“Stay here, and you’ll meet my brothers.” His cajoling tone nearly made her smile.
As a carrot, it was dangled perfectly. The D and H…Denver and Heath. She hated—oh, she hated—the fact that she wanted to know more about him. What kind of men were his brothers? Were they like him, full of secrets and sexiness? She frowned. “You always seemed like such a lone wolf.” Sure, she’d figured he had other people on the payroll or people he contracted with for help but not family. “You trust them?”
“Yes. They’re my brothers.” His eyes darkened. “I trust Denver, Heath, and now…you.”
He’d just included her in his family. She took a step back as hope dared to flare in her. “This is happening too fast.”
“We’ve been dating for months.”
Her eyes rolled of their own accord. “You can’t call what we’ve been doing dating. We’ve never been out together. Not really.”
“You want to go out to dinner?” One of his dark eyebrows rose.
“No,” she breathed, her legs twitching with the urge to run. She had to get away from him and think. Definitely think. Sure, she’d had fantasies about him staying, but the reality was freaking her out. He kept too many secrets. The darkness in his eyes that he thought she couldn’t see… Oh, she did more than see it. Sometimes she could feel it.
She’d been on the run before, when her mother had dated a convict, and she knew—she just fucking knew—he was running from something or someone. This apartment, this building, was just a temporary stop. Part of her believed he was different from the jerks her mother had dated, but what if her instincts were just as bad as her mother’s had been? What if she allowed herself to get all caught up in one man? That led to disaster. “Ryker, we need to take a step back.” Why was it so hard to breathe all of a sudden?
His head lifted while his eyelids half lowered.
She shivered.
“I know the right thing to say, and I know the right thing to do,” he said slowly, his voice gritty.
“Which is?” she breathed out.
“To nod and take you home, telling you to let me know if you want my help.” His head cocked, just a millimeter, to the side. Tension rolled from him, taking over the atmosphere with the sense of maleness.
She swallowed, and a heated tornado of air, one borne of instinct, whirled through her chest. “Exactly.”
“But I’m not going to do that.” Determination hardened his already implacable face.
She reared back. “You’re not.”
“No.” One of his muscled shoulders lifted. His angled jaw tightened. “The right thing be damned.”
She started to shake her head and stopped when he took a step toward her. The breath whooshed out of her lungs.
“You showed me you, Zara. Whether you meant to or not.” Another step, and the heat from his body washed over her. “When you cooked me meals and cried on my shoulder. You’re sweet and you’re kind…and I’m neither of those things. I’ll protect you now whether you like it or not.”
The anxiety slid right into temper. “The hell you will.”
“Think you can stop me?” he asked softly.
Her head jerked. His behavior was unacceptable and totally not the norm for a modern man…and U.S. law. The more emotional she became, the calmer he became, which provided a warning…one she couldn’t quite decipher but instinctively knew to heed. Yet damn if it didn’t intrigue her as well. “You can’t just do whatever you want.”
“I gave up on doing the right thing years ago, baby. It’s too late, and even if it weren’t, I don’t give a shit.”
There was the part of Ryker she’d always sensed beneath the surface: an immovable rock of sheer stubbornness, of something not quite tame. And his earlier question had been a good one. Could she stop him? “You’re forgetting a couple of things here.” To her shock, her voice remained steady.
“Which are?” The street showed in his eyes, was stamped hard on his face.
“One, I’m not in any danger. The car was old. Two, I could stop you.” Her voice rose, and she tried to tamp it down, to meet him on even terms. But she knew he had an edge she’d never seen and didn’t have.
He smiled then. “We’ll see about the brakes, but that bruise on your face? Yeah, that’s danger. Two, how are you going to stop me?”
How indeed? Her mind spun for answers. “This is kidnapping. If you follow me, that’s stalking and harassment. Don’t think for a second I won’t turn your ass in.” Yeah. She’d use the law.
“You even think of turning my ass in and I’ll turn yours a bright red.”
She gasped. Oh, she’d been bluffing, but something told her he wasn’t. Heat flared through her chest. “I’m not liking you very much right now,” she hissed, feeling both trapped and traitorously interested in this new side of him.
“I can live with that,” he said evenly.
She opened her mouth to let him have it when a hard knock sounded on the door.
Ryker strode past her, brushing her with heat. “What?”
“Have the car up on the lift,” said a deep, very deep, voice.
Ryker opened the door and moved aside. “Zara, this is Denver.”
Zara walked toward a man every bit as big as Ryker. This one had black hair and deep blue eyes, flecked with gold, that revealed absolutely nothing. A scar along his jaw gave him the look of a battle-worn soldier. He wore a ripped T-shirt and frayed jeans. Man, she wished she wasn’t half covered in mud at the moment. She held out her hand. “Hello.”
He finished wiping his hands on an oil-covered rag and then gently took hers. “Hi.”
She nodded, noting a scar across his palm. One just like Ryker’s.
Denver released her and shoved the rag into his back pocket. “Bad brake lines.”
“How bad?” Ryker prodded.
“Worn and leaking.” Denver glanced at her. “Really worn.”
Well, geez. It wasn’t like she’d had time or money to hit a mechanic’s. “I’d noticed the brakes were getting tougher to use, and I thought to get the car into the shop next week.” Relief, the full and blooming kind, whipped through her. She’d almost subscribed to Ryker’s goofy notion that somebody had tried to harm her.
Ryker’s expression didn’t change. “Any chance somebody did it deliberately?”
Denver shrugged.
Ryker kept still. “If I wanted to sabotage somebody, and their brake lines were that bad, then it’d be easy to use a wire sponge and finish the job. Hell, even sandpaper might’ve worked with worn brakes.”
She shook her head. “Nobody wants me dead.”
Ryker ran a knuckle across the barely there bruise on her face. “Uh-huh.”
Her knees wobbled. One little touch, and he sent her body into overdrive. She should panic, but instead, she wanted to crawl up onto him and plaster herself to his hard body. Man, she needed a vacation.
Denver cleared his throat. “I doubt it.”
Ryker’s lips pressed together, his patience obviously dwindling. “I need more, Den. I’m having trouble interpreting your meaning right now with the monosyllables.”
Denver glanced down at the floor and steeled his shoulders. “As a means of harming somebody, especially on such a small hill, it sucks. My guess is that the brakes were just worn down.” He looked at Zara, his words rushed. “It’d be easier to just shoot the car from the hillside.” He sucked in air as he finished speaking.
“Yet we’re not sure if anybody did anything,” Ryker rumbled, clapping his brother on the back as if in support. “So if they wanted to stay under the radar, they have.”
What were these odd undercurrents? Zara shook her head. “My engine went out six months ago, and the transmission was next. The mechanic told me the brakes were bad, but—”
“But what?” Ryker asked, way too softly.
Denver looked from Ryker to Zara and back, his gaze contemplative.
A ruckus came from outside the door. “Hey. Why is there a pie
ce-of-shit car up on the lift?” A guy wearing a black coat loped into the hallway, his greenish brown eyes sizzling and his brown hair shaggy across his collar. “Oh. Hi.”
Denver jerked his head toward Zara and lifted his eyebrows.
Ryker nudged Denver in the ribs with an elbow and then stepped aside. “Zara, this is Heath.”
They shook hands. Another scar. Zara ran her finger along it as he drew away. Interesting.
“The car is Zara’s,” Denver explained, his gaze not leaving hers, a smile tickling his lips.
“Oh. Sorry about the ‘piece-of-shit’ description,” Heath said, also not looking away.
She nodded, trying very hard not to feel like a bug under a microscope. The men watched her, studying her, their gazes more than a little curious.
“Stop looking at her like that,” Ryker snapped.
Denver looked at Heath and shrugged.
Heath smiled. “Like what, brother?” he drawled.
Ryker coughed. “Like we’re back in high school and a pretty girl has dropped by.”
He’d just called her pretty in front of his brothers. Zara fought the insane urge to preen like a teenager.
Denver snorted.
Heath nodded. “Like we ever went to high school.” He traded smiles with Denver.
Ryker’s sigh was full of suffering. “Heath, why are you dressed up?” He looked down at Heath’s boots. “With boots again? I told you to get shoes.”
Heath shrugged. “I had to do a local sign-in with three other new attorneys and meet the judges, which was a pain in the ass. I haven’t had time to get shoes.”
“You’re an attorney?” Zara asked.
“Just got sworn in yesterday,” Heath said, his tone bland.
Zara kept still, her mind spinning. “And the three of you own a business?”
The other two men finally stopped looking at her and turned their attention toward Ryker, obviously giving him the chance to reply.
He nodded. “Yes. I’ll tell you about it later.”
More secrets. Zara frowned. “Why did you guys move into town?” So much wasn’t adding up, and maybe the two men now shuffling their feet would tell her more than Ryker ever had. Although, that was all sorts of screwed up. Now she felt like she was back in high school, playing it coy. That wouldn’t do at all.
“We won’t be here long,” Heath muttered, his upper lip twisted. “Sorry.”
She shoved a piece of hair out of her face, a little intrigued by this more-than-honest brother. “I figured.”
Ryker cut her a look then, and it sure as hell wasn’t full of patience. “I need a moment with Zara.”
Her chest grew heavy.
Heath made a quick exit, and Denver followed, pausing at the door. “The car?”
The guy really didn’t use many words. Zara opened her mouth to answer, but Ryker beat her to it.
“Scrap it,” Ryker said.
“No.” Zara moved toward Denver, only to have Ryker block her path. “That’s my car. Do not scrap it.”
Ryker’s nostrils flared, and he kept his gaze on her. “Take the car off the blocks, and I’ll let you know our plan tomorrow morning.”
Denver shut the door quietly behind him.
She looked at the closed door. “What’s up with him and monosyllables?”
“He doesn’t talk much,” Ryker said, “doesn’t like to talk, but he makes an effort for us.”
There was a well full of information being left out, but Denver wasn’t really her business. “All right.” She turned back toward Ryker.
“What’s it to be? Are we staying at your place or mine tonight?” Ryker asked.
She worried her bottom lip, her mind turning events over. Never, not once, had she been a coward, and she wasn’t going to start now. “I haven’t decided. Now you start explaining who you guys are and why you’re suddenly renting offices in Cisco.”
He leaned back against the door. “Oh, you’re going to explain where you were today first, after you have a shower and get rid of the mud. Do you need help getting into the shower, or would you like to handle that yourself?”
Chapter
9
Ryker waited until Zara had fled into the master bathroom, insanely grateful he’d purchased bath towels the previous week, and then he went out into the hallway.
Heath leaned against the door to his own apartment, ankles crossed. Exhaustion had turned his eyes bloodshot. After Zara’s accident, he’d stayed in town and been on the phone or computer, still obsessed with the serial killer case. “She’s pretty.”
“Yeah, she is,” Ryker said.
“You can’t be seen publicly with her, Ryker. I know she’s not a redhead, but she could still be in danger by being close to us.”
Ryker breathed out heavily. “She might be in her own set of danger, so I can’t leave her alone. I’ll stay under the radar with her, so when our good old serial killer comes knocking, he won’t know anything about her. Any luck with her medical or financial records?” Ryker kept his voice low in case she finished showering.
“Not yet, but Denver is working on it.” Heath drew in air. “Why don’t you just ask her?”
Ryker nodded. “I’m planning on it, but considering she’s been keeping secrets, I’d rather know the truth before asking.”
Heath snorted. “That is not how trust works, brother.”
Yeah. Good point. Ryker reached into his back pocket. “The guy who hacked our system came into the office earlier and wants to hire us for a job.”
Heath shoved off the wall. “Really?”
Denver pushed open the door to the stairwell and stepped inside, his gaze going from one to the other. “We’re meeting here?”
“Yeah. I was just telling Heath that I met the person who hacked into our system. We need to scout the security cameras and see where he went next.” Ryker slowly unfolded the paper Greg had given him.
Denver sighed. “An external source wiped the security cameras. The hacker is good.”
That fuckin’ kid seriously knew his electronics. “The hacker is about twelve years old, named Greg.”
Denver’s eyebrows drew down. “Twelve?”
“You could’ve done it as a teenager,” Heath said slowly.
Denver nodded. “Yeah, but we’re not normal.”
“Amen to that,” Ryker said. “I’m thinkin’ maybe this kid isn’t normal, either.” He handed over the picture of Sylvia Daniels.
Denver took it silently and handed it to Heath.
“Greg wants to hire us to find her. Says her name is Dr. Isobel Madison and that she’s part of some covert governmental agency,” Ryker said.
Heath shook his head, his eyes firing. “No way.”
Ryker kept a wince off his face. The woman had shown up at the boys home periodically through the years to test their scholastic and physical abilities. For a while, she’d claimed she was leading a governmental study about kids raised as orphans, but once Ryker had learned to discern a lie, he knew that was untrue. Why she’d studied them, he still didn’t know. “It’s not a coincidence this kid wants to find her.”
Heath’s chest lifted with a huge breath, and he blew it out through his nose. “I thought we were done with that witch.”
“Me too,” Denver said, staring down at the picture.
Heath growled. “Is the kid messing with us? I mean, he did hack our files. Maybe this is just another ‘Fuck you.’”
Ryker replayed the entire meeting in his head, his heart hurting for Greg. “I don’t think so. He’s almost desperate to find her, to the point where I could smell it on him.”
“Wait a minute. If he’s good enough to hack us, then why doesn’t he just find her himself?” Heath asked slowly, his hand shaking a little.
“Says he can’t.” Ryker rubbed his chin. “Says he read our files and saw how we find people nobody else can.” With skills they shouldn’t have, really. “Greg said he couldn’t find her but thinks that we can.”
&
nbsp; “He knows about us?” Denver asked, his head going back.
That was good. That Denver was still speaking in complete sentences when talking about the past was a good sign.
Ryker shook his head. “There’s no way for Greg to know much about us, but he suspects we’re able to do something most folks can’t. He can’t understand the rest of it.” Unless the kid had his own special gifts. “It’s not a coincidence that Sylvia—or rather, Isobel Madison—studied and taught us…and this special kid, the best hacker we’ve ever found, is looking for her.”
“We cannot open that fucking can of worms,” Heath snapped, his eyes wild. “Everything will unravel, and we just got to safety. Of a sorts.”
“I know,” Ryker said. “But what choice do we have? If we don’t help the kid, he’s going to turn us in to Sheriff Cobb.”
Heath scrubbed both hands down his face. “Damn it, I know. Even if the little shit wasn’t blackmailing us, we have to figure out what’s going on. I’ve always wondered about Sylvia, and it appears there’s more to her than we thought. Maybe—”
“Don’t say it,” Denver grumbled.
Heath cut him a hard look. “Maybe she has the answers about us. I mean, why we’re different. Why we have high IQs and super hearing. Why we can read a lie on most people. The weird stuff.”
“Maybe she knows about our families, the people we’ve been searching for,” Ryker added. It wasn’t a coincidence they’d created a detective agency to find the lost. “This kid may lead us to the answers we’ve been hunting for since escaping the home.”
Denver slowly shook his head, his eyes stark. “We have lives, and things are good. Digging up the past will lead to pain and death. You know that.” His voice broke, and heat swelled from him.
“What I know is that the past has always been coming for us. Now maybe we have a chance to get there first,” Ryker said quietly. He pulled out another drawing to hand over. “After Greg left, I quickly sketched his face.” The kid wasn’t the only one who could draw.
Heath studied the picture, his shoulders straightening. “Strong bones, sad eyes.”
Deadly Silence Page 8
