COLE (Dragon Security Book 1) (8 page)

Amber

I watched Megan pace in front of her desk. There wasn’t a lot of space in her office. In fact, it was nothing like I’d imagined it would be all the months I tried to get up the courage to come here. I imagined a huge office with big windows and a full bar. Instead, it was just a narrow little room off to the side of the reception area. No bigger than my bedroom back at the trailer.

I don’t know what that said about Megan, but I found it oddly impressive.

“I have Dominic interviewing the man from the mall,” Megan announced to no one in particular. “Hopefully, he’ll be able to get something out of him.”

I glanced back at Cole. He was leaning against the back wall, watching his sister pace with a blank expression on his face. The baby fussed, and he glanced at me just as I turned to adjust PJ in my arms.

“Did he say anything to you?”

I shook my head. “Like I told Cole, he just shoved the gun into my back and threatened to shoot me if I didn’t do what he said.”

“You didn’t recognize him?”

“No.”

“Is there a reason we don’t know about why someone would want to forcefully remove you from a mall?”

I didn’t answer right away, and Megan seemed to take that as some sort of confession. She stopped pacing and leaned back against her desk, right in front of me. I looked up to find her studying me like a scientist might study a bug. Then she reached behind her and picked up a photograph that had been lying face down on her desk.

“Can you explain this?”

I took the picture and my heart sank. I bit my lip, trying to figure out what explanation might make me look a little less like a liar in her eyes.

“Why did you pretend you didn’t know Peter was dead when you were at his funeral?”

I stared at the picture for a long time, remembering how it’d felt to stand at the back of that crowd that day. Everyone there was dressed so nice, and they were all leaning on each other, drawing comfort from one another. They clearly loved Peter and each other very deeply. I had no one. I thought I had Peter; I thought we were beginning something that would…I don’t know. I wasn’t stupid enough to believe that Peter would want to run off and marry me just because I was carrying his child. But I was kind of hoping he’d want to spend more time with me. To see those people—so many people—mourning his death only highlighted how little I actually knew about him.

I’d felt isolated. Alone. And heartbroken.

“I did know he was dead. I did go to his funeral.”

“But you sat in this very office and made me believe you didn’t know.”

I handed the picture back to her and gathered the baby closer to my chest as I stood. “I’m sorry,” I muttered, as I started toward the door. But Megan caught my arm even before Cole could react.

“We just want an explanation.”

“But there is no excuse for what I did.”

“Amber—?”

Cole began to reach for me, but Megan made a motion with her hand, forcing him to back off. Then she turned me around and studied my face with kind, if determined, eyes.

“I know we must have scared you when you first came here. I know Cole going on about you being a gold digger made a really bad impression on you.”

“Hey—”

“But we really need to know the truth if we’re going to protect you and PJ.”

I looked down at the baby, his warm body so comforting in my arms. The only thought that went through my mind when that man pressed that gun into my back was that at least PJ had Cole and Megan and the rest of their family. At least he wouldn’t have to go into the system if something happened to me.

But I really didn’t want to miss watching him grow up.

“I’m sorry,” I said softly. “I just…I wasn’t sure if I could trust you, and I was frightened by that man following me around. I thought if I lied about knowing who Peter was and that he’d died, I could convince you I wasn’t after money or a name for my baby.”

Megan nodded. “Do you think you could tell us the truth now? Explain why you came here and what you were looking for?”

I was afraid to look back at Cole. I didn’t want to see the anger in his eyes, or the I-told-you-so that was probably lying just below the surface. He thought he had me pegged the moment I walked into this office, and I’d just given him the ammunition to prove it was true. I suddenly felt sick to my stomach as I felt what little trust we’d built up simply evaporate.

Megan touched the baby’s cheek, then gently helped me back to my chair. She leaned against her desk again and watched me with eyes that were so much like Peter’s that it almost hurt to look at her.

“I knew who Peter was. I went to the library and looked him up not long after he started coming to the diner because he seemed…mysterious. But there was something about the way he moved, the way he talked, that told me he didn’t belong in a dirty little diner like that. And he was nice to me.” I looked down at the baby as tears welled in my eyes, blinking them away so that neither Megan nor Cole saw them. “He invited me to sit with him sometimes and we’d talk about literature. He knew things that no one else did, no one I knew. He made me feel smart.”

Megan glanced at Cole. In that instant, I could see naked grief in her eyes—and that made me feel worse for lying to her.

“It went basically like I told you before. But…remember how I said he only came by the diner once after the night we…”

“I remember.”

I took a deep breath. “There was another night. It was like a week, maybe more, before his accident. He came to my trailer in the middle of the night, woke me up banging on the side of the trailer. He was clearly upset, agitated in his movements. I thought he was drinking again, but it was pretty obvious that there was something else going on. He had this envelope, one of those big, orange things? He told me if something happened to him, I should give it to you.”

I leaned close and kissed the baby’s forehead, causing him to stir a little. The tears were back and I was struggling to push them away. I couldn’t…I didn’t want to lose it. Not here. Not now.

“Why didn’t you?”

“I tried.” I looked up at Megan. “I tried to approach you at the funeral, but you were so surrounded by people that I couldn’t get through. Then I called your office, twice a week for more than a month, but they always said that you were out and not taking meetings. And then…I got wrapped up in my own stuff, and I guess I put it to the back of my mind. But then that guy started showing up, and I remembered, and I…I wasn’t sure I could trust you.”

Megan nodded. “I understand.”

“No, I don’t think you do.”

I glanced back at Cole who’d been so quiet through this whole thing. He had his arms crossed over his chest, and he was leaning casually against the wall again, watching with that blank expression back on his face. I didn’t know what was worse: that expression or the anger and hatred that I knew was just under the surface.

I turned back to Megan, tugging the baby a little closer, wanting to hold him so close that no one could ever take him away from me.

“There haven’t been a lot of people in my life that I could trust. Peter was one of so few that I can count them on a single finger. I didn’t want to let him down.”

Megan was silent for a long time. She finally ran her fingers through her hair, tugging it off her neck as she stared up at the ceiling.

“Okay,” she said softly. “I want to give you the benefit of the doubt. But I’m going to need to see what’s in that envelope Peter gave you.”

I nodded. “It’s back at my trailer.”

“I’ll drive her out there,” Cole announced.

Megan glanced at him, and then she looked at me.

“No more lies. I understand that you’ve had a raw deal most of your life, but we can’t have any more lies.” She studied my face for a long second. “We can’t protect you if we don’t know what we’re protecting you from.”

“I understand.”

Megan seemed satisfied. She looked at Cole and said, “Don’t take the baby. You don’t know what you might be walking into when you get there. And if there’s trouble, call and I’ll send Hayden to help you out.”

“I think I can handle anything that comes up.”

Megan’s eyes narrowed. “If you want to work here, you need to understand our procedures. And that’s one major one. You call in. You keep us informed. And you accept help when Sam or I deem it necessary.”

The tension that suddenly filled the room was a little overwhelming. The baby fussed, so I pressed the back of my finger against his mouth. He suckled for a second, then went back to sleep.

“Fine.”

Cole took my arm and pulled me out of my chair. He was silent as he marched me out of the office and onto the street. He didn’t say anything as he waited for me to put the baby into the car seat either. But he snatched up my wrist and pushed me back against the car as I moved to get in.

“Are you okay?”

That was the last question I’d expected him to ask me. But there it was, hanging in the air between us. And then he brushed a piece of hair away from my face, tucking it behind my ear. It was such a gentle touch that tears immediately welled in my eyes again. I pulled away and slipped into the car before he could see them, a part of me frightened by what he might say or do if he saw just how weak I really was.

After a moment’s hesitation, he climbed into the car, too. He didn’t speak to me again until we were nearly to my trailer, hours later.

Cole

The door to the trailer was standing wide open, even though I distinctly remembered closing and locking it.

“Would your landlord have a reason to be here?”

Amber, her eyes wide with fear, shook her head.

“Stay here.”

I grabbed my gun out of the glove box, pulled the slide, and walked as close to the side of the trailer as I could as I approached the door. A quick peek around the door and I could see that someone had been in there. The furniture was destroyed, the cushions on the couch cut open and the foam inside cut to pieces. Someone had been looking for something.

I stepped inside and checked the kitchen, moving slowly, methodically, as they’d taught us in the Marines. Then up the hallway, careful not to fall into the hole they’d uncovered in their search. They were thorough. They’d cut open the mattress and destroyed the lamp. Her clothes, her sheets, her bath towels…were all shredded. I don’t know what they thought she could hide in the thin hems of her blouses, but they searched everything. Everything. There wasn’t a bit of the trailer that didn’t have holes or cuts or some evidence that they’d searched it.

But, whoever it was, was gone now.

I shoved my gun, barrel first, into the back of my pants and went to the door to call Amber inside. She moved slowly, almost as if she was reluctant to enter. I couldn’t blame her. If someone had done this to my place, I’d be reluctant, too.

She gasped as she stepped through the door. I just stood by the door and watched her touch things, lifting the tattered edge of a book that had been sliced to pieces, the remnant of a couch cushion. There were tears in her eyes, but she didn’t allow them to flow. She just kept moving, walking through the rooms, searching through the mess for little trinkets here and there. She found the shattered remnants of a porcelain figure, the shredded pages of several more books. She pulled open a drawer in the bathroom and sighed softly, lifting some thin piece of paper to her chest. When she caught me looking, she held it out to me. It was a sonogram picture of PJ.

There were other little things she found in the debris that she put into her pockets. When she was done searching, the tears gone, she went to the bed and studied it a long second.

“Could you lift the corner there?”

I kind of cocked my head, not sure what she wanted since the mattress and the box spring were in tatters. But I did as she asked.

She knelt and slammed the edge of her fist into the floor. A piece of wood, which was covered in carpet that matched what was laid around it, popped up. She reached inside and pulled out a small metal box, a framed photograph, and a manila envelope.

She opened the box and looked inside, relief pretty obvious on her face. Then she stood and handed the envelope to me, holding the box and the photograph close to her chest.

“That’s what Peter gave me that night.”

“And the rest?”

She looked down at it, pulling it closer to her chest, as though she thought I would take it from her. “Just some stuff. Nothing important.”

I let it go because she had this look of desperation on her face. Instead, I looked around the ruin of her former home, wondering what the hell we should do next.

“Your landlord isn’t going to be happy with this.”

“My landlord lives in Dallas. He’s going to be livid to hear he has to drive all the way down here to take care of this mess.”

“You got everything worth saving?”

She shrugged. “There wasn’t much.”

“Will you let me bring in a cleaning crew to empty the place out? Then we can call your landlord and let him know you moved out.”

“Yeah, but I have three months left on a year’s lease. He’ll want the rent.”

“I can take care of that.” She rolled her eyes, and I groaned. “Come on, Amber, you don’t have a lot of choices here.”

She looked around herself, that desperate look I thought had disappeared these last few weeks back in her eyes.

“We can work out some sort of deal. But you need help. You don’t have a job; you don’t have any clothes now…” I gestured around the room. “And you don’t have a safe place to live. You have to let me help you.”

For the first time, tears rolled down her cheeks. I went to her and touched her arm, but she pulled away, brushing the tears away angrily.

“I don’t want to owe anyone anything.”

“I know that. But I can’t leave you here with that baby without a way to take care of him. Even if there wasn’t some idiot with a gun marching you out of the mall, I wouldn’t do that. It’s not safe for the baby, and it’s definitely not safe for you.”

“What do you care?”

“I do care, Amber.”

I touched her face even as she turned her head away from me, cupped her jaw, and tried to get her to look at me. When she wouldn’t, I pushed her backward, trapped her against the wall so she had nowhere to go. She looked at me then, her eyes wide with surprise. And I just…I don’t know what I originally planned to do, but I couldn’t help but kiss her. She looked so vulnerable, so alone, that I just need to taste her lips.

It was a soft, gentle kiss. A brushing of the lips, really. But then she tilted her head up to mine, and I couldn’t resist. I kissed her harder, slipping my hand under her neck and pulling her up against me. She came, the hand that wasn’t holding her things slipping around my side. My breath flew from my lungs at her simple touch, need rushing through me so intensely that I couldn’t stop it. And then her lips parted just slightly and I had full access to the sweetest taste of her gorgeous mouth.

I rested my hand on her hip, tugging her up against me, that damn box pressing into my chest, keeping a barrier between us. But then she dropped it, nearly missing my toes, her other hand slipping around me, tugging at my shirt as she wrapped her fingers in the soft material.

I wanted her. I mean…
shit
, I’d wanted women before. A few drinks, a nice dinner, a little dancing, and I was ready to take just about anyone to bed. But that wasn’t anything like this. It was overwhelming, this need. It was like my brain had just shorted out and touching Amber was the only thing that was programmed. I needed to touch her; I needed to feel her skin under my hands. I needed to taste her, needed to breathe the same air she was breathing. I didn’t just want her. I needed her.

I thought, for a moment, that she felt the same way. She tugged me closer, returning my kiss with the same urgency that I offered it. But then she was pushing against my chest, pushing me back from her, pulling away.

“Stop!”

“Amber…”

She bent over and snatched up her things, then marched away down the hallway. I followed, nearly falling through the hole in the floor.

“Amber, what’s wrong?”

She paused in the doorway, tension so clear in her shoulders that my shoulders ached.

“I was your brother’s slut. I won’t be yours.”

Then she was gone, out the door, vanishing into the late evening light.