One Kiss More (23 page)

“All right. What now?”

“Now? It’s time for you to get the hell out of here, princess. I’ve got work to do, and where Teyo might be willing to put a little cautious trust in you, I’m not.” Damien barked a couple of orders to his guys, one of which was to bring the car around so they could leave.

“Can I say good-bye to my dad first?” She didn’t want to leave. Couldn’t stand the thought of leaving him here with these people, but Emma knew if she pressed her luck they’d all pay the price. Tears stung at her eyes, but she kept her emotions in check as she remembered Landon’s words. Guys like this respected ruthlessness above all else. Crying in front of them would only exploit her weakness.

“Make it quick,” Damien said as he headed for the front of the warehouse and the group of guys loitering near the doors. “I haven’t got all fucking day to wait around on you.”

Emma went to her dad and wrapped her arms around him. He was so thin. Almost a shell of the man he’d been six years ago. He held her tight before letting her go and guiding her into Landon’s arms. Her brow furrowed. The symbolism wasn’t lost on her. Had Landon picked up on it as well? Because by accepting her into his arms the way he had, a silent vow had been made to her father. A promise that he’d keep an eye on her. Keep her safe.

Somehow Emma doubted that Landon would be thrilled at the prospect of being saddled with her.

“I’ll be back soon,” Emma promised. “Try to get some rest, okay, Dad?”

“I will,
mija
. Don’t worry about me. Everything will be fine, you’ll see.”

She let Landon lead her away, but she looked back, worry eating away at her stomach like acid. There were still too many variables, too much unaccounted for. It was totally possible that all of this would get them nowhere. That once everything was said and done, Teyo Sousa would kill them to cover his bases. And Emma would be responsible for it all.

Her spine straightened and she pulled away from Landon as panic built to a deafening crescendo that pulsed in her ears. Her head was like an overinflated balloon atop her head. Blood rushed to her brain and her heart pounded in her chest like a bass drum as she tried to control her rapid breathing. When she’d tried to exonerate her dad, he’d been kidnapped. And in dragging Landon into all of it, she’d made him an accomplice to her crimes. Now, she was trapped. At the mercy of a sadistic asshole who bought and sold people and weapons of mass destruction like they were boxes of crackers at the grocery store. Oh, and then there was the icing on the cake: she was technically dead. No one—not a single one of her friends—knew she was alive. How had this become her life?

As though her current predicament wasn’t stressful enough, Luis apparently thought his single duty was to stand in the doorway. She’d already run that gauntlet once; doing it again didn’t exactly fill her heart with joy. Especially since she was already on the verge of a full-blown panic attack.
Ugh
.

Landon grabbed her by the elbow and Emma paused, her brow arched. “Let me go out ahead of you,” he said. “Just to be safe.”

Safe?
As in,
Let me be the first one out in case there’s a firing squad waiting for us outside.
That sort of safe? Her mind was too unfocused to voice a reasonable protest and it wasn’t as though she’d be able to change Landon’s mind anyway. Luis stepped out of the way, letting Landon through the door, and Emma let out a sigh of relief. Maybe he was through with acting like a dick.

Nope. The second Landon was through the doorway, Luis reoccupied the space. He looked Emma over from head to toe, the sensation similar to being coated with a thick layer of slime.
Gross
. Emma steeled herself and headed for the doorway, head held high and shoulders back. She refused to let him intimidate her. He didn’t deserve the satisfaction.

As she eased through the doorway, his body hunched over hers and he put his face close to her head, inhaling a deep breath. The whisper of contact made Emma’s skin crawl and when she tried to rush past him, he thrust out one bulky arm, blocking her path. “I wonder if you taste as good as you smell.” His hot breath in her ear caused Emma to shudder. “I bet you’re tight as a fist, too.”

Emma pushed at his arm, but she might as well have been pushing against an oak. Her face grew hot and adrenaline dumped into her system, making her legs weak and shaky. “Move.” She infused the one word with every ounce of bravado left in her stores.

Luis answered her with a leering grin that made her stomach bottom out. Her mouth went dry, and she tried to force something, anything, out. But before she could utter even a squeak of protest, Luis’s arm was knocked away and Landon wrapped his hand around her wrist, hauling her out of the way. Emma took a stumbling step through the doorway only to have Damien catch her before she fell flat on her face.

“Landon—”

Whatever she’d planned to say died on her tongue as Landon’s fist swung out at Luis’s face. The contact was solid. A sickening crunch that Emma almost felt in her own jaw. Caught off guard, Luis stumbled back, but Landon didn’t let off. He came at the taller man with a ferocity that startled Emma, his fist connecting with the other man’s face once again before Luis finally had the common sense to fight back.

He shoved Landon away, but it didn’t deter him. He came at Luis, body hunched as though he intended to lay into him with a full-body check. Luis reached for his waistband and produced a weapon almost too large to be considered a handgun and swung it up into Landon’s face.

“Come at me,” Luis goaded, regaining his cocky attitude once he had the upper hand. His tongue flicked out as his bottom lip, lapping at the blood that dripped from the split. “Come on!” His voice escalated, taunting Landon, who stood stock still, his expression seething with rage. “Do it,
hijo de puta
!”

Never once had Emma thought of Landon as threatening. Sure he had the tough-guy cop routine down, but beyond that there was an easygoing openness to him that she couldn’t help but find attractive. Now, though, she was seeing a totally different side to Landon McCabe. One with rough edges and violent tendencies, and yeah, he was sort of scary.

And
oh-my-God sexy
.

She shouldn’t be turned on by the dark look in his eyes, the hardness of his expression, or the fact that his body was tense and practically vibrating with restraint. His broad chest heaved with labored breath and his nostrils flared. Emma couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t speak. Her eyes didn’t even want to blink. And forget about a heartbeat at this point. As the reality of the situation hit her, every particle of Emma’s body froze, fear settling over her like a heavy mantle as she watched Luis shove the barrel of his gun into Landon’s face.
Oh my God. This is my fault. He’s going to shoot Landon in the face and it’s
my
fault
.

“Stop!” The word exploded from Emma like a shot and she rushed forward, inserting herself between Landon and the barrel of Luis’s gun. Stupidity was obviously the better part of valor in this case, because Emma had no freaking idea what she was doing.

Luis’s expression went from stunned incredulity to amused hilarity in a second flat. He busted out into a round of raucous laughter. “Good thing you have your girl here to fight your battles for you, asshole.” He thrust his chin in Damien’s direction and said, “Can you believe this shit,
hermano
? His woman has bigger
cajones
than he does.”

Behind her, anger radiated from Landon in palpable waves. His chest brushed up against Emma’s back with every breath he took, stirring the hairs on the back of her neck. Damien cursed under his breath, the sounds of his footsteps brushing against Emma’s consciousness as he approached them. “McCabe, get in the car. Emma, unless you want your father’s stay here to be even less accommodating than it already is, I suggest you follow him.”

In front of her, Luis’s eyes narrowed, and she suspected that this hiccup was about to cause more than a little trouble between Damien and the other man. Great. All the past few weeks had managed to prove to Emma was that the more she tried to fix things, the more broken they became.

The heat of Landon’s body disappeared and he sidestepped her. Talk about stubborn stupidity. It wasn’t enough that Landon had been about to get his face shot off—he wanted
another
go at Luis? Damien intervened, grabbing him by the collar of his shirt as he gave him a solid shake, like a wolf bringing one of its pack members into line. Landon seemed to get the hint and threw Damien’s grip off before heading toward their ride, the sounds of his departing footsteps like ominous thunder in Emma’s ears. She closed her eyes for a fleeting moment and let out a weary sigh before turning on the balls of her feet and following Damien and Landon out the door toward the awaiting car.

Great. Who else could she manage to piss off today?

Wait. Maybe she shouldn’t ask.

Chapter Eighteen

“Crawford said you were going to be a handful, McCabe,” Damien remarked as he pulled out of the warehouse lot. “But I didn’t think you had a death wish.”

Emma wondered how they’d managed to leave without a full escort. Though it stood to reason that, once her task was done and they figured she could be trusted to a certain degree, Sousa’s guard dogs would back off. It was nice to know that her suspicions were confirmed that Damien was in fact the SOG marshal working undercover. It made the wink he’d given her after lunch a lot less unsettling, anyway.

Landon sat at Emma’s side, stoic. He stared straight ahead, his eyes focused on some unknown point. A muscle ticked in Landon’s cheek, his jaw sawing back and forth as if he were making a meal of his own teeth. Nervous energy skittered up Emma’s spine. He was pissed—there was no doubt about that. But now that they’d left the warehouse behind she figured he’d take the opportunity to cool off. Maybe McCabe wasn’t the sort who bounced back quickly.

Rather than respond to Damien’s ribbing, Landon remained silent. He looked like he might blow at any second and Emma was afraid of making even the smallest misstep to set him off. “I know it’s not your responsibility, but have you been looking after my dad?” Emma was pretty sure the last thing on Damien’s list was watching out for an ailing old man, but she had to ask. “I mean, he’s holding up all right, isn’t he?”

“I’m doing what I can,” Damien said. “I’m not around a lot, but when I am I check in on him. He seems to be holding up fine. Sousa won’t let anything happen to him until he gets his money back, Emma. They won’t be giving him the gold-star treatment or anything, but at least he won’t be intentionally hurt.”

Intentionally
. That one word tied Emma’s stomach into an unyielding knot. “I never should have taken the money,” she said more to herself than Damien.

“No,” Damien said. “You shouldn’t have. But it’s too late to worry about that now. Focus on damage control, on convincing Sousa that you want on his payroll. You did a good job today. You proved not only your worth but that you’re willing to do what he asks of you. With any luck, we’ll have this wrapped up soon.”

“But that depends on how quickly I give Sousa back his money, right?”

“More or less.” Damien shrugged. “He’s calling the shots now. Your job is to sit tight and play your part. Do that and this will all turn out fine.”

She wished she could be so optimistic.

The rest of the drive passed in silence. Beside her, Landon sat like a statue, anger radiating from every pore. For the first time all day, Emma almost wished she was back in the warehouse with Sousa’s men rather than about to be dumped off to spend the rest of her evening cooped up in a hotel room with one super-cranky deputy U.S. marshal. With any luck, the hotel cable carried the beIN SPORTS network. A good soccer game was the distraction she needed to take her mind off of her growing list of worries.

Or maybe not . . .

Damien pulled up to the rear entrance of the hotel, and Landon jumped out of the backseat, slamming the door behind him. The SOG marshal returned Landon’s gun to him, and he waited with his back turned to Emma, arms folded at his chest. “I’ll be in touch. I suggest staying close to your phone.” He rolled up his window and pulled out of the parking lot, leaving a car’s width of distance between Emma and Landon. Those few feet that separated them might as well have been miles.

Landon didn’t take a single step until Emma caught up to him. Even then, he waited for her to take the lead, staying close behind her right shoulder, almost crowding her but not quite.

“Are you going to say anything?” Emma hustled through the back entrance and made a beeline for the elevator. Urgency took on a new meaning with her head sweating like someone had encased it with a layer of heated plastic. Which wasn’t half as annoying as her itchy scalp. When all of this was said and done, she was ceremoniously burning the damned wig. She doubted it did much of anything to change her appearance anyway. The only thing it was good for was pure, unmitigated torture.

Landon refused to speak, all but ignoring her as they stepped inside the elevator. He punched the button for their floor with so much force, she’d be surprised if the button ever worked properly again. Why was he behaving like a spoiled teenager who’d lost his Internet privileges? Was he pissed off that Damien had pulled him out of the warehouse before Luis could blow his fool head off? Or maybe it was Emma’s own interference that had him so bent out of shape. She cringed as she took a tentative step back. Now that she thought about it, she could see how that might have dinged his ego.

Great. Was there anything she hadn’t managed to screw up yet?

The elevator doors slid open on the second floor to a couple waiting to jump on board. Emma reached up and pulled the blond locks of her wig down around her temples, averting her gaze as she maneuvered to the rear of the elevator. One floor passed and then another. Though it was unlikely anyone would recognize her out of the blue, she couldn’t help but feel nervous. She’d really crossed the point of no return, hadn’t she? Criminal. Thief. Extortionist. And dead.