Chapter Seven
G
unner
decided he wa
s starving and didn’t want takeout. They walked to the restaurant, which was just up the block. Avery adjusted the baseball cap she’d grabbed from her bag, noting that no one came near them as they walked together through the darkened streets, which were beginning to show signs of life, as though the music wafted along the sidewalk.
“Don’t worry—I’ll show you the floor when we get back,” he told her. “Wheels in your mind are working overtime. Relax. It’s after six. No more work tonight.”
As they settled into a table in the loud and crowded casual restaurant, a car backfired outside the open window behind them. She immediately froze, flashed back to killing the first man. She hadn’t hesitated to pull the trigger, because he’d killed her mother.
She’d done it face-to-face because she’d wanted him to know who was taking his life, wanted him to see the retribution in her eyes.
“If you’re scared of a car backfiring, you’ll never survive in this neighborhood,” Gunner said, but his tone was gentler than she’d expected.
“I’m still a little jumpy. I was hoping the land of good times would make it better.”
“It’s not that anymore. Not by a long shot.” Gunner’s face was grim. “It’s a goddamned shame too.”
“But you stayed.”
“I love her too much to desert her.”
“Too bad you can’t say the same about your wives,” their waitress interjected with a smirk and a snap of her hips.
“Billie Jean, don’t go telling all of my secrets.” Gunner’s drawl was lazy, easy, and if he was pissed about what she’d said, Avery would never know it.
She looked up at Billie Jean and wondered if she really was an ex-wife. She was pretty, with long dark hair and olive skin.
“Who’s this—another secret?” Billie Jean asked Gunner with a perfunctory nod in Avery’s direction.
“Can we just order please? The usual, times two?” Gunner gave a half grin and Billie Jean relented, wrote something on the small pad and walked away.
She came back less than three minutes later with beers and a plate of small red shellfish-looking things. Avery ignored the food in favor of the beer, since her adrenaline was still racing.
Dare trusted you to do this—don’t screw it up,
she told herself.
Gunner drew everywhere. She wondered if he even noticed he did it. The black pen made soft scratch marks on the white paper placemats, the napkins. When she looked, she saw a sketch of her: the cap, the big eyes . . . but he ripped it off and stuffed it in his pocket.
“Don’t want to take chances with a wanted woman.”
“But you taking me here . . .”
“People will know you’re with me.”
“Like a bodyguard.”
“Something like that
.
”
She was too wound up for a place like this, with its cheer and friendliness. She didn’t want to celebrate—she wanted revenge on a man who’d ripped her family apart before it even had a chance. She was hot with it, though Dare hadn’t wanted it to consume her, was worried that she’d fall over the edge, never to come back.
“You’re haunted,
chère
.”
“Hunted,” she corrected. “There’s a difference.”
“Not in my book.”
She shifted topics. “How long have you known Dare?”
Gunner took a swig of beer from the bottle. “Long enough.”
“You tattooed him?”
“I don’t break my clients’ confidences,” he told her. “Have a mudbug.”
She wrinkled her nose, even as he showed her how to crack them and suck out the meat. But the taste—she had to admit it was worth it. All the food placed in front of them was amazing, and she ate heartily, forgetting, for that short time at least, why she was really in this city.
She noticed all the women looking at Gunner. Some of them glared at her, like she was stealing their good time away.
“Want to tell me why you’re in trouble?” he asked finally, after he’d devoured his own plate and helped her with hers.
“How do you know I’m in trouble?” She licked the salted brine off her pinky and took another long swig of beer. She was feeling more relaxed than she had in months.
“Everyone who comes to me is. And that’s a fact. Don’t make me pull it out of you. I’m sure your brother told you not to keep secrets from me.”
In fact, Dare had.
You
can trust him with everything—the more information he has on you, the better. Just don’t mention Powell—I’ll break that to him.
She just hadn’t been expecting to do it out in public like this, but it wasn’t like anyone could hear them over the band. Her confession would blend in. “Someone’s trying to kill me. And I’m also wanted for murder.”
Gunner cocked his head to stare at her. Did he want her to cry? Break down? She wouldn’t, nor would she apologize. She stared back at him, brows raised, daring him to question her further.
Of course he did, but he didn’t ask the one she’d expected. “Did anyone follow you—cops or assassins?”
“No. I came here with Dare.”
“And they’re trying to kill him as well?”
“Yes.”
Gunner shook his head. “Got plenty of ammo in the shop.”
“Comforting.” And it was. He didn’t seem to worry that she was marked. “When did you meet my brother?”
“I worked with his father a long time ago.”
“Darius is my father too,” she offered. “I didn’t know until recently.”
Gunner’s expression didn’t change, but his tone softened. “He was a good guy.”
The
was
nearly leveled her, but she decided that the jury was still out on the good-guy part. “I never met him. I don’t know anything about him except . . .”
He never claimed me.
“He lived a dangerous life and he got my mom killed.”
“Seems to me that women who get involved with dangerous men know what they’re getting into. Probably because they’ve got more than a little bit of hell on wheels in them to start with.”
There was no judgment in his tone, but she bristled anyway, probably because he spoke the truth. “I gave my momma hell,” she admitted.
“A wild child.”
“I guess. I didn’t have much to rebel against, but I couldn’t sit still. I was always looking around the corner for the next adventure. I grew up in the bounty office she owned. I learned there’s a really fin
e line between upstanding citizen and criminal.”
Gunner raised his beer. “Sometimes, there’s no line at all.”
She clinked her bottle against his. Wondered how much longer she’d keep holding up, holding on. It was expected of her. Necessary. She’d been doing it since she found Momma murdered, and that image was something she could shake from her mind only when she was doing something that required complete concentration.
After she’d killed the men who’d murdered her mother, she’d nearly buckled, forced herself to walk away before the police came.
She still didn’t understand how the police could’ve found her so quickly, but after Dare explained it, it all made sense.
She’d killed Powell’s men, and Powell sent more after her. It chilled her to think how close they’d gotten to her, what would’ve happened if Dare hadn’t gotten involved.
“Whoever’s after you must be pretty powerful. And pissed,” Gunner speculated. “Not every day I meet a female fugitive.”
She wanted to ask him how he knew that, but maybe she should be reassured. If he could peg her, he could identify danger.
At least he was on her side. She knew better than to deny what he’d said.
When more plates of food were plunked down, with Billie Jean still smirking, Avery looked up at her. “Look at me like that one more time and you’ll have no lips left to make that face.”
The words were quiet, the threat coming through loud and clear. Avery’s own expression must’ve told the tale, because Billie Jean backed away fast.
“Scaring away my ex-wife’s a good way to stay on my good side.” Gunner grinned as he spoke, then began digging into his gumbo. “Shit is hot—hope you’re ready.”
“What happens after we eat?”
“We change everything about you.”
Chap
ter Eight
A
fte
r he finished playing the song, Dare waited another hour, then went into the house with a decisive bang of the door.
She didn’t jump, and he damned well knew she wasn’t asleep.
He took his time showering and changing and finished a hot cup of coffee in the kitchen, where he could continue to keep an eye on her.
With a dry pair of jeans and no shirt or shoes, he figured it was as good a time as any to get this talk with Grace Powell started.
By doing so, he would officially be reviving Section 8, without the consent of the CIA or any other official party. Actually, by kidnapping Grace, he’d done that. But the thought of bringing more people into it when it was his war to finish—well, that didn’t sit well with him.
He moved closer to her, saw her involuntary shivers and called himself a bastard.
“I don’t want to do this,” he said through clenched teeth to no one in particular but himself, and if Grace heard, she didn’t turn her head. He hated being forced to reinvent Section 8 for any reason. A group like that wasn’t good for its members—no, it was like signing their death warrants.
The fact that Adele had come to him and forced his hand . . . he wanted to hate her but couldn’t.
She’d been born an operative. He hadn’t been, but rather had been molded into something resembling hardened steel, which sat over the wildness that always wrestled inside him for dominance and freedom—the wildness that typically won, before all this had started. He covered his insides well, but they would never be able to lock out what he’d been.
He had several people waiting for him to make a move, and this beautiful woman tied up across the room.
“You were avoiding me. Why?” Grace asked him, her voice not exactly defiant but in no way passive.
He fucking burned for her, and she knew it. He could see that in her dark gypsy eyes when he moved to stand in front of her, and he neither confirmed nor denied her suspicion. “Tell me what you know about Powell.”
“I told you—nothing of use to you,” she said. Her voice held that quality of sex that no woman could fake. She’d been born with it, and it pulled him to her like a siren’s song.
“Let me be the judge of that. Start talking.”
“Where do I start?”
“From the beginning.” He needed to know everything he could about her father, had to live and breathe that enemy. Had to become him in order to decimate him.
After that, a part of that bastard would always linger inside him. There was no way around that.
That’s what Grace lived with every day of her life, but he forced that thought away. Sacrifices had to be made for him to keep his promises.
“I don’t
like remembering,” she said.
“I don’t give a shit about your likes. Tell me the last time you saw Richard Powell.”
“I called him Rip. And it was six years ago.”
“How cute—a nickname.”
“I called him that because I wanted him dead and buried. The peace part was ironic.”
Her gaze leveled him. Everything about her did. Her hair had come loose and tumbled over her shoulders, dried in waves. Her eyes were infused with copper, framed with thick lashes, and her skin was tanned from the summer sun. “Will
Rip
want you back?”
“Yes, for sure.”
“And you want nothing to do with him?”
“He’s a killer. And for all I know, you’re as bad as he is,” Grace told him, and Dare glared at her as though she’d just discovered his biggest fear—and his most well-kept secret.
That meant there was hope. She breathed a little easier. She’d been in worse spots—she’d been hurt worse than anyone could hurt her again.
No matter what, she’d survive, whether it be by kicking, crawling or screaming. She wouldn’t give this man the satisfaction of breaking down, ever.
If she had to, she’d take him down with her. And he’d never see it coming.
He wasn’t about to let up on her soon. Instead, he leaned into her, his hands on either side of her thighs, his face inches from hers. There was menace there, yes, but also a born compassion he’d been unable to drive out of himself, and she knew he must hate it.
“Grace, I might be worse than your father. You don’t want to test me, because I will pass with flying colors.”
With that, he moved away from her and went into the next room. When he returned, he threw a blanket over her to help with the shivering she was trying to control and refused to look at her again. It was late. She was tired, and sleeping in this upright chair wouldn’t be pleasant.
And he had a cell phone in his hand—
her
cell phone. She’d forgotten it was in her pocket and hadn’t felt him slip his hand in to grab it.
“What’s his number?” he demanded, holding the phone out to her.
“A great merc like you can’t get something as easy as a phone number?”
He kicked her chair, and her body lurched as the chair slid back and hit the wall. “Tell me the number—I’ll dial and you speak.”
“Never.” She jerked her body toward him furiously, as far as the ropes would take her. Bared her teeth like an animal, because if that’s what he wanted, that’s what he’d get.
The ropes were so tight they chafed. She angled for a better position, wondered if she could do any damage to him at all. All Dare did was look at her with a frown.
After a long moment during which she was pretty sure he was about to come over and rebuke her, he came over and instead closed the shades.
“Too dangerous for you to be near an open window.”
And then he bent and untied one wrist completely and loosened the other.
It was a dangerous move for him—and from him. The way she was raised to fight, she could do a lot of damage with that one hand.
He must know that.
It was either a test or a dare. She wondered if she should fail miserably or pass with flying colors, then decided she didn’t give a damn either way. She still refused to be anyone’s puppet.
She’d rather die. And it might come down to that.
* * *
After d
inner and her check-in call with Dare, Gunner walked Avery back to the tattoo shop, only this time, they entered from three doors down, inside an underground garage. He pointed out his motorcycle and car to her, and Avery took note of them plus the exits and entrances that led to various alleyways.
“I’ll get you some keys,” he assured her as he let them into the back of the shop and upstairs to the second floor, grabbing the bag she’d come in with along the way.
There were several bedrooms—he picked one for her seemingly at random, but she had a feeling there was no such thing when it came to him.
“Now it’s time to fix you up. Bathroom’s that way—get changed. I’ll get the dye.”
“Dye?”
He reached up and touched the brim of her baseball cap. “You’re going to get hot and look suspicious as hell if you keep wearing that.”
She glanced back in the oval mirror above the dresser and realized that her long blond hair would need to go, and fast. Then she took off the cap and stared at the ponytail that had been there for as long as she could remember.
But now wasn’t the time for sentimentality. Instead, she changed quickly and let Gunner help her with the cut and color.
He was surprisingly good at both. With the short, pixie-like cut and warm brown color, her eyes stood out even more.
She didn’t look like her old self, and she really didn’t feel like it either. Scaling down the side of a building with Dare had changed everything. She’d conquered a lifelong fear in a moment of danger—and could only hope she’d be able to do it again if necessary—escaped jail and met a brother she’d never known she had, literally in the space of minutes.
And now she’d embraced a new lifestyle that promised nothing but trouble.
“Better,” Gunner told her. She was barely dressed, with a towel over her shoulders, wearing only a bra and a pair of shorts she’d borrowed from him—and Gunner was looking, but she didn’t care; she liked the way he looked at her.
“What about the tattoo?” she asked now.
“I don’t tattoo drunk women,” he told her, and she wanted to argue that she wasn’t drunk, not really—at least not with alcohol. But she was intoxicated for sure.
People do crazy things in New Orleans,
her mother had warned her, but there was always a soft light in her eyes when she said it. Because this was where her mother had met Darius. This was where Avery was conceived.
Now Avery was in New Orleans, and her mother had been right. Avery felt crazy, and she liked it. In this town, she could go wild; she could turn into a mercenary like her father had been and still be a woman, a lover.
She could be everything. Live or die, but do either proudly.
“You’d best cover up or you’ll end up naked in my tattoo chair,” Gunner told her, a lazy smile on his face that told her he was anything but.
“I thought you didn’t tattoo intoxicated women.”
“For you, I’d make an exception.”