Guarding His Witness

by Lisa Childs

  “I’m not hurt that badly,” he said.

  But he was hurt.

  Concern filled her just as it had when those shots rang out the minute he stepped out of the SUV. They’d been waiting for him—whoever had fired those shots. Had they just wanted him out of the way so they could get to her? Or was there a hit out on him as well?

  She wouldn’t put it past Luther to have put one on him. Hell, he’d probably already had one on him. He’d hated Clint even more than she had. She had no doubt that he probably wanted the former vice cop dead.

  Fear overwhelmed her, but she fought it back with humor so that she didn’t become hysterical. “You shouldn’t be driving because you drive like a lunatic,” she told him. She climbed up from the floor now, and he didn’t push her back down.

  She stared out the windows at the unfamiliar area. “Where are we?”

  He hadn’t been driving that long, but he’d been driving fast so he must have gotten them farther than she thought. They were definitely not in the city anymore, not with the thick woods on either side of the road.

  Rosie was a city girl through and through. She’d been born in the city and had grown up there. She was used to sidewalks, not deep ditches and trees so thick that she couldn’t see behind them. But she suspected there were no houses behind all of those trees, because there were no driveways.

  She suspected there were only more trees.

  Her heart had already been racing from all the gunfire. Now it began to pound even faster. She wasn’t comfortable with isolation, especially when she was about to be isolated with Clint Quarters.

  Then he turned the steering wheel.

  And she grabbed for the armrest and console, certain he was about to drop them into one of those deep ditches. But a culvert of some sort was in this ditch, with a scattering of gravel and dirt on top of it. The SUV bounced down a path that wound between all those trees. It wasn’t a driveway. Driveways to her were either made of concrete or asphalt. This didn’t even have much gravel on it, just a smattering of stones on top of mud and deep ruts.

  The SUV bounced again with such force that Rosie’s head struck the roof of it. And Clint grunted in pain from all the jostling.

  “We don’t have to go to the hospital where I work,” she said. “But we need to go to one.”

  And she doubted there was one in the middle of the woods. “You need medical treatment.”

  “I have a first aid kit,” he said.

  She glanced around the SUV. “Where?” She needed to stop his face from bleeding. His golden beard had turned red with his blood.

  “There,” he said. And he pointed toward a log cabin that suddenly appeared in the middle of the woods.

  “Where are we?” she asked.

  “Home.”

  This was not what she would have expected from Clint. Sure, he’d admitted his parents had been hippies. So maybe there was some of that nature lover in him as well. But still...

  This didn’t look like a place a man like him would choose to live. Alone.

  But then again, maybe it was exactly a place a man like him would choose to live. Alone. Because despite his friendships with the other former vice cops–turned–bodyguards, he was a loner.

  * * *

  Clint had taken her home. Not that he could really call it that. He’d bought the place when he’d quit the force, but he hadn’t moved in much of his stuff yet. And he hadn’t spent many nights there, either. He mostly stayed in the city with Landon at the house they’d rented together when they’d both still been in the vice unit with River City PD.

  He had been at the cabin recently to stock the kitchen and bring in some other supplies. He’d thought it could prove a good place to bring a potential client if the other safe houses were ever compromised.

  He’d never imagined that Rosie Mendez might be the client he’d bring here one day. He’d never imagined Rosie in his home. She had yet to get out of the SUV even though he’d come around it to open her door.

  He’d parked it inside a lean-to beside the cabin. Piles of wood for the fireplace surrounded the lean-to, concealing the SUV from anyone who might have been looking for them.

  “You’re safe here,” he assured her.

  She narrowed her big brown eyes and stared at him, clearly skeptical of his claim. “Maybe from gunmen,” she acknowledged, “but what about lions and tigers and bears?”

  “There are no lions and tigers,” he assured her.

  “What about bears?” She glanced fearfully at the woods around the small cabin.

  “I’ve never seen any here.” Of course, he hadn’t been home very many times, but he didn’t share that with her.

  She reached out, but not for him to help her down from the SUV. She skimmed her fingers along his cheek instead.

  He flinched at the sting of the wound, but it was nothing compared to the first one he’d gotten. It probably wasn’t even a bullet that had grazed his face; more likely it was a piece of glass from the shattered windshield. The SUVs had reinforced glass and metal, but those shooters must have been using special ammunition. The SUV had dents and dings and quite a few holes from the bullets that had hit it.

  He studied her face to make sure she had not been hit. She was so beautiful, her skin such a warm, honey color and flawless. But her curly brown hair was tousled. “Are you okay?” he asked.

  She nodded. “I’m fine, but you’re not. There’s a first aid kit inside?”

  “Yes.”

  She jumped down then and slipped on the damp ground. Her body slid into his. Before she could hit the dirt, he caught her with an arm around her waist, bringing her body even closer to his.

  His body tensed and hardened at the closeness of her soft curves. She must have felt his reaction, because she tensed as well.

  “This is a bad idea,” she murmured.

  It was.

  He shouldn’t have brought her here. He shouldn’t have chosen to be alone with her. But he wasn’t sure who the hell he could trust right now, if anyone. Parker and Spencer had assured him the safe house would be safe.

  But they’d been wrong.

  By accident or design?

  He wouldn’t have believed Luther Mills could get to either of them. But Luther didn’t just pay people off; he threatened them, too. And Parker with his beautiful wife and kids and his big family had a lot to lose.

  Clint had nothing.

  But this cabin.

  And his life.

  And as he stared down at Rosie, he realized he had something else to lose, if he hadn’t already: his heart.

  * * *

  Parker ripped aside the crime scene tape surrounding the safe house and stormed up to the officers interrogating his bodyguards. He had questions of his own for them. “What the hell happened?”

  He’d convinced Clint to bring the witness back here. He’d assured him that it would be safe. No wonder Clint hadn’t been answering his calls. And Parker had started calling him the minute he’d heard the news—not on television but through one of the two-way radios the other guards at the scene had been wearing.

  “We came under attack,” one of the guards replied. But this wasn’t just any guard. It was the man who would soon be Parker’s brother-in-law.

  Lars Ecklund was a giant of a man with pale blond hair and blue eyes. He was also a former Marine, which was why he worked for Parker’s brother Cooper, who was also a former Marine and with whom Lars had served.

  “Do you think they followed Clint here?” Parker asked.

  Lars shook his head. “No. They must have already been here, hiding somewhere, waiting to ambush him.”

  “And you missed them?” he asked disparagingly.

  A person stepped around Lars. Parker hadn’t seen her because the big body of the former Marine had blocked her. Nikki Payne was petite like their
mother, with auburn curls and big brown eyes and an indomitable spirit. “They had to be hiding outside the perimeter. We had the block around the warehouse covered,” she said. “We can’t contain the whole damn city. They came at us fast.”

  Parker shuddered at the danger his sister had been in. He would never get used to her being a bodyguard now. For years he and his twin Logan had kept her chained to a desk in Logan’s office, which was the original one of the Payne Protection Agency. That was why she’d joined Cooper’s when he’d started his own.

  Logan never would have let her out from behind the desk, and neither would Parker if he’d had the choice. “Are you okay?” he anxiously asked her.

  “Of course,” she said, dismissing his concern.

  “She took out at least one of them,” Lars said with pride in his fiancée.

  But Nikki didn’t look proud. She looked regretful. “Not much older than a kid.”

  “But he knew how to use a gun.” Lars touched his shoulder, which had at least been grazed, because his shirt was stained with blood.

  Shame slammed through Parker that he hadn’t noticed immediately that he had been hurt. But his shirt was a dark blue, so it had been harder to see the blood. “Oh, no, you were hit,” Parker said. “You need an EMT!”

  “I’m fine,” Lars said.

  “Was anyone else hurt?” Parker asked anxiously.

  The initial report he’d received had made it sound as if none of his team—and his brothers’ teams—had even required medical attention.

  But there was a long hesitation in which neither Lars nor Nikki would meet his gaze.

  “What?” he asked. “Who else got hurt?”

  “Clint,” Nikki replied. “The minute he got out of the SUV they started firing at him like crazy.”

  “How badly?” Parker asked, his heart beating slow and heavily with dread.

  Lars shrugged, then flinched. “Not bad enough that he wasn’t able to return fire and take out at least one of the shooters before getting back into the SUV and speeding off.”

  Just because he’d left didn’t mean that he was fine. He could have been fatally injured. Maybe that was why he hadn’t been accepting Parker’s calls. It wasn’t because he was mad. It was because he was dead.

  “And what about the witness?” he asked.

  Nikki and Lars both shook their heads. “I don’t know. The SUV came under heavy fire. And these shooters had special ammo—like someone knew about the reinforced metal and glass on our SUVs.”

  How the hell had someone found out about the safe house and the SUVs? Was someone within the Payne Protection Agency working for Luther Mills?

  “It could have been hit,” Nikki continued, then heavily added, “She could have been hit, too.”

  So they both might be dead.

  He cursed.

  And another curse echoed his. He turned around to find that his stepfather had joined them. And Woodrow Lynch didn’t look pleased.

  Parker wasn’t worried anymore about having failed this assignment. He was worried about having failed a friend. He’d assured Clint that he would be safe if he brought the witness back here.

  And Parker couldn’t have been more wrong.

  Chapter 14

  Rosie walked across the front porch and through the door Clint held open for her. The cabin was small, probably just the one room, since a bed stood in a corner of the open space. The four-poster bed was on one side of the big brick fireplace while a couch stood on the other side of it. The kitchen and a small table took up the other half of the area. A door off the back of the open space opened onto a bathroom, but it looked like an add-on. So the place probably hadn’t even had indoor plumbing until that addition.

  Rosie turned back to Clint, who still stood near the door. “Is this really your home?” she asked. For a while, she’d thought he was a liar, had even told his boss that he was. But she had begun to doubt that as well as a few other things about Clint.

  “I haven’t owned it long,” he said. “But I intend for it to be home.”

  “Why?” she asked. The log walls and low wood ceiling and hardwood floors made the place seem dark and small. It felt like a sad place to her, sadder even than the shabby apartment she’d shared with her brother.

  He shrugged, then flinched. “I like the solitude.”

  “Then why did you bring me here?” she asked, forcing a smile for both their sakes. She wanted to distract him from his pain and herself from her fear.

  But maybe there was another way she could distract them...

  First, she had to treat his wound.

  “Usually you refuse to talk to me,” Clint reminded her.

  “You probably prefer that to when I have,” she said. And her face flushed slightly as she recalled some of the hateful things she’d hurled at him.

  He didn’t deny it, but his sexy mouth curved into a slight grin. And her heart skipped a beat at the sight of it. He was so damn good-looking, even with that blood on his face. She needed to clean and treat that wound, so he didn’t scar.

  “Where’s the first aid kit?” she asked.

  He gestured to the bathroom, and she hurried over to it. The room was bigger than she’d thought it would be, or maybe it only looked that way because it was bright with a wide window high in one of the white beadboard walls. There was enough space for a double vanity, a linen closet and a big claw-foot tub. She gazed wistfully at that tub for a long moment.

  “You can use it,” Clint said from where he stood in the doorway.

  Heat flushed her face that he’d caught her salaciously eyeing a bathtub. “I’ve just never seen one that big,” she murmured. So big that they would both fit in it. And she closed her eyes on that image, of the two of them naked in a tub full of water and bubbles.

  Clint groaned.

  And she opened her eyes, worried that he was in pain and she was taking so long to help him. His face was flushed, and his green eyes had gone dark. But he didn’t look like the pain he was in had anything to do with his injuries.

  Had he been imagining the same thing she had? The two of them naked in that tub?

  Her hand shaking, she pulled open the linen closet door and reached for the kit, which was on the shelf above a bunch of towels. The towels looked new and soft. She could imagine him wrapping one around her to warm her skin. Or would he do that with his lips?

  His mouth...

  She turned to find it close to hers, as he’d sat on the counter between the sinks. “You really need to have a doctor look at this,” she said.

  He shook his head. “You seemed to know more than that resident who stitched me up.”

  “I’ve been in the medical field longer than he has,” she explained. She’d worked her way through high school and college as a nursing assistant in the ER.

  “So you can treat me,” he said.

  And she couldn’t argue with that. She dabbed at the wound with a hydrogen peroxide–soaked cotton ball, cleaning away the blood. It was a shallow cut, not a through-and-through. She released a breath of relief. But she knew that wasn’t the only place he’d been hit.

  “Take off your shirt,” she told him.

  He arched his eyebrows. Maybe he was remembering when she’d tried tugging it off in bed at the safe house.

  If Parker hadn’t called and interrupted them, what would have happened? Would he have stopped when he’d touched her? Or would he have taken off her scrubs top?

  Her skin heated and tingled at just the thought of him touching her. But she needed to touch him.

  “I need to look at that shoulder wound,” she said. “I can tell it’s bothering you.”

  Had the resident ever made it back to fix those sutures? She couldn’t remember if he had—before that kid had pulled a knife on her. And Clint had saved her.

  He’d saved her at the
safe house, too, even though he’d come under attack. He must have been remembering that attack, because he hesitated before removing his holster. And when he did, he kept it next to him on the counter. Then he pulled off his shirt, baring his chest and abdomen.

  “Thank you,” she murmured.

  “For taking off my shirt?”

  She was grateful for that and not just so she could look at his wounded shoulder. She was most grateful that he’d saved her life so many times.

  “Thank you for protecting me,” she said.

  “I have my reasons,” he said.

  And her face flushed with embarrassment. “I know you’re just doing your job.” And doing it well.

  “I promised Javier,” he said.

  And she looked up at him. “What?”

  “He was worried about you,” Clint said, “even before...” His voice trailed off as if it was even harder for him to speak of her brother’s death than it was for her. And maybe it was, since he blamed himself for it. “He asked me to make sure that you stayed safe.”

  She sighed. Javier...

  He’d been playing matchmaker. He’d always wanted her to find a good guy who could take care of her, so she wouldn’t have to work so hard and so many hours.

  “That must have been hard for you when I wouldn’t let you anywhere near me,” she said.

  He sighed. “Very hard.”

  Like his body. The man was all rock-solid muscle. She stepped closer to him, to inspect his shoulder, and she could feel the heat of his chest against her breasts. Once again, the bandage on his shoulder was saturated with blood. But when she peeled it off, the wound looked better than it had that morning. The doctor must have re-sutured it. The blood on the bandage hadn’t come from the old wound. There was a new one now, a hole that was no shallow scratch like the one on his cheek.

  She gasped. “Clint! You’ve been shot.”

  He touched it. “It went through,” he said, dismissing the wound.

  “And as it was doing that, the bullet could have nicked an artery or a nerve or torn some muscle tissue,” she said, panic stealing away her breath and making her heart race. “You need to go to the hospital.”