B00MV3HMDW_EBOK (6 page)

“Stop bitching about your lack of sleep.” Taryn went over to the door and picked up her running shoes before sitting down at the kitchen table. “You have never been a morning person. Drink up and let’s head out.”

Ethan was about to snap back that he liked mornings if the exercise happened to be in bed, but he managed to keep that to himself just in time. He took a drink of his coffee, not caring that the scalding liquid burned his esophagus. In fact, it seemed to help get his thoughts straight and kick him into gear. He wanted this run over with so they could get their collective asses to Texas.

“Let me take a piss first, will ya?”

Ethan took his coffee with him, taking the path of the short hallway and into her bedroom. The furniture was eclectic, with mismatched pieces and a mattress that had yet to be fitted for a bedframe. Her bed had already been made with precision, a habit left over from when she’d served on a ship. Images of that one dream returned, reminding him that he’d pictured them on this very same bed. He kept walking until he reached the bathroom and slammed the door shut, hoping the action would do the same with his thoughts.

“Hey, I left my iPod on the sink,” Taryn called down through the hallway right when he’d unzipped his jeans and pulled his dick out to pee. He looked up toward the ceiling for help. What the hell was wrong with him? “Can you bring it out with you?”

Ethan wanted to growl
no
, he wouldn’t bring it out and would leave it on the counter just to mess with her. Did she really think he was that much of a bastard? Yeah, he liked to joke around at times, but she was taking things to extreme. He grunted his response and tried to focus on something that normally took no attentiveness to begin with, however pissing through a morning hard-on took concentration and proper aim. Maybe a run would do him good and clear his thoughts, just like he’d recommended to her.

Finishing up, Ethan washed his hands. He grabbed up his coffee and her iPod and was out in the living room in less than three minutes. Taryn had already laced up her running shoes and took her device from his hands, immediately inserting the ear buds that she’d been holding. She walked to the door, all of her attention on choosing the right music for the job. He normally didn’t listen to anything and since she kept up a decent clip in her run, they wouldn’t be talking anyway.

While Taryn’s attention was elsewhere, Ethan quickly grabbed his duffle bag and walked back to her bedroom where he changed into sweats and a T-shirt. He didn’t mind the colder mornings and would only get overheated if he wore anything heavier. He went back to the front door for his shoes, already seeing her out on the landing doing stretches. She smiled at him when he caught her gaze and he lifted up one side of his mouth in return. He needed to get his head on straight if he was going to sit in a vehicle with her for two days straight.

“Let’s get this over with.”

*   *   *   *

Ethan had cracked open his window, allowing the chilled air to make its way through the interior of Taryn’s SUV. Thirty minutes of running while she had been lost in her own world listening to music had given him way too much time to think. Now it was seven hours into the trip and what he’d determined wasn’t something that was sitting well with him.

Ethan had actually waited to see if Taryn would say anything to him about what his mother had brought up last night. He’d waltzed into the kitchen as if he hadn’t heard a thing, when in reality he’d been in shock. His mother had been making overtures in regards to him settling down for the past year, but what she’d suggested to Taryn was a little bit outlandish. At least he’d thought so last night.

“Well, that went better than expected,” Taryn said, placing her phone inside the cup holder. She’d forgone coffee at their last pit stop and opted for a water bottle instead, which was currently tucked into the seat against her denim clad leg. She’d always been very casual and this trip was no exception. She’d put on a long-sleeved pink shirt that she’d rolled up to her elbows. Her black-rimmed glasses sat perched in the middle of her tousled hair, but the style looked good on her. He tried to focus on the conversation at hand and rolled down the window a little more. “Aunt Lisa is expecting us for dinner tomorrow night at eighteen hundred.”

“We’ll make that in plenty of time,” Ethan replied, turning on a signal so that the on-ramp vehicles could merge. “Speaking of food, let me know when you’re hungry and we’ll pull off. I could stretch my legs.”

They’d been traveling for over six hours with only one bathroom break. He was getting hungry, especially considering that he hadn’t had anything for breakfast. Taryn had wolfed down some toast as he’d loaded up the back of the SUV and made sure they had their handguns secured. They had chosen a heavy loadout for their go bag including different types of weapons, wanting to be prepared for anything thrown their way. If Ryland chose to show his face, who knew what he might have planned.

“It’s going on noon, so I could definitely eat,” Taryn replied before she went back to chew on the pencil that she’d been writing notes with. Ethan could feel her eyes on him, but he refused to look her way. He was starting to perceive her in a different manner and one that he wasn’t quite comfortable with. Unfortunately it wasn’t as unfathomable as he would have thought. She had to go and indicate that she enjoyed the lifestyle that he’d come to appreciate immensely. He found it difficult to stop thinking about her tied to his bed at his mercy when neither of them had ever implied they’d wanted more than friendship. When she hadn’t answered his mother, he’d known then that she had never viewed him in any other form but a close friend. For some reason her response had crawled under his skin and it irked him, especially when he’d been having dreams about her. “Are you feeling okay? The dash is saying that it’s fifty-nine degrees in here. No offense, but I might as well be riding on the roof.”

“Sorry.”

Ethan rolled up the window, and the moment he inhaled he caught the scent of the lilac lotion that Taryn preferred. She would think he’d lost a screw, but the little things she did and the things she said were taking on different meanings. He’d thought about it all morning, and would it really be so bad to take what they had and make it into something more? His mother was right about the fact that he wasn’t getting any younger. Sure, thirty was young by some standards, but the majority of his high school and college friends were married and either had already started a family or were thinking about it. Take into account that nearly all their teammates had taken a direct hit with an arrow from the little fake shit in diapers. Hadn’t he just mocked Lach for being the latest casualty in the war of love?

“My phone call to Mom did warrant a new name to add to the list of people we need to speak with. Apparently Dad stayed in contact with a David Rudolph for a few years after he moved to Wisconsin. Maybe he knows something that will shed light on Dad’s past.” Taryn tapped the eraser part of the pencil against her lip. The metal part was already dented from where she’d been chewing on it. Knowing he couldn’t stop the image, Ethan swallowed his groan when she appeared before him taking something else entirely different into her mouth. God help him, this trip was going to be a torturous one. “I keep hoping for some miracle that Dad didn’t do something while he was married to Mom. I don’t know if I could even tell her if that turned out to be the case.”

“Well, think about it. After Yvette Capre’s autopsy they estimated her age around a little over two years older than you. If that holds, which I can’t imagine it wouldn’t, that would mean he slept with someone close to three years prior than your mother, taking into account the pregnancy. Your mom and dad didn’t wait long after they met to have you.”

“Who’s to say he didn’t keep up the affair?” Taryn asked, pulling one leg up into her seat and shifting herself so that she was facing him. The burrowed frown was covered up when she slipped her glasses back down onto the bridge of her nose to study what she’d written on a notepad. “We vacationed in Houston quite a lot when I was a little girl, although the older I got the less we visited.”

“It sounds like you’re just scrounging up trouble, Squid.” Ethan moved back into the right hand lane after checking the mirror and glancing over his shoulder. It was probably a good thing she wanted to talk about the case and how this was connected to her family. He needed a break from where his original thoughts had been headed. “Let’s stick to the facts, the way you prefer. Yvette Capre is related to you and we’ve confirmed that through DNA. Take into consideration the close match, and she’s more or less either a half sister or maybe a double cousin or some shit. If Yvette came out of an affair that your father had, the woman was born over two years before you. Your father was well established with your mother in Wisconsin when you were born. Let’s not borrow trouble where there isn’t any.”

“You’re right,” Taryn conceded, not looking too happy about it though. “But my father wasn’t the type of man to forgo his responsibilities. Trust me, I’ve gone through my parents’ expenses from the time before I was born. There was never any money taken out and distributed that shouldn’t have been. We weren’t rich by any means, and what my father made went directly to bills.”

“Then it would be a safe assumption to say he didn’t know,” Ethan pointed out, catching sight of an exit coming up ahead and turning on his signal. There was bound to be a sit-down restaurant somewhere along that stretch and he needed some more coffee. “We’ll grab something to eat and we’ll go over who we want to speak with after we’re done having dinner with your aunt.”

Taryn was lost deep in thought, giving Ethan some more time to think which wasn’t technically a good thing. The more he contemplated the closer he came to making a decision that would forever change the course of their relationship. If he did, he had to make damn sure that this was what he wanted…what she would want. And wasn’t that the kicker? Ethan wasn’t so sure that Taryn would be on board, which only made him want her that much more.

Chapter Five

T
aryn walked out of her hotel room and headed for the elevator bank. She and Ethan had arrived in Houston earlier this afternoon, giving them plenty of time to rest up before they needed to leave for the dreaded family reunion dinner. Her Aunt Lisa’s house was located around twenty minutes outside of the city and by the time Taryn walked downstairs, Ethan would be pulling around her Pathfinder with the go bag just inside the rear hatch. They would arrive in plenty of time.

The go bag contained two SIG716 Patrol model rifles with the Sig Sauer CP-4 Optics Packages, two magazine pouches with six R71 Magpul magazines loaded with twenty 7.62 x 51mm 168 Grain Hollow Point Boat Tail (HPBT) rounds, six extra P220 extended magazines loaded with ten .45 ACP 230 Grain Hydra-Shock rounds, and two Chemring N519 multi-stun grenades in each pouch. She’d taken the time to change into a white blazer that would cover her Galco concealable belt holster, which was situated on her outside right hip. Her gut was telling her that Ryland wouldn’t show his face until after she’d discovered how she was connected to Yvette, but Taryn wasn’t taking that chance. If he did have the misfortune to arrive in town, he had better have remembered to wear his vest as well as have purchased the optional ballistic plates, because she and Ethan weren’t banking on taking him to jail if he did.

The doors swished open and she stepped inside, pressing the L button that indicated the lobby. She was by herself, so she stood in the middle of the shaft as it descended. There were mirrors on the egresses and it was impossible not to stare at herself. She’d used a little extra hair product to make sure her hair maintained its tousled yet styled look. Her pale cheeks were covered with a light amount of make-up, as well as her lips. She’d used a gloss instead of a lipstick, liking the natural color. She didn’t look half bad considering her life was being torn to shreds. It didn’t help that Ethan had been acting strange for the past few days.

Technically Ethan’s bizarre behavior had begun weeks ago, but she’d shrugged it off on account of them having had such a heavy caseload lately. For the last four months or longer he’d been part of a Personal Security Detachment for the youngest daughter of a presidential nominee. During the same time her connection with Yvette had come to light. Between their professional lives intermingling with their personal ones, they truly hadn’t had any amount of meaningful downtime.