Designed for Murder (Killer Style) (12 page)

“God damn it,” she yelled, her words cracking him across the face. “You need me.”

The truth was he did—and that was more dangerous for her welfare than being on the shit list of every drug dealer in Harbor City.

“Carlos, I think I’m falling in love—”

“No.” He leveled a hard look at her, forcing himself not to look away when she flinched. He couldn’t let her say it. He’d never be able to do what he needed to do next if he did. “You’re the last person I need. I need someone who is going to realize that the importer she worked under for years is a front for drug dealers. I need someone who’s going to see there are high-end security cameras and upscale security features at every entry point—all things that a normal fabric importer doesn’t need. There’s no way you’re qualified to track down a drug dealer. Stay on the sidelines. It’s where you belong.”

He’d kept his voice low and steady, never growing in volume or heat, but each word had found its mark. His harsh words had forced Mika to lose some of the inner glow that carried her through everything. Time to extinguish it completely—otherwise she’d fight to try to protect him. It was what she did, her greatest strength and her greatest weakness.

“Did you not learn anything after what happened with your sister?” He curled his lip in contempt. “Once again, you led the wolf right to the hen house and opened the fucking door. It’s your inattentiveness that caused your friends to get hurt. It’s amazing no one ended up dead. Again.”

“That’s low, Carlos,” she said, her voice cracking. “Really fucking low.”

“No.” He steeled himself to deliver the final blow. “It’s accurate. You say you want to protect people, but all you do is get them hurt.”

Her brave facade crumpled and she gasped. “You bastard.”

He plucked his phone from her grasp. “I’m going to call Reggie. You probably want to put some pants on before the cops get here.”

He walked out into the hall, each step away from Mika like slogging through waist-high snowdrifts, then closed the door behind him. The metal barrier did little to block the sound of Mika’s gut-twisting cry or the
thunk
of something hard hitting the door from the inside. He deserved her anger. An icy numbness settled over him. He deserved much worse.

Chapter Thirteen

“Q: Is there anything you envy about women? A: Their hold over men.”

—Alexander McQueen

T
he cops were finishing up after removing Roger’s body. Mika was holed up at the opposite end of the hallway outside her design studio with Reggie and another cop who was furiously scribbling down everything sh
e said. Carlos had popped the sound out of his knuckles, and it hadn’t helped him think of any way to track down the mystery man behind the drug scheme.

Maltese Security’s owner, Tony Falcon, peeled away from a hushed huddle with a handful of Harbor City Police Department top brass and headed toward Carlos. The grim set to his boss’s face just added to the weight on Carlos’s shoulders.

Tony stopped in front of Carlos. “The cops believe her.”

“About fucking time.” The idea of Mika as a drug mule hadn’t gotten any less ridiculous the longer it had been floated out there.

“You have about a million years’ worth of vacation time,” Tony said. “Take it.”

Carlos stiffened and fisted his hands. “No.”

“It’s not a request.” Tony shrugged. “I told you to keep your pants zipped. You didn’t and everything went sideways.”

“This is bullshit.” He kept his volume low, but there was no lessening the heat in his tone. “Not to mention total hypocrisy. Getting involved with clients is practically a Maltese Security founding principle. It’s just that not all of us get happy endings.”

“Watch it, ’Los.” Tony glowered at him as he toyed with the new gold band around his left ring finger.

Losing his shit wasn’t helping. He had to make Tony see that Mika might not be safe with him, but she sure as hell wasn’t safe without him, either. The masked man was still out there. He’d bide his time, but he’d go after her eventually. Anyone who shot an underling without hesitation, like the man had done to Roger, would do the same to any other loose ends—unless Carlos found him first.

“Mika needs Maltese’s help,” he said in as calm a voice as he could manage. “You said yourself, I’m the only one who can work this case right.”

Tony sighed and shook his head. “Will and Alex are taking over. Reggie says the cops are following up on some leads on their end. We’ll find the guy. Go home.”

An icy heat slithered through Carlos’s veins. This couldn’t be happening. This wasn’t how he finally redeemed himself, washed his hands free of Ivy’s blood, and saved Mika from the mysterious drug dealer. His jaw ached for the force he was expending to keep himself from shouting in frustration.

“Tony.” Taking in a breath was like sucking a cue ball through a straw stuffed with sand, but he forced himself to do it. “I
need
to work this case.”

“No,” his boss said. “You need to take some time and get your head screwed on right. I don’t want to see you in this office for at least a week.”

Carlos soundlessly worked the knuckles on his left hand as Tony walked away.

B
ack in his silent apartment, Carlos poured himself another double whiskey on the rocks. The alcohol had stopped burning its way down his throat an hour ago. Now it was only a warm river winding its way through him, numbing his body and muffling his thoughts.

Coulda.

Shoulda.

Woulda.

None of it mattered now. He’d fucked up. Let his emotions get the better of him again. Now Mika was in danger—even more danger than before—because he couldn’t do his job.

His cell phone vibrated on the couch next to him. Cam’s number flashed on the screen. When would he get the message? For once, Carlos wasn’t going to answer a call from Maltese Security. He grabbed the phone and shoved it between the couch cushions.

Bam! Bam! Bam!

Carlos’s front door vibrated from the person pounding on the other side.

“Open the door, ’Los,” Cam hollered through the barrier. “I’ve got something you want.”

What he wanted? There was no way Cam had her. She never wanted to see him again. Nor should she.

He pondered the empty whiskey bottle and shot back the last of the amber liquid in his glass. “Go away.”

“Why don’t you open the door and make me?” Cam shot back.

Anger burst to the surface, making Carlos’s chest burn and his cheeks flame. He jolted up from the couch, strode to the door, and yanked it open. “Go the fuck away.”

“You look like shit.” Cam pushed his way into Carlos’s apartment. “Damn, and you smell even worse. Did you fall into a vat of Maker’s Mark?”

Carlos stood, weaving just a bit, by his open front door. “Just leave me alone.”

“Why? So you can have a pity party and sit alone in your dark apartment? Fuck that.” Cam pulled a laptop out of his backpack and laid it on the kitchen island.

It wasn’t just any laptop. It was Carlos’s favorite work laptop, fully loaded with anything and everything he could possibly want. It was a hacker’s wet dream. For the first time since he’d left Mika surrounded by cops in her hallway, a lightness pierced the pain.

“Thought you might want this to keep track of what’s going on with your girl,” Cam said.

“She’s not my girl,” he said reflexively. He couldn’t say her name. Just hearing
Mika
in his head made his whole body ache. “She’s the client—one I was
supposed
to keep safe.”

Cam shrugged. “Some cases work out like that.”

“A little too often with me.”

Carlos thought he’d buried everything the case with Ivy had blown to bits—the emotion, the need for connection, the awe at how the right woman could change everything—but he’d been wrong. All it had taken was Mika and everything had made its way up to the surface. God knew how long it would take him to stow it all again.

“Boo-hoo. Suck it up.” Cam rolled his eyes. “You want someone to pat you on the head, go get someone else to bring you your toys.”

“I never asked you to.” He curled his hands into fists but kept them at his side. Friend or not, the other man needed to leave.

Cam snorted. “You didn’t have to.”

The laptop sat on his kitchen island, calling out to him. With it, he’d be able to monitor Alex’s and Will’s progress on the case, follow up on a few leads on his own, and watch over her. It might not be too late.

Carlos shut the door, crossed the room, and slid his fingers across the laptop’s aluminum shell. “Tony took me off the case.”

Cam shrugged. “So put yourself back on it.”

The temptation was there, palpable and undeniable. It pushed against the alcohol haze fogging his brain and made it hard to remember why he couldn’t do this. “I have other things to do.”

It was a weak denial, and Cam laughed in response. “What? Like a second bottle of bourbon?”

“It’s just a case.”

But it wasn’t. If it had ever been just a case, that had ended the moment he walked out of Grounded Coffee and saw Roger holding a gun to Mika’s head. Being around Mika twisted him up inside and turned the world he thought he’d finally figured out on its side. He didn’t understand it, but he couldn’t deny it.

“Yeah, keep telling yourself it’s just a case.” Cam walked to the door, opened it, and took a step through before pausing. “I don’t know what is going on between you and Mika, but if nothing else, you owe it to her to see this thing through. Hell, you owe it to yourself.”

The door clicked shut behind Cam.

He shouldn’t do it. For the past year he’d done everything in his power to prove himself to everyone at Maltese Security. He’d answered every call for help, put in overtime on every case, and he’d taken the work the others didn’t want. He’d paid his dues and put in the time. If he did this, he’d be throwing it all away.

He shouldn’t do it, but he knew he would.

Mika was in danger because of his mistakes. He would do whatever it took to make sure she didn’t pay the ultimate price.

A
fter his sixth day off from Maltese spent drinking toxic bodega coffee while sitting in his car parked strategically down the block from Mika’s apartment, Carlos had a hole in his stomach the size of Wisconsin—only a Rhode Island–sized portion was due to the shitty coffee. Through his binoculars, he watched Mika stroll past one of the windows, then stop and stare out. S
he looked so beautiful it sucked the air right out of his lungs. The urge to bolt up the stairs to her was as tangible as the binoculars in his white-knuckled grip and as ridiculous as the idea that she’d ever forgive him for what he’d said.

And she shouldn’t—which had been the whole point.

He gritted his teeth and forced his mind back to the problem at hand and not the clusterfuck that had brought them to this point. The bad guy was still out there. If Carlos could see her, so could the masked man. What the hell kind of half-assed job was Will Roscoe doing protecting her? The bad guy was still out there, and Mika was standing in front of her window like a sniper’s wet dream. He reached for the door handle. She looked over her shoulder, shrugged, and faded back into the room.

About damn time Roscoe did his job.

For the millionth time in the past hour, he checked his laptop sitting open on the passenger’s seat. The program he’d developed that searched the entire Harbor City Police Department arrest database was still running. If he didn’t get any hits on arrestees with a throat scar and a limp, he’d have to call in some favors for a peek at the federal records. The bad guy hadn’t left any physical evidence behind besides Roger’s dead body, but Carlos wasn’t giving up. Carlos would find him and make sure he’d never go after Mika.

A Prius parked behind him and Alex Lee got out. Just what he needed, a chat with Maltese Security’s resident pot stirrer. Alex moseyed up to Carlos’s driver’s side window. He could ignore him, but that wouldn’t make him go away. Head lice were easier to vanquish than Alex. He rolled the window down.

“You have a weird-ass idea of vacation,” Alex said as he leaned a hip against Carlos’s car. “Don’t think we missed that even though you’re off the clock, you’re mysteriously still logged on to the Maltese Security system.”

Carlos flipped him off.

“Or that you have an alert set for when anything about Mika comes through.”

Carlos hit the button to roll up his car window.

“Or that you’ve spent every night for the past week sitting in your car.” Alex managed to get the entire sentence in before the window was even halfway up. “Don’t worry, Roscoe’s taking good care of Mika. Real good.”

Carlos grabbed the door latch and had it halfway open before he realized it. As soon as his actions penetrated the jealous haze fucking up his brain, he yanked the door closed again. Shitty impulses were what had gotten him into this mess in the first place.

Alex
tsk-tsk
ed. “It’s okay. You know chicks don’t go for that whole yes ma’am Southern boy charm he’s got going. Not. At. All.”

Carlos kept his gaze straight forward and his jaw clamped shut tight enough that he was probably going to put all of his dentist’s kids through grad school. Alex was about as opaque as a piece of Plexiglas. He’d sauntered over for his piece of flesh and he wasn’t going until he’d gotten it. The less engagement the better.

“Of course you don’t care,” Alex said. “That’s why you handed her off to Roscoe in the first place and went on immediate leave.”

Carlos gave the shit disturber the best dead-eyed, fuck-off look he had.

“All right. I see you’re a man with lots of”—he shrugged—“plans for your vacation that involve unauthorized stakeouts because you like sitting around with six days’ worth of fast-food wrappers while you stare at an apartment building. That’s good. We’ll need someone to keep tabs on Mika’s place while she’s at the Battle Ultimate tomorrow.”

Carlos’s gut clenched. “She can’t go.” The hoarse words were out before he could stop them.

Alex shrugged. “That’s what I said. She told me to go fuck myself.” He gave Carlos a considering look. “I kinda like her. I wonder if she likes tall, smart, classically handsome men of Chinese descent.”

Whatever reaction Alex was trying to provoke, Carlos was too busy sprinting across the busy street to give it to him.

“B
astard,” Mika muttered.

He was still out there. Parked down the block like Mika wasn’t going to notice—not that he expected her to. No. To Carlos, she was just a liability, a woman who made the same mistakes over and over again because he thought her impulsiveness got people in trouble, got them hurt, and could have gotten them killed. Well, he was wrong, and she’d show him just how much, and then she’d never waste
another moment thinking about him again.

“Fuck you,” she muttered to herself.

“Sorry?” Will asked.

She looked over her shoulder at the big block of a man sitting at her dining room table with a college football scouting magazine opened in front of him. No doubt somewhere out there, a fairy tale was missing its giant. “Just talking to myself.”

She took one last look at Carlos’s car, then turned away, walked over to the coffee maker in her kitchen, and poured the last of the morning pot into her Tardis mug. Staring out the window at the man who’d ripped her heart out and thrown it in a blender was the last thing she needed to be doing with the Battle Ultimate starting tomorrow. She had last-minute costume adjustments to make, strategy to discuss with her court, and a million little details to work out. Of course, since she had so much to do, it was the perfect time to deep-clean her kitchen.

She had the entire upper-level cabinets emptied out when someone banged on the door. Hard.

Will held up a hand, signaling her to stay put as he picked up his handgun from underneath the magazine and made his way to the door. He looked through the peephole and stepped back.

“It’s Carlos.”

A flicker of excitement curled around her before she got ahold of herself and stomped that out. So he finally had the balls to leave his car? Perfect. She had a week’s worth of pissed off to rain down on him.

“Oh is it?” She stormed over to the door and yanked it open. Scruff covered his square chin, his clothes were wrinkled, and he looked like he hadn’t slept well in a hundred years—still her heart kicked into overdrive at the sight of him. “What are you doing here?”