by Amber Malloy
Suddenly, a vibrating sound from his pants broke the strange spell between them. He reached into his pocket.
“Knight,” he answered. “Yeah, I have the target.” He stepped away from her. “If I’d known you were keeping tabs on me, I would have been much harder to find.”
His tone seemed impartial, but his rigid posture told her something different. Walker wandered toward the spotless kitchen, leaving Ashe rooted to her spot.
“No… I just got off a mission and I didn’t plan to stay in the city.”
She tried to keep up with his conversation, but C.T.’s screams echoed through her head. That horrifying sound played on a loop. As she’d been on the phone with her partner, Ashe had imagined the man’s hands around her throat. After she’d arrived at her door and seen C.T.’s lifeless body, everything had become a blur. Sleeping monsters from her past had been startled out of their slumber. Just the thing to rachet up her constant battle with anxiety, her ongoing souvenir of her past.
“You should sit.” He guided her to the couch. “Your leg.”
Ashe hadn’t heard him end his phone call. She glanced down at her knee. Blood soaked her suit.
“Do you mind?” After ripping the rest of the fabric from her torn pant leg, Walker studied her wound. “One second.”
He got up and left the room.
She was chilled to the bone and a sharp shiver ran down her spine.
He came back with an emergency kit. “We’ll clean it first, but you might need stitches at some point.” Opening the box he held in his hand, Walker got down on one knee. “Are you okay?”
“What?” Confused by the sudden softening of his tone, she glanced into his amber-colored eyes. Face-to-face with the beautiful man, she noted—not for the first time—how he resembled a dark angel.
When he applied a pad of alcohol to her leg, Ashe released a hiss.
“Sorry.” Walker blew on the offended spot. “I should have warned you.” He caressed the back of her knee with calloused fingers. “You’ve had a rough go of it. Are you all right?”
Under different circumstances she would believe that his eyes sparkled with interest, but she knew that couldn’t be the case. Mere minutes ago, he’d called her the target.
“It’s just a scratch,” she told him. “I’ll be fine.”
Ashe didn’t truly believe that. Her whole life had just imploded. Not for the first time, but she promised it would be the last.
* * * *
Overhead lights glided across the truck’s windshield. Ashe sat in the passenger seat without the foggiest idea where they were headed.
“Do you have your phone?”
“Oh…yeah.” She dug into her purse and found her cell. After passing her smart phone to him, she instantly regretted her decision. Walker rolled down his window and tossed it out. “Well, there’s that,” Ashe muttered.
He chuckled. “Sorry, but we don’t know who could be tracking you.”
Matching his smile, Ashe took a moment to appreciate the sexy man’s profile before the gravity of her situation settled back into her soul.
The life she’d built had blown up a few hundred miles back. Ashe drew her purse close. Shock from the situation had worn off about fifteen minutes before, but waves of uncertainty had taken its place. “Uh, where are we going?”
“Safehouse.”
“Is this part of the plan?” she asked.
“No. I want to get a better feel for your case before J”—he stopped mid-sentence—“someone picks you up. It should be a couple of days at the most. We’re going to stop at a store at the next exit. I strongly suggest you buy items to alter your look.”
She opened her mouth, but nothing came out. Instead, regret seeped into her mind, contaminating her thoughts.
Chapter Three
Weeks later
Wolfram, Langley and Knight offices—also known as WLK Security—occupied the entire top floor in a coveted uptown location in Manhattan. They used the exclusive workout facilities for training. More often than not, Walker headed up the drills, but today he sat in a lineup of meetings with high-profile clients. Since he didn’t have patience for the business side of the firm, his partners often scheduled everything on the same day.
Never in a good mood after a marathon session of consulting, he left the conference area. After passing his notes to his assistant, Walker stepped into his office. The nondescript room appeared stark, with minimal furniture.
“What do you think happened to those two?”
Walker glanced over his shoulder at his top recruiter and silent partner, Tank. The man’s bulk seemed to take up the width of any space with walls.
“Those chick lawyers.” His trainer jerked his thumb at the television screen on the wall before he grabbed the remote off his desk to turn up the sound.
“Set to appeal to the United Nations Council concerning human trafficking, Attorneys Cruz and Marcille went missing before their scheduled speech…”
A picture of Ashe and her partner graced the screen. The beauty he’d saved weeks ago gazed away, while her partner appeared to challenge the camera with her presence.
“I bet the hot, sexy one offed the other hot, sexy one in some kind of lesbian murder suicide,” Tank offered.
Walker signaled for him to turn the set off. “No more Tinder for you. It’s rotting your brain.”
“Big butts and a smile… That’s where it’s at.” Tank pulled out his phone and flashed his cell in his direction. A carousel of women in various degrees of undress went across his screen.
“Trust me when I say I’m losing hope for you,” Walker noted.
“Get in line.” The big man chuckled. “Are you done adulting for the day?”
“Yep,” Walker told him.
“We’re hitting the climbing wall in a minute, then the pub.”
“Can’t. Got to check on my grandparents’ property. It acquired damage in the storm last week,” he lied. He’d kept his distance from the beauty too long. Walker honestly didn’t know what to do with her, but he refused to let J8 get their paws on her. He just wanted to be surer what was going on first.
“The one on the Cape?”
“Yeah, I’m thinking of selling it,” he admitted, close to the truth but not quite. Walker had inherited the place a while back and had never taken the time to clean it out. It made no sense to leave it empty.
“I may have a guy who’s interested. Let me know?”
Walker packed his bag with a few essentials and turned the light off in his office, with no plans to stay in the Cape for long. “You’ll be the first person I call.”
“Really?”
“No,” he told the giant, while he made a beeline to the elevators. “You would be the absolute last.” Walker got into the cab and pressed the lobby button.
“No faith… I like that. It leaves me room to impress you.”
As the doors shut, he laughed at Tank’s sunny optimism.
* * * *
The flight didn’t last long enough for a decent nap. Walker grabbed a car service to the beach house and worked on the outline for WLK Security’s latest project. They had been hired to provide protection in Dubai for some royal kid’s celebration and the schematics were a beast to figure out.
Immersed in his work, it didn’t register that the driver had stopped the car. He glanced up at his grandparents’ three-story cottage. Although it was still in pretty good shape, the place needed a little work. If he decided to sell, the wood stunner wouldn’t take long to unload.
As he stepped onto the wraparound porch to unlock the door, he promised himself to make this visit a quick in and out. J8 wanted Ashe released into their custody. If the agency didn’t have a history of turning and burning their targets, he would have given her up willingly a few weeks back.
Walker reached for the ancient lock and opened the front door to the blue-colored wood home. A full-on assault of rich tomato sauce intermingling with the ocean breeze smacked him in the face.
It had been closed off for the better part of a decade, so Walker hadn’t stepped into it since his teen years. Before Ashe’s arrival, sheets had covered the furniture. He took in the bright tones of blue and cream that warmed the house.
Following the sound of voices toward the patio, he noted the changes she’d made to the cottage since he’d stashed her there. Once furnished in thick fabrics and dark tones, the light and airy ambience enhanced the feel-good energy of his old summer haunt.
The sound of Ashe’s laughter drew him into the kitchen, where pots boiled and bubbled on top of the stove. His stomach rumbled from the heady aroma, but the sight of Ashe shook him to his core. Walker hadn’t felt this type of attraction to a woman in years.
Clad in a bikini and a skimpy cover-up, she stood outside the French doors. Wild, reddish-brown curls streamed down her back. He’d suggested she change her appearance, but he’d had no idea Ashe would resemble something out of a 1950s B-movie.
The absolute best genre ever!
“Are you looking to replace that flooring upstairs?” Nosey neighbor Tom’s nasally tone snapped him back to reality. “Dan, two streets over, is a whiz with carpentry.”
Ashe raked stray leaves from the pool with the cleaning pole. “Not sure. I’ll have to check with—” She stopped mid-sentence. “Speaking of the devil.”
Walker stepped out of the house, and she greeted him with a smile.
“Walker!” Tom scrambled to get up from the lounge chair. His nosey-ass neighbor had built his deck above eye-level of the fence, a fact that hadn’t gone unnoticed by his grandparents. “What’s it been…ten years?”
He waved for the old man to take a seat before he fell over. “I haven’t been able to get out this way much,” he admitted. Without his grandparents around, he’d felt no need to visit.
“Military, right? Then what? Private work for the government?”
Walker didn’t answer. He could tell the man didn’t know anything.
“Your fiancée here has been quite the hit around the neighborhood.”
“How so?” he asked, intrigued about Ashe’s title, among other things. She’d remodeled his grandparents’ home, cooked and flirted with his lusty neighbor. Apparently, the gorgeous attorney had been bored.
“What am I going on about? You two haven’t had a proper greeting. Go on and give your fella a smooch hello.”
“We’re fine. We don’t need to—” Walker began.
Ashe’s soft lips cut off his next word. Against good common sense but not his will, he put his hands around her waist and deepened their kiss.
A warm ball of lust spread through his body. Revved up, he wanted more, but she pulled out of his grip with a wink. “I’ve got dinner going. We’ll catch you later,” Ashe said to Tom.
“Oh, okay. Yeah, I’ve got a new Jeopardy to watch anyway,” Tom muttered.
Walker grabbed her hand and led her into the house.
With a sexy laugh, she hurried to close the double doors. “Sorry about that. The snitch would have ratted us out to the whole neighborhood by the time the ten o’clock news hit the air.”
Walker bit back a smile. “So, we’re engaged now…”
“Almost a day after you dropped me off, Tom popped by. I get the impression he’s the self-appointed neighborhood watch.”
“It’s been a while since I’ve been back here. Good cover,” he admitted.
“Yeah, I figured a messy breakup would be an easy explanation when I leave.” She picked up a spoon and took the top off one of the pots. “Any word on that?”
A safari print cover-up almost hid her fabulous body. Distracted by the bikini underneath, he tried not to stare. He thought he saw something on her back but couldn’t be positive, past the glittery tiger emblem sewn in. Perhaps if she took off the rest of her clothes, he could see it better. “On what?”
She glanced over her shoulder with an upraised eyebrow accompanied by a knowing smile. “My case.”
“Oh.” He didn’t tell Ashe that J8 had demanded for her to be released into their custody—a request he’d rudely denied until he’d done some digging himself. The life she’d once known would be over. Walker hated to see Ashe lose everything she’d worked so hard for. “Very little,” he admitted.
She turned down her full lips before she went back to the simmering pots. “Are you hungry?” she asked.
A quick in and out to the Cape had turned into something else. The minute he’d laid eyes on the beautiful attorney, his plans had changed on the spot.
“Sure.” Walker pulled the chair away from the chef’s island, attempting to bat aside any indecent thoughts about her. “I could eat.”
Chapter Four
After dinner they took their glasses of wine into the sitting room to talk. Ashe hadn’t known much about Cape Cod before Walker had unceremoniously left her in the beachfront town. Nevertheless, within a month, she’d found creative ways to outmaneuver the retirees.
Seventeen miles away from mainland Massachusetts, the ritzy island sheltered bored residents. They all seemed to search for reality-show-type entertainment.
“Sorry about the house. I had to come up with something to keep them out of my hair,” Ashe explained. It may have been presumptuous of her to renovate his grandparents’ home, but from what she could tell, it had all but been abandoned. “I can change it back if you don’t like it,” she joked.
Noticing its bad shape from the minute she’d stepped through the door, Ashe had thrown herself into fixing up the place. It had helped to keep her mind off her current fugitive status.
As she took a sip from her wine glass, she watched Walker stoke the fire with the poker. The temperature had dropped outside from an unseasonably warm eighty-five to a chillier fifty-eight degrees. Dressed in business attire, he didn’t at all resemble the military angel who had come to her rescue. Instead, he favored one of those sexy Wall Street bankers her partner C.T. had loved to string along.
Caught off guard by his visit, Ashe had thrown on a maxi dress before they’d sat down for dinner. Having been hidden away at his house for weeks, she felt they were on uneven footing. On top of everything else, Ashe didn’t want to feel vulnerable in front of him.
“Honestly, I should be the one apologizing. Dumping you off here with no game plan was a bad move. Besides, I forgot how nosey everyone is—especially Tom. Mainly Tom.” Walker stood up and dusted his hands off on his pants. “Ah hell, who am I fooling? I’m officially a shitty grandkid who inherited a great property. You did me a huge solid. Thank you.”
When he took a seat in the matching wingback chair across from her, their gazes connected. Throughout his visit, she’d sensed more than a passing interest from him. Unfortunately, the man’s unreadable expression mixed in with his lack of physical contact spoke volumes. “How about we take a look at your phone? You mentioned something about your partner?”
“If you recall, you threw it out the window somewhere between Stamford and Bridgeport. Besides, I thought J8 was going to take over my case?” Walker glanced away for a moment but couldn’t hide his dazzling smile that changed his dark features. Angel, she thought once again about the man who radiated such intense energy.
“Yeah, I thought I’d take a crack at what’s happening first before handing you off.” He dug in his pocket and pulled out his cell. Using his fingerprint, he unlocked the screen before tossing it over to her. “You mentioned the cloud?”
Not at all surprised by his total recall of their conversation, she accessed her account through his smart phone. “C.T. and I would often record our calls to one another. Since they were mostly business and rarely personal, we started to do it out of habit.”
She located the last call and hit Play.
Walker kept his eyes on Ashe. With his extensive background in the military, J8 and finally private security, he could effortlessly dissect her reaction. Somewhere along the way, he realized, he might have lost a sensitivity chip. Manipulating moments like these
reminded him of that particular character flaw. For the first time in a long while, he wanted to put work to the side and comfort the woman in front of him.
Thankfully, the cocoa beauty appeared to be made from hard stock. There were no tears, but an air of sadness clung to her. Although Ashe’s perfect face morphed into a mask of grief, she continued to listen to the audio.
The call had taken place in Ashe’s New York hotel room. The partners had made plans to assemble their team and meet for one last prep on their presentation. They were taking evidence to the United Nations to urge them to file sanctions against three countries that continued to turn a blind eye to human trafficking.
While a New York brogue touched C.T.’s cadence, Ashe’s voice encompassed more of a sensual lulling tone. They laughed about one of the junior partners’ insistence on joining a prep session he called work-related sleepovers. A knock at C.T.’s door had interrupted their light, fluffy conversation.
“Who is it?” Her voice could be heard forever frozen on the cloud. “But I didn’t order anything. What the hell are you doing?” She must have opened her door wide enough for someone to shove their way into the room. A quick scream was cut off.
“Hey,” Ashe said in the audio record. “C.T.?”
A muffled yelp and a scuffle broke out. “Where is… Where is she, you fucking bitch?” The audio came in and out. A specialist would have to boost the sound.
“I stayed connected and made my way down to her room,” Ashe said, filling in the blanks for him. “We usually fought over who got the bigger suite since we’re on the same track in the firm. We had to rock-paper-scissors the whole thing out.”
As her grip tightened around his iPhone, Walker offered her a slight smile. He nodded his head, encouraging her to continue.
“The door to her room was cracked. I pushed it open and saw—” Unshed tears glimmered in Ashe’s eyes, but she didn’t release them. “C.T. was on the floor and this guy was tossing her room.”
