by Alison Kent
“Fine.” She doubted she’d see him again once she’d bandaged him up and sent him on his way, but whatever. “I’m not a complete amateur, by the way. I did a year of nursing—”
She slammed the car to a stop, sucking in a sharp breath. Then she sat there, her fingers wrapped around the steering wheel, and stared straight ahead.
Army’s bike was propped against the garage door.
She’d told him to put it up last night after supper. She’d reminded him this morning before driving him to school. But he couldn’t find his homework and they were running late and—
“Are you okay?”
Nodding, she turned off the engine and climbed out, heading for the garage’s side door. It was a pain in the ass to open but she put her shoulder into it and shoved. Then she went back for the bike that still needed a kickstand and rolled it inside.
She propped it against the wall in front of the lawnmower and inhaled deeply—gasoline, mouse droppings, dirt, stale cardboard—then wiped her eyes with the heels of her palms. She didn’t know what to do. She didn’t know what to do!
She pulled herself together as best she could and turned to find him standing there, a silhouette filling the doorway. She breathed deeply again; his scent mingled with the rest of those in the garage, fitting in. Belonging.
Boy, this wouldn’t do. “What’s your name?”
It was suddenly the most important thing in the world that she know. He had saved her. He had military training, had seen combat. He fought like a pro. Mostly. Maybe he’d have an idea as to how she could get her son back and get out of this mess in one piece.
“Kyle Abbot.”
Kyle. Kyle. She turned it over, testing it. “I’m Annie. Annie Whitman.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” she said because she was not going to tell him what she’d been thinking.
“Annie.” He moved closer, looming but not threatening. “What’s wrong?”
The way he said her name... Shivers rolled through her, raising gooseflesh on her limbs. “I was just thinking”—she latched on to the first thing that came to mind—“that I’m going to have to mow the lawn before too long.”
He held her gaze with his, which was searching, as if reading her mind. “You sure you’re not thinking about the little boy’s bike you just put up?”
He stared at her, his eyes so, so blue, his lips full even when pressed into a grim line. The scruff on his face was so inviting, but more so was the width of his shoulders. She wanted to step into his arms and have him hold her while she cried. She really needed to cry.
Instead, she told him, “My ex kidnapped my son.”
Chapter Three
KYLE SAID NOTHING WHILE Annie prepped for cleaning him up. At least she’d grabbed his gear out of his truck. And had already thrown his laundry into her machine. The truck wasn’t an issue. It was legally registered, no discoverable traps. It would be fine for now... though with Annie’s admission, the kidnapping, he wasn’t sure when he’d get back to it.
The thugs had scrambled once a man had come out of the pawn shop next to the washateria waving a shotgun, a woman behind him on the phone. Kyle remembered that but little else. He wasn’t sure if he’d gotten into Annie’s car on his own or if she’d had help.
The fact that he’d come out of the fight with the injuries he had proved he shouldn’t have gone into it. He was worn out, his top form somewhere back on the obstacle course at the compound. But he wouldn’t have been able to live with himself if he hadn’t intervened.
This was what he did. This was what he’d been trained to do. What Jeb and Lucinda had chosen him for when he was ten years old and they’d rescued him from foster care.
He huffed to himself, listening to Annie down the hall gathering supplies—she’d ordered him not to move or bleed on more of her house than he already had—because rescue was exactly what they’d done. He’d been in a house with five boys his age, one bedroom, bunk beds for six. Three squares a day, twenty minutes per meal. Three hours of homeschool. Seven hours of sleep.
No sunshine or swimming or hiking, no comic books or video games, no picnics or bicycles or running at full speed. Because the other thirteen hours were spent packing eBay shipments for the couple who’d taken them in. Slave labor. The system didn’t care.
If not for Jeb and Lucinda, he wouldn’t know what it meant to have parents, to be loved by parents. What remained of his childhood after they’d saved him had not been normal, so he couldn’t say he understood what it was to be a kid. But he hurt for the little boy whose bike needed a kickstand. And for his mother trying to keep it together.
He thought about Lucinda, about Loren’s kidnapping. “What’s your son’s name?”
Annie returned to sit in the kitchen’s straight-backed chair that faced his. There were three usable ones. The fourth was piled high with kid stuff. Puzzles, coloring books. Action figures. A row of Hot Wheels. Three mismatched socks. He’d forgotten a six-year-old’s feet were so small. The chair had one leg askew. Maybe he could fix that before he left. Replace the broken—
Focus, Kyle. You’re not here to play handyman. It wasn’t his job to make things better around the house, mow the lawn, water the grass, WD-40 the hinges on the sticky garage door. He wasn’t her knight in shining armor. He wasn’t anyone’s knight.
Annie cleared her throat and finally said, “Army.”
He frowned. “Like... the armed forces army?” She nodded and he asked, “Why?”
“Because air force and marine corp didn’t make good names and navy was iffy.”
She opened a box of gauze, ripping the top with a whole lot of unnecessary force and sniffing back the emotion she’d obviously dragged in from the garage.
The subtext in her comment, and her obviously angry hands, had him asking, “Was this his dad’s thing? The military?”
“Depends on what you mean by his thing.” She jerked a pad from the box, two others came with it. She left them where they fell on the floor. “He tried to enlist after high school but didn’t pass the physical. Or so he says.”
“You don’t believe him?”
“I did then. Now?” She shrugged, tearing open the sterile packaging on the square in her hand. “Anyway, I used to tell people Army was short for Armand.”
But that’s not what she’d told him. “I once knew a kid named Crash so...”
“Seriously?” Shaking her head, she dampened the pad with alcohol. “Who would name their kid Crash? That’s like inviting trouble.”
“Hold up,” he said when she brought the pad close to his face. His skin was still damp from the soap and water he’d used earlier at her kitchen sink. He needed a shave.
She tilted her head and looked at him askance. He figured that was her mom look, keeping Army from balking. “I don’t have betadine, sorry.”
He closed his eyes and nodded. He could take care of his cuts and scratches once he was home, but if he was going to stick around long enough to find the boy, he needed intel.
Allowing her to do her thing was a small price to pay. Right. Who was he kidding? It was no price at all. “How does Army feel about his father?”
“He doesn’t know his father. Not really.” She dabbed the cut on his jaw and he only winced once. “When Vince used to come by, Army always stuck close to me.”
Used to. Interesting. “He doesn’t come by anymore?”
“He doesn’t need to be part of Army’s life.”
Kyle considered that and let it settle, then asked, “How did he end up part of yours?”
Finished with his jaw, she reached for his sleeve, slipped her fingers into the hole the knife had made, and ripped the fabric to the hem. “Because I should’ve known better you mean?”
Take it easy. Don’t push. That’s not how to recon. “That’s not what I said.”
“It’s the truth.” She leaned close, lips pursed, frowning as she probed his wound. Her fingers were thorough but gentle, her skin soft.
He wished he hadn’t noticed that part. “He was charismatic, and I was desperate to escape my parents’ home.” The wound gaped when she released the edges. It was tender but it wasn’t deep. “This really needs stitches.”
He looked at her face instead of the damage. “You have butterflies?”
Her hand went to her stomach as if it took her a second to put his question into context. “I can cut some out of duct tape. Or I have needle and thread.”
“Let’s go with the tape,” he said, and her lips quirked in amusement. Tough guy was a pussy. Yeah. He got it. Didn’t keep his gut from tightening as he imagined her mouth at the base of his throat, his chest, his abs... “Tell me what happened. With Vince.”
That shut her down. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
He reached for her wrist, fine-boned and fragile in his hand, and held it gently, then held her gaze with all the strength he had in him. “Tell me. Take my mind off the torture.”
“My touch is torture?” she asked wryly, getting up to rummage through two drawers. She was wearing faded jeans and a sleeveless blouse that barely reached her waist. He caught glimpses of her skin as she stretched and bent and walked... and yeah. His focus was shot.
“I’m thinking it’s going to be.” He cleared his throat as she came back with scissors and a roll of bright yellow tape, pulling off a long strip, then pushing her wavy blond hair from her face. “What were you doing at the washateria? Your machine obviously works.”
“I manage it.” She sectioned the tape into six narrow strips she lined up along the table’s edge. “And I work at the pharmacy next door.”
The pharmacy. “That’s what Vince wants from you. Drugs. Oxy.”
“And other things.”
“He deals locally?”
“Markit is a small town,” she said, hesitating before cutting his useless sleeve out of the way.
He wondered if she’d decided against asking him to take off his shirt. Good call if so. Her fingers on his arm were hard enough to ignore.
She gave a quick shake of her head and went on. “We’ve got a really high unemployment rate. With not much to do and no money anyway... though there’s always money for drugs.”
“Getting by by getting high.” She nodded, opened another gauze pad, and poured on the alcohol. “So you give Vince the drugs and he’ll return your son?” He sucked in a sharp breath at the cold sting. “What happens next time? He’ll take him again if you don’t cooperate?”
“I don’t know.” She used another gauze pad to dry the skin around the wound then started taping. “That’s what he sent his men to tell me.”
“And I fucked that up.”
The second tape strip in her hand, she sat back and stared at him. “You didn’t fuck up anything except my car seat and your arm. If you hadn’t shown up when you did...”
Shuddering, she leaned forward to apply the tape. “Like I said. They need me. They wouldn’t hurt me yet. But who knows what I would’ve agreed to? Not that I’d actually give him the drugs, but at that moment...” She shrugged and went silent, tears filling her eyes.
It took everything in him not to reach for her, to hold her, to pull her to his chest and tell her not to worry. He had this. “It’s your kid involved. No one would blame you if you did.”
“I’d blame me,” she said sharply, returning to his arm. “Committing that class of felony would have me ending up in prison. Or on the run. And what would happen to Army then? There has to be a way out that won’t put his future at risk. I just need time to think.”
Kyle let her finish taping his arm back together, turning over options, best- and worst-case scenarios, thinking back on other kidnappings— “Will Vince hurt him? Neglect him?”
“I can’t believe he would. But then I can’t believe he took him.” She leaned down for the gauze pads on the floor, then sat back and stared at them as if they held the answers she needed. “He used to be clean-cut and wholesome. That was who I married. I don’t even remember when things started to change.”
“What did he do? For money? Before the drugs?”
“When we were married, he worked for his family’s real estate business. Claude Investments is the only game in town. Then one morning I woke up to see him holding a very scary gun.” She scooted back her chair and stood. “I asked him about it, thinking it might be for protection. He showed a lot of rural properties and would run into snakes, feral hogs, stuff like that. But he just told me to shut up. So I guess not.”
While she put away the scissors and tape, Kyle considered what she’d said. His gut was tight, his voice too when he asked, “Has he ever hurt you?”
“Not physically. And really not until now, taking Army,” she said, arranging things in the drawer, tossing a handful of twist ties into the trash. “He injured his back not long before the gun incident. It made it hard for him to drive which made it hard to work. I’d planned to finish nursing school but had to find a job. We could’ve moved in with his parents, but he said no.”
“Why?”
“Your guess is as good as mine, though I’m sure the idea of living with Mommy and Daddy was too much for his ego. Didn’t matter that it would’ve made things easier on me.” She moved an extension cord to a toolbox under the sink. “By then I was making enough to rent this place and take care of my son, and I was done being an afterthought.”
The more Annie told him, the more he wanted to beat the shit out of her ex. He hated bullies. Hated men who devalued women. “He didn’t put up a fight?”
“He didn’t care about us.” She turned to lean against the counter’s edge. “Not long before I found him with the gun, he’d sold a warehouse to a partnership of some sort and spent more time with them than at home. It wasn’t like I minded him having friends, but he’d show up at all hours drunk or stoned. I dunno. Maybe I’d have felt differently if they were guys I knew. Ones we’d grown up with, you know? Anyhow, I’m pretty sure they’re who he’s working for now. Or reports to. Or however this criminal stuff works.”
His arm throbbing, Kyle digested all of that, then asked, “What’s in the warehouse?”
She crossed her arms and shrugged. “Nothing as far as I know. They use it as a hangout or clubhouse, but they don’t store any sort of inventory. He mentioned playing pool and poker. Watching football on the big screen. I wouldn’t doubt if they bring women there,” she added, her mouth grim. “He slept there a lot, so I assume they have sofas, if not beds.”
“A front then?”
She nodded. “People talk but no one does anything. Not that there’s anything to do. He’s got law enforcement in his pocket now. You’ll notice the cops haven’t rushed over here to question me about what happened. Or to find you.” She made a sound of disbelief as much as disgust. “And to think it only took him four years since our split to get to where he is today.”
“Asking his ex to steal drugs and kidnapping his son.”
“Yeah.” She returned to the table, blowing out a heavy breath, her chair creaking as she dropped into it. “Honestly, if I knew how to disappear, how to create a new identity and vanish, I’d probably give him what he wants, take Army, and poof. But I know he’d find me. He’s got connections and I have nothing. No one.” Then out of the blue, “Do you have kids, Kyle?”
The question caused a stirring in his gut. “No kids. No woman.”
“Really.” Her eyes flashed and he wondered if Army’s were the same dark blue. “That’s surprising. The woman part anyway.”
“Why?”
“I’d say look at you, but I’m pretty sure you know what you look like. I would think women would flock and flutter.”
He smiled at that. “I don’t meet many women.”
“Because you’re not looking? Not interested?” She cocked her head to one side. “Because you like men?”
“I like women,” he said with a rough laugh. “But I’m not the catch you might think I am. Work gets in the way. Other things—” He stopped himself
. He didn’t need Annie trying to fix more than his arm. And what he’d been through in his life had no bearing on the here and now.
Except it did.
She crossed her legs and stared at him curiously, swinging her foot so that her toes brushed his calf. “Are you broken, Kyle?”
Let me count the ways. He hedged. “I did a really bad tour overseas and it’s given me hell.”
“Are you in therapy?”
He thought about Ezra Moore who’d once belonged to a team similar to the Avenging VIII. “Oh yeah. It helps some. Mostly it makes me—”
He stopped again because he realized he was talking to a woman he’d only met a couple of hours ago. Telling her things he never told anyone. And he knew more about her than he did about any of those he’d bedded since returning stateside.
There hadn’t been many. He scratched that itch himself most of the time. It was easier that way. He didn’t have to explain... anything.
But right now, all he wanted was to take Annie to bed and tell her about the folding metal chair he’d sat in thirteen hours a day as a kid, the paper cuts which were nothing compared to those from fights with scissors, the sleepless nights when he’d kept his hand wrapped around a piece of glass from a figurine he’d purposefully broken while packing it.
So he stood, stepping away from her and knocking his chair to the floor as he did. He righted it and said, “I need to get back to my truck.”
“Okay. Let me get my keys and I’ll take you.”
He nodded rapidly. It was the right thing to do. Leaving. Not staying.
She hadn’t moved away or gone after her keys. She was staring at him, studying his physical damage, and he feared she was going to see the rest. The little boy who’d been left to fight for the food the others had grabbed from his tray when he didn’t want to fight at all.
He shook his head as rapidly as he’d nodded moments ago. His week with Ezra had left him with a lot of open wounds and if he started talking—
“You look... lost.”
He shoved his hands to his hips and stared at the floor, at his boots, at the drops of his blood on his jeans. He wasn’t even sure if they were from the fight or from the fall he’d taken. He blew out a heavy sigh. “I’m fine. I just... need to go.”
