“That’s why you texted me this morning?” she asked, feeling even more torn than before.
“All of this,” Derek said, gesturing with his hand, “was why I didn’t take you up on the offer of getting a hotel room. I couldn’t let myself be with you when I’d lied. Though I sure as hell wanted to,” he said, heated eyes running over her body. “And I didn’t want to come to your party with it unsaid, either. I know how important your family is to you. And, never having had one, I know how important it would be to me, too. I didn’t want to disrespect that.”
She wasn’t sure whether her heart or her body reacted more. Her heart so appreciated what he’d said about her family, and the reminder that he didn’t have one opened up an ache in her chest. The mention of her fantasy of taking him to the hotel right near where they’d made out passed a tingle through her lower body. Was it really possible that their date had just been the night before? It felt like whole days had passed since then. Days during which she’d been kidnapped, shot someone in self-defense, and learned her brother was a criminal. It nearly made her head spin. “Derek—”
“Wait. There are a few more things you need to know.” He tilted his head as if to assess her. She nodded, certainty filling her that whatever else he had to say wasn’t going to be good. “That string of murders in Baltimore this week?”
Emilie’s stomach dropped to the floor as her brain resurrected the image of Manny’s blood-spattered jeans. “Manny,” she said softly. Not a question. Not after what the cops had said this morning.
Derek pressed his lips together and nodded. “Yeah.”
Her mind whirling, Emilie released a shaky sigh. Derek had once again confirmed her worst fear where Manny was concerned. He truly had returned from war a changed person. Maybe no one returned from something as brutal as war unchanged, but either way, the end result for Manny was something dark and twisted. “I filed an emergency psychiatric evaluation petition this morning. Last night, Manny showed up at my house in bloody clothes, and then he built a bonfire in my backyard to burn them. It was only the worst and most recent in a long line of abnormal behavior.”
Something fierce and protective shot through Derek’s gaze. “Shit. We switched out the stash in your basement with flour and basement bats. Did he notice?”
She shook her head, kinda relieved to learn her basement wasn’t full of contraband anymore. “He never came in the house.”
“Good. That’s good,” Derek said. “How was he otherwise?”
Emilie hugged herself. “Honestly, he seemed scared. I’d never seen him like that before.”
“The head of the Church Gang put a million-dollar bounty on his head, so all kinds of people are currently looking for him. That might be why.” Derek kneaded at his thigh, and Emilie wondered how badly his limb was bothering him.
She sat heavily back into her chair. “That must be what Jeffers meant,” Emilie said. “He told someone on the phone that I’d be valuable to Church. Why, I don’t know.”
“Probably because you represent a way to your brother, who they want.”
“Oh, God,” Emilie said, feeling lost and confused and like she didn’t know whose life this was. She braced her elbows on her knees and dropped her face into her hands. “This is a nightmare.”
“Yeah,” Derek said. “That’s for sure.”
Emilie peered at Derek, and he suddenly looked utterly exhausted to her. Dark circles marred the skin around bloodshot eyes. She was completely overwhelmed by this situation and she’d been in the middle of it for a matter of hours. It sounded like Derek had been caught up in it for a year. Concern and sympathy poured through her. “I’m sorry for what happened to you and your friends,” she said. “And for whatever part my brother played in it.”
Derek gave her a small smile and a nod. “I’m sorry for lying to you.”
“Thank you,” Emilie whispered, looking down at her lap. Thing was, she didn’t know what to say after that. What she wanted and what she thought were best for her—safest for her—were two different things, and she didn’t know where that left her. Or them. She pushed to her feet and paced again. When she turned back to him, he was right behind her. Her heart thundered a quick beat against her breastbone.
He took her face in his hands, and while her mind said to pull away, her body insisted on staying right where it was. “I wanted a chance with you Emilie. I still want a chance with you, if you’ll let me.”
The intensity of his gaze and closeness of his hard body sent a rush of heat through her blood. She released a shaky breath as her gaze fell on his lips. “Derek,” she whispered.
Slowly, he leaned in. Closer. And closer. Until his lips hovered just shy of hers. A small whimper of need escaped from her throat, and then he was on her. The kiss was demanding and urgent and needful. His arms wrapped around her back and head and tugged her in tight against him. She felt him harden against her belly, and desire jolted through her, landing most intensely between her legs. The kiss turned frenzied. Harsh breaths. Whimpers and grunts and moans. Rough, grasping hands.
God, she just wanted to lose herself in him, in these feelings, and forget all the rest of this was happening.
The ferocity of her desire for him sent her heart into a gallop. It scared her. The power of these feelings and this need was unlike anything she’d ever had with Jack.
It took every ounce of her willpower, but Emilie pulled away.
Derek’s face was a mask of sexual need and promise. One she knew she wouldn’t be able to resist, no matter how messed up her head was. She needed time, space, some clarity. And she wasn’t going to get it if all she could think about was inviting Derek between her thighs. Her belly clenched at the thought.
Emilie shook her head and met his expectant, wary eyes. “Derek, I want to go home. Right now.”
Chapter 17
Emilie watched as the heat cooled from Derek’s expression and he frowned. “I don’t think that’s a good idea, Emilie.”
Somehow, she knew he was going to say that, but she wasn’t staying here. She needed the comfort and normalcy of her own place. She needed to find a way to turn her world right-side-up again. And she needed not to be tempted by Derek in the midst of this chaos—no matter how much her body demanded that she give in, lose herself in him, and forget everything else.
“Derek, I need to go home,” she said, crossing her arms.
He stepped closer, and Emilie instinctively stepped away. If he kissed and touched her again, she wasn’t sure that she’d have the willpower to pull away a second time. But she didn’t miss the twinge of hurt that flashed through his eyes.
Derek jammed his hands in the pockets of his jeans. “Your house isn’t safe. The gang knows who you are. Any other dirty cops working with Jeffers will know who you are. If we could find you, anyone else looking for your brother eventually could, too.”
Frustration swamped her. “Okay, I’ll grant you that. But what am I supposed to do? I can’t stay away from my home forever. I have a job in Annapolis, a life there. And, oh God, I have thirty people coming over for a party in less than twenty-four hours.” Shit, shit, shit. How could she have forgotten? She still had so much left to do before she’d be ready—Her thoughts froze. If the house really wasn’t safe for her, then it wasn’t safe for anyone. But, God, canceling less than twenty-four hours before was going to be a nightmare.
Just then, someone knocked on the door on the other side of the gym and it eased open. Beckett leaned his head in. “Nick called everyone together for a meeting in here in five minutes. Wanted to give you a head’s up.”
“Thanks,” Derek called. “You can come in.”
As if things hadn’t gotten weird enough between her and Derek, they got even more awkward when Beckett joined them, his gaze glancing back and forth between them. To be honest, Beckett was pretty intimidating—huge, serious-faced, scarred—but the things he’d said about Derek had nearly melted her heart. And that was part of the problem in a nutshell.
Within a few minutes, the space around Derek’s desk was packed with people. Some she’d met over in the apartment and some she hadn’t.
“Should I leave?” Emilie said, unsure of her place with Derek, let alone with the whole group.
“No,” Derek said. “Stay. You’re in this now,” he said. His gaze cut to Nick. “She’s up to speed.”
“All right,” Nick said, nodding. “Let’s get started.” For the benefit of the non-team members, he recounted what had happened—a lot of which had to do with her brother. The murders he’d committed, the bounty the gangbanger had placed on Manny’s head, her filing of an emergency psychiatric evaluation petition, and everything that had led to—including the fact that Derek and his friends had been caught on camera rescuing her at the storage facility, which meant their enemies now had a better-than-average chance at identifying who they were.
Emilie’s stomach squeezed with guilt. She wanted to apologize, but she didn’t feel like it was her place to interrupt.
Leaning against the wall next to Derek’s desk, Beckett cleared his throat. “Well, what I laid out yesterday as a possibility of being identified, I think we now have to count as an eventuality. The only question is how fast they’ll put names with the faces on the security footage. Nick, did you have a chance to, uh . . .” Beckett’s glance bounced toward another brown-haired man standing at the back of the group. He had piercings in his lip and eyebrow and tattoos . . . pretty much everywhere.
“Just now,” Nick said, his expression sympathetic.
“And?” Beckett asked as all the men’s gazes swung toward the tattooed man.
“Jess is downstairs rescheduling the weekend’s appointments. I’ll close up until Monday and then reassess from there,” the tattooed man said, crossing his inked arms. “And I wanted to clear it with you first, Nick. But I have to tell Jess what’s going on.”
“Of course,” Nick said. “At this point, it’s a matter of safety.”
“I’m sorry this is spilling over on you, Jeremy,” Derek said, his hip perched on the edge of his desk.
Jeremy nodded. “Rather be safe than sorry. Plus, it’ll give me time to address the idea of camouflaging Hard Ink,” he said.
Beckett pushed off the wall and strode closer. “Meaning?”
“Off the top of my head . . . what if we moved all the signage for the tattoo shop over to the other side of the building? There’s no way to keep someone from looking for Nick or me, or from finding this address, but we might be able to confuse which side of the building the shop and residences are on.” Emilie vaguely recalled the L-shape of the building from when they’d parked in the lot out back.
“What would you need?” Beckett asked.
Jeremy ran tattooed fingers through his longish dark hair. “I’d need to move the shop’s door and signage to the other side and add some exterior lighting over there. And then I’d need to chain or board up the real door’s location. Make it look unused. We’d also need to do something to block out these windows”—Jeremy pointed across the room to the tall windows that ran up the front of the building—“and the ones in our apartment. Or we institute a blackout, which would be a pain in the ass. And then maybe install some interior lighting on the second and third floors on the other side to make it look lived in.”
Nick turned to Beckett. “Think that’ll help?”
The big guy shrugged his huge shoulders. “It’s a good start, and I think it’s a precaution worth taking. We should get at it right away.”
Emilie’s stomach dropped farther. The fact that they’d been caught on that security footage had created so much of a threat that they had to do all this? And it was all her fault. No, it wasn’t. It was Jeffers’s. Which chipped away a little more of the guilt she felt over shooting him. How many other people like her had he hurt? Or worse . . .
“I’ll help,” a bald-headed man with a cutoff denim jacket said. “And I can get some of the guys over here to help, too.”
“Thanks, Ike,” Jeremy said, clasping hands and bumping shoulders with the other man.
“Appreciate that, Ike,” Nick said. “It’s bad enough Jeremy has to close down. I would hate for anything to happen to the building given all the hard work he’s put in here over the past few years. And there are just too many of us living here now to take any chances.” Murmurs of agreement went around the group.
Ike nodded. “Maybe you should consider hiring some of my guys for the duration of this. Extra security.”
Nick exchanged looks with the other men and got lots of nods of approval. “I like the sound of that. Think we can arrange to get some guys over here this weekend?”
“For the right price, I don’t see why not,” Ike said.
“You know,” Derek said. “If we had more bodies, we could set up lookouts or even a defensive perimeter within the neighborhood. There’s one main way to Hard Ink—from the north. Going south of here dead ends into the water. Going east of here hits the rail yards. Anyone coming at us is going to be coming from Eastern Avenue. We’ve already got cameras up down the block, but bodies would provide a deterrence factor.”
Emilie followed the conversation like she was watching a tennis match. She didn’t know these people well, but as she listened she couldn’t help but be fearful for them. It was like they were planning a war. She recalled the scene at the storage facility. That’s exactly what this seemed to be.
“That’s smart,” Beckett said, crossing his arms. “And maybe we invite ourselves into the abandoned warehouse across the street and set up a sniper’s roost over this whole corner.” He looked at Ike. “Think your guys would be open to anything like that?”
“I don’t see why not,” Ike said. “We got quite a few ex-military among us, so there are definitely guys with exactly this kind of expertise.”
“Good,” Nick said. “After this, you and I can work on getting that set up, if that’s okay.” Ike nodded. “All right, next. We rescued two women today from a cell in the basement of Church’s storage facility.” Ike’s face went from thoughtful to livid, the scowl downright scary. And Emilie had thought Beckett was intimidating. “Question is, what’s our plan where they’re concerned?”
“I talked to them and, honestly, they’re acting a little squirrelly about where they’re from and what their situation is. Didn’t want me to call anyone. Wouldn’t really volunteer much. So there’s a story there,” Derek said.
“Can’t turn them over to the police,” Beckett said. “What happened this morning with Emilie proves our fears that the cops are in Church’s pockets.”
“Agreed,” Nick said. “But we can’t just hold them here, and I don’t want to put them out on the street to fend for themselves.”
“I talked to them a little,” Sara said from where she stood behind Shane’s chair. “I think they’re running from something. But I couldn’t get any specifics, either.”
Ike crossed his arms and nailed Nick with a hard stare. “We can take them. If they want.”
Emilie frowned. Take them? What did that mean?
Nick’s gaze narrowed. “I don’t—”
“That’s actually a good idea,” Jeremy said. Was Emilie imagining some resemblance between Nick and Jeremy? They both had the most striking pale green eyes. “The Ravens help out people like this all the time.”
“Explain,” Nick said.
“We protect people that need protecting,” Ike said. “Child abuse victims, domestic abuse victims. The criminal justice system is a freaking drawn-out process, and it’s a long time between charges and jail time. We make sure people feel safe in their homes, don’t get intimidated by assholes trying to get them not to testify. That kind of thing. These women have a past they’re trying to outrun, they’re welcome with us. We can give them a way station and help them figure out what’s next.” He shrugged one big shoulder. “If you want.”
Emilie’s eyes went wide as she listened to Ike. And here she’d thought him scary. Although, if she wa
s in need of protection, he was exactly the kind of person who’d make her feel safe. Because who in their right mind would challenge that guy? “Having been kidnapped and imprisoned, they’ve been through a pretty big mental and emotion trauma. Forgive my question, but is that something you’re prepared to handle?”
Ike gave her a nod. “Doing what we do for as long as we’ve done it, we have resources in place.”
“Well, it’s pretty amazing,” she said. Ike gave her another nod. An offer to talk to the women nearly spilled from her lips, but she was hoping to go home. Wasn’t she? Not stay here and work.
Nick tilted his head and finally nodded. “Okay, let’s talk to them about that. Appreciate your willingness to help them, Ike.”
All day, Emilie had been swamped with the feeling that she’d stepped into someone else’s life, or fallen down the rabbit hole into some alternate version of reality. But these guys . . . even with her confusion over Derek’s lies, she couldn’t help but admire this group of ex-soldiers and their friends. From how they’d administered medical care to two of their own, to their willingness to help complete strangers—including her—she found them sympathetic, honorable, and likable. People she wouldn’t mind getting to know better.
She sighed and rubbed her forehead as the achiness from Jeffers’s blows flared. From the corner of her eye, she spied Derek watching her, a concerned expression on his handsome face.
“We have another thing to consider,” Derek said, pushing off the desk and tucking his hands in his front pockets again. “Emilie has asked to go home.”
Emilie cut her gaze to Derek and suddenly became aware that everyone else was looking at her.
“That’s not such a good idea,” Nick said, frowning.
“So, what? I need to cancel my party, abandon my house, and remain in hiding until this blows over? What if it never blows over?” Emilie asked, frustration and just a little panic getting the best of her. Maybe if she started placing phone calls right now, she could prevent at least a few of her more distant family from making wasted trips.