Hotshot (11 page)

He turned his head and looked under her car, trying to assess the threat from his limited vantage point. She wriggled again. “Be still.”

“I’m trying to look,” she shouted. “Maybe I can see who it is.”

Him
looking was one thing. Shay exposing her face was another matter altogether. “An ID won’t mean a thing if you’re dead.”

“I’m more likely to smother,” she muttered, her breath hot against his cheek.

Her heart pounded against him, hard, fast with a fear she wouldn’t let past her bravado. His arms convulsed around her. Breasts to chest, her hips cradled against him, and yeah, his body was hepped up with adrenaline and still hard from their kiss. He would worry about the erection later, once the bullets stopped.

He clutched her closer, her citrusy smell filling what little air there was between them. Screw waiting for these thugs to quit shooting. What if the shooter left the car? He had to get Shay out of here. He slid his arm up to open the door . . .

Just as brakes squealed, and the car sped away.

That fast it was over. Silence surrounded them. The neighborhood echoed with that wounded quiet after a storm. He scanned the parking lot, the basketball court, across the street . . .

Abandoned. Everyone had run for cover.

And Shay was still alive. He kissed her again, firmly.

Slowly, the air around them cooled as a siren sounded in the distance. He eased up onto his elbows, lifting himself from her, even as their mouths held until the very . . . last . . . second. Shay stared up at him with confused but passion-fogged eyes. He started to apologize, but apparently his voice wasn’t working right yet.

He turned his head to the side, coughing to clear his throat and hopefully his mind. A glint on the asphalt on the other side of her car tripped his attention. He stared harder, his brain on a fucking gerbil wheel trying to process everything barraging him. About six feet away lay something he recognized well from his first night in town. Their shooter had used and tossed.

The gun from Shay’s little backpack.

ELEVEN

Fifty yards away, Officer Jaworski sealed the little gun in the evidence bag.

Shay hugged her stomach while crowds gathered and gawked across the street. There had been a time when she didn’t care if she lived or died. That time had long passed.

She looked at her bullet-pocked car and shivered. Police had roped off the scene, marking shell casings on the ground, more bullet holes in the center’s street sign and a billboard. She was seriously starting to hate this parking lot.

At least no one had died this time, which was somewhat comforting, but the increasing violence brought a thick cloud of impending doom she couldn’t shake. She snuck a glance at Vince standing solid and steady beside her. The past hour had been filled with giving statements, and while she hated what had happened, she welcomed the distraction from speaking about what happened
before
the shooting.

A kiss that still had her body on edge, her senses already on total overload from the shots, the danger, the fear. She plowed her fingers through her hair, remembering the urgency of his touch as he’d freed her short ponytail.

Vince moved closer, the heat of him warming her back, his head dipping toward her ear. “While we’re stuck here cooling our heels waiting for Jaworski’s questions, you and I should talk.”

Not in this lifetime, Hotshot.
“Talk about what?”

“Don’t play coy here. We can’t ignore that kiss. Hell, probably half the neighborhood saw.”

“Then half the neighborhood witnessed a mistake. Quite frankly, I’m more focused on the drive-by.”

“A mistake?” he hissed as if he hadn’t even heard the rest of what she’d said. “You can’t tell me you didn’t feel something last night in the hotel room. Even before that. This has been building for a long time.”

“And now we know.”

“Damn straight. There’s a chemistry here that needs to be dealt with.”

“I am dealing with it. By staying away from fire.” This man had already burned her once without laying a finger on her. She didn’t want to think of how badly he could singe her to the core given free rein over her body. Or worse yet, her feelings.

One thing was certain. She couldn’t trust her own will-power anymore. She needed to put distance between them.

Without a word, she strode toward . . . she wasn’t sure what, except the destination would be somewhere away from Vince.

She made it all of three steps.

He gripped her upper arm, his touch nearly as hot as the fire it stoked. “You can’t just put your fingers in your ears and chant, ‘La, la, la, I’m not listening.’ ”

“Says who?” She shrugged to tug free, but he held firm.

Just her arm, for crying out loud, and already she ached deep and low to dive right back in for round two of wrapping herself around Vince’s hard-muscled body.

“Pardon me?” the community center guard interrupted, giving Shay the edge to jolt away. A retired police officer, he wore his new uniform with crisp precision. “They’re impounding your car and need the keys.”

No car, no apartment, no purse. She couldn’t even have her dog for comfort, since she’d given Buster over to her neighbor to watch. All of which seemed petty to complain about when she could have died. “The key is still in the ignition. I was about to leave when the shooting started.”

“Thank you, Miss Bassett.” His eyes blazed with the excitement of being back in the thick of things. “I’ll bring it around for the tow truck.” The old flatfoot launched into a light jog back toward the crime scene.

Shay was alone with Vince again, but not for long. “I think it’s best that I stay with someone else.”

“Because of that kiss that doesn’t exist.”

“I can stay with Angeline. In fact, I should go ahead and call her now.”

“I thought you said she already has a full house.”

“Can you promise me that if we’re alone in a hotel room, we won’t kiss again?” Or more.

His silence answered loud and clear.

“I’m calling Angeline.” She pulled out her cell phone, the tow truck beep, beep, beeping as it backed to hook up her car.

Her thumb hovered over her cell phone keypad as she watched the guard slide into her little car to move it into a better position for the tow truck. Her ten-year-old compact wasn’t much, but it was hers. Pocked with bullets, it had protected her well this morning. How odd to feel such a swell of nostalgia for a car she’d planned to replace when the end of the year sales rolled around.

She forced herself to look away, turning her back and focusing on her phone again. Vince scowled at her, obviously not one bit pleased about being overridden.

Tough.

She hit the preprogrammed number and snuck one last look at her soon-to-be-towed compact, the guard cranking the engine. The phone rang—

And her car exploded.

Don guided his car through the landscaped entrance leading into his condo complex and wished raging thoughts were as easily steered.

He had a couple of hours for a shower and power nap before he needed to return to the office. He wouldn’t have left at all, but his people wouldn’t have their take on the video feed ready until then. He suspected it could be a long time before he saw the inside of his place again.

His heart jackhammered a litany of denial in his ears, but he couldn’t ignore reality.

Some bastard had tried to blow up his daughter.

Had he and Paulina been so focused on concerns about an attack at the hearing, they’d missed a sign? His screwup could have cost Shay her life.

He wound along the narrow road, inching past a rent-a-cop doing rounds in his cart. Yet another reminder of how close Shay had come to dying. If not for that too-thoughtful-for-his-own-good old guard moving her car for the tow truck . . . There had to be more they could do.

At least they had a lock on a cell phone from those responsible. Now they had to hope the kid didn’t toss it. Their intel showed it was a prepaid sort, but unlike the mob, these thugs didn’t have disposable income. He wanted to grab the little bastard and rattle his cage.

Paulina, however, had vetoed him. She thought that would alert others in the chain, causing them to close ranks. She insisted they could learn more by cloning the cell phone, enabling them to trace all the other numbers it called. The dark ops team’s advanced technology expanded the scope, speed, and reliability of sniffing out a network through electronic cloning. Now that Paulina had fast-tracked the secret FISA warrant needed to cover their butts legally, they were ready to roll. Vince and his fellow aviators would be spending a crap-ton of time at their workstations.

Impotence roared through his veins as fiercely as his high-powered engine sped up. He powered down lanes leading him deeper into the gated neighborhood of three-story mock brownstone condos.

He whipped up the driveway in his corner unit, headlights sweeping across the minimalist yard and the front stoop.

A front stoop with a woman waiting for him.

His shoulders slumped.

Jayne sat on the top step, her long legs tucked to the side, porch light glinting off gray blond hair held back from her face in a clasp. She’d worn her shoulder-length hair that way since the day he’d met her in college. She’d always been perfectly groomed, perfectly composed, perfectly pissed at all the ways he hadn’t been the perfect husband.

He glanced down the row of condos, and sure enough, there was a car parked in the guest spot. If there was anything in this world that would give him a heart attack, that woman topped the list.

He turned off the engine and stepped out with a heavy sigh he reserved especially for his ex-wife. “I have to shower, change, eat, and head straight back to work. You’re going to have to take a number.”

“If I listened to every time you said that, we would never have a conversation.”

Sounded like a good plan to him.

“Don, we have to talk.”

“Fine.” He brushed past, catching a whiff of her Chanel perfume.

His senses tumbled into a time warp of naked memories that left him twitching below the belt. He tamped down irritation. He’d been married to the woman for nineteen years. They’d slept together, had great sex before their relationship dried up. It was only natural his body would occasionally go on autopilot when she walked in the room.

He absolutely refused to feel guilty. He and Paulina had never asked for nor expected exclusivity.

Still, he had been sleeping with her for four months, respected her in the workplace for a year now. She deserved better from him.

Don pushed inside his condo, Jayne hot on his heels with tut-tutting.

“Wow, Don, love your cookie-cutter decorator. I must get his number. I’ve always longed for a place with nothing more personal than a razor and food.”

“I like brown and black. So sue me.” He wasn’t here enough for it to matter anyway.

He pitched his keys on the black lacquer dinette table. Jayne still had baby pictures of their two kids on her key chain, for God’s sake. Of course she also used that as a reminder to their adult children of how they’d failed to do the expected thing of marrying and having children. Which usually lead right into how bad he’d fucked up in raising them.

She hitched her purse higher on her shoulder. “Don’t you want to know why I’m here?”

Damn, the woman was so good with the guilt, she should hire out. Right now any issues he had with his kids took a huge-ass backseat to making sure he didn’t lose a child altogether.

His gut burned. “Not really. But if you’re going to tell me anyway, make it quick.”

“As polite and sensitive as ever, I see.”

Maybe the whole thing was just indigestion from the casserole Paulina fed him.

He tossed his roll of antacids beside his keys. “I thought when we got divorced we would spend less time together?”

Standing behind the sofa barricade, Jayne straightened a pillow on his leather sectional. “You were in the air force then. There isn’t any way to spend less time together when you were gone all the time.”

“Yeah, yeah, old script. I took care of Sean’s tuition. We’re done here.” He gestured toward the front door.

She dropped her leather purse on the couch. “Don’t you dare ignore me.”

“No worries, Jayne, you’ve always made sure no one ignores you.”

“Are you trying to pick a fight?”

“We never needed to try.” As much as he wanted to send her on her way, he couldn’t waste the time standing around. “If you want to talk, you’re going to have to follow me around, and you’d better speed things up, because I’m going to be naked and in the shower within the next five minutes.”

Jayne grabbed him by the arm, stopping him as much by her grip as by the fact that they never touched each other at all anymore. He stared down at her smooth hair and furrowed brow.

Her Chanel perfume wafted up again, another thing that hadn’t changed. He remembered the scent well after buying the requisite bottle every Valentine’s Day.

Her trembling, however, tugged at him far more than her scent.

Don gripped her shoulder. “Jayne?”

“It’s all over the news. I had to hear it on the
car radio
that someone tried to kill our daughter. And then when I spoke to her, she tells me this threat has been going on for days?
You
let her wander around without knowing what kind of danger she was in.”

And Jayne didn’t even realize the worst of it.

“She knows now.”

“When did you tell her?”

He forced himself not to look away like some disobedient toddler about to pitch the remote control in the commode. Lord, but Shay had been cute when she waterlogged their electronics. “We couldn’t risk her tipping anyone off.”

“We?
We?
”

“The FBI, the government.” He was skating on thin ice acknowledging that much. He couldn’t go so far as to out the air force or how he, a CIA agent, had tangled himself up in an operation on U.S. soil.

She shrugged free of his hand on her shoulder. “Damn you and damn governmental obligations. I put up with your BS when you
were
ignoring me. But when the job comes before your own flesh and blood, our children you are biologically obligated to protect . . .”

She shoved against his chest. Once. Twice. Hard.

He captured her wrists. “I’m doing what I think is best for her.”

“You’re doing what you always do.” Her fingers curled into fists against him, digging deep until her manicured nails disappeared altogether. “You view the world through analytical eyes, because it’s easier than actually feeling anything.”

“What the hell do you mean by that?”

She pulled her arms free slowly, eying him with incredulity. “Are you really so clueless that you don’t get it? Even your children know. I believe the air force suspected, too, but you were of better use to them numb.”

Numb? She thought he was some robot? Just having her here and talking about Shay in danger had him roaring inside with hellish memories of that night their daughter had tried to kill herself.

The doctors had all made it clear Shay hadn’t been “acting out.” She’d been serious. Days after that boy Tommy had died, she’d taken amphetamines bought off some street corner, filled the tub with icy water, and made a longitudinal cut along her wrist to sever more arteries and veins.