When a Man Loves a Weapon (16 page)

“Which just means the Feds fucked up when they offered him a deal, because he never planned to deliver the real buyer to you and he was using you to get a lower sentence,” Cam said.

“And I created the diversion he needed to get away.” She thunked her head against Trevor’s chest. “Damn, I’m sorry.”

“Just how
ex
was
this
ex?” Riles asked.

She stiffened, but worse, Trevor’s muscles bunched.
“That’s enough,” he said, his voice almost too low to hear. “One more word and I’ll drop you in that lake.”

Holy cats, he meant it. She didn’t need to see Riles to feel the hatred; the strength of it bore two holes in her back.

“We need to find this Alex asshole and find out who paid him to draw Bobbie Faye out,” Riles said.

“He’s gone to ground,” Cam answered. “We searched for him for years, and that salt dome hideout y’all blew up was definitely not his sole hiding place. What we really need to do is find Roy and who fed him the info about where the poker game was going to be.”

Trevor was quiet. The kind of eerie misleading quiet that happens when everyone thinks all is well, tra-la-la, rainbows, kittens, and then bam, nuclear meltdown. She put her left hand over his heart and, slowly, he ran his own hand from her shoulder to clasp it, playing with her engagement ring.

Though the tension did not leave his body for a second.

Trevor’s distant expression changed suddenly. Focused. She cocked her head, watching him. “Was the name he called you some private barb between you?”

She shook her head. “He would call me by a different name when he wanted me to pay attention.”

“How convenient. The point is, he’s gone,” Riles said. “He used the distraction,” and here he hesitated and glared at Bobbie Faye, “to get away. I say we find him and find out why.”

But Trevor concentrated on her face, and as they gazed at each other, he said, “He was trying to warn you off. You being there surprised him. He couldn’t have told Roy where we were meeting—Alex didn’t know ’til I brought him there.”

“Oh, hell,” she said with sudden clarity. “Nick said Alex was
placing
bets. As in,
recently
.”

“He couldn’t have,” Trevor answered, the same epiphany dawning in his eyes. “We had him under house arrest, monitoring him 24/7 for the last month.”

“Nick lied. That little
weasel
.”

“We need to find that sonofabitch,” Trevor snapped, and
she wondered if there were going to be pieces of bookie scattered all over some deep, dark bayou.

They ran toward Trevor’s car until a familiar face swam up in front of her and big hands grabbed her into a hug.

“Sugar Girl!” Tyrone said, nearly squeezing the breath out of her. “You’re okay. I was so worried about you.”

“Oh, Tyrone! I am so sorry—I would have never called you if I thought this was going to happen,” she said, hugging him back. Well,
trying
to hug him back—kinda hard to do when he was as big as a refrigerator.

“Hon, I knew that boat was toast the minute you showed up,” Tyrone laughed. “You just have that way about you.”

“Geez, thanks.”

“It’s all good, Sugar. We got everyone out. I had a lot of evac experience in Iraq, but girl, you can sure keep people on their toes. We’ve got a lot to deal with, but you were the only one I hadn’t accounted for. I’m glad to know you’re okay.” He turned to Cam and said, “You take care of her,” because Tyrone was a little behind the curve on exactly who she was engaged to.

“I will,” Cam answered, and Bobbie Faye moved between him and Trevor, because Cam was not only a big antelope mooning the lion, he’d just drawn a “bite me” on his ass in big red letters.

“Are you fuckin’ wit’ me?” Sean asked him, and Lonan threw himself into a leather chair in the apartment’s plush living room, face buried in his hands.

“Have I ever fucked wit’ you, Sean?” His answer was muffled into his hands. He had a hard time looking at Sean without being reminded, all over again, of his failure before. Of not being there when Sean needed him. Sean bore too many scars, too many reminders.

He’d always been a rough, scrappy kid. Aiden had been the one with the looks, but Sean, a little older, had been the one with the weird charisma, the one the ladies wanted, even though scars littered his body, his face, and he’d turned
into a stocky man who looked like he’d kill you with one punch. . . .

At least, he used to. Before the fucking FBI agent had shot him with several rounds, chopping up his left arm, chipping his right shoulder, breaking both of his hands. He’d barely healed when Lonan had finally found and coerced the right person and gotten Sean out of the hospital. He’d also gotten Sean a physical therapist who met Sean’s requirements, and resembled Bobbie Faye a little too much for Lonan’s comfort, but that’s what Sean wanted. The therapist had proven useful for keeping Sean’s temper muted. Directed.

He watched his boss and friend as Sean worked with some sort of ball, trading off squeezing it with each hand. He’d probably never lift his right arm higher than shoulder-height, and he looked like a fucking pincushion—the old barbed wire scar across his face where someone had once tried to choke him just one of many scars. It was when he got up to go piss that the damage was obvious.

He wore sweatpants. His hands couldn’t grip the zipper of the combat khakis he preferred. He couldn’t grip a pencil or squeeze a trigger.

Lonan had not been in the right place when they needed him. He’d have died on the streets if it weren’t for Aiden and Sean. They not only made sure he ate, but they made sure he ate first. They sent him to school. He’d gotten a university education.

He’d failed them. Aiden. Sean. Robbie and Mollie—dead—too.

He stared at his own hands, perfectly formed, manicured. “I could’ve fuckin’ killed her a couple a times t’night,” he confessed. “I wanted to.”

“That’s not the way of it,” Sean said, empathy creeping into his voice.

“I know, Sean.”

“Too quick ’n easy, lad.”

He sighed. “You’re right. I know it.”

“I’d have loven to have her from the start of this,” Sean continued. “Would’ve made it sweeter. But we’ll have her.”

Lonan nodded.

“They’ll both suffer,” Sean cajoled. “Doin’ her like we plan? Will tie the fuckin’ Fed in knots.”

“Then he dies.”

“Aye, Lonan, then he dies.”

Lonan was happy with the plan.

Trevor made her wait in the Porsche. A Porsche. Holy Hot Buttered Jesus, he’d lost his mind, letting her sit in a Porsche. Clearly, his cover was “upscale business guy,” and clearly the Feds were hell-bent to make his cover perfect, but wow, they’d really gone the extra mile.

She wanted to step out of the damned thing before her bad luck leaked out all over it.

He’d parked it in their drive; he’d backed in, left the engine running. He’d had to make calls the short drive home. Spare phone in his glove box, he was back to being unreadable agent-guy.

Riles checked the house while Trevor finished a call, standing outside the car, his conversation classified. Cam had parked at the road and now patrolled the grounds. Everyone searched for traps, signs someone had been there in the few hours it had taken her to sink a boat.

“It’s clear,” Trevor said at her side window, and she jumped so hard, she slammed her head against the seat rest.

“Crap, make a noise next time,” she griped, climbing out of the car.

He didn’t joke about her jumping in shock, didn’t laugh, didn’t use the moment like he usually did to sweep her playfully into his arms and tease her. In fact, from the moment he’d learned about the kiss, he’d become nearly unreadable. There hadn’t been a single hot, steamy gaze, though yeah, she couldn’t entirely blame him for that last one—she smelled faintly sulfury-lake-like, and her hair had curled as it dried into something not entirely unlike a drowned poodle. She wished he would just
look
at her, and then her brain went off on a how-icky-a-drowned-poodle-would-really-look tangent which was
not
the place to go mentally as he
tugged her toward the house without a
single
solitary smart-ass word, his grip on her hand strong.

He stopped immediately at the living room, the blue color sharp against the white trim, and he faced her, something fathomless in his expression.

God, he hated the blue. She should’ve stuck with the butter cream.

“I started with red, and then green, but Riles said you’d hate green because of the camo and then—”

“It’s good,” he said. Then tugged her forward. They rounded into the bedroom and he locked the door before she registered what was going on. He reached over his head, grabbing the back of his once-pristine, now bloodied white shirt, and peeled it off, not bothering with the buttons. He tossed it away from them and she stared at the cut of his muscles, the flow of his hands as he moved toward her. The low-slung hum of her body whenever he was around kicked up a notch, musical in its wanting, and yet, all she could focus on were the differences. His too-short hair. The goatee. The expensive suit pants.

“You’ve lost weight,” she said as he pulled her filthy lake-stinky shirt off, disposing of it and her bra in one fluid move.

He skimmed his hand along her waist, gently fingering the scars there, like he was lightly playing an instrument from memory. “You’ve lost weight, too,” he said, so husky-voiced, she yanked her attention from his arms to his eyes, and for a moment, they simply stood, breathing each other in. His gaze stopped at her mouth, frowning, as if he could somehow see evidence of Cam’s kiss. Seething below the surface, fighting it, trying hard not to be angry at her. Needing . . . something . . . and she framed his face with her hands and kissed him softly on the corner of his mouth, and on his cheek, and then stood on tiptoe to reach the scar just beneath his eye, and his arms came up around her as he breathed out, jagged.

“Thank you,” he said, low, his voice humming up through her veins, “for painting for me.”

He tasted her then. She curled her arms around his neck and drew herself as close as she could, skin on skin, warmth, heat, hard against soft, savoring it, and he took his time, exploring her mouth, the nape of her neck, her cheek, kissing away the tears she hadn’t even known had formed.

An abrupt clattering sound echoed from the kitchen and they froze.

“Riles?” Trevor called.

No answer.

“Get dressed, quick. I’ll be right back.”

He sprinted out the bedroom door as she grabbed the closest bra, the one on the top of her dresser, the see-through black lace one Trevor loved. She barely had it in her hand, the lace whisper-soft against her fingers, when he came barreling back through the door.

“Get
out
! Bomb, bomb, bomb, get
out
!”

He dragged her over the bed to the old French doors, kicking them, breaking the lock, and the doors slammed open, shattering glass against the exterior of the house. He’d grabbed his go satchel and was shoving her off their little back patio, the cool night air chilling her as she tried to latch the damned bra. And run. Across a yard full of stickers, barefoot, hopping on one foot like a wounded penguin on a pogo stick. He scooped her up and flat-out ran, heading for the barn on the back of the property.

It was very hard to put on a bra while crunched against a man’s chest and running for their lives. Bra makers don’t exactly think of these scenarios. And just who in the fuck came up with the brilliant plan that bras ought to be clasped
in the back
? Where you cannot get to the clasps unless you’re standing perfectly still? And pretzeling your arms all bendy behind you? Even the front closure things required getting the little hook lined up with its keeper, and where the hell was the Velcro bra?

“Get back, bomb!” Trevor yelled to Riles and Cam as they ran around the perimeter of the house, moving toward them. He cradled her until they were at the barn wall and then stood her up, placing her protectively behind him as she finally slid
her arm through the straps, and she thought,
well this is silly, I need a shirt, and don’t bombs usually go
boom
?

When it did.

The concussion slammed them to the ground, Trevor rolling to take the brunt of the fall as the house fireballed upward and out against the deep indigo of the night sky as if Satan wanted to juggle, with smaller explosions following . . . perhaps the lesser demons in the act. For a brief moment, time suspended and she felt like she hung there in the air, topped out on a roller coaster, just a heartbeat away from screaming her head off, and then the debris rained down around them, falling and pinging on the raggedy tin roof of the barn. The fire spread, flickering against the dark line of the woods.

She had no sooner sat up and seen that Trevor was moving, wasn’t bleeding, and then realized,
great, I’m sitting here in my bra . . .
and then registered
my
torn
see-through bra . . .
as Trevor rose up. And in that moment, out of the corner of her eye, while Trevor reached for her to check to see if she was hurt, she saw Cam running toward her.

Staring at her.

And she felt the chill of a light breeze across her bare skin.

Then suddenly, Cam was there, yanking off his shirt and, bam, between one breath and the next, he was fitting it over her naked self. Cam bent over her, blocking her from everyone’s view, even Trevor’s, as he checked her for injuries with a, “Baby, you okay?”

Trevor planted a hand in Cam’s chest and shoved and, in spite of Cam having four inches on Trevor and in spite of Trevor having to come off the ground, he moved Cam away, hard, tumbling him into the groaning barn wall. “Back the
fuck
off,” he said, and turned to pull Bobbie Faye up. “Are you okay?”

“I think Bobbie Faye follows the Marines’ slogan.”

“Really? What’s that?”

“Total destruction in thirty minutes or the next one’s free.”

—SWAT Sniper Nancie Hays to Firefighter Kaz D’Spaña at the casino fire scene

“She needs—” Cam shouted, pushing back against Trevor, his voice rising above the noise of the house burning.