Wicked Ride (26 page)

My father gave Dee enough
information, including turning over documents proving Magnus was
defrauding investors by giving fake returns from new investor
money—classic Ponzi maneuver—and she was preparing an
arrest warrant but wasn’t
sure when it would be executed. Sadly, while Magnus was in serious
trouble over the various fraudulent cons he had going on, he wasn’t
so big a fish that we warranted any type of police protection. The
most Dee could say was that we needed to be careful and that once
Magnus was brought into custody, it would be made clear he would be
under very intense scrutiny from the police. We all hoped that would
be enough to make him want to keep his nose clean and not add a
murder charge to his rap sheet. I did not want my father or me going
poof
.

Of course, there was still the
option of us packing up and moving away.

Possibly starting over somewhere
new.

Never thought I’d
say that because I love New York and it’s my home.

But the time I spent in Wyoming
has given me new perspective. Maybe because I was with a man who
showed me I could have a really amazing life somewhere else? Well, at
least until things went to shit really fast.

And my heart got broken in the
process.

I mean, really broken.

“You okay, darlin’?”
my dad asks.

I tilt my face away from the
street to look at him. He has no idea the things I went through to
save him. I could never tell him the level to which I stooped, not
only because he’d be devastated to know what I’d done for
him, but also because while Mickey Foster is a non-violent man, he’d
never give up a quest to kill Magnus for the type of con he involved
me in. My father may not have had qualms with me cheating, lying, and
stealing to make a living, but he’d never forgive the injustice
of Magnus forcing me to essentially prostitute myself if he knew the
real truth. As it were, I’m just thankful my dad accepted me at
face value when I told him that the con was a bust and that our only
option was to help the police bring him down.

“I’m fine, Daddy,”
I say softly. “Just… worried.”

“Looks like more than worry
on that sad face of yours,” he observes.

I take in my dad’s
kind face with his laugh lines, and even smile to myself over the
inherent sparkle of deviousness in his eyes that is the telltale sign
of a lifelong con artist. I love him for his faults and despite them,
and when all is said and done, I can never regret my actions to save
the one man in my life who loves me unconditionally and holds nothing
of himself back.

“Ever think about leaving
New York?” I ask him in an effort to not only change the
subject away from my sad thoughts about Logan, but also to actually
put some thought into the best way to keep us safe until Magnus is
put in prison. That was not going to happen overnight, and I was not
looking forward to sleeping the next several months with one eye
open. “We could start over somewhere. Maybe southern California
where it’s always sunny and warm?”

“Hate to leave our home,
baby girl,” he says morosely. “But like you… I’m
worried about what Magnus is going to do. At the very least, you
should leave.”

“I’m not going
anywhere without you,” I rebuke. “We’re a team.”

“Always a team,” he
says and holds his beer up in salute to me. “So maybe
California isn’t a bad idea.”

I give him a lukewarm smile and
wonder what it would take to start over. Dad has no job skills, but
he can grift anywhere. I could help out…
maybe still go to school. I give a mirthless internal giggle over
that. The College Grifter. I bet I’d be one of a kind.

A knock on the door has me
freezing in place, my eyes the only things moving toward my father.
He lowers the recliner slowly, wincing as it creaks a little, and
sets his beer on the table. Reaching down to the side of his chair,
he picks up the baseball bat he keeps there. Like I said,
he’s generally a non-violent type and doesn’t believe in
guns, but living the type of life we do… you have got to have
some protection.

I swing my legs off the
windowsill, placing them on the floor to stand up, but my dad shakes
his head at me in silent admonishment. With a jerk of his chin, he
motions me to go to my bedroom.

I shake my head in denial,
considering the large butcher knife in the kitchen.

“Get in your room now,”
he whispers at me with that stern father look that’s not to be
disobeyed.

My pulse spikes in fear, but I
refuse his order, instead darting into the kitchen and grabbing the
knife out of the wooden block. I creep back into the living room, my
father giving me a harsh glare before moving to the door.

I pad silently behind him on bare
feet and watch as Dad puts his eye to the peephole. He stares a
minute and turns to face me, giving me a silent shrug to indicate he
doesn’t recognize
who’s at the door.

This relieves me slightly because
it’s clearly not
Magnus, but it doesn’t mean he wouldn’t send a messenger
over to find out if I was here. There’s no way he knows about
our involvement with the police yet, but I’m sure he’s
more than pissed he couldn’t find me in Wyoming.

I push past my father and put my
eye up to the peephole, perhaps able to recognize one of Magnus’
henchman or even better yet, the apartment manager who might be here
to collect our rent, which always seems to be overdue.

Instead, I see Logan’s
beautiful face staring at the door and I jerk backward, knocking into
my dad.

“Who is it?” he
whispers to me.

“Logan,” I whisper
back involuntarily. I look back through the peephole and take note of
the swell of joy and anger that sweeps through me.

Without another thought, I pull
the chain free of the lock and swing the door open, fashioning my
most malevolent stare at the man who managed to drive me higher than
I’ve ever been in my
life, only to drop me from the stratosphere to crash back down to
earth.

“What do you want?” I
ask, my tone appropriately icy.

Logan’s
eyes roam briefly over my face before looking down to the butcher
knife in my hand, and he winces. And because I apparently have some
sort of mystical connection to his emotions, I read his guilt loud
and clear.

I put you in danger, and now
you have to carry a butcher knife around your apartment.

But he quickly schools his
features and says, “I
came to check on you. Make sure you’re okay.”

I can’t
help the sarcasm. It comes pouring out. I hold the knife up and say,
“I’m just peachy, Logan. Just waiting for Magnus to come
bust into my apartment and whack my father and me.”

I open the door up a little so he
can see my dad standing there with the baseball bat and jerk my chin
toward him. “See.
Dad’s got a bat. I got a knife. We’re fine. So you can
just mosey on out of here and head back to Wyoming.”

“You’re clearly not
fine,” he grits out as he pushes his way past me into the
apartment.

“Well, make yourself at
home,” I mutter as I step back and then close the door behind
him.

“Don’t mind if I do,”
he snipes back.

I roll my eyes at his back before
asking with resignation, “Seriously, Logan… what are you
doing here?”

I pretend not to notice how
damned good he looks in faded jeans, his hiking boots, and a
long-sleeved dark blue Henley, even as I feel my skin tightening all
over just from his presence.

Logan spins on me, scrubs a
frustrated hand through his hair, and admits, “I
was worried about you.”

I throw my hands out, one still
clutching the knife, and say with exasperation, “Well,
as you can see… I’m fine. So you can just go.”

“I’m sorry I got you
into this mess,” he blurts out, his face lined with guilt and
worry.

“He got you into this
mess?” my dad asks from behind me.

I wince, because I’d
forgotten my dad was witnessing this painful exchange. I also cringe
because my dad has no clue who Logan is or that he played a part in
our current predicament. All I told my father when I came home was
that I couldn’t continue on with the con because I felt it was
too dangerous, and that I met someone in Wyoming—that would be
Bridger—who had a way to help us out of this mess.

To my dad’s
credit, he tried to question me on what type of danger Magnus had put
me in, but I’d stubbornly refused the details and said he’d
just have to trust me. There was no way I could ever tell my father
the sordid details of the con, much less how I fell for a man who was
trying to help me out but put me in a worse pickle than I already
was. I certainly couldn’t tell him that now, or else he’d
take that bat to Logan, and I liked his face all pretty the way it
was.

With a sigh, I say, “Dad…
this is Logan. A friend. He had my back in Wyoming… like my
friend Bridger.”

This was not a blatant lie,
because if I were to look at it solely from Logan’s
perspective, he did have my back. He just went about it the wrong
way.

Logan cocks an eyebrow at me,
clearly surprised I’d
reference him as a friend or that I’d even dare to say he had
my back. And then he goes on to make matters worse, when he asks me
dryly, “A friend? I think I was more than that.”

“Seriously?” I ask in
exasperation. “You want to lay that innuendo out like that
right in front of my father? Who you just met and who is also holding
a baseball bat that he is not afraid to use?”

And he did not just quirk his
lips up in amusement at me…?

Before I can slap the smirk off
his face, he steps past me and holds his hand out to my father. “Mr.
Foster… I’m Logan McKay. As Auralie said, I’m a
friend of hers. And I hope I’m more than that.”

I growl low in my chest as my
dad’s eyes cut to me
with surprise before he looks back to Logan and offers his
non-bat-bearing hand to shake. “Pleased to meet you.”

Logan nods at my dad before
turning back to me. “Bridger
told me you met with the federal prosecutor.”

“Yes. My dad gave enough
information and proof that they’re going to issue an arrest
warrant for Magnus,” I tell him grudgingly. “No clue when
they’ll serve it though.”

“He’s going to come
after you,” Logan states a simple fact I already know. “First
and foremost because you ditched him in Wyoming.”

“This I know,” I say,
sarcastically waving the knife in front of my face again, which is
really a childish maneuver but whatever. “Hence the reason
we’re armed.”

Logan snorts at our pitiful
defense system and walks back to my door. I’m
stunned for a moment, thinking my sarcasm has driven him off before I
can really look at him and get my fill of all his magnificence before
he leaves me again. I almost call him back once he opens the door,
but he halts there and sticks his head out into the hallway, looking
down to the left.

“You guys can come in,”
he says to someone in the hall.

Logan steps back and admits two
burly men in their early thirties. Both dressed in street clothes…
jeans, t-shirts, and jackets. Fairly non-descript except for the air
of menace they both carry about their personas.

Logan turns to me. “This
is Wade and Wilson. They’re going to be your shadows until
Magnus is behind bars.”

My eyebrows shoot sky high as I
look at the men standing there before me, both with their hands
clasped behind their backs as they stand at almost military
attention.

“Come again?” I ask
Logan in shock.

“They’re protection
for you and your dad,” Logan says briskly. “They’ll
switch out with another team for the night shift, but they’re
on you until Magnus is taken care of.”

“Protection?” I
mutter, still not able to comprehend what Logan is doing.

Logan’s
eyes slide to the knife I’m still clutching. “Yeah…
they’re much better than knives and bats.”

“I don’t understand.
You what… hired bodyguards?”

“No,” Logan says
sarcastically, but it’s a sarcasm laced with amusement. “I
went to St. Margaret’s School for Wayward Children and hired
mercenaries.”

“Huh?” I ask,
completely lost in the conversation, not because it’s confusing
as hell, but mostly because my brain has been pure mush since Logan
walked into my apartment.

“Didn’t you see
Deadpool
?”
he asks me.

“No, I didn’t,”
I murmur.

“Well, never mind…
you’re going to have twenty-four-hour protection,” he
says confidently. “They’ll stay out in the hallway, but
if you need to leave, they’ll go with you. I’ve also
hired someone from their agency to track Magnus down to deliver a
very strong message that you are under protection and that orders are
shoot to kill if someone comes after you.”

I blink in astonishment, and my
dad mutters, “Holy
shit.”

Logan turns to Wade and Wilson,
nodding toward the door, “You
guys can go ahead outside. You’re officially on the clock.”

“Yes, sir,” one of
them says in response, and I’m not sure if it’s Wade or
Wilson, but then they both turn and walk out the door. In a daze, I
bend over and place the knife on the coffee table, clearly not
needing it right now.

When I look back to Logan, I ask
with narrowed eyes, “We
can’t afford this. And I know you can’t afford it, so
who’s paying for this protection?”

“I actually can afford it,”
Logan says. With apologetic eyes, he adds on, “It’s the
least I can do for you.”

I do not like that at all,
because now I know he’s
here only because he’s driven by guilt for putting me in this
situation to begin with. It was stupid to think he’d come all
this way because he wanted a relationship with me.

“Well, thank you,” I
snap at him. “I appreciate the offer, and we’ll accept
it. So now that you have that burden off your shoulders, you can go
ahead and go now.”