Deadly Pursuit (10 page)

“Sooo … you’re in WITSEC?”

“Huh-uh. I’m a big boy. Special agents like me with weapons training and a gun are supposed to be able to take care of ourselves. We don’t get put in the Program. We get transferred to another office.”

“Oh.”

She reached out to touch his arm and suddenly all that touching empathy was more than he could stomach without lapsing into dry heaves. Wheeling away, he snapped at her over his shoulder.

“Now if you’re done with the third degree, I need to make that phone call so I can get you out of my hair as soon as possible. You’re a royal pain in the ass.”

Some devil made him glance back in time to see the hurt streak across her face and it stabbed him with the kind of pain he deserved for being such a bastard after she’d shown him such kindness.

But Amara Clarke was only a temporary visitor to his fucked-up world, and it was best that they both remembered that and kept a nice distance from each other. Best for her and definitely best for him. Emotional attachments weren’t his thing and never would
be as long as Kareem Gregory was alive and had the money to put out a contract on him.

Aware of Amara hanging her head and collapsing back into her chair, Jack pulled his cell phone out again and punched the numbers he had memorized and only used in case of emergency. He figured his current boiling cauldron of trouble qualified.

“I’m calling Dexter,” he said.

“Who’s Dexter?”

Cincinnati

“Dexter. Oh, God,
Dexter.
”

Belinda, thought Dexter Brady, really overdid it when she came, especially when they did it doggy style, like now. The whimpers, the operatic screams, the endless loud calling of his name, so bad that he’d had complaints from his irritated upstairs neighbors on more than one memorable occasion. He appreciated enthusiasm as much as the next guy and, let’s face it, he could fuck a woman like nobody’s business, but Belinda really needed to tone it down.

As soon as he came another three or four times, he intended to tell her so.

She went limp at last and it was his turn.

Both hands on her hips, he used one knee to nudge her thighs wider, until she collapsed on her belly and he could thrust as deep as he needed to. He came in a surge of weak relief that in no way corresponded to the frenzied workout he’d just put himself through. Letting his head fall back, he reached for the pleasure and tried to prolong it, tried to embrace the relief and let it be enough, but it wasn’t. It never was.

Sated and disappointed—Jesus, why did he think every time would be different and why was he always so disillusioned when it never was?—he pulled out and collapsed onto the pillows next to her. He’d just reeled her in and covered her mouth with his, licking deep, when his cell phone chirped on the nightstand.

“Ignore it, baby.” She nipped his bottom lip, sucking it, and he would have ignored it because not much in life was worth interrupting for a phone call and sex definitely wasn’t one of them, but then he decided he should do his job.

“Sorry.” Giving Belinda one last kiss, he kept one hand on her tits and reached for the phone with the other. “Brady.”

“It’s Jack. I’ve got a situation.”

Climbing out of bed, he turned his back on Belinda’s wide eyes and paced over to his dresser in the corner. “Parker, you stupid fuck. What happened to you?”

Jack tried to stay calm, which was a major project at the moment with his frayed nerves and the squared lines of Amara’s jaw as she stared across the room and refused to look at him even though he knew darn well she was listening to every word.

“I’ve got a situation and I’ve got a new phone,” he told Dexter.

“Yeah, well, I’ve got a situation, too.” Dexter’s voice softened a little and this terrified Jack because he was pretty sure Dexter hadn’t shown any softness since the first Bush administration. “It’s bad news. Wolfe’s dead. His wife too.”

The words hovered in the air, heard but unregistered.

Jack waited for them to sink in, but they didn’t. Amara, apparently sensing a change in him, looked around with concern in her eyes. Jack turned his back to her, swallowed hard and struggled with words. None came, but the knowledge settled in his gut with the weight of a thousand boulders.

“Parker?” Dexter said in his ear. “You there?”

“What—” Realizing he was croaking in a pretty good imitation of a bullfrog, he tightened his grip on the phone and cleared his throat. “What happened?”

“They were hit execution style in their garage.”

Standing up suddenly became way too much effort. So did sitting down. In a pathetic compromise, Jack rested his forehead against the wall and sucked in a breath that did nothing for him except give him enough clarity to imagine Ray and his innocent wife—hell, they were all innocent, but she’d
really
been innocent—sprawled and bleeding on the concrete floor of their own damn garage.

Emotion erupted from him in an unstoppable blast and, with a roar of agonized anger and frustration—
why Ray, God, WHY?
—he banged his head on the wall.

Behind him, Amara cried out and hurried to his side but he shook her off and focused on the warmth of his blood as it flowed anew from the split in his forehead, and embraced the beautiful release that physical pain gave him from emotional pain, which was always so much worse.

“Stop it, Jack. What are you trying to do to yourself?”

Amara wheeled around for a washcloth from the stack on the counter a few feet away. Next thing he knew she was back, pressing the scratchy cotton to his head and caring for him in a way no one else had for longer than he could remember. He submitted, wanting to shake her off and, more than that, wanting to pull her closer.

Meanwhile, Dexter was talking in his ear. “What’s going on, Parker? Who’s that? Where are you?”

“I’ve got it,” Jack told her, taking the cloth and keeping it in place with a firmer pressure than she’d been
using, not to stop the blood but because when he held it this way the pain continued in a steady throbbing ache that gave him the focus he needed.

Hovering within touching distance, she watched him with worried eyes.

“It’s Amara Clarke,” Jack said into the phone. “She’s a local defense attorney and she’s caught up in my mess. We were caught on surveillance video together and it wound up on the local news—”

“What?”
Dexter said.

“National too,” Amara murmured. “CNN called, MSNBC, the networks. Didn’t you see it? Where have you been?”

Jack closed his eyes with sudden nausea. Well, that sure explained a couple things. How ironic was that? After all the skulking in shadows he’d done trying to keep himself alive, his face wound up plastered all over the country anyway. Yeah. Real funny.

“Do you want to tell me how this happened?” Dexter demanded.

“It’s a long story.” Jack’s sudden weariness was so overwhelming it was an effort not to slur his words. “But he knows where I am.” Aware of Amara’s intense interest and her absolute focus on everything he said, his every breath and blink, he took care to keep things general, to not name names. “He sent someone to the diner tonight, looking for me.”

Here Jack had to pause because the memory of J-Mart’s body, ruined and dead on the floor of the diner that had been his great love, tormented him. He thought of those vacant eyes, that gruff voice, silenced forever, and the kind soul who’d never done anything wrong except befriend Jack without asking questions.

Amara, whose unerring instincts were beginning
to unnerve him, big time, shifted closer and put a steadying hand on his arm.

Jack looked at her as he spoke into the phone, trying to be gentle as he told them both because he knew Amara had liked J-Mart. “They shot the diner owner earlier.”

Amara emitted a choked wail that hurt him—actually felt as though it reached down his throat and ripped off a piece of his heart—but Jack continued, needing to say it and get it over with. “He’s dead.”

“No.” Amara clenched her fists and jerked them up and down in angry slashing gestures that punctuated her grief.
“No, no, no!”

Jack watched as her bright eyes filled and overflowed with sparkling diamond tears that trailed down her cheeks. The right thing to do would be to hold her, comfort her, but there was no comfort in him, not for himself and certainly not for anyone else.

So he focused on the pain in his head, the negligible weight of the phone in his hand, a place near the light switch where a corner of the faded wallpaper had peeled. Anything but her.

“They went to Amara’s house tonight looking for me,” Jack told Dexter. “We barely made it out of there alive.”

“Parker,” Dexter muttered. “Could anyone but you scare up this kind of trouble?”

Jackson snorted, keeping one eye on Amara, who snatched a tissue from the box on the counter, dabbed at her eyes and, after a deep breath or two, seemed to pull herself together. “Sorry to wake you up, Dex. I know how you value your beauty sleep.”

“I’ll call Seattle. Get them to put together a couple of guys. Where are you?”

“Yeah. About that.” Jack toyed with what he needed to say, trying to figure out the best way to broach the topic, and then decided, screw it. “I’m a big boy. I can take care of myself—”

“I know you’re a big boy,” Dexter said. “Get to the point.”

“I’ll be fine until I head back to Cincinnati. I want to know what you’re going to do to keep Amara safe.”

Dexter’s sigh was so harsh Jack had to pull the phone away from his ear. “Look, Parker. It’s not that I’m not sympathetic. I am. But that woman is not our responsibility.”

Jack, who’d expected exactly this kind of response, still couldn’t suppress the low growl of angry frustration rumbling in his throat.

Amara watched him, unblinking and emotionless.

“If you want,” Dexter continued, “I can make a call to the local police and see what kind of temporary protection—”

“Local police?” Jack snarled. “I’m not sure you understand what’s going on here, Dex. This woman was minding her own business and she stumbled across a robbery. She risked her life to save the victim. Because of her bravery and through no fault of her own, she was caught on security camera
with me.
Tonight she was nearly killed in her own fucking house by a contract killer who’s looking
for me.
My boss was killed execution style—did I mention that his knees were shot out before he died?—by probably the same contract killer who’s looking
for me.
Do you get that?”

“Parker—”

All but breathing fire now, infuriated by the injustice to Amara and the hornet’s nest he’d introduced
into her life despite all his efforts not to, Jack raised his voice several notches.

“So you’ll have to forgive me if I think this problem is a little too serious to just hand her over to the local Keystone cops and hope for the best. You feel me?”

A pause, then, “Is her shit that good, Parker?”

“Fuck you.” Cheeks burning because Dexter was right—he wasn’t thinking with his big brain, not entirely—he turned to Amara.

God knew he wanted her.

She stood there, shoulders squared, eyes dry and resolute, looking like she was braced for anything and ready to be brave. Hell, she
was
brave; that’d already been demonstrated twice over as far as Jack was concerned.

But being brave, as he knew firsthand, didn’t amount to a fly’s piss when you were facing down a professional killer who was backed by a drug kingpin with deep pockets and a thirst for vengeance as nasty as he could make it.

And Jack didn’t want Amara to have to be brave. He wanted her to be back safe in her own house, where she could work on her cases, install fresh dead bolts, and live a peaceful and violence-free life before dying in her bed at the age of a hundred and six.

She held his gaze, knowing her future was in his hands. And she didn’t look worried, foolish woman.

“Who is she to you, Parker?”

“Someone I want to keep safe.” There was a hall-of-fame-worthy understatement. “And since you’re the only person I can trust, I’m counting on you to help me out.”

Dexter kept quiet for a minute and Jack could feel
his wheels spinning, plans formulating. When he spoke again, it was with the decisive tone and determination Jack had long respected over the years.

“Give me your location. I’ll call Seattle and have them put a team together to come get you. We’ll get the woman sorted out later. I’m thinking it’ll take a couple hours. I assume you can stay out of trouble for that long …?”

The basic plan sounded good, but there were always weak spots, always human error to be dealt with. “Who’re you sending? We don’t need a whole parade—”

This sensible question earned him the predictable response from Dexter. “Don’t tell me how to do my job. You just sit tight until they come knocking on your door.”

They ironed out a few more details and then Jack hung up, weary to the depths of his soul and wishing he could postpone the inevitable next confrontation with Amara, who was surely gearing up for another grueling cross-examination of him. But when he tossed the phone on the nightstand, she surprised him.

“Is Dexter your boss?”

“Yeah.”

“Someone’s coming for us?”

“Yeah.”

“He’s not happy about me, huh?”

This almost made him grin. “No one’s happy about you, Bunny.”

In what he supposed was a one-time only thing, she let both the sarcasm and the nickname pass. “How’s your forehead?” she asked quietly.

“What? Oh.” Peeling the washcloth away, he poked at it with his fingers, trying to assess the damage.

Amara jerked his hand away and scowled. “Brilliant. Be sure to infect it with as many germs as possible, genius.”

He laughed, which was proof positive that this whole adventure had rendered him insane. Actually cracked his lips open in a smile and let it play out to its natural conclusion, which was laughter. It almost felt good. Almost eased some of the pain.

“Amara,” he said. “We’re running for our lives. We’ll be lucky to see the sun come up in a few hours. Do you think we might have a few more important things to worry about than a little cut on my forehead?”