by KD Jones
*****
Jagger woke feeling groggy. His head and shoulder hurt something fierce and his mouth was dry. He opened his eyes and searched for Daniela. She was on the other side of the room. He tried to stand but pain shot through his whole body.
“Easy. Lay back down.” Daniela was suddenly by his side, kneeling on the floor. Her small hands pressing against his chest gently easing him back down.
“What happened?” he asked.
“You were shot and didn’t tell me what happened!” She accused with angry eyes.
“Why am I on the floor?”
“Your body held up long enough to secure the building and then it shut down naturally to heal. I gave you a healing shot and one for pain. I had to leave you on the floor because I wasn’t strong enough to move you.” She reached for a bottle of water that she found in his leather sack. The man had all kinds of things in his bag. Weapons, different identifications, can food, bottled water, medic kit, several t-shirts and jeans, handcuffs, and oh yeah…duct tape.
He blushed at the fact he had passed out on the floor. He was supposed to be a tough bounty hunter and should be taking care of Daniela. Not the other way around. But here he was unable to even lift his head without pain incapacitating him.
“Why does my head hurt?”
“I think you hit it on the floor when you collapsed. I’m sorry I couldn’t get to you in time.”
Jagger reached and touched his shoulder where he had been shot. He found that his shirt was gone and there was a bandage over the wound. He looked at her in surprise.
“I needed to clean the wound so I removed your shirt. It’s pretty much toast but I used it as a rag with water to wipe you down.” She blushed and looked away from his massive chest. She felt a little guilty for enjoying the short bath she gave him. Her fingers had lingered when they shouldn’t have.
“Thanks for taking care of me. You didn’t have to.” She could have fled and left him to die.
“Well, your cousin made it clear that if I didn’t, there would be consequences,” she told him nonchalantly.
He didn’t doubt that Vic promised retribution for her if she left him, but he just couldn’t see her leaving him anyway. There didn’t seemed to be a mean bone in her body. Then again he didn’t know her that well.
“You should get as much rest as possible,” she advised him.
“I will in a minute. I hate admitting that I feel tired. But more than that, I am a little hungry. You must be too. We hadn’t had anything to eat before we left for the shuttle station.”
“Do you want soup? There was a can inside your leather bag,” she offered, reaching for his bag.
“Sounds good. My knife has a can opener tool attachment and also a spool tool.”
She pulled out the can and the knife. She opened a can of soup and then turned the knife tool part into the spoon. She scooped a spoonful out and fed it to him. Her eyes stayed on his lips.
“You don’t have to feed me,” Jagger said.
“You hurt your right shoulder and I remember that you are right handed.”
He smiled that she noticed. “Yeah, I am. Thanks. You should have some soup too." He motioned for her to eat some.
“I just hate that I have to feed you soup from a can instead of my homemade special.” She took a spoonful and grimaced at the bland flavor.
“Needs salt.” He laughed at her facial expressions.
“Needs to be thrown out and never to be fed to living beings ever again.”
“Have you always wanted to be a chef?” he asked, taking another spoonful. It wasn’t that bad. He’d had worse.
“No. I never thought twice about it until I was fourteen.”
“What happened at fourteen?” shaking his head that he had enough.
“My parents died in a motor pod accident. I was shipped off to my grandparents. They were great and all but I was forced to leave all my friends behind and I was coming into my awkward teen years. I was also angry over losing my parents. So, I didn’t make friends right away. I spent a lot of time at home doing nothing.”
She smiled as she continued her story, “Then one day my grandmother had decided she had enough of my lazy teenage attitude and ordered me into the kitchen. She proceeded to show me the basics. I hated it at first. But after numerous failures and a few successes, I began to like the challenge of it. I put my all into learning every recipe that she knew. Then I started to change them around and make them into my own.”
“You went to culinary school right after high school?” he asked.
“Not at first. I spent that after graduation summer doing lots of odd jobs trying to earn the money for tuition but all I could get was enough for the first semester. The culinary school I wanted to attend was really expensive.
“Then my grandfather took on a second job and helped pay for the remaining three semesters. As soon as I graduated and got a job at a restaurant, I started to send them money to pay them back. They didn’t want me to but I felt it was the least I could do after everything they had done for me.”
“Your grandfather passed away a while ago, right?” he asked gently.
She nodded. “Two years ago. I encouraged my grandmother to take his life insurance money and pay for her spot at the retirement community they were both looking to join. All their friends were already there. I go to visit her as much as possible.”
“How did you meet your…fiancé?”
“We both know he isn’t anything to me anymore.” She sighed. “About eight months ago a friend of mine introduced me to Lial at a party. He was attractive and we hit off. We started dating. I wasn’t expecting it to turn serious, but three months ago he asked if he could stay with me because he needed to find a new apartment. He said there were problems with his landlord. So I let him move in and he never left. I didn’t insist that he move back out either. In truth, there were times that I thought about it. Our relationship has always been rocky.” She was done with the awful soup and put it to the side.
“Exactly when did you guys get engaged? Because when I interviewed him, he never said anything about that? Only that you were his girlfriend,” Jagger asked.
“I had waited two days for Lial to send a lawyer to help me. The lawyer never showed. So I took out the bail bond agreement and was released. I met up with Lial at our home. He said he needed more time to try to hunt down the real thief. To get that extra time he insisted I get off the planet. He said he couldn’t have his fiancée go back to jail. I was shocked, it wasn't really a formal way to ask me to marry him, same as how we ended up living together, but I went with it. I feel so stupid for believing him.”
Despite his pain, Jagger reached out to touch her hand. “You thought you could trust him. It’s not your fault.”
She wanted to change the subject. “What about you?”
“What about me?”
“Your cousin, Victor, is a full Decaros?”
“Yes.”
“But you’re not full Decaros?”
“No. My mother is human and my father is full Decaros. Vic came to live with us when he was eight.”
“What happened to his parents?”
“Don’t know. One day they showed up, dropped him off on our doorstep, and…left him.”
“How horrible.” She suddenly felt guilty for thinking badly of the rough speaking bounty hunter.
“He’ll tell you himself that he was better off without them. They were both too self-centered to pay attention to a child. However, my parents welcomed him and we grew up as brothers. We are partners in the bail enforcement agency.”
“Wait, you own the agency?” She was impressed.
“Yes. We started out working for another agency for about five years, then decided we wanted to own our own business. We relocated and opened up for business.”
“Do you have a wife or girlfriend?” Oh shit, she asked that out loud.
He gave her a sexy smile. “None as of yet. My work calls me out at all hours of the
day and night at a moment’s notice. Kind of hard to establish a relationship with that kind of schedule.”
They fell into a comfortable silence. Jagger didn’t mean to but he ended up drifting off to sleep. He woke up once to find Daniela laying down beside him. He used his unhurt arm to drag her to his body. Her soft warm body was a comfort to him. His must have been for her too because she sighed and fell into a deep sleep.
Hours later Jagger felt something pulling him from his comfortable sleep. Something irritating was kicking at his foot. He reached for the gun on his hip and clicked the safety off. Then he opened his eyes at the same time he pointed his gun at the person standing over him and Daniela.
Chapter Nine
“Vic? Why the hell are you sneaking up on me? I could have shot your ass!” he kept his voice low enough not to wake Daniela. She had snuggled and laid her head against his chest. He briefly caressed her soft brown hair and then looked back up at his frowning cousin.
“We need to talk,” Victor told him, pointing to the other side of the room.
Jagger sighed knowing that we need to talk was another way of saying we are about to have a fight. He slid out from under Daniela, lowering her head gently to the floor. Then he stood, careful not to jar his right shoulder. The healing agent was working pretty good. He was mostly achy now.
As he made his way over to where his cousin stood by the stairs, he glanced around. He could see out the windows that there were two other bounty hunters doing a perimeter check.
“How did you get inside? I secured all the doors and the windows have bars on them?” He hated being caught unawares.
“Isaac, the man is a genius with locks,” Vic told him. Jagger grunted.
“You want to tell me what’s going on?” Victor asked.
“I already told you over the phone. There was a shooter at the shuttle station. The perp I had handcuffed was killed and I got hit in the shoulder.”
“How’s it doing?” Victor pointed to the bandaged wound.
“Better, thanks to Daniela.” Jagger glanced back to make sure she was still resting.
“Yeah, about Daniela. What is going on between the two of you?”
“Nothing.” Jagger could hear the lie in his own voice.
“It did not look like nothing when I walked in. I found you two wrapped around each other liked barbed wire on a fence.” Victor glared at him with censure in his eyes.
“Fine. There is an attraction between us, but that’s all. We have not taken it any further. I know my job is to take her in. However, there are inconsistencies that make me believe she is innocent of the charges.”
“They’re all innocent. Either they all are framed, or it is all a big misunderstanding. It’s still not our place as the bounty hunter retrieving them to decide their innocence. We take them in, get paid, and leave,” Victor told him. It’s not the first time Jagger heard this from Vic. It’s Vic’s cardinal rule that all new hires are taught day one. Don’t get involved, do the job, and get out.
“It’s not safe to try to take her in right now. There have been several attempts on her life already.” He was going to fight Vic on this. There was no way he would allow Daniela to be endangered again if he could help it. Bob’s bloody image came to his mind and he knew it could have easily been Daniela that was hit.
“Fine, I’ll have Elsa and Drake guard her until we take her in. But know this, we are taking her in.” Victor knew he was being overly demanding, but he had to look after his cousin who was more of a brother to him. Whether his cousin liked his protection or not, he was getting it.
“Fine, they can help me guard her. But we still have the issue with there being a shooter out there, probably watching the shuttle station.”
“I’ll call the others to come in and we’ll think of something.”
“Who all did you bring?” Jagger asked as he walked with his cousin to the main entrance.
“Drake and Elsa are outside scoping out the area. Abe is investigating the upper levels. I have Isaac going out for supplies and more food.” As they continued to talk they walked outside shutting the door behind them.
*****
Daniela remained immobile on the floor until she heard the main door shut closed. Then she sat up. She had woken up a few minutes ago and overhead Jagger speaking with his cousin, Victor. She didn’t want them to know she was listening.
It hurt that Jagger was still thinking of her as just a job. He admitted to an attraction but made it sound as if it wasn’t anything more. Of course it wasn’t. She was a fugitive and he was the bounty hunter charged to bring her in. What was she expecting? She barely knew Jagger. Her track record with men was awful. Her own ex—fiancé wanted her dead.
She sat up and brought her knees to her chest hugging herself. A lone tear trailed down her cheek. How had her life turned upside down so quickly? One day she was working as a sous chef in a five star restaurant. The next, she was a criminal on the run, being hunted by bounty hunters, and then she almost got shot dead at a shuttle station. She thought about Bob’s dead body lying on the floor of the shuttle station. That could have been her. It would have been her if not for Jagger. She owed him her life.
“Don’t think about fleeing, lass. You wouldn’t get far,” a male voice with a Scottish accent said as he made his way down the stairs.
She glanced up at the man. He was about six feet six inches, two hundred pounds, with light brown hair pulled back in a ponytail. Sexy and dangerous were the two words that popped into her head.
She stood, stretching. “I wasn’t planning on leaving.”
“I’m sure you weren’t. Just know that there are five more of us here watching you now. You’re not going to get anything past us.” He stopped at the bottom of the steps and folded his arms across his chest.
How had these huge guys got into the building without her or Jagger seeing them? The door opened and Jagger walked back inside followed by his cousin, Victor, two more serious looking men, and a gorgeous blonde woman followed. They all wore leather. Maybe it was a requirement, like a uniform or something. It made them look sexy and dangerous.
Jagger’s eyes locked on to hers. She waited to see how he planned to handle things. She would take her cue from him. He nodded at her and looked away. Guess that answered that.
“Abe, what’s the upper floors like?” Jagger asked him, stopping to stand by him.
“Two upper floors, each with four rooms each. The top is in a little better condition. There is a full suite in addition with a kitchenette and two bedrooms with actual beds. They’re dusty but will suffice,” Abe reported off what he had found.
Vic stepped forward taking charge. “Abe, I want you on the main floor, Elsa will monitor from the second floor. Drake, I need you to scope out the buildings across the street. I want to know if they are lived in, who lives in them, or if they are abandoned like this one. The rest of us will head to the suite on the third level.”
Daniela grabbed her bag from the floor and followed behind the female bounty hunter. She didn’t look at Jagger, too afraid he would see the hurt expression on her face. She pushed her emotions down deep to protect her heart from getting hurt any further. It might have pulled it off if it wasn’t for her shaking legs that felt like rubber.
Jagger followed behind Daniela, worried about how quiet she had become. She hadn’t said anything since Vic and the rest of the bounty hunters had shown up. A thought suddenly occurred to him. He hadn’t bothered to introduce her to the others. They were probably a scary group of people. Most of them in jeans and leather. Well, Elsa wore all black leather.
None of the other bounty hunters had bothered to speak to her either. They wouldn’t either because one of Vic’s other cardinal rules is to limit you interaction with the fugitive. But it bothered Jagger that his friends had basically ignored Daniela. Damn, he was getting soft. Vic was right to be worried about him letting the woman affect his judgment.
They stopped briefly on the second floor a
s Vic gave Elsa instructions. The beautiful blonde woman nodded her head. She glanced at Daniela briefly with sharp cold eyes. It mad Daniela shiver with dread. She didn't want to be on this woman’s bad side.
“Don’t worry about Elsa, she’s naturally cold-blooded. Her icy stares have been known to make a man’s balls fall off.” A man a few inches shorter than the other men said from behind her. She turned to give him a onceover. He was attractive with curly brown hair, kind brown eyes, and a bit of a beard on his young face. He was hot in scruffy looking way. He smiled at her warmly and put his hand out to shake hers.
“I’m Isaac James, the technical support for the team.”
She put her hand in his and shook. “Daniela Martin, sous chef and…fugitive.”
Isaac laughed. “Nice to meet you. Even under these circumstances. In case you didn’t notice, we are the only full humans here, so I thought we might as well be on first name bases.”
“It is nice to meet you too.” She gave him a friendly smile. He held on to her hand a little longer than necessary but it wasn’t uncomfortable. In fact, she found his touch to be…comforting.
“Let go of her hand now.” Jagger’s angry voice made both Isaac and her jump apart.
Isaac held up his hands. “Hey, man. I was just trying to calm her. She seemed really upset.”
Damn, Isaac and his touchy-feely ways. He was full human but he was also born with the touch empathic ability. He can sense other’s emotions with a touch and can calm their moods as well. He just didn’t like the idea of Isaac touching Daniela at all. “She doesn’t need your special skills. Keep it to yourself.” He stormed off not looking back as he headed up to the third floor.
Isaac sighed and followed Jagger up. Daniela stood there still stunned over what had happened. She looked back at Victor who was waiting for her to move. “What was that about?”
“Isaac is a touch empath and was calming you. Jagger didn’t like it. Get it moving, Martin.” He gently nudged her up the stairs.
An empath? Wow. She had never met one of those before. So why was Jagger acting so mean? She shrugged her shoulders. Men were just weird no matter what species they were.
