An Eye for Danger (27 page)

"Shhh." Sam kneeled and started picking the lock.

The screws in my chest tightened another notch. I wasn't worried that the Buckleys would be pissed to find their Central Park oasis broken into, regardless of harrowing circumstances. I simply wanted out of the exposed hallway faster than Sam was delivering.

Finally, he eased open the door a millimeter at a time. I huffed. We'd never get inside at this rate. He held up a fist for us to hold still, as his other hand slipped through the slender opening. Something clinked, like glass. Slow and sure, he widened the opening and pulled forth two wine glasses, their stems pinched between his bloody knuckles.

"Alarm system," he whispered, waving us inside.

Candlelight flickered up the walls and onto the ceiling, as small glass votives lined the granite countertops. The Buckleys must have returned early from Florida, since they'd sworn to never sublet the place. And here we were, crashing their romantic interlude.

Sam reset the wine glasses against the closed door. "Set them on a long sheet of paper. Close the door from the other side, and then slide the paper out. The sound of breaking glass makes intruders nervous so they make mistakes. And leave a trail." He smiled, like he was a genius.

"And the Buckleys?"

"In Florida, like you said."

I shook my head and flipped on the light, illuminating dark cherry floors and cupboards from the Buckleys' last remodel, which I remembered not sleeping through.

"Not yet." Sam shut off the light and strode into the living room, also awash in candlelight.

Two leather couches and a matching oversized armchair filled half the room. Between them, an oval glass coffee table reflected the glowing faux embers of a gas fireplace. Awe and disgust hit me at once, the move from horror movie to romantic setting surreal at best.

After a quick search, he set his gun onto an ebony credenza lined with white orchids and reached for his back pocket.

"You forgot something." Sam tossed an object into the air.

Despite the dim light, I caught the pink phone, feeling its rough edges where the plastic had scraped the sidewalk when Troy had flung me all over the street.

"Thank God. I'll phone the police." I wasn't sure I could call anyone when my voice sounded like I was talking through sand. When I unlocked my cell, the screen showed I'd missed calls from Wainright. Sam had called me back, but I must have been fighting for my life by then.

"Nope. No calls unless I tell you." He snatched the phone from my fingers and popped off the back cover, exposing the inner circuitry.

"But Raul is just sitting there. In his own blood. We need to help him."

"There's nothing we can do for him now." Sam looked up as he pulled the SIM card from the phone, disabling it. "You can't call anyone, you can't go anywhere. I don't have time to explain, so you're going to have to just trust me. Whether you like it or not."

"I tried calling you."

He paused, and then pocketed the SIM card along with the phone's remains. I noticed the sweat glistening on his brow. "I'd turned off my phone in the restroom. Any vibration could've had Stone busting through that door. By the time I remembered to turn it back on, you were… you were MIA."

Retrieving a set of binoculars from the credenza, he surveyed the street from behind thick, velvety curtains. I recognized the military-grade night vision units and knew they didn't belong to the Buckleys.

With his free hand, Sam flipped open his own cell and dialed a number longer than 911, dashing my hopes of a speedy rescue. "Echo Sierra Bravo 558954." Sam's voice was low and stilted, a soldier on the charge. "Rabbit secured. Will maintain current location. Need containment. Retrieve target at…"

He then rattled off an address I calculated as the construction site next to the market stall where Troy had attacked me. They'd framed six floors of condos, but the place was still an iron skeleton. Why he'd point his people to that address when we needed help here stumped me. But my head was spinning, so I was easy prey for confusion.

"Still sucking air, barely," he said, giving me a half-smile. "Roger that. Pickup in twenty. Second target outside rabbit hole. Civilian… I know, I know, a real clusterfuck. Hold calls to PD or HQ till I give the go ahead… You heard me. Find a stash and I'll deal with the consequences later. We're under radar now. Can't risk exposure… Roger that. And bring some muscle. Out."

Sam closed his phone, leaned against the credenza, flattening his lips into a thin line, and suffered a long, deep sigh. I hated pregnant pauses. After a moment, he spoke matter-of-factly. "My team will extract the bodies, then come for us when we're clear to relocate. We need to lay low. No comms, heads down. Nod if you heard me." He looked up.

My breath hitched as I realized Sam had called a cleanup crew. Troy had met Raul's fate, but at Sam's hand, Sam's gun. He'd ensured Troy would never find us, never attack me again. But I didn't know how to feel grateful. The man I desired, my rescuer, was a killer.

Again the assault of gunfire blew through my ears. Two shots, then four, then ten…

"Jules. I need to know you understand." Sam braced my arms, so I hummed confirmation to appease him, since I couldn't seem to form a sentence with my lips trembling. "God, if anything had happened to you…" Sam lifted my face, and his brows sank. "Tell me you're okay, baby."

Nodding, I pulled my collar closed over my throat.

His touches were coarse, his voice jagged as he wiped my dusty face with his sleeve. "I thought… Fuck, I thought he'd taken you from me."

He swallowed hard, hiding the nearly imperceptible crack in his voice, and embraced me, rubbing his hands over my back, though he was really comforting himself. He was still ramped up, panicked. Yet he was trained for this. Something must have gone wrong during the fight.

"I heard gunfire, Sam."

"You're alive. That's all that matters." He framed my face in his hands and whispered, "Never again." Then he pressed his lips against my tender brow, repeating the words as he kissed my eyelids, my cheeks. "Never again."

He engulfed my mouth, kissing so forcefully I suffocated under him.

I tucked my chin and turned my head. "Sam, you're scaring me."

"No, no. I won't let anyone touch you." Sam shifted, clicked on the floor lamp, and adjusted the shade till the light stung my eyes. "Show me where he hurt you."

Instinctively, I retreated from him, my mouth dropped open. When he neared, I stepped back again. The wetness I'd felt at Sam's cheeks weren't tears, and the dampness at his chest wasn't sweat. But blood. Brow to waist, he was splattered with Troy's fluids. A dark ring covered the front of his gray sweatshirt and flared at his armpit, like he'd held the man's head and pummeled his face inside out.

"What have you done?" I whispered.

Sam looked down his front, then shut his eyes. "That's not important now." He lifted my chin, pushing it sideways so he could scan my neck as he ran fingers down my windpipe till I winced. "Nothing feels broken or dislocated."

"You killed a man. You beat him and shot him."

"What does it matter if I did?" Sam squared his body to mine, grabbed my shoulders so they hiked toward my ears. "Tell me right now, would that matter to you?"

"Yes. No. I don't know"

He dropped my shoulders, and I was happy to distance myself from him.

I rubbed my arms, which Troy had already bruised. "If he tried to kill you, I'd understand."

"He tried to kill
you
!" Sam spit out his breath in disgust. "And no, I didn't kill him. But I should've. He's lucky all he caught was a bullet in the leg after what he did to you. And to my friend, and to those people. You think I don't got a right to put that bastard down?"

Max whined and tucked his head between his paws.

Sam started for the kitchen, but spun back to me, his hand slicing the air. "And what the hell were you doing out there anyway? What the fuck were you thinking? You can't go roaming the streets at night with people hunting you. Damn it, you don't listen, you don't think. How am I supposed to protect you when you can't even take care of yourself? Answer me, goddamnit. Do you really want to die that badly?"

I eased backward, my body shrinking from this man I no longer recognized, and smacked into the credenza. I knew better than to provoke a stamping bull.

"Ah, shit." He pulled at the back of his hair with both hands. "You just… you just scare the hell out of me, Jules." Then he slumped onto the leather chair, his blood and dirt-crusted hands cradling his head.

"I only went outside because I was looking for you," I rasped.

Sam rubbed at his eyes. "I know, baby. I know."

"I just wanted us to be together."

"None of this is your fault, Jules. None of it." He lifted his head and stared at the fire. "This one's on me."

"But you couldn't know I was out there. You didn't even know Troy was still alive."

"But I did." He met my gaze. "And because he was loose, I was supposed to be watching your back. Instead, I was too busy trying to impress you." He swept his arm toward the candles, the faint jazz music in the background, the romantic details meant to welcome not disgust me. "My head wasn't in the job."

"I don't understand." I rubbed at my temples, my head about to burst.

"We needed to know what Stone was up to, whether he'd follow you. So I tailed you from the restaurant. Round and round the block you went. God, I thought you'd never land. I wanted to drag your ass home, lecture you about playing safe. But mostly I want to bring you here." He rubbed his fists on his jeans, like that would clean them of blood. "But I could see you hurting. You were so pissed for what I did, and you were right to be angry. I used you to get to Stone. And he wasn't the monster I needed to watch for."

"If you saw me come home, then you saw Stone…"

"Yeah, I saw." Sam clenched his jaw, and I shuddered to think he'd seen Stone kiss me. Or worse: assumed I'd enjoyed his advances. "I wanted to throttle the bastard. But you were holding your own. And then you got rid of him. I thought, 'You still got a chance, Sam, don't blow this one.' So I swung around back and took the freight elevator up. Put this together in a hurry and waited at your door. Only you never came home.

"So I sent Max down to find you. And waited. I called your phone, but you never answered. Then Max returned with crumbs on his face." Sam laughed at the memory, then his face went slack. "I ran downstairs, found the wrappers and stems in the foyer, but no Jules. Then I heard a scream outside. A horrible scream. And I ran. As hard as I've ever run in my life."

I moved closer, but I couldn't touch Sam. Part of me was shutting down, not ready to re-experience the night's events, even when I needed to hear Sam's side. My gaze fell to Sam's bloody sweatshirt. "Enough." He was about to confess details of a battle I didn't want to relive, and I was about to beg him to stop.

Sam gritted his teeth. "He had you off the ground. And I thought, 'Too late. He got her. Because of you, Sam, the bastard got her.'" Sam stared at his knuckles, bleeding fresh from his skin stretching tight over fisted hands. "I'm trained to control my responses. But all I could feel was rage. A burning, pressing rage like I hadn't felt in years. I wanted to kill him. More than anything, I wanted him dead for hurting you."

My fingers dug into my pounding skull, as if I could block the images Sam was pressing into my mind or the memory of gunfire penetrating the dark. The rage, the screaming, the explosions. I was on a battlefield in Afghanistan, running down the streets in Kosovo, hiding in a village in Darfur. Sam was one of a hundred soldiers confessing their unwonted brutality, their excuses for bloodshed, but I couldn't hear them. Not from this man.

"You must think I'm a monster." Sam's shoulders dropped when I didn't respond. He peeled off the sweatshirt, still favoring his right side, and rolled the material into a bundle. "I can get a transfer, find someone to take over your assignment. You won't have to see me again. But first, I gotta get you somewhere safe."

"Stop. What do you mean 'my' assignment?"

He pulled out his phone. "You. I'm assigned to protect you."

I reached out and clamped his phone shut, struggling to make sense of Sam's assignment, this apartment, the candles and music, Max's dog bed in the corner. The chai tea latte, no water, no foam. My role as the rabbit being hunted.

"Just stay still. Please, Sam. I'm so upside down I can't think, I can't feel. I just need everything to stop."

He pulled me to his chest, and I heard his heart pounding as hard as mine. Damn if his phone didn't interrupt. His torso tensed, yet he hesitated to answer because of me. So I let go of him, giving him leave to re-enter the game.

"Tell me you've got an exit," he said into the phone at his ear, as he slipped between the curtains, stretching the band between us so tight, I thought we'd both snap. His eyes were glued to the binoculars, sweeping the playing field. "Yeah, I got you. Target to your nine o'clock. Right there. Wait. Get down, you've got company."

When I stepped to the window, Sam pushed me behind him, leaving his hand on my hip. I could see a car-mounted searchlight flash down the street, illuminating the distant construction site.

"My favorite prick, that's who," Sam said into the phone. "Neighbors must have called in the shots... Hey, it was an accident. Kinda… Bet he's taking a look at your ride. Yup, just lit up your plates. Better switch 'em out. Looks like he's moving on… Wait for it. Okay, get the bastard and get out. Go ahead and kick him, if you want. I did. Plenty… So put your balls into it and drag his ass. Are you a man or what?… Yeah, yeah, we'll maintain. But we need that exit plan…" Sam flashed a smile over his shoulder. "Rabbit's getting ancy… Of course I'll get it. Since when are you so anal about procedures? Strike that. Contact me when we're a go."

Sam continued scanning the street through the binoculars.

"Please tell me Troy's gone," I said.

"Long gone."

"With the cops?"

He lowered the binoculars. Sam's expressionless face meant 'no.' "We're not streeting him, if that's what you're worried about. He'll stay in custody."