Deadly Pursuit (20 page)

Several gulps of the frigid air cooled him off and he turned back to the group. Everyone shifted and hung their heads. That made him feel better because they looked sorry and he knew they’d work harder next time.

Running a business was really like being a father. These men were like his children. They just needed occasional guidance and instruction, and, as the saying went, it hurt him worse than it hurt them. But rules were rules and business was business.

Kareem shook his head because the whole scene made him sad.

And he used the silence again to make sure he had everyone’s attention.

He did, but he glanced around the loose circle anyway, taking a long beat to look everyone in the eye and make sure they were all on the same page and all knew what he expected of Yogi and of them.

Then he turned to Yogi, cupped his face in his hands and kissed his cheek because he loved him like a brother and when you doled out the discipline you needed to make sure you did it with kindness and love.

“Why do you have to make me do this, man?” Kareem wondered. “Huh?”

Yogi didn’t answer.

Kareem fished a linen handkerchief out of his breast pocket and passed it to Yogi. “Clean yourself up. And do your job. You feel me?”

“I feel you.”

Yogi’s voice sounded hoarse, but it was loud and clear and Kareem knew the man wouldn’t fail him again, not if he wanted to live.

Good. So they understood each other.

Kareem felt much better. Light and hopeful, with a big weight taken off his shoulders. Yogi was back on the job and would make sure Parker didn’t live to testify against Kareem again. It would all come together. If Parker didn’t testify, Kareem would be acquitted. And once Kareem was acquitted, he and Kira could start their marriage over.

It was all connected. Circle of life and all that shit.

The sooner he was found not guilty, the sooner he could get back where he belonged: in bed with a wife who believed in him and looked at him with love and trust shining bright in her eyes.

Jesus. The image damn near made him cry.

Smiling at the men, he jerked his head toward the Land Cruiser and started walking.

“Let’s go. I’ve got a business to run.”

So this was a safe house.

Safe was, Amara supposed, a relative term.

Her house back in Mount Adams was beautiful, with flower boxes in the spring, matching colors and textures, and accent pieces with the furniture, but it
was right on the corner of a tiny intersection and had flimsy locks and was not, therefore, safe.

The safe house of her imagination was an impenetrable fortress carved into the side of a mountain that was accessible only by a three-day journey by four-wheel drive SUV and then by helicopter. It had bulletproof windows, security cameras that covered every inch of the house, retinal scans for entrance from one room to the next, massive guards who had all been Navy SEALs in a former life, and roving packs of Dobermans—no, pit bulls—that were trained to kill intruders on sight. That was the ultimate in safety.

This house was … somewhere in between.

No cameras, no dogs, no bulletproof windows. They didn’t
look
bulletproof, anyway, but what did she know? It was just a plain old house, two-story brick traditional with three bedrooms and two baths, about thirty years old, on about an acre of land at the end of a lane.

That was it.

Well, and the guards. Two inside and two outside. There’d apparently been some discussion of putting two more in a surveillance van down the street, just in case, but they didn’t have the money or manpower to spare for that.

The four guards were DEA agents who’d either drawn the short straw to get put on the safe house protection task force or were on some sort of grievous punishment for past misdeeds. This gig couldn’t be on the list of most coveted assignments for anyone, even the local traffic cop.

Jack was out and about in the world doing God-knew-what sort of DEA secret agent business. He’d left earlier and she’d watched him go, feeling forlorn
and all but pressing her hands and nose to the nonbulletproof windows and wishing she could go with him.

Because Jack was her only link to anything approaching normalcy. With him, it was easier to convince herself that everything was under control. Without him, she was scared to death.

The irony of the situation didn’t escape her. You’d think she’d have a little more backbone by now, but no. Despite all the alleged criminals she’d represented over the years (and who was she kidding with the
alleged
part? Most of her clients had been guilty of the crimes they’d been arrested for and at least a dozen others for which they’d managed to fly under the radar), she was a coward at heart.

She’d never been in the military. Never handled a gun. Never feared for her physical safety, unless she counted the five or six times growing up when she’d had to defend herself against her mother’s johns when they’d looked at her with a little too much interest and she’d locked herself in the second bedroom of their tiny apartment.

They were dealing with a hired killer financed by a vengeful drug kingpin. You didn’t reason with these people. There was no begging and no mercy, no negotiation tactic that could possibly work. It was only a tiny comfort that Jack was the real target and she was only temporarily caught in the middle. There was a light at the end of her tunnel, yeah. One day soon, hopefully, she could go home and resume her real life.

Jack never could.

This last thought started the walls closing in on her. That, and the lack of fresh air combined with her increased restlessness now that she was feeling better.

“I’m going for a walk,” she announced.

There was a little more sharpness in her voice than she’d intended, and Special Agent Samantha Martinez heard it. She’d been sitting at the dining room table working on some report or other, but now she glanced up.

Though she seemed young, no more than thirty-ish, with a pretty face and wavy black hair scooped back in a loose bun at the nape of her neck, Sammy looked like she’d seen and heard a lifetime’s worth of bullshit and didn’t plan to put up with any more from Amara. Word was she’d been with DEA for eight years and was a cop before that, so she’d earned a healthy dose of respect from Amara.

At the other end of the table, Special Agent Anthony Kelleher finished up his call and put down his cell phone. As though he sensed trouble in the making, he shot Sammy a warning look.

“No walks, Amara,” said Sammy in a falsely pleasant voice that plainly said Amara was a pain in the ass she wished she didn’t have to babysit. “Why don’t you watch cable?”

“I’m not a TV watcher.” This was a lie. Amara had already missed several episodes of her favorite Travel Channel shows, but she resented Sammy’s trying to shuffle her off into the other room like a kid who could be tempted by an episode of
SpongeBob SquarePants.

Sammy shrugged and resumed scribbling on her stupid little report. “How’s your scarf coming?”

“I’m tired of knitting.”

“Then it looks like this isn’t your lucky day.”

Amara was getting ready to jump down the woman’s throat with both feet when Anthony cleared his throat and smiled.

“Ah, Amara,” he said, all boyish charm and dimples with a hint of the South in the low drawl of his voice, “when you get a minute, why don’t you go on ahead and put that grocery list together for us? And then we can send someone on over to the—”

“Tell you what, Billy Bob.” She didn’t mean to be rude, but, come on, was this guy for real? “You ease up on the southern hospitality a little, because I’m immune anyway, and I’m gonna take me a little ole walk. You hear?”

Anthony laughed, which was the scrape of fingers over the blackboard of Amara’s raw nerves. “We’re all in this together, Amara. We’re going to have a lot of long, tense days here together if we can’t work on getting along.”

“I’ll be in a better mood after my walk.”

“That’s a negative, ma’am.” Sammy now reached for her cell phone and punched in a number. “We can’t keep you safe for Jack if you’re traipsing—”

“I’m not planning to traipse.
Ma’am”
Amara looked around for her jacket. “I’m going to walk to the corner and back. There’s no one around for miles—”

“That we know of.” Sammy put the phone to her ear, dismissing Amara.

This was outrageous.

The security issue was one thing—Amara got that and she wasn’t a complete idiot, after all—but the disrespectful treatment was something else and needed to be addressed. For all she knew, she’d be holed up here with Crabby Patty for another week or ten days, and Amara certainly didn’t intend to put up with this rudeness.

Without any real thought, she reached out, snatched the phone and clicked End.

A startled moment passed during which even Amara thought,
wow, maybe I went too far that time,
and then Sammy jumped to her feet and got in Amara’s face, looking surprisingly fierce, or maybe it was just the weapon strapped to the holster at her side.

“Excuse me,” Sammy began.

“No, excuse
me,”
Amara said.

Anthony materialized between them, which didn’t stop them from yelling at each other, but then a new voice joined the fray and Amara shut up the second she heard it.

“What’s the problem?”

Oh, God, it was Jack.

After being gone for hours and hours, long enough for her to begin wondering if he’d been shot or had simply decided to take off on his own and never look back, he’d chosen now, while she was behaving like a bigger shrew than usual, to reappear.

Amara snapped her jaws shut and felt the flames of embarrassment burn her face.

Sammy, meanwhile, wheeled around, resumed her seat and looked dignified.

Jack’s gaze locked with Amara’s. Although he didn’t smile, he didn’t look especially angry, and she’d had enough experience with his dark moods to know. There was a fresh bandage on his poor abused forehead, so she took that to mean he’d had it checked out.

“Alienated everyone already, Bunny?” he asked. “That didn’t take long.”

Oh, sure. Blame the prisoner. Like it was her fault. Furious, she pointed to the offenders. “These two clowns,” she said, “Billy Bob and Crabby Patty, are refusing to let me get any fresh air.”

“Oh.” Jack said it with zero inflection, and yet
everything about him screamed reproach, as though he was apologizing for her childish behavior and wished she had the grace to do the same.

Effectively shamed, Amara sucked in a harsh breath and apologized. “I’m sorry.”

Satisfied, Jack held out a hand to her and she took this lifeline, grateful for it. He reeled her in and held her against his side, his endorsement and support speaking volumes. These people respected Jack and would therefore give her the benefit of the doubt, even if she was behaving like a raving bitch.

“Amara takes some getting used to,” Jack said.

Now wait a minute. She didn’t need a spokesperson to explain her behavior to the world. Hadn’t she just been woman enough to apologize? Frowning up at Jack, she snatched her hand free.

“Kindly do not talk about me like I’m not here, Special Agent.”

Still seething, she stormed up to her bedroom to find her coat, slamming the door behind her. These people could not keep her locked up indefinitely with no fresh air and no fresh food and nothing—

The door opened and Jack came in.

“I need a minute, okay? And please knock before you come into my bedroom.”

“It’s our bedroom.”

Abandoning the walk idea, she went to the window and concentrated on pushing the awful flowered drapes back so she could get as much sunshine as possible. It’d been sleeting for days in Cincinnati and now it was cold but sunny and she couldn’t even see the light with these nightmare drapes.

“There are two other bedrooms here,” she told Jack. “Pick one.”

“I’ve already picked whichever one you’re in.” Unperturbed, he leaned against the cheap plywood dresser and crossed his ankles and arms. “What’s this about?”

That impenetrable calm of his just drove her through the roof. So did his stupid questions, as though he’d thought and thought about it and just couldn’t fathom why she’d be upset about anything.

“What’s this about?
This is about my house being broken into and me being shot. This is about flying all the way across the country to hide in a tiny little safe house for God knows how long—”

Jack did his best statue routine, absorbing her histrionics with nary a flicker of his eyelids or a ghost of an expression on his face.

“—and all you stupid DEA agents with your rules and your secret handshakes and your little nonverbal signals that make me feel like more of an outsider than I already am, and you marching in here and telling me that I can’t even choose a bedroom without you controlling my selection. That’s what this is about.”

Spent and breathless, she brushed her flyaway hair out of her face and waited for him to level her with his temper and call her ungrateful for their protection. Maybe he’d go so far as to say that if she didn’t like the minor inconveniences of temporary living in a safe house, she should go back to Washington by herself and good luck with that.

She was prepared for that reaction.

She wasn’t prepared for him to reach out and grab her, but that’s what he did.

The shock took a long time to register—how could he go from standing there, looking bored, to quick
handwork that would make Muhammad Ali proud? By the time she thought to flail and struggle, it was too late and he was all over her. She overcompensated and they toppled to the bed, or maybe that was what he’d had in mind all along.

He favored her wounded side, but still managed to damage her equilibrium. Every part of him was so strong and hard and healthy, and she was infuriated, flat on her back and helpless. Not helpless to get away, but helpless to resist her body’s insane reaction to him.

She tried anyway.

Arching back, she worked to get her arms between them, to plant her hands on the marble-hard slabs of his chest and push. No dice. His gentle hands—God Almighty, how was it possible that such a big man had such an unspeakably tender touch?—cupped her face, stroked it, and she was lost in the sensation and, worse, the emotion.