of them had to be functional, right? They were…they were partners. He hadn’t had a partner he could truly count on in years, one who picked up the slack when he couldn�
��t. One who needed him to do the same when her two dads showed up on their doorstep.
It was a perfect sitcom moment, and he didn’t want it ruined by that bitch.
“Baby, I think they know it’s you,” he pointed out. “We could run, but they might get in that…is that a Prius? I think the Porsche could take it but not the way you drive.”
She frowned and turned his way. “I drive fine. I’m a magnificent driver. I once got away from a Russian operative driving a hundred and ten miles an hour down an icy Siberian highway.”
“You didn’t do it in this Porsche.” Somehow even through his misery, he’d been sad about how hard she’d been on his other baby. If she’d been anyone else in the world, he would have kicked her out and called in a driver.
When had she become more important than his things? Materialism had been safe for so long, but he hadn’t done much more than bitch a little about her stripping his gears. He hadn’t forced her to comply with his wishes.
Because her feelings, her will, had somehow become more important than his own.
He was in way too deep. He had a drama playing out on his yard and he wasn’t freaked out about it.
“Why are my dads here?” She asked the question with a vulnerability he’d never heard from her before. Not once.
And yet he knew she cared about them. This wasn’t fear. Not fear that they would hurt her. She was a teenaged girl who got caught with a boy. It was enough to throw him off.
“Why don’t we ask them instead of staring at them in the middle of the road at one thirty in the morning? It’s weird and someone’s going to notice,” he pointed out, but with none of the panic he would have thought he would have. Normally he would want any drama at all in his life hidden away from reporters.
What would they say this time? Joshua Hunt Meets the Parents? He kind of didn’t hate that headline. That headline felt nice and normal and good.
He did want to meet her parents.
