Sex, Lies and Surveillance (18 page)

Mal followed on her heels, silent. He wanted her so badly his fingers ached to touch her. He was so screwed. This whole case was so screwed.

And, goddamn it, there was Bennett, waiting on the other side of the street with his limo and his bodyguard.

Client or not, Mal was going to beat him into the ground for disobeying him. The bastard’s smug grin nudged Mal over into complete fury.

“That son-of-a-bitch—”

He started across the street, Janey behind him now. Bennett pushed away from the car, probably gaining courage from the bodyguard at his back.

Mal didn’t care. He was gonna—

The squeal of tires from up the street barely registered until Mal realized the car was speeding up and headed straight for them.

Mal caught a blinding flash of headlights and squinted against the glare.

Instinct had him hurling himself at Janey, scooping her up and rolling with her out of the path of the car, which came close enough to brush his calf.

Janey’s short scream ended in a groan as they slammed into concrete. He tried to cushion their fall as much as possible, then rose to his knees in a split second, pulling his gun from the back of his pants and sighting at fast-disappearing taillights.

Through the roaring in his ears and the pounding of his heart, he listened for any distinctive sounds the car made, anything that would help him identify it later.

There was nothing. Nothing except Janey drawing in a sharp breath as she lay on the ground behind him.

“Shit, are you okay?”

He shoved the gun back into the holster and knelt beside her. When he reached for her, fear clutched at his stomach when she flinched away from him. He started running his hands over her arms and legs, testing for broken bones or wounds.

“Jesus, Janey. Are you hurt?”

“No, I’m fine. Just a…just a little scraped up.”

Mal sat back on his heels. He could see fear in her eyes and something else. Something he didn’t understand. Shutting it out, he stood and held out his hand.

“Come on. We gotta get off the street.”

Rising, she brushed herself off with trembling hands, ignoring his outstretched one. He swore and felt his body go hot, then cold with fear and adrenaline.

“Are you sure you’re not hurt?” he asked.

She didn’t look at him. “I’m fine. It never touched me. But it hit you, didn’t it?”

“Christ, Laughlin, that car could have killed me. Why aren’t you going after it?”

Mal barely spared a glance for Bennett, whose bodyguard had pulled him to safety behind the limo.

“Chris—” he spoke to the bodyguard, “—take him back to the hotel. If he tries to leave his room, handcuff him to a chair. Or shoot his knees out. I don’t care which. I’ll be in touch tomorrow. Come on, Janey.”

Bennett sputtered but finally the bodyguard got him in the car. Mal couldn’t care less. He was only worried about getting Janey off the street.

“Mal, are you okay?”

“I’m fine. I think it just grazed my leg.” He looked down and realized he was bleeding. Then it started to hurt. Shit. “I want you off the street. That car wasn’t aiming for Bennett, goddamn it. We’re taking the cab back to your place.”

For a second, she just stared at him

Then she nodded, gathered her bags, surprisingly unscathed from the accident, and hurried across the street to the cab. His hand on her elbow, Mal cursed himself the whole way. Damn it, this was his fault.

You’re losing it, son. Getting sloppy. If you get sloppy now, something might happen to Janey. Just like Dev.

***

The trip back to her home was silent, except for the steady chatter the driver provided.

“Damn, secret agent man, that car came out of nowhere. Must have been doing forty or fifty by the time it almost ran you down. Must have pissed off someone good.”

Janey couldn’t think straight, not through her constant shaking.

“Did you get a look at the car?” Mal asked the driver.

And she couldn’t get warm. Her body shook, even in the warmth of the taxi. Her teeth started to chatter when they pulled up to her building, but she quieted them through sheer willpower.

“Nah. It was all over by the time I realized what was going down.”

She’d nearly been run over by that car.

In all the years with her parents, she’d never been the target of outright violence. Her parents had enemies, some who’d tried to harm them. Nic had been in any number of close calls and he’d nearly died in the Middle East.

Even Jimmy had been targeted for a hit a few years ago. Some nutcase had decided he was too much competition. Luckily, the guy didn’t have the brainpower to carry out his threats. His homemade bomb had lacked a few key ingredients, like a fuse. The man now had a nice white room in a state facility.

She had no memory of her kidnapping as a child, no memory of the woman who’d taken her. Her parents didn’t tell her about it until she’d been fifteen and stupid enough to believe she could sneak off to the Jersey Shore with Annie for a weekend. Then her mom had sat her down and scared the living hell out of her.

Grace had explained how being a DeMarco meant having to take precautions other children didn’t have to take. How a stolen weekend at the shore with a friend put not only herself but Annie at risk. How any number of cretins could be watching and waiting for their opportunity to steal her away, to use her as a bargaining chip or worse.

Until that moment, she hadn’t truly understood how being her parents’ daughter made her the target of some very nasty people.

For a week, she’d been terrified to leave the house, to be away from her parents or her brothers. Terrified someone would take her.

Her parents had freaked. Her mom blamed herself for giving Janey nightmares—and a possible ulcer—while her dad blamed himself for just about everything else.

And then Nic had come home on leave and taken her to the gym. Nic didn’t belong to one of those chains that served wheatgrass juice and organic smoothies. He trained in a gym that looked like the one used in the first
Rock
y movie. Grungy. Smelly. Hot as hell.

The men there all had at least one tattoo and enough muscle to bench a car. For an entire week, Nic trained her in self-defense with the help of those guys, who turned out to be military, cops and firefighters.

They hadn’t talked about her feelings, about how scared she was. He’d thrown her around like a rag doll without ever hurting her. He showed her how to street fight, how to break holds and to use her smaller size to greater advantage. He taught her how to break a guy’s nose with the back of her head and where to bite someone and make it hurt like hell.

And by the time he had to return to his unit, she’d no longer been having nightmares.

So why the hell was she falling apart now?

Because she’d become complacent, that was why.

No, goddamn it. I’m a DeMarco. I’m not going to be terrified.

But what if something had happened to Mal? What if he’d been injured because of her?

Taking a steadying breath, she looked at Mal to see him pull his ripped and bloody jeans away from his knees.

Fear tried to sink in again but she wouldn’t allow it.

“Damn it, Mal, you’re bleeding.”

“Just surface abrasions. It’s fine.”

She took another look and knew he was right. Still… “When we get to my place—” her voice sounded weak and shaky so she forced some strength back into it, “—I’ll clean that for you.” He didn’t fight her about it, but he wouldn’t look her in the eyes either. It must hurt worse than he was letting on. Her own hands were scraped up and her right leg probably had the beginning of a spectacular bruise, but his knee must be killing him.

“Maybe we should take you to a hospital.”

His hands curled into fists. “I really slammed you into the pavement.”

Now, why did he sound angry about that?

“I’m fine. I’d rather
you
slammed me into the pavement than that car.”

Mal acted like he didn’t hear her. “I should have been more careful. Should have seen that car sitting there waiting. Goddamn Bennett. I told him to leave. Told him to go back to the hotel.”

Mal shook his head and didn’t say another word after that.

By the time the cab deposited them at her doorstep, the silence sat on her shoulders like an anchor.

Mal limped to her couch and dropped onto it, letting his head fall back against the cushions. All other thoughts left her head at the pain etched into his face. “I’ll be right back with the first-aid kit.”

When she returned from the bathroom, she knelt in front of him.

“The jeans are ruined anyway. Just go ahead and rip them.” Mal didn’t even open his eyes.

Taking hold of the damaged fabric, she tore them away. Then she reached for the bottle of painkillers and held it out. “Take a few of these.”

He opened his eyes and stared steadily into hers. He held out his hand. His trembling hand. She spilled out three, then handed him the bottle.

“I’ll get you some water.”

After he’d taken the pills and downed the water, he leaned his head back onto the cushions with a sigh and she turned her attention to the wound, pausing before actually touching him.

“This is going to sting.” She looked up to find him staring at her. “I’m sorry.”

His answer was a slight nod. Then he closed his eyes again.

She dabbed at the dirt with a soft white washcloth, trying not to cause him any more pain, but noticing every slight flinch he made.

She also couldn’t help noticing the man’s great legs.

Dragging her gaze away from the bit of muscled thigh she could see easily, she turned to find the bandages and give herself a moment to regain her equilibrium.

“Janey, are you really okay? Your hands are shaking.”

Damn, so they were.

Come on. Pull yourself together.

“Do you want me to stay with you tonight?” he asked, causing her hands to tremble for a whole different reason. Then he totally ruined the mood. “Or if you want, I’ll call Nic, have him come over.”

She stood and began to gather her first-aid kit together. “I’m fine, Mal. You took the worst of the fall. Hell, my hands aren’t even scraped. I’m perfectly capable of taking care of myself.”

“Janey—”

She held up one now-steady hand and stopped him. “You can stay.” So she could keep an eye on him, make sure he didn’t have a concussion from hitting his head on the ground.

Yeah, right.

She stalked off to the bathroom, fuming because he was just like her brothers, thinking she needed a man to take care of her, protect her from all the bad things in life.

So, okay, it was
kind
of sweet, in a chauvinist-pig way, but she’d discovered some things about Mal this morning that left her with a whole lot more questions.

Like her inability to find his exit date from the NSA.

If he stayed here, with her, she might be able to extract more information from him. And of course, after last night, the thought of close proximity made her knees weak. And that definitely was not due to her near brush with danger. It was all due to Mal.

She’d been thinking of ways to get him back in her bed all day. She wanted him there and, from the heat in his eyes whenever he glanced her way, he wouldn’t be averse to that either.

When she left the bathroom, she found he’d moved into the kitchen, where he stood at the sink getting another glass of water.

She hadn’t made a sound. Her house didn’t creak. Not the hardwood floor or the new windows or the steel door.

But he heard her coming anyway and turned to watch her walk across the room.

She crossed her arms over her chest.

“Are you sure you want me?” Her eyebrows lifted and he actually flushed, just a low rise of color on his cheeks. “To stay? Are you sure you want me to stay?”

She had to laugh at that one. Yeah, she was sure. She couldn’t help her furtive glance toward her bed. Her home’s open floor plan meant her bedroom was only partially concealed from the rest of the room by a large folding screen made up of old wooden garage doors. They hid her bed from view but they were not walls.

She wouldn’t get any sleep if Mal was only a few feet away.

Then again, maybe she didn’t want to.

“You can sleep on the couch.”

***

“So tell me again how you found out DeMarcos was looking to hire someone.”

Sitting on the couch in a pair of Nic’s sweats that weren’t too big and a faded T-shirt of Jimmy’s, Mal stared straight into Janey’s eyes. They’d been sitting here for the past half hour, her on the chair across from him. Her questions had gotten increasingly more difficult to answer. It was only going on 10:00 p.m. Maybe he should just plead exhaustion and go to bed.

But he couldn’t even think the word “bed” without wanting to end up in hers.

She’d come out of her bedroom in a pair of men’s flannel pajamas, her feet bare and sexy as hell. All he could think about was if she was naked under all that soft cotton.

He’d seen her naked. He knew how beautiful her body was. How she responded to him, moved with him, came apart in his arms.

And apparently all she could think about was work.

He shrugged nonchalantly, his gaze never wavering from hers. “You know how it is in the intelligence community. It wasn’t that hard to find out. I called your office, and your mother asked me to come in for an interview.”

That was exactly what had happened. Minus a few key plot points.

Maybe you want to rethink this little sleepover, son.

Too late now.

Janey’s electric blue gaze was homed on his and he couldn’t look away.

“Tell me something about yourself that I can’t find in your classified files,” she asked.

Was she actually admitting she’d read his file? She had to know that was breaking the law. Still, she was a DeMarco.

“My favorite TV show is
Community
.”

She burst into laughter, tipping back her head and exposing the line of her neck. The sight ripped right into his libido.

“Oh, that’s just too typical.” Her laughter broke into uncontrollable giggles. “You couldn’t come up with something more esoteric, like, I don’t know, some show on the History Channel?”

He couldn’t help himself. He had to laugh along and then she got the hiccups when she stopped suddenly.

And that just made him laugh harder.

“I think—”
hiccup
“—I need a—”
hiccup
“—glass of water.”

“Sit still. I’ll get it.”

He limped to her kitchen, opened the glass cabinet on the first try and extracted a bottle of water from the fridge.

When he returned, she allowed their fingers to brush as he handed her the water. A shiver ran through his body, making every hair on his body stand up.

Before she took a sip of the water, she said, “Tell me about your partner, Mal.”