“So you’d rather I deliver the bad news?” he asked, setting the bottle back on the nightstand.
“Seems a smart choice to me.”
He inclined his head in agreement. “As smart as packing a weapon which I assume you know how to use?”
“Yes.”
“How’d you learn to shoot?”
“My father,” she said without hesitation but her voice soft, barely there.
“The fisherman.”
She rotated to her knees to face him. “Don’t.”
“Don’t what, Kara?”
“Don’t try to figure me out.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s wasted energy when I can give you what you want.”
Her. He wanted her. His fingers curled on into his fist. No, damn it. He wanted Alvarez and he wanted him dead. “Which is what, Kara? What do you think I want?”
“To impress Mendez.”
She wasn’t wrong. Mendez was his ticket to Alvarez. “Go on.”
“It’s his nephew. He runs the shipping operation.”
“Did you tell the former head of security?”
“He was in on this entire theft ring.”
“You seem certain.”
“If you let me have my briefcase, I’ll show you why you should be, too.”
Blake considered her a moment and pushed off the mattress, grabbing the pizza boxes and setting them on the desk before returning to the side of the bed. With his hands on his hips, he studied her. “You want your briefcase; tell me how you drugged me.”
She hesitated, her lips thinning, but she agreed. “Fine. Yes. I’ll tell you. It wasn’t hard. The drug I used makes you pass out within ten minutes of contact with the skin.”
Holy hell. Blake didn’t even want to think about how dangerous that could be in the wrong hands. His simple mission to kill Alvarez had just gotten as complicated as reading a map after a bottle of bourbon. “What drug?” he demanded tightly. “I need a name.”
“I don’t know the name.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Right. We have trust issues. You’ve told me.”
His jaw tightened. “Start with how and when you used it on me.”
“It comes in thin white strips. You can rub them on any surface of an object or directly on the skin. Once a person touches it, the drug absorbs into the blood stream. So…you see. I was telling the truth before. I didn’t have to stay with you that night in Denver. I could have placed the drug on the folder and left right after I got to your room.”
Their eyes locked and held, the air crackling with electricity. Blake let this fears over this new drug slide away, his need to know where she was going with this suddenly all that mattered. “And yet you didn’t leave.”
“No,” she said softly. “I stayed.”
“Why, Kara? Why did you choose to stay with me?”
Chapter Nine
Why?
Blake’s question hung in the air and Kara didn’t know the answer. Why hadn’t she left that Denver hotel room without sleeping with him? She’d contemplated that question over and over in the past week, unable to stop thinking about him. She didn’t have an answer besides that she’d been feeling alone, as if the world was on her shoulders. She was alone. No one was helping her. Whatever she made happen, she made happen. And in his eyes, she’d seen pain and torment so like what she felt, that she had actually believed, if only for one night, they might just save each other. And they had, or he had her. He’d taken her away, made her feel whole again in a way no stranger should be able to. She’d needed it and him.
“Kara,” Blake prodded.
Her gaze snapped back to his, from the floor where it had settled. “I stayed with you and I didn’t have to. It’s the only answer I have. I just…I don’t want you thinking I slept with you to get that file. And I didn’t want to drug you. I struggled to go through with it.”
“But you did,” he observed again, but his eyes were softer now, his voice gentler.
“I had to. You have to know that.” And she had. Just not for the reasons he thought and damn if her stomach didn’t knot with the half-lie. How could she feel guilty for lying to a man who’d kill her if he knew the truth? Or at least hand her over to someone who would?
“Yes,” he said after an eternal silence. “You had to.”
Relief washed over her that she told herself was about gaining his trust, avoiding danger, but it was more than that. When she’d looked in his eyes in Denver, she’d felt a connection she couldn’t seem to shake.
“You shouldn’t have been there at all,” Blake continued. “You helped Richter gain leverage over both of us. He’ll wait for the right time and blackmail us both because he knows what we both know. Mendez won’t be happy about you helping Richter or me letting myself get drugged. ”
But she hadn’t been working for Richter at all, and Blake was too smart not to figure that out if she didn’t distract him and fast. “Then we have to stop these theft issues. That has to help us with Mendez.”
“Don’t kid yourself. No matter what good you do for him, if Mendez finds out you undermined him, it won’t matter. We need a plan if he tries. I’ll have my team work on something we can use as leverage on him but if he contacts you, I have to know right away.”
“I’ll get your briefcase,” Blake said, heading to the hallway where he’d left his bag.
Kara pressed her hand to her knotted stomach, feeling like she was swimming in the quicksand of her lies and she had this wild, ridiculous urge to tell him everything. She barely contained a nearly hysterical laugh at how deadly a mistake that would be.
Blake returned and set her case on the bed between them. “Show me what you’ve found.”
Seizing the chance to shift the topic from Richter, she quickly removed her MacBook Air and powered it up. “When I first told Mendez about the discrepancies,” she explained, settling against the headboard, her legs stretched out in front of her, “I hadn’t put two and two together. The data showed random places where the restaurant data and the pier ‘special product’ shipment numbers didn’t match. But since then, I’ve found four more cities with those kinds of discrepancies, and…” She clicked on a collage of photos, showing two men exchanging envelopes and turned the screen for him to see more clearly. Blake moved to sit next to her, their bodies aligned from hip to foot. She swallowed against the dryness in her throat, and continued. “That’s Ignacio, the nephew,” she said, pointing out the man on the left with a scar down his cheek and long black hair. “The one on the right is Alex Gomez. He’s the regional manager for the restaurants here locally.”
Blake stared at the photo and then glared at Kara. “You took these shots?”
“Yes.”
He rotated to stare at her. “Are you flipping nuts, Kara? If you would have been caught—”
“I used a long-range zoom lens. I wasn’t even close to them. The fact that was able to, though, tells you how poorly they’re running the operation.” Kara pulled up another picture, this one of a small boat floating next to a larger one, and men loading it with boxes. “It looks like they skim the product right here on the pier. Once it leaves though, I’m clueless. I don’t know where it’s going or who might be involved. I just know Ignacio is where it starts.”
He cut her a sideways look. “You’re just a secretary, my ass.”
She bristled. “I’m offended by that statement for every secretary that saves her boss’s ass about ten times a day.”
His lips twisted wryly. “When’s the next shipment out?”
“Midnight tonight.” She glanced at the clock. It was already ten. “In two hours.”
“Then I think tonight is the night Ignacio meets the new head of security.”
Kara shut her computer. “I want to go.”
“No.”
“I can point out things you wouldn’t see right away.”
“I’m not putting you in danger.”
Kara felt l
ike she was in the Twilight Zone. A few hours ago, she was worried he’d want to kill her. Now, she was convincing him she didn’t need to be protected. This was just…odd. “I thought you weren’t letting me out of your sight? I could still run.”
“You won’t.”
“Are you 100% sure?”
His lips thinned. “Fine, you can ride along, but you’re staying in the truck.”
“Fine, but that won’t keep me from running. You’ll need me by your side.”
“I’ll cuff you to the wheel.”
Her eyes went wide. “You wouldn’t.”
“Try me.” He didn’t give her time to ask if he even had a set of cuffs, before he ordered, “Get dressed. We have a stop before we go to the pier.”
“What stop?”
“Your place.”
Kara blanched. “My place?”
“That’s right. I’m moving in. That way you are in my sights all the time.”
“No. You can’t.” He couldn’t. This was bad.
“I am.” He rounded the corner to the hallway, disappearing out of her view, and she could hear him doing something with his bag.
Kara’s mind raced for a way out of this, but she was coming up blank. Blake had already seen beneath her story and while she was smart enough to have nothing damaging lying around her place—she was too well trained for that—it didn’t matter. Blake would see the facade of a real life in her fluffy decor and use it to unwrap the truth. He’d confirm what he suspected, that her life as she’d put it on paper was fiction.
“Hop to it,” he said, reappearing and tugging a shirt the rest of the way down his chest, and over his rippling, spectacular abs. “Let’s get out of here.”
“I live in a tiny studio. You won’t like it.”
His eyes danced with mischief and heat. “All the better to get to know you in.”
“What if I don’t want you to stay with me?”
“Sorry, darlin’.” He scooped up his socks. “This time if you drug me and I pass out it’s going to be in your bed.”
***
Blake pulled up to a parking meter behind Kara’s car as she parked, and glanced at her apartment directly to his left, which was more a wooden house broken into small units and framed by two more just like it. Kara killed her lights and he quickly dialed Kyle for the second time since leaving the hotel ten minutes before.
The instant Kyle answered, he said, “You had to park in front and under a streetlight? Thanks for making it impossible for me not to be seen.”
“If your job was easy,” Blake said, unzipping his bag to remove the plastic bag holding a glass Kara had used in the hotel, “you wouldn’t like it.”
Kyle started to grumble and Kara got out of her car. Blake hung up on him, setting the bag with the glass on the seat and hoping they’d get a match on her identity. He snatched up his duffle and the pizza boxes, then climbed out of the truck, feeling tension coil in his gut. Not only did he have Kara to figure out—and yes, protect because he couldn’t fight the feeling he needed to—he was damn worried about this drug. A substance like that could be a terrorist weapon, and Blake couldn’t pretend it didn’t exist just to achieve his own agenda. He had to find the source of that drug and destroy it. If he couldn’t, no matter how much he didn’t want to get his old club involved, he was going to have to bring in the ATF.
He met Kara at the hood of his truck and he didn’t miss the nervous look on her face, but she shivered against the year-round chilly San Francisco night air and quickly headed toward the door. “Home sweet mansion,” she said when she’d unlocked the apartment and flipped a light on the inner wall.
Blake stepped inside the warm entryway, and glanced up a flight of stairs that seemed to lead directly to a dimly lit living area. Kara flipped the lock into place and he followed her to the next level.
At the top, Blake found himself standing inside a small studio with light hardwood floors, a living area with one red leather couch and a chair, and to its right, a canopy bed. Kara’s canopy bed, where he would be sleeping with her. The wild, wicked things he could do to her in that bed heated his blood, as it would most men, but for reasons unknown to him, his chest tightened with emotion right along with his groin.
Kara delicately cleared her throat. “Let me take that pizza. You’ll be glad you brought it. I don’t have much in the fridge.”
“I’ll fix that tomorrow.”
Kara wet her lips, reminding him of how soft they were pressed to his, and looking nervous in the process. He didn’t think she got nervous often. “Right,” she said. “Of course.” She rushed off to the small kitchen opposite the living area and he let his bag drop to the ground, taking in the room.There were pictures of San Francisco and little trinkets on a table and bookshelf, but not one personal item. It looked like one of the places they would set up as part of a cover.
Kara returned and motioned to a partitioned wall near the bed. “I’ll change so we can get out of here.”
Blake watched her disappear around the makeshift wall, her shadow reflecting from behind it, a teasing silhouette of her undressing. He ground his teeth against the tightening of his groin. Kara wasn’t what she seemed, but she awakened something inside him, something he’d thought died with Whitney, something more than passion. The raw, seeping wound inside him, dark with emotion, was still there, but there was more now. There was…hope.
Grimacing, he ran a rough hand through his hair and turned away from the screen. If he fell for this woman and she burned him, he wasn’t sure he had it in him to get back up again. He wasn’t going to fall for her. He’d protect her. That was it.
Blake drew a deep breath and turned right back around again, proving to himself this woman did not have him by the throat, just the balls and he could pry her hand off those. His gaze went to her silhouette, the shadows outlining her naked body as she reached for a pair of pants. Blake’s cock went instantly rock hard and his control, the control he’d claimed to own so fully, threatened to snap. After a moment of fighting it, he decided to embrace what he was feeling and make sure she did, too. He stalked across the room and around the panel, the sweet, feminine scent of Kara slamming into him almost as fiercely as her creamy-white naked body.
She gasped as he drew her into an embrace, his mouth closing down on hers, commanding her to give herself to him, his tongue seducing hers into a response. Her body softened almost instantly, and it turned him on, and then pissed him off. She was good at turning him on. Too good.
He pressed her against the wall, twined his fingers into the dark silk of her hair, and forced her gaze to his. “It would be better for you to tell me who you are now, on your own.”
“I’m Kara,” she panted. “I’ve always been Kara.”
“End the game here and now,” he growled. “Don’t make me do it for you.”
“You think this is a game to me? This has never been anything further from a game to me.”
“What do you call secrets and lies? A game. A dangerous game. You have nothing personal here, not even a picture of your mother.”
“If I have her picture, that makes her important to me. There are people, like Ignacio, that might decide that means she’s worth hurting.”
“And yet you told Mendez and Richter.”
“I did what I had to and a public announcement isn’t required.”
He glared at her, probed her eyes. “You have an answer for everything, don’t you?”
She sucked in a breath, a tormented look flashing in her eyes. “No. If I did, I wouldn’t be here.”
More of the game, but beneath it was real pain and it spoke to him. He knew it, understood it, and owned it with far more gusto than he wished to claim. And he wanted to own her. It was a barbaric thought, but he owned it for that, and for where it came from. If he owned her, he’d take her someplace far away from here, and keep her safe. He was damn near desperate to keep her safe and he knew why, he knew the past was messing with him, he knew he couldn’t escap
e it, or the guilt over Whitney’s death that ate him alive.
Bitterness ripped through him and acid burned in that open wound that was a cavern inside him. His mouth came down on Kara’s again, rough with anger, at his loss, at Kara for making him care enough to be here right now, ready to bury himself in her, not some nameless woman who didn’t give a shit about him. Who wouldn’t be around to worry over the next day.
His tongue delved deep into the warm, sweet recesses of Kara’s mouth, his hands sliding over her breasts, thumbs teasing her nipples. A haze of lust and desire overcame him, fed into her, and she responded, touching him. He lost himself in the rush of heat over his skin, the silk of her floral-scented hair on his face. He didn’t remember how his pants got down or how the condom ended up over his shaft. There was only the sizzle, the touches, the taste of her on his tongue, and the moment he lifted her leg and watched the lines and shadows of desire on her beautiful face as he pressed deep inside her.
Blake framed her face, staring down at her. “Fuck me here and now, and like this, a million times over. But don’t fuck me outside of this.”
“Blake—”
He kissed her, hard, punishing, because he knew he wasn’t looking for a promise she wouldn’t keep, but he had one to give her, one he would keep. He tore his mouth from hers, and stared down at her. “You’re in over your head and I’m going to keep you safe. The only person who is ever going to kill you is me, and I plan to do it with pleasure.” He drove into her and went to work, keeping his vow.
Chapter Ten
Kara was a whirlwind of emotions as Blake parked the truck in the hotel garage they’d left earlier, to be near the pier. There was something happening between them, something she wasn’t going to want to walk away from. She kept telling herself it was her using him to hide from the heartache she feared her mission was going to bring to her. But if that were true, it was only true because deep in her soul, she connected with Blake. She felt his pain, too. To believe he was one of them tore her apart. Yet she had every reason to believe he was, and nothing but what he made her feel to believe otherwise.