Cian stopped him with a hand on his arm. “Not here,” he said, leaning in. “Why don’t you and the boys take Ramon here on a ride for a couple of hours. I’ll meet you back at the club.”
Connor nodded and pointed to the two men holding the attacker by both arms, then toward the other cars in the lot, indicating they should load him into a nearby SUV.
“Liam’s on his way,” Finn said, giving Cian a stern look. “He said you don’t move from here until he gets here with more guys.”
Connor spun to look at Cian. “What the hell were you doing out here by yourself, anyway?” he asked as the other men took the struggling captive away. Someone had produced handcuffs, so the man was partially disabled, and when they got him to the car, Lila saw one of the MacFarlane men pull a zip tie out of his pocket before looping it around the prisoner’s ankles.
Cian rolled his shoulders as if sloughing off the previous ten minutes. “It wasn’t me who was attacked,” he said calmly.
Connor and Finn automatically closed in, keeping their backs to the wall alongside the parking lot, their eyes scanning the lot, but placing themselves between Cian and Lila and the drive aisle.
“Doesn’t matter. I assumed you’d be leaving with the same security detail you came in with, but now you’re out here alone, and the boys said you told them to have the night off, enjoy a drink.”
Cian shrugged. “I was just going home. I didn’t need babysitters for that.”
Finn crossed his arms and scowled at Cian. “I’m with Connor and Liam on this one. You’re the head of the family now. You can’t go anywhere by yourself. Look what almost happened.” He glanced at Lila. “And it wouldn’t have only been your head.”
As if the remark had reminded Cian of Lila’s presence, he turned to her, his hand drifting to her throat. She held as still as if she were a bunny in the sights of a falcon. He gently stroked the bruised skin with one finger.
“I’m sorry,” he said, his voice low. “They’ve obviously seen you with us before and were waiting to grab you. This is our fault.”
Lila swallowed and cleared her throat as his hand fell away. “It all turned out okay,” she said, her voice more normal now that she’d had a few minutes of air to breathe. “I knew when I took this job it was dangerous. I think I just need to get up to speed, figure out how to protect myself. I’m not used to having to think about it.”
Cian’s gaze snapped to Connor. “I want a man with her twenty-four seven until we get this Vasquez thing resolved.”
“I don’t need—”
He glared at her. “Yes. You do. It’s not open to discussion. If I have to get Xavier to insist on it as part of your job requirements, I will.”
She stared at him. In all her years of dealing with sexist computer nerds, she’d never had a man try to control her like this.
She snorted, turning and digging through her purse for her keys. “I’ll let you know,” she said. “Right now, I just want to go home and get some hot tea on my throat.”
She heard Cian murmur some instructions to his brothers, then feet moving away. She finally found the damn keys and dug them from the bottom of her bag, punching the key fob to unlock the doors. She’d never leave someplace at night without her keys in hand again. Lesson learned.
“Lila from Rogue.” Cian’s voice was soft as he leaned against the side of her car, his arm resting along the doorframe so she couldn’t open it. “I know your job hasn’t ever put you in this kind of situation. I may be a MacFarlane, but I’m not blind. What you do is illegal, but it’s never put you in this world. This world isn’t virtual. It’s very real and very dangerous.”
She couldn’t look at him right then, her reserves of adrenaline were fading fast. She just wanted to get away from him, go home, break down on her own time, in her own way.
“You need protection.” His tone left no room for negotiation, but Lila wasn’t the type to accept what she was told to do. She would never have become a hacker if that had been the case.
“I can protect myself.” She turned to face him, arms crossed in defiance. She’d lasted all those years with her father. He’d been a responsible addict, but all the same, gambling was a dark and gritty world. She’d made it out. She could handle this herself, like she did everything in her life.
He smiled sadly. “From men twice your size with guns?”
“I’ll get my own gun.”
He sighed, his eyes dark. His gaze turned to something almost tender, and he leaned toward her so that for a brief moment, she thought he might try to kiss her. And honestly, she didn’t know what she would do if he tried.
Then he pulled back, his voice changing to a firm tone.
“You’ll get a gun, I’ll teach you how to use it, and then you’ll learn self-defense. How to fight. Even at your size, you can hold a guy off long enough to scream for help. If you won’t take a guard, then at least you’ll be better prepared if anything like this happens again.”
She wondered how in the world he’d find time to run an organized crime syndicate and still give her shooting lessons, but she shrugged. “Fine, I’ll let you know when I have the gun, and I’ll sign up for one of those self-defense courses at the Y.”
Cian snorted. “I’ll have a gun delivered to you tomorrow morning, and you’ll learn self-defense from me at the gym my brothers and I fight at.” He pulled his phone out of his pocket and shot off a text. “I’ll have someone here to drive you home in just a few minutes.”
Lila felt her exhaustion morphing to dismay.
“Look, I realize you’re used to having everyone follow your orders, but beyond our joint project, I’m not your employee. You can’t just…” she sputtered for a moment, “make me do things!”
Cian’s fingers were warm on her jaw as he forced her to look at him. She’d never known a man who would just touch a woman like that. In the law-abiding world, it would be sexual harassment. In the geek criminal world, the only touching would be done via computer.
And maybe it was that shock, the dismay and surprise, that caused her to stand still, allowing him to hold her jaw between his powerful fingertips. Whatever the reason, Lila didn’t move as Cian gazed at her, his expression deadly serious.
“I am used to people following my instructions. And do you know why they do?”
Lila swallowed uneasily. Now was when he was going to tell her something about concrete shoes and Lake Michigan. She was certain of it.
“Because it’s how they stay safe,” he finished. “I don’t know why you chose the life you have, but it’s time you realized it’s dangerous. I’ve never known anything else. I was raised to do what I do. It’s in my blood, my DNA.” He blinked once, and she saw deep sorrow there for a split second. “I’ve never had a choice. The good thing about that is I’m an expert. I know how to stay safe. How to stay out of jail. How to stay alive.” He smiled briefly and released his grasp on her face. “Now you get to benefit from all my knowledge.”
Lila thought about the differences between Cian’s life and hers. She’d spent so much of her life operating on the wrong side of the law in cyberspace—starting as a teen to gain her father’s attention, continuing on for a brief stint in college to impress professors, then realizing she could earn more as a black hat hacker than she ever could going legit, and deciding to do it to please herself instead of anyone else. Through all of it, she’d considered herself a bit of a badass. She liked the little thrill of being a criminal. She imagined it was what her father felt when he gambled, and as much as she didn’t like to admit it, she still yearned to connect with him somehow.
But she was quickly coming to realize that in all those years, she’d never lived like Cian MacFarlane. Her father’s gambling was child’s play compared to what Cian had seen every day. Her dark web jobs were the tip of the blackmarket iceberg, and Cian lived on the ocean floor. His world was full of guns and blood, men who’d “pull a train” on a woman, and drugs that weren’t simply units stored on a server, but c
rates stored in a warehouse. He’d killed. She knew it. And it crushed her to realize the truth. Lila was a child playing pretend. Cian was the real deal.
A set of headlights pulled up a few parking spaces away, and Lila saw Connor and Finn get out of the SUV they must have been waiting in. They went and spoke to the occupants of the new vehicle, then Connor waved to Cian.
“Your ride is here,” he said matter-of-factly. “Give me your keys, and I’ll have your car brought to you in a bit. One of my guys will stay outside your place tonight, and I’ll be by first thing in the morning—my idea of morning, not yours.”
Lila’s skin prickled with something. Awareness? Fear? Acceptance? Whatever it was, she knew it was major. The feeling had started the minute she heard about this assignment, and it had grown exponentially every time she saw Cian MacFarlane. As she obediently trudged to the waiting sedan and climbed into the backseat behind two big Irish mob goons after handing her car keys to Cian, she knew nothing in her life would ever be the same again.
By nine a.m. the next morning, Cian had spent an hour training Lila how to kickbox. She’d impressed him, her lithe frame moving with ease through the maneuvers he taught her. She’d been wary, of course, and sullen when he picked her up at her row house in the Logan Square neighborhood. But once he’d gotten her in the ring and begun showing her some basic moves, she’d approached it with the same quiet determination she’d shown in her work.
He’d tried not to notice the way her breasts looked in the thin tank top she’d worn, nor how delicate her bones were when she kicked those long legs out. But more than that, he’d worked to ignore how her dark eyes focused on his face when he talked to her. The quiet way she asked the smartest questions he’d ever heard. The serious demeanor she adopted as she watched Liam demonstrate the right way to punch.
Lila Rodriguez continued to fascinate him, and Cian continued to actively ignore that fact with everything he had.
“Where are we going?” she asked yet again as he bundled her into the back of a car and Danny started up the engine.
He narrowed his eyes as he pointed to her seat belt, indicating she needed to put it on. She huffed out a breath in exasperation and did as he directed.
“Is there another word you want me to use for 'shooting range'?” he asked sarcastically.
He saw the tension in her jaw.
“Maybe I have more important things to do.”
“Nothing’s more important than learning how to protect yourself from guys like that one last night,” he countered.
She was stubborn, little Lila. Cian had had her checked out, of course—the daughter of a Korean-American schoolteacher and a Puerto Rican cardsharp, Lila had come by her risk-taking proclivities honestly. While her mother had been the stable provider, her father had been the one who lived to outsmart the opposition, just as Lila did as a hacker.
But even with her father’s less than savory ways, her parents had been married Lila’s whole life, and her father seemed to be well skilled at taking risks without actually risking what mattered. They owned a home and two cars. He’d always managed to pay his gambling debts, never been in jail, and somehow managed to cheat others out of their money and wind up friends with them at the end of the night.
Meanwhile, Mr. Rodriguez’s tiny daughter was turning Cian’s entire day upside down.
“You want me to get her set up on the range?” Danny asked as he held the door open for Cian and Lila to exit the car.
Cian knew he ought to just let Danny take care of it. His main guard was perfectly capable of teaching Lila to use a firearm. It would give him a chance to check in on how the interrogation of Vasquez’s soldier was going and make some plans for what to do next.
But he’d be damned if anyone else was going to spend that time with her—showing Lila how to load the gun, hold the gun, shoot the gun. Cian was certain if Lila was playing with guns, it ought to be his gun she was playing with. He cleared his throat when he realized where those thoughts had taken him.
“No, it’s okay,” he told Danny. “You can set up on one of the other targets if you want to get some practice in. Or take a break, whatever. I’ve got this.”
Danny looked at him with an amused expression, then nodded before walking them inside.
Once they’d secured a private lane, Cian opened up the duffel bag he’d brought and pulled out the Glock 26 he’d chosen for her.
He held the gun out, and she gingerly lifted it, holding it in both hands, barrel pointed at the floor.
“It’s okay,” he said. “It’s not loaded.”
She didn’t look convinced, and he smiled. “It’s called a Baby Glock because of the smaller size. It should fit your hand better than a full-sized gun and has less recoil. But it’s a nine-millimeter, and it’ll take down anyone you need it to.”
She grimaced and turned it over in her hand, looking at the dull black surface and textured handle.
“It loads with a clip.” He pulled one out of the bag and showed her how it snapped into the handle. “And all the safeties are built in, so you don’t need to worry about disengaging anything or about it going off accidentally in a purse or something.”
“So, there’s not an off switch?” Her eyebrows rose nearly to her hairline.
“There is, but the gun sets it for you.”
She looked skeptical.
“Here, let me show you.” He explained the safety action of the gun, how each component engaged and disengaged as the trigger was pulled and then popped back into place.
“But what if the trigger gets bumped by something in my bag, or jolted by a bump when I’m driving?”
“Come here,” he said, holding the pistol out in front of him. He beckoned her to stand slightly in front of him and stepped behind her. “Take the gun.” She did. “Hold it out in front of you. Look along the top of the barrel and on to the target. Got it?” She nodded. “Now pull the trigger.”
There were a few seconds of silence, as Lila pressed her finger against the trigger. Nothing happened.
“Harder,” he said as he leaned down and put his lips to her ear.
The gun fired, and Lila squeaked, taking a small step back and landing against Cian’s chest. “Oh my God,” she muttered as he chuckled.
“Okay,” she conceded. “So it takes a lot to pull the trigger.”
“Exactly,” he said, smiling as she turned to look at him. “It’s somewhere in the neighborhood of five pounds of pull weight to fire it. Not so much you can’t do it fast and accurately, but not so little you’re going to set it off resting your finger on it or having something bump it in your bag.”
She looked at him that same way she had earlier when he’d been teaching her self-defense tactics. Dark eyes, serious expression, mysterious things that swirled beneath the surface. She moved him in some way. He didn’t know why or how, but she did, and the fact was, he had no room in his life for someone who moved him.
He took a deep breath and stepped back, then gently pulled the pistol from her grip. “Now,” he said. “Let’s teach you how to really use this thing.”
Chapter 8
Connor swung his leg back and planted his boot deep in the gut of the Vasquez soldier. The man groaned and retched bile onto the floor of the storeroom at the warehouse they’d taken him to.
“Now, one more time,” Liam said, squatting as he pulled the man’s head back sharply by his hair. “Where the fuck is Vasquez?”
The door to the room opened, and Finn walked in, followed by two MacFarlane men. He held a cell phone in one hand and had a Bluetooth earpiece in place.
“Yeah, he’s right here.” Finn glanced at their captive. “Yep, still breathing.”
Liam snarled as he shoved the man’s head against the concrete floor and stood. “Tell Cian to piss or get off the pot. We’re not going to get anything out of this guy.”
“You hear that?” Finn asked Cian on the other end of the call. “Yeah. Okay.” He wandered back out the door, and th
e guys who had followed him in looked to Liam for guidance.
Liam spat on the man lying on the floor, then tipped his chin at the door, indicating it was time for all of them to leave.
“Gag him so he can’t yell,” he told one of the men before leading Connor out of the room.
Finn walked toward them from where he’d been pacing, finishing his call with Cian.
“Now what?” Connor asked. “This has totally screwed up our plans to make peace with Vasquez.”
“Not necessarily,” Finn answered, that look in his eye telling them he was scheming as usual.
Connor’s phone buzzed in his pocket, and he pulled it out, one ear still devoted to listening to his brother. Jess’s name flashed on the screen, and he swiped it open.
Connor, it’s Carmen. I’m at Holy Cross Hospital with Jess. I found her beaten in her apartment. You’d better get your cheating ass down here. I’m sure this was your fault.
Connor’s heart raced as his entire body went stone cold. Where the hell was Ricky? Suddenly, he couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, couldn’t move. His hand was frozen, clutched around the phone. His mind was a blur of static, and the only thought that penetrated was he could lose her. Really lose her this time. And it was all his fault.
“Hey,” Liam said as his big hand came down on Connor’s shoulder. “Hey, cupcake? What the hell’s the matter with you? You’re white as a sheet.”
Connor swallowed, reality rushing back at him a hundred miles a second. It was like being slammed with an icy-cold wind off the lake, and he sucked in a breath as if he hadn’t taken one in several minutes.
He looked down at his phone screen again and nearly vomited.
“It’s Jess. She’s been attacked. She’s in the hospital.”
Liam turned and slammed a foot into the side of a wooden crate sitting nearby.
“I thought we had Ricky on her? Where the hell was he?” Finn asked.
Connor shook his head. “I don’t know. I just—”
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