Skin Deep (10 page)

Isabella laughed, picturing the two of them camped out with their pizza straight from the fridge. “How old were you then?”

“I guess I was about fifteen and Kylie was maybe ten that first time,” he said after a pause. “But we shared a lot of pizza in those days, just me and her.”

“No wonder you two are close,” Isabella said, and the pared-down, God’s honest smile on his face slid through her like a summer breeze.

“Yeah, we are.” Walker tilted his head, gesturing toward her with a lift of his stubbled chin. “Your turn. Tell me something about you.”

Whether it was the cover of the near-darkness blanketing the front seat of her car or the ease at which Kellan had told her such a personal thing about himself, Isabella had no clue. But instead of playing dodge ball with the topic like her gut demanded, she said, “I don’t drink coffee.”

Surprise streaked over his face, illuminated by the glow of a nearby streetlight as he shifted in his seat. “No way that’s a legitimate truth. How do you function?”

“On sheer determination, mostly. Well, that and I drink enough tea to fill a bathtub on any given day.”

Walker’s soft laughter filled the space between them, easing her tension by another notch. “Is there a particular reason you don’t drink coffee, or should I question your sanity in general?”

“I promise, I’m not insane,” Isabella said, lifting a hand to caveat with, “At least not where my dislike for coffee is concerned.”

“I see.” Although his tone was clearly prompting her to continue, he didn’t push out loud, and hell if that unassuming, deep blue stare didn’t knock the story right out of her.

“When I was fourteen, my cousin Marisol and I wanted to act grown up, but we were too chicken shit to do anything high-level, like take whiskey from either of our parents’ liquor cabinets.”

A smile ghosted over Walker’s mouth. “At fourteen, that was probably a good thing.”

“Since Marisol was three years younger than me, definitely,” Isabella agreed. “Anyway, we ended up sneaking two cups of coffee from my
mami
’s kitchen one night after a family dinner. We thought we were such a big deal, you know? Drinking coffee like the adults. Of course, we didn’t add cream or sugar because that wouldn’t have been grown up, and my
papi
’s pretty much notorious in our family for brewing coffee strong enough to kick-start the living dead.”

“I like him already.” Kellan turned toward her, a subtle thing, really, but God, his quiet focus made it all too easy to keep talking.

“Well, he taught me a lesson that night, even if he didn’t know it. Marisol admitted right away how much she hated the coffee, but I was scared we’d get caught sneaking back into the kitchen if we tried to dump out our cups. I couldn’t
admit
that, though.”

“Because you were older,” Walker said, and her smile was two parts wry, one part bittersweet to go with the memory.

“And because I was stubborn as hell. So I brazened it out and drank both cups of coffee to the very last drop. Marisol had to hold my hair all night while I was sick to my stomach and high as a kite on caffeine. I’ve never touched the stuff since.”

Walker laughed, not unkindly. “Sounds like you two are close.”

The simplicity of the words, the glaring reality that they hadn’t been true for eleven years now, hurtled Isabella back to reality, and she scraped for a breath to temper her suddenly slamming heartbeat. Was she out of her
mind
? She had a job to do—not a small one—and yet here she was, letting herself get distracted by a sexy firefighter she had no business revealing her feelings to. Focusing on the case in front of her, on the women in those photos, that was the only thing that mattered.

Even if keeping the past inside hurt like hell.

Isabella turned her attention to the city block outside her window, where it should’ve been this whole damned time. Christ, she was slipping. “Yeah. Well, anyway, we should probably get a plan into place for this chat with Marcus. Something tells me it’s not going to be a milk run, and I need to get as much out of him as I can.”

The silence coming from Walker’s side of the car was loaded with hesitation, and please, please, she’d need far more energy than she had if he decided to push his luck. But rather than calling her out, he simply lifted a shoulder, turning his body away from hers to scan the other side of the street as if their conversation had never even happened.

“That’s what we’re here for. So what’ve you got in mind to get this guy talking?”

K
ellan sent
one last glance over Atlantic Boulevard before setting his shoulders and diving headfirst into trouble. Judging by the number of people already beginning to populate the mostly residential area around the park in varying degrees of drunk and disorderly, he wouldn’t find a shortage of the stuff, either. In fact, all he had to do was look less than a foot and a half to his right and he’d get an eyeful of mad, bad, and dangerous to know standing right there next to him on the sidewalk.

Or maybe he should make that
difficult
to know, because for as wide-open as she was about her passion for work, Moreno sure did play her personal life close to the Kevlar. Not that her fierceness made Kellan any less curious about her. Or any less turned on with each passing minute they spent together.

On second thought, dangerous might be a better fit.

“Okay,” Moreno said, the intensity in her voice stamping the heat from his belly before it could take the quick trip due south. “Remember, this will be a lot different than dealing with Carmen. Once we find Marcus, he’s almost certainly going to give chase. Just stick to the plan and follow my lead.”

Kellan frowned. “About the plan,” he said, but she cut him off with a shake of her head.

“I know you don’t like staying in the shadows once we put eyes on Marcus, but I’m not changing my mind on how to run this.”

Kellan fell into step beside her. Slipping his hands into his jacket pockets, he swept a covert stare over the block before lowering his chin to keep his words close between them. “All I’m saying is that the plan is a little risky. What if it backfires?”

“It’s not going to backfire.”

“And you’re sure because…?”

Her exhale warmed the bare skin of his neck as she turned to look at him. “Because I need it to work.”

“Okay,” he said slowly, resigning himself to a nod. While hedging their bets on a probability gave him the fucking shakes, Kellan had to admit Isabella was no slouch in the strategy department. The plan might hinge on one “maybe”, but it
was
otherwise solid. Plus, she’d already made it clear in no uncertain terms that if he didn’t like the way she wanted to handle the situation, he was welcome to warm the Mustang’s seats while she did it without him.

File that under not goddamn happening. This neighborhood was a crime scene just waiting to go down, and despite Isabella’s gut feeling that Marcus would be a runner, Kellan had seen enough scrapes to know that once they got the guy backed into a corner, his fight or flight instincts just might err on the side of getting chippy.

Christ, they really did need the plan to work.

Doing one last check of their surroundings, Kellan took a mental snapshot of their exit paths and any potential obstacles that might cause snags. The entrance to the park sat in the center of the block, marked by a six-foot opening in the wrought iron fence surrounding the heavily shadowed space. A dense network of tree branches arched overhead, still thick with leaves that provided ample cover for the handful of acres that made up the park. What served as winding jogging paths during the day made for all sorts of hidden places for illicit acts at night, and he and Moreno were going to have to be at the very top of their game in order to pin Marcus down and get what they needed out of him.

The shadows around him slipped, pulling at his senses. The night air sent a chill down Kellan’s spine despite the cover of his black canvas jacket, and the sensation kicked him in the gut before kicking him back in time. God there was so much irony in how cold the desert got after the sun went down. That first night patrol had damn near ended him, and not from any danger the enemy had posed.

That had come later. Roadside bombs. Ambushes at checkpoints. So many things that could happen in less than a blink.

His heart worked faster against his rib cage, the frenzied rhythm becoming a white-noise whoosh that pressed against his eardrums with every step. Adrenaline threatened to picklock all the boxes in his brain, to make his breath stick and his hands shake, but he reached for an inhale, forcing his brain out of the desert and back into the here and now.

Focus. Nine paces from the car to the other side of the street. Six run-down row homes with mostly darkened windows facing the even darker park. No emotions. Facts only. Breathe.

“You ready?” came Moreno’s murmur, soft and sure enough to smooth out the jagged edges of his nerves. She inclined her head at the shadow-lined footpath leading away from the crumbling sidewalk, and Kellan anchored himself the rest of the way into the moment before nodding.

“Absolutely. Let’s go make the plan work.”

For the first few paces, he moved slowly, staying a half-step behind Isabella as she walked over the dimly lit trail. His eyes adjusted fast enough—shit, learning how to rely on senses other than sight was pretty much Ranger 101, not to mention the first damn thing they taught at the fire academy. Moreno seemed to adapt just as quickly, leading the way down the path on barely-there footsteps. They walked in tandem, her on the trail and him on her hip, passing couples knotted together and small groups of people smoking and drinking from shared bottles wrapped in brown paper bags. Most of them were far enough off the path not to even notice Kellan and Isabella moving past, but the few that did bother noticing them didn’t spare more than a brief glance, seemingly too wrapped up in their activities to care.

Of course, he noticed all of them, cataloguing hair color and build and about a dozen other things with each turn on the winding trail. But no one they passed came close to fitting Carmen’s description of Danny Marcus, and the path was becoming less and less populated the farther they went.

Kellan sent yet another furtive three-sixty through the shadows. “You think we’re going to find what we’re looking for?” he asked quietly, leaning in over Moreno’s shoulder. “We haven’t even seen anyone for about fifty paces.”

Her expression was a tough gauge in the low light filtering down from the street lamp ahead of them in the distance, but her body was strung with enough tight determination to broadcast her answer before she even murmured, “Patience is a virtue, Walker.”

“Do I strike you as the virtuous type?” There was no helping the implication laced all over the question, but as soon as Kellan caught the smile hooking at the corners of Moreno’s mouth, his boldness became worth it.

“Fair enough. But we’re less than a third of the way up the trail, and—” Although her words crashed to a halt, her movements didn’t seem to have considered hitching for even a second, and she slid her fingers over his forearm, gripping tight. “There,” she whispered. “That’s got to be him.”

Kellan’s eyes lasered in on a man standing to the side of the path about twenty paces in front of them. The guy—who seriously couldn’t have weighed more than a buck twenty even if he’d showered in his clothes—stood beneath a street lamp, his back to the pole and his cell phone glued to his ear as he yak-yakked away. An overabundance of dark corkscrew curls sprang out from his head in every direction, and yeah, the guy fit Carmen’s description right down to the hey-baby murmurs he was throwing into his cell phone in Spanish.

“Copy that.” Kellan checked the immediate area for bystanders and covert exit paths, his pulse tapping out a rhythm of
fuck yeah
at the small stroke of luck that gave Marcus neither. Still… “You sure you want to stick to the plan?”

“Walker.” The word was all warning, and damn it, he really had no choice.

“I’m falling back. You’re a go to move in.”

Moreno didn’t so much as blink. Ruffling a hand through her hair, she tugged the hem of her T-shirt down low enough to reveal the swell of her cleavage along with—Jesus, she was going to end him right here in the middle of the park—a good two inches of the black lacy bra beneath it. Slipping a provocative smile over her face, she sauntered over to the guy, and even though it screamed against every last instinct in his gut, Kellan hung back on the periphery, sliding into the shadows just outside the reach of the scant overhead light.

“Hi. You’re Danny Marcus, right?” Moreno pressed her hands into the pockets of her jeans to give her breasts maximum lift, and bingo. She had the guy’s attention, hook, line, and I-think-with-my-dick sinker.

He murmured something quick into his cell phone, stowing it in his jacket pocket a second later. “And who might you be?”

“My name is Isabella.” She leaned on her accent just enough to seal the deal of Marcus’s full attention, his eyes taking a slow, filthy trip over her body that made Kellan want to kick the ever-loving shit out of the guy. “I’m looking to score a little fun,” she said. “Thought you could maybe help me out.”

“You came to the right place, honey. Danny Marcus does know how to have a good time. How come I’ve never seen a pretty girl like you out here before?”

Kellan took a slow breath, holding it tight in his lungs. For as slimy as the guy was, he wasn’t entirely stupid. He was fishing for something to trust.

And Moreno gave it to him, along with a smile that would inspire a hard-on for any straight man on the fucking planet. “I just moved here from Charlotte. I used to hang with Antonio Torres and some of his friends. One of his regular girls said I should come looking for you if I wanted a good time.”

Recognition took a turn over Marcus’s expression, and Kellan had to admit, she was working him like a pro. “Yeah, I know ’Tonio. He’s alright.” He paused. “What kind of pick-me-up do you need, sweetheart?”

“Mmm. What’ve you got?” Moreno asked, the question making Kellan’s heartbeat work a little faster in his chest. This was the part of the plan they needed, the part they’d been unable to control or predict with certainty.

Leverage
.

Marcus bit. “Molly, oxy, or smack. Pick your pleasure, Isabella.”

“You’ve got heroin?” Moreno paused, pulling her bottom lip between her teeth. “How much?”

Marcus pulled a baggie from his jacket pocket, and damn, he and Moreno couldn’t have gotten a better set of circumstances if they’d ordered them gift-wrapped. “I think we can work out a trade. Why don’t you bring those pretty tits over here so I can get a better look? Danny Marcus will get you all set, baby.”

Kellan’s pulse jumped in his veins like a living, breathing, very pissed off thing. Although a primal part of him wanted to say screw it and plant his fist in Marcus’s face, he forced himself to inhale, albeit barely. Matching Moreno’s steps toward Marcus with noiseless forward movement of his own, he positioned himself off the path about six feet from the two of them.

Focus. Two paces to the path. Five paces to Moreno. Breathe
.

“Damn, girl,” Marcus said, his voice dropping in greedy approval. “You’re going to look so good on your knees, earning your high.”

“You want me to blow you in order to get my fix?”

Marcus laughed, the sound rubbing Kellan’s nerves raw. “Unless you’re up for a fuck. Danny Marcus can make it good for you, baby.” He reached down to rest his hand over the fly of his overly baggy jeans. “I promise my cock is worth the smack.”

Kellan’s molars locked together so hard he was sure they’d self-destruct under the pressure. Even though his brain screamed at him to stand down for just a breath or two longer per the plan, he edged closer, his body bowstring tight and far past ready to act.

A fact that Isabella must have sensed somehow, because she lowered the hand closest to Kellan all the way to her side, flexing her fingers upward in a small, subtle signal of
stand down
. “There’s only one teeny-tiny problem with that,” she said.

Marcus laughed, holding up the bag of heroin in an obvious attempt to sway her. “Come on, honey. You don’t have to be shy with Danny.”

In a scissor-sharp instant, her demeanor went from coy to calculating even though nothing moved save her eyes. “Oh, I’m not shy at all. But I am a cop. Which means you and I are about to have a very different exchange than I think you had in mind.”

Kellan saw Marcus make up his mind two nanoseconds before the guy tossed the baggie into the grass and lunged down the footpath, and score one for Moreno’s gut. But Kellan had been ready for Marcus to jump ever since they’d put eyes on him, and he sprang out of the shadows to block Marcus’s trajectory in less than two steps. Whether or not Marcus would see him and stop was a fifty-fifty, Kellan knew, and part of him begged for an excuse to tackle the guy to the asphalt. Marcus recognized the roadblock with just enough space to slow his sloppy advance, though, fear channeling his oversized running shoes in the opposite direction even though in its panic, his brain had clearly forgotten that Moreno was standing there in wait.

“Remember me?” she asked, advancing enough to box Marcus in. His fight or flight instinct was still gunning hard for choice B, and he swung one last time to try his luck on Kellan’s side.

Not today, douchebag
. Kellan grabbed the guy in a rough hold, spinning him to face Isabella and wrenching both of Marcus’s arms behind his back as he nudged him toward the bench and the street light.

“Isabella Moreno, Remington PD.” Moreno’s badge glinted in a quick flash of gold before she replaced it deep in the well of her pocket. “Let’s have a chat, Danny.”

“I don’t have anything. You don’t have anything!” he half-whined, half-pleaded.

To her credit, Moreno refrained from rolling her eyes. “Really? Because I’m pretty sure that between this”—she reached into his jacket to reveal three more baggies, then three more full of pills from the other pocket—“and the heroin you tossed into the bushes there, which I
will
find with less than five minutes of searching and
will
have your fingerprints on it, I’ve got enough to call tonight Christmas fucking morning.”

Marcus jerked against Kellan’s grip, radiating the scent of sweat and fear. “Th-this is entrapment!” His voice lifted a register before cracking. “You propositioned me.”

Kellan’s pulse thrummed, but Moreno didn’t budge or back down. “I told you I was looking for some fun. You’re the one who offered me heroin in exchange for sex.”