“I guess.” She yanked open one of the drawers where she kept plastic supermarket bags. As she grabbed one, she thought she heard a noise on the back patio, loud enough to make her freeze in the act of stuffing the mail into the bag. She looked hard at the door, half expecting it to be kicked open.
“What’s the matter?” Zach asked, coming back into the kitchen.
“I heard something out there.”
He frowned, looking and listening. “I was just out there.”
“An animal, maybe?” Her heart and head throbbed in syncopation now. “Let’s just get out of here, Zach. It feels spooky.”
“Let me look. Step back.” He unlocked the door and opened it slowly, his shoulders taut, a hand fisted, his boot placed to make a swift kick. He jumped outside hard enough to scare anyone or anything, then looked from side to side. For a second, he disappeared from her sight as he walked to the side where she’d jumped. Then he came back in, shaking his head.
“Nothing. Let’s go.”
She nodded and followed him to the front door. Going this way eliminated her clever plant scheme, but it didn’t matter. She wasn’t coming back here until this whole thing was over.
Downstairs, they passed the Brodys’ door without incident, but her landlady’s comment still pressed on Sam’s heart as they rounded the house and walked toward the backyard to leave through the fence, the way they had come.
“Listen, Zach, I’m really sorry about my neighbor.” She didn’t mean to have pity in her voice, but it came out. His jaw clenched in response. “I’m sure she really just thought you were dressed for a costume party, too.”
“Whatever, Sam. Let’s just go.”
The tone in his voice made her shoulders slump as she hustled to keep up with him. “You don’t think I look at you that way, do you?”
“I really don’t think about it,” he said, stepping it up. “I want to get out of here fast. Let’s go.”
She grabbed his arm. “Zach, wait a second. Talk to me.”
“Not now, Sam.” He gave her a little nudge forward. “Get to the fence.”
“God damn you,” she muttered, walking toward the fence ahead of him. “How can you be brooding over some inane comment from my landlady?”
“I’m not brooding.”
She slowed her step and turned to force the issue. “You’re not a monster.” She reached up and put both her hands on his face, feeling the muscles tense under her touch. “You’re not.”
He just stared at her.
“You’re not,” she repeated, frustrated that he wouldn’t answer.
“Are you finished yet?”
“No.” She yanked him closer, covering her lips with his, kissing him with all the fury and fear that raged in her.
He… didn’t respond. Nothing. No kiss, no tongue, no movement, nothing.
Cold inside, she slowly inched back, still holding his face in her hands. She stared at him for three, four, five interminable seconds.
“Now I’m finished,” she whispered. Brokenhearted, mortified, furious, and finished.
“I thought we agreed no more of that.”
“I was making a point.”
“So was I.”
Fury fired through her veins. “All right. Fine. Let’s go.” She marched to the fence, lifting the boards that created an opening, sensing he wasn’t right behind her. She climbed through, then stepped aside, holding the fence slat up for him. But he was still in the yard, ten feet behind.
“Be that way.” She let the boards snap back down into place, then started into the alley.
“Sam, wait.”
She ignored the order, just as an engine screamed, lights blinding her as a car whipped into the alley a few houses away.
She turned, caught in the glare, frozen as the lights got brighter and the growling engine louder.
“Sam!” Zach leaped across the alley, slamming into her, throwing her down to the ground just as the car bore down on them. He rolled her out of the way, stones stabbing her back as Zach got them both out of the path of the speeding car.
A scream of terror caught in her throat as the crack of a gunshot split her eardrums. Another shot popped as the car passed and a third before it disappeared down the other end of the alley.
For one breathless second, they didn’t move. Then Zach leaped, grabbing her by the arm and pulling her with him. “Move it!”
The wig tumbled off as they ran, tearing between houses, the wind whistling in her ears as they made their way to his car. He hesitated at the street, checking out both directions, but there was no sign of the dark vehicle that had almost run them down or the driver who had shot at them.
“Let’s go.” He pulled her toward his big gold car, yanking the back door open and shoving her in. “Lie down,” he ordered, climbing in to drive.
“Is he following us?”
He floored it so hard, her whole body slammed against the backseat. “Just stay on the floor, Sam, and don’t get up until I tell you.”
From the shadows of the next yard, the Czar prayed as hard as he’d ever prayed before. And his prayers were answered. The footsteps picked up, a car engine started—a good German one, too, judging from the sound of it—and tires squealed as it took off.
He couldn’t see from where he hid, but all that told him that the bastards had missed their shot.
The fuckers were trying to kill his witness so they didn’t have to pay him. Levon didn’t like that. He didn’t like that one bit. He’d get her long before they did.
Disgust rolled through him at the amateur effort. Firing like a bunch of gangsters in the alleyway. How graceless was that? He could do this so much more creatively. And now, he had a nice little piece of bait that they were far too stupid to use.
CHAPTER 10
Zach flipped his pillow, adding a little punch, pressing his scarred face against the cool cotton, aching for relief. Even six months after the last surgery, the lingering sensation of prickly spears of pain never really went away.
Except when something cool and soft and dry touched it.
The pillow gave him a split second of relief; then the fire-hot needles burned again. All of him burned, actually. He slept in boxers, the sheets thrown off the completely inadequate twin bed, the windows of the second-floor bedroom wide open. Still, sweat tingled his skin, making him imagine the pleasure of a third icy shower in the lone bathroom across the hall.
Outside, the night was silent, the blue-collar town of Jamaica Plain relatively quiet at three-something in the morning. The occasional car, a dog. No real threats.
Yet.
He’d done a fine job of assuring Sam they were safe, telling her just enough about his cousin Gabe to make sure she believed that if this house was safe enough to meet his standards, it was safe enough for them. He’d combed every inch of the house, checked the usual places and the unusual, and felt certain it was clean, especially knowing that if Gabe’s people had found it, they’d probably swept it thoroughly too.
And he was absolutely certain no one had followed them from Somerville.
Wasn’t he?
Fuck. Why did he keep questioning his capabilities? Maybe because while he was standing in her yard behaving like a miserable dick and feeling sorry for himself, she had marched right into the line of fire. Would Marc have let that happen?
No, he wouldn’t have.
And yet, Zach had stubbornly refused to give up a job he didn’t want in the first place.
Why?
Swearing softly, he turned again. Burn. Press. Soothe. Burn again.
Why did he refuse to leave Sam under someone else’s watchful eye—eyes? Why had he ever let her go in the first place? He’d done such a great job of convincing himself it was the right thing to do that when he looked into her deep blue eyes… all he could do was wonder what the hell he was thinking when he made that sweeping, lasting, selfish decision.
But when he looked into the mirror, he knew it was the right thing to do, sel
fish or not.
He heard a noise upstairs, and he propped up on his elbows, listening. Her soft sigh, maybe. A shudder after crying?
A memory punched, shockingly clear. He could see his own hand twisting the shower faucet in Sam’s apartment in predawn darkness. He hadn’t turned on a light in the bathroom, didn’t want to wake her. But he could hear her strangled sobs, muffled into the pillow. He knew he should march out to that bedroom, take her in his arms, tell her…
But he couldn’t. Instead, he’d flipped the cold water on, and just stood in the prickly, painful spray until he knew she’d stopped crying. Until his own silent tears were washed away. Until he could go get dressed, and leave for Kuwait, and pretend he hadn’t heard her.
Just like he was doing tonight.
He listened again, but the house was quiet. He’d left the door to his tiny bedroom open, so he could hear anything. Pretty easy since the three-story walk-up couldn’t be much more than twelve or thirteen hundred square feet total, with three rooms for living, eating, and cooking on the first floor, this one and a bathroom on the second, and Sam’s room alone at the top.
Still shaken and finally done trying to get him to talk, she’d headed upstairs when they arrived, and remained there all evening and into the night.
Which should be a relief to him, but just felt like… punishment.
He’d heard her taking a shower while he sat in the dark downstairs and ate cold leftovers and nursed a beer he’d snagged from Vivi’s place. She went back to her third-floor room after her shower, while he made the rounds and checked every door and window again, finally going to bed. If she moved, even paced her bedroom floor, he’d hear her, since every other floorboard in this hundred-year-old house squeaked. He welcomed any sound, if only to block out the memory of her voice still in his head.
You’re not a monster. You’re not.
And then, that kiss. So different from the one he’d given her. His was desperate, a plea for a second chance he didn’t deserve. Hers was… tender.
The thing was, every kiss with Sam was different. He remembered that, from the first one. He draped his arm over his face and drifted back. Vivi’s bathroom. That party. Sam’s sexy laugh, her I-dare-you-to-follow-me look. And, Christ, he had. Like a hound dog on a scent trail.
He’d knocked on the bathroom door, pushing it in, just like he had this morning. She’d put lipstick on her bottom lip, glossy, wet, making that sweet swell of flesh even more edible. In five seconds, that gloss was gone. In five minutes, so was her top. In five hours, he was inside her for the third time that night.
His balls throbbed at the memory, and he flipped over again, hating this new annoyance on his body. He smashed the unwanted erection against the bed with a soft groan.
If only she’d come downstairs and they could…
No, she deserved more than sex, even if it was great sex. She deserved more than his vague answers to her questions, even if it really was all he could offer. And she deserved more than him, even if he wanted her with a need so intense, it hurt.
He bit the pillow to stave off growling in frustration, to keep from grinding his wood into the mattress and howling for her. Anything to stop himself from throwing off the sheets and climbing those stairs and telling her what he needed.
Something told him he could convince her, too. The chemistry was still sizzling between them, a slow simmer that one touch would spark into more. Maybe he should go up there. Maybe it could be “just sex” again, couldn’t it? Just another round of wild, fast, furious fucking. He could satisfy her need for talking with five minutes of meaningless conversation and five hours of what they both wanted and needed.
What he needed, anyway.
Who was he kidding? He needed so much more than that with Sam. He took a deep, slow breath and pressed his burning cheek on the pillow, torn by what he wanted and what he knew he should do. Was she this ripped apart?
Upstairs, a bare foot hit the top step.
He reached to the nightstand, grabbed his patch, and looped it over his head, positioning the protective flap between his brow and cheekbone, the elastic so tight the piece flattened the scar tissue of knotted skin where his eye used to be.
Sam moved slowly, as if she were trying to avoid making noise, but she failed. His hearing was too good, and he could count which stair she was on. Then she paused just outside his open door, no doubt listening for the sound of his sleep.
Or planning to come in…
After a second, she went into the bathroom, and light spilled from under the door. He came up on his elbows, listening to the toilet flush, water flow from the faucet, a soft sigh as he imagined her rinsing her face, drying it.
He pictured her pouring water on his face, soothing his fiery pain. That would be bliss. Then laying her cheek against his. More bliss. Then laying her body against his… way past bliss.
She turned the light out before she opened the door, obviously not wanting to wake him. After a moment, she continued down, her feet brushing softly over the stairs.
He sat up, ready to follow.
He listened to her movements in the kitchen, getting up and walking to the hall to make sure she didn’t turn on a light or open a door. Was she safe alone down there?
Probably safer than if he went marching down with a boner sticking through his boxers. She was hungry, no doubt. The sounds drifting upstairs confirmed that, a soft tap of a plate on the counter, the roll of a drawer, the screech of an old oven door.
He could monitor her movements from here, and let her eat in peace. She deserved that.
“Oh! My God!”
He bolted into the hallway, pausing for a fraction of a second to balance on the two handrails and vault down the whole staircase in one long leap. Landing on the balls of his feet, hands splayed for attack, body taut with aggression, he lunged around the corner to the kitchen where she squatted on a chair, a look of horror on her face as she stared at the ground.
“We have visitors,” she said in a shaky voice, sleep-mussed hair casting shadows over her face. “Maybe a whole family of them.”
“Jesus.” He lowered his hands and flexed the fingers he’d just stiffened, ready to kill.
“I’m sorry I woke you. A mouse just ran over my foot and scared the crap out of me.”
He scanned the linoleum, where a gray mouse cowered on the floor, shaking. “He’s more scared of you.”
“I know, I know.” She let out an embarrassed laugh. “And I feel like a complete cliché jumping on a chair.”
He bent over, hands open. The mouse scurried left, following the warped boards under the cabinets. “There are more?”
“One under the sink, one… I don’t know.”
He crouched, blocking the mouse’s escape with one hand and waiting for the perfect instant to…“Got him.” He clipped the tail, snagging him.
“Oh!” She backed up on the chair as he stood, dangling it. “Ew. Don’t kill it, Zach.”
He looked over the mouse at her. “No? That’s how you get rid of them, you know.”
“Can you take him outside?” She flicked her fingers. “Then maybe you can find the other two and send them all out together.”
He smiled at her. “I had no idea you were such an animal rights activist.”
“I’m just… compassionate. But get that thing out of here, will you?”
“Don’t move.”
“Fat chance.”
He unlocked a back door to a small stone patio and a postage-stamp-sized backyard, tossing the offender on the grass. He took a second to peer out at what wasn’t exactly the most high-security yard they could have, while the adrenaline finished running its course, along with the southbound blood that had had him so erect a minute ago.
When he walked back in, Sam still had her feet up on the chair, her gaze locked downward.
“He’s under the sink. I heard him scurrying around.”
Zach opened the cupboard door and saw the mouse immediately, hiding in a cor
ner, then running to the other side, away from the light. It took a minute of wrangling, but he managed to get that one, too, and deposited him with his brother.
“The last one is in the cabinets somewhere. Or escaped to their little mouse hideout.”
“We’ll listen for him.” At the sink, he washed his hands, using a half-empty bottle of dishwashing soap left by the previous tenant. “I’ll get mousetraps tomorrow.”
“And kill them?”
“Unless you want to give them all names and turn them into pets, that’s the usual course of action.”
She made a face. “I have leftovers in the oven, but… I’m not really hungry now.”
“You have to be. You haven’t eaten since this afternoon, and, don’t worry. There are no mice cooking in the oven.” He popped open the door, the smell of red sauce and Uncle Nino’s sausage wafting out. “No wonder the entire rodent population of Jamaica Plain showed up. You gotta eat this, Sam.”
“No, I can’t. I lost my appetite. I’ll just put it back in the fridge.”
“I’ll do it.” He grabbed the edge of the foil dish, gingerly holding it with two hands, setting it up on the gas burners of the stove. Behind him, he heard Sam leave the kitchen.
He ignored the punch of disappointment and put the food back on a shelf in the empty refrigerator, grabbing a cold Sam Adams when he did. He popped the top, took a gulp, and headed back to his miserable bed.
“That beer looks good, though.” She was curled into a corner of a sofa, her arms wrapped around her legs, her whole body folded protectively around a throw pillow.
“Take this one.” He walked over and gave it to her. She took the bottle with one hand and his arm with the other.
“Stay with me.” She looked up at him, and even in the dark he saw her eyes were red-rimmed and a little swollen. “We can share it.”
Everything human in him just wanted to hold her like she held that pillow, the fear and sadness in her voice squeezing his gut. He didn’t move.
They’d shared quite a few beers together, always from the same bottle.
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