Protection Detail

by Julie Miller

  He found her in the back hallway outside Seamus’s room, chatting with Mutt and Jeff. Or rather, she was standing with her arms crossed, listening to his buddies run on while she had a blank expression on her face.

  Her gaze shot over Jeff’s shoulder to meet his as he approached. She forced a smile onto her pale lips and turned back to Mutt and Jeff. “If you’ll excuse me, I really do need to see to my patient.”

  “Think about what I said,” Jeff reminded her. What exactly had the three of them been talking about?

  Seamus’s door swung open and his aging father propped his walker in the middle of the hallway, forcing the two men back a step. “Jane is part of dis fam-ly. The Wat-ons protect our own.”

  What had him riled up?

  Jane squeezed his arm. “My hero. But I’m okay. I’ll get your shower ready.”

  After she disappeared inside Seamus’s suite, Mutt realized Thomas was standing behind him and turned to apologize. “I didn’t mean anything. If I hurt her feelings I’m sorry. My concern’s with you, pal. We ain’t the spring chickens we used to be. You’re risking your life for her.”

  More curious than affronted by whatever his tipsy friend had said, Thomas nodded. “I appreciate it. I’ve always appreciated you guys. When we served together. When I lost Mary. Now.”

  Jeff pushed the shorter man down the hallway in front of him, pausing beside Thomas. “Same here.” He reached out with a one-armed hug, carefully avoiding the two mugs of coffee. “C’mon, Mutt. I’m taking you home.”

  Once they’d gone, Thomas looked down to see his dad frowning. “What was that about?”

  “One of dem was warning Jane dat dey didn’t want to tee you get hurt ’cause of her. Don’t know if dey meant you need to watch your back or your heart.” Seamus lifted his pale blue eyes, reminding Thomas of the stern police sergeant who’d raised him. “I didn’t like de tone of what I could hear troo de door.”

  Now he was more curious about the exact words, and why they’d felt compelled to confront Jane. “Thanks for defending her. Mutt’s had too much to drink. But that’s no excuse.”

  “They’re right, t-son. You could get hurt.”

  “My backside or my heart?”

  Seamus didn’t smile at the joke. “You’ve lost too much already.”

  “Anybody in this house could be hurt, Dad. Badge Man kills cops. Someone’s had a grudge against us even before he came to town. We’re all targets.”

  “Whose house is dis?”

  “Mine.”

  “Whose family is dis? Whose fwiends?”

  “Mine.” Why had he ever thought he was in charge around here? “I know where you’re going with this, Dad.”

  “You have most to lose.” Seamus thumbed over his shoulder to the sound of water running in the en suite. “Whose woman?”

  Jane wasn’t his yet. She might never be. “Do you agree with Mutt and Jeff? That Jane’s a danger to me? To us?”

  “No.” Seamus sounded pretty emphatic for a man with a speech impediment. “I like Jane. I want her to tay. Go get bad guys.” He turned his walker and headed back into his room. “And den you go get her.”

  * * *

  THE UNHAPPY MAN’S smile faded the instant he stepped out of Thomas Watson’s house and left the reminiscences and loyal promises behind him. How could they still be talking about Niall and Lucy’s wedding and celebrating Seamus’s birthday and being happy when everything about that picture of familial bliss was completely wrong?

  Thomas didn’t know it yet, but he was planning a suicide mission. He’d listened to his war-room scenario to rescue his Boyle tramp, and made sure he was a part of it. But the fact that Thomas hadn’t been able to keep his eyes off Jane while he talked about controlling the situation, and getting Badge Man to focus on Jane and him rather than the setup closing in around him, only bolstered his need to make Thomas pay for taking Mary from him and letting her die. And to look at Jane that way in Mary’s own house! With her beautiful blue eyes smiling from her portrait over the mantel, Mary had to watch her worthless husband making cow eyes at that skinny little nurse. Such a grand plan to save the wrong woman when he should have done half as much to save Mary.

  And though Thomas still didn’t suspect him after all these months, Thomas was certain he was dealing with two unsubs now, working in tandem. The Unhappy Man would make sure Thomas knew the truth before he killed him—and that wouldn’t happen until he’d forced him to watch his new girlfriend die. The Unhappy Man pulled out into traffic and revved the engine a little too eagerly as that euphoric thought washed over him. Thomas would know what it felt like to have his heart ripped from his chest, just as his own heart had been when he’d lost Mary all those years ago.

  The Unhappy Man eased up on the accelerator and merged with the traffic heading toward the interstate. Patience had never been his strong suit. But he wasn’t about to blow a plan that had been twenty years in the making because of a speeding ticket. Nothing had been right in those twenty years. He’d lost the woman he loved with no hope of ever winning her back because of Thomas’s carelessness.

  But he was making things right now. And payback was a bitch.

  He’d turned Thomas’s life upside down. Turned his father into a stuttering invalid. Threatened his children. Made the Watsons afraid of their own shadows. Turned that prickly Jane Boyle into the target of a serial killer.

  Saturday night, their lives would be destroyed.

  He’d waited twenty years for this—he could wait a couple more nights.

  He drove across town and pulled into the parking lot of a nondescript motel. Carefully ensuring that he hadn’t been followed and that no one was overly curious about his arrival, he parked in front of room 17 and tapped three times on the door.

  “Yeah?”

  “It’s me.”

  The door opened a crack for the occupant to identify him, then closed again to unhook the chain and let him in. Despite the nip of fall in the air, his new friend was dressed in nothing but his jeans. His new compatriot chained and bolted the door behind him before walking to the far side of the bed, where he scrubbed his fingers through his wet hair and paced.

  The Unhappy Man’s shirtless friend usually hid the writing tattooed around his neck, and the badge inked into the skin over his heart. The poor sap must be killing himself every time he carved that emblem into another victim’s chest. The young man had told him his sob story about why he needed to kill—about his daddy the cop who’d been so well liked and respected, and how behind the closed doors at home, his hero abused him with a dangerously strict discipline that had warped both his mind and body. Instead of manning up and becoming a cop like Daddy, he’d murdered him instead.

  The Unhappy Man had listened to the young man’s hate and how it all came down to never measuring up to his vaunted father. He’d washed out of the police academy because he couldn’t pass the psych evaluation. He couldn’t even keep a job as a security guard because of his penchant for violence.

  The Unhappy Man had listened. Not because he cared, but because he needed to know everything about this instrument for revenge he was using against the Watsons.

  “Did you see her?” the tattooed man asked.

  “Yes.”

  He finally stopped pacing. “Did she remember me?”

  The Unhappy Man took note of the accoutrements arranged in precise rows on the faded bedspread. The blue rope, the Taser, the knife, his neatly folded clothes. “She didn’t recognize you. Couldn’t give much of a description to the police. But she remembered the noose. She has no doubt you’re after her now.”

  The younger man swore and resumed his pacing. “I told you that was a bad idea. She’s the only one who lived, you know. I should have gotten rid of her and moved on. I don’t like playing games like this.”

  But he
did. “She’s frightened. Don’t you get a rush from that? They’re all afraid of you.”

  “That’ll just put them all on guard against me.” His restless friend finally picked up a black turtleneck off the bed and covered himself. “I watched her at the house. I saw her at the hospital. She’s there twice a week with the old man. I even passed her in the hallway when I borrowed that custodian’s outfit. It would be so easy to kidnap her there. I don’t like taking chances like this. I should move on. You said she didn’t recognize me when I bumped into her. She didn’t see my face. I should leave.”

  The Unhappy Man raised his uninjured hand, urging the other man to calm down. He wasn’t finished with him yet, and needed him to have as much of that fractured brain thinking about the job as possible. “But you’re not alone this time. You have me. It’s easier with a partner, isn’t it? You don’t have to take care of every detail yourself.”

  “I like taking care of those details.”

  And he liked being the one in control of this game. That boob he’d hired to shoot up Olivia Watson’s wedding had gotten careless. He’d left a trail of clues that led the Watson boys to identify him as Gin Rickey, the code name for a hit man who worked for a gunrunning organization in the Ozarks. And now that Duff Watson and his girlfriend had broken up that hillbilly Mafia, the people who’d been running it might talk about his involvement in exchange for a lighter sentence. He doubted they could identify him by name, but they could identify him by the job he’d hired their man to do. Any intel they shared might lead back to him.

  He wasn’t about to rely on anyone else to bring his mission to punish Thomas Watson to the satisfying conclusion he wanted.

  He picked up the tattooed man’s mirrored sunglasses off the bed and put them on. When the younger man’s territorial OCD kicked in and he started to protest, the Unhappy Man pulled out the gun strapped beneath his jacket and pointed it at him. The little tug of pain at the bandaged wound on his wrist didn’t stop him. “It’s not your decision to make. Now let me tell you how this is all going to play out.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Thomas pulled his head from beneath the shower’s spray and let the hot water beat down on his sore leg for a few minutes. Between ibuprofen and the heat, the electric shocks of pinched nerves and the ache of muscle cramps had subsided enough that he thought he could forgo the prescription painkiller he kept on hand. Other than past midnight, he had no idea what time it was. The house was finally quiet. Everyone had gone except for Keir, who was parked out front, keeping an eye on things through the night. Because of her injury, stairs were tricky for Ruby, so she was sleeping down in Millie’s room. He was alone upstairs with Jane.

  Correction. He was simply alone.

  Jane had retired to her room long before the last of their guests had left. But he’d seen her light on beneath her door and knew she was still up, probably scribbling notes or drawing rudimentary blueprints of crime scenes—real or imagined—in that journal of hers. She’d let him read what she’d remembered from the night her husband had been murdered, trying to figure out how Badge Man had gotten into their house without breaking in, how he’d tracked her to the running path and how Saturday night’s sting operation was going to play out without anyone else dying.

  No wonder the woman couldn’t sleep. Her nightmares were real. And she couldn’t make them go away simply by waking up.

  He wished she’d talk to him, though. After helping his father get ready for bed, she’d thanked him for the tepid coffee he’d brought her, set it on the kitchen island without taking a sip and excused herself to go to bed. He knew she was exhausted and frightened. He knew she was fighting an ongoing battle to keep the demons of PTSD at bay.

  But he also knew she was smart and strong and determined to do whatever was asked of her to expose not one criminal mastermind, but two, and see them both put away. He only wished she’d let him share the burden she carried. That’s what big shoulders and life experience and late-night conversations were for, weren’t they?

  He wasn’t just a cop coordinating a makeshift joint task force—he was a man protecting what was his. Short of barging into her bedroom again, though, he wasn’t going to get the chance to explain that to her. He grunted a humorless sound in his throat and shut off the water. If he did tell her what he felt, would she listen? Would she at least let him hold her again tonight, and allow herself those few precious hours when she could drop her guard and feel safe?

  He was knotting a towel around his waist when he heard a soft knock on the bathroom door. Thomas released the tension that had strained across his chest and smiled.

  “Are you decent?” Jane asked.

  “No. But you can come in, anyway.”

  He saw a misty silhouette of pink and plaid and heard a soft laugh when the door opened. “That’s an old joke.”

  “Well, it’s not because I’m an old man.”

  Any evidence of a smile had vanished by the time the steam from the shower had cleared the room. For a split second, he thought something was wrong. But then he realized the cloud of steam had impeded her vision, too. Her gaze was wide and staring, scanning him from shoulder to shoulder, from chest to towel and farther down, her eyes darkening with a hungry look as she took in his state of undress.

  The breathless parting of her lips triggered a heated response low in his belly. “Did you need something?” he asked, hearing the timbre of his voice drop a few pitches and grow husky.

  “I, um, came in to check your leg before you turned in for the night.” She cleared her throat, trying to erase the hoarseness that had sneaked into her voice, too. “And your arm.”

  Thomas dutifully stood still, curling his toes into the bath mat as she stepped into the room. His eyes invariably moved to that sexy strip of skin showing beneath her pajama top. Reining in the desire that instantly traveled south, he squeezed his eyes shut and inhaled a steadying breath, only to breathe in the citrusy scent of her hair. Cursing his own randy libido, he resolutely stared into the mirror over the sink, counting the gray wisps dappled through the darker hair curling across his chest.

  For several seconds, Jane was all businesslike, taking his arm and turning it to inspect the new skin growing over the wound. “This is healing nicely. I think we’ll let it air out tonight and wait until the morning to put on a new bandage.”

  Good grief. Was she sneaking peeks at his chest? Had her fingers lingered longer than was necessary against his skin? And was that a pert nipple straining against the pink cotton of her T-shirt reflecting in the mirror? Was she as aware of her actions and reactions as he was? Maybe he should have rethought this and excused himself to get dressed before she examined him further.

  When she knelt in front of him and wrapped her hands around his ankle and calf, Thomas audibly groaned.

  “Does that still hurt?” Running her fingers over his tensed muscles and the harder ridges of surgical scars and skin grafts was sparking a very different sort of ache in his body. And he couldn’t say he was still feeling the heat from that shower. “On a scale of one to ten, what’s your pain level?”

  “Jane...” Her fingers were dancing perilously close to the promised land if she massaged much farther up beneath the towel.

  “Your quad is still knotted like a rock.” She dug her knuckles into the damaged muscle and he flinched. “If I could loosen it up.”

  Enough. There were limits even to his patience. Thomas grabbed her by the shoulders and pulled her to her feet. “I am not an invalid.”

  “I never said you were.”

  “I’m a man.” Her hands braced against his chest as he lifted her onto her toes. “I don’t want to be your boss, a father figure, your best buddy or even friends with benefits—and no, I’m not so old that I don’t know what that means. I don’t want a nursemaid. And I don’t want security to be the only thing you need fro
m me.” He eased his grip on her arms and moved his hands up to her face. He slipped his fingers into her silky hair, tilting those green-gold eyes and beautiful mouth up to his. “But if I don’t kiss you right now, if I don’t hold you...”

  For an endless moment, they were locked together like that, searching each other’s eyes for understanding.

  Then Jane slid her arms around his neck and kissed him boldly on the mouth. There were no more words, nothing to discuss, only a long-denied need rising to the surface.

  Thomas took over the kiss, sliding his tongue into her mouth as his hands found their way to the skin at her waist and snapped her body to his. Her hands roamed over his shoulders and chest and up against his damp hair. She nipped at his chin when he came up for air. She tugged at his towel when he backed her against the sink and rubbed his thighs against hers. He slipped her pink shirt off and covered her small, perfect breasts with his hands while she pressed kisses to his chest and squeezed his bare bottom. Every place she touched him kindled a new fire that heated his blood. A flick of her tongue against his own taut nipple made him gasp for breath and sent a jolt of need straight to his groin.

  He reclaimed her mouth, telling her with his tongue all the things he wanted to do with her body. Her eager responses made him feel male, powerful, whole. He tugged at the elastic of her pants, and they pooled around her ankles. He slipped his hands beneath her bottom and lifted her onto the edge of the counter. Her knees squeezed around his hips as he moved between her legs. This was what he needed, man to woman, skin to skin, need to need.

  He peppered kisses down her neck and over the curve of one breast until he pulled a sweet, pearled nipple into his mouth. Jane jerked against the intimate touch, but she tunneled her fingers into his hair and held him there until he tasted her again. He grinned at the needy hum in her throat and turned his attentions to the other breast until that hum became a breathy groan.