EVEN FIRST THING in the morning at this time of year, the roofed backyard was hot enough to send sweat trickling down my back. I wanted to pace to let out my restless energy, but walking around only made the heat more uncomfortable.
Nothing was as uncomfortable as the tension between the four of us, though. I couldn’t remember the last time that the Chaos Crew had been so divided in our opinions, but a pretty girl and an angry client seemed to bring out our different moral compasses.
“Toss her to the client, and let him handle the little thief. Wiping our hands of her will be the best thing we could do,” Garrison said, shaking his head. “What’s she worth to us anyway?”
“It doesn’t matter what she’s worth,” Julius said evenly. “It’s a question of what’s justified. If we believe her story, then she barely had anything to do with the job. It might look worse for us to admit someone got past our surveillance to see the scene of the crime. And whoever hired us for the job, they’re not likely to want witnesses walking around.”
Despite what he was saying, I could hear the doubt in his words. Dess could be a threat to us as much as to the client, depending on how much exactly she’d seen. Julius put the security of the crew above all else.
“If we believe her,” Garrison said in a scoffing tone.
“She hasn’t acted as if she knows we had anything to do with it,” I had to point out. Dess hadn’t exactly warmed up to us in the past day, but we hadn’t given her much of a chance to. She hadn’t seemed scared of any of us—the opposite, really. I’d rarely seen anyone less nervous when faced with Talon’s physical prowess and icy gaze.
Garrison grimaced at me, which meant he couldn’t argue against that specific statement. That fact didn’t stop him from going on, though. “You heard her. She stole from her friend after finding her dead. Do we really want a chick like that sticking around?” He took a swig from his morning mug of hot cocoa.
I didn’t know how he didn’t end up as wired as I was with all the sugar and caffeine he put in his system. The guy downed the stuff like an insomniac chugs coffee.
Talon grunted. “It didn’t sound like she had another option. Desperate people do desperate things. But that applies to how she might act with us too. She’s unpredictable.”
Talon would go along with whatever Julius decided in the end, but he’d want to come to that decision quickly. The guy always preferred to deal with potential threats as swiftly as possible.
“Exactly,” Garrison said. “And the client is breathing down our necks. If it’s those necklaces and the cash he’s after for whatever reason and he finds out we kept them from him, it’ll be our heads on a platter. We’re just seeing the job through.”
What he said made logical sense. I couldn’t deny that. But something in me balked at his suggestion anyway. The same something clenched up when I saw how pensive Julius looked as he rubbed his jaw, as if he was seriously considering Garrison’s suggestion.
Dess had a quality to her that I couldn’t quite put my finger on, but it intrigued me—maybe because I couldn’t identify it. She wasn’t like any other woman I’d ever come across, and I’d made the acquaintance of quite a few in my time.
I wasn’t thinking just with my dick, though. She might have been mysterious, but I didn’t think she was an enemy. She’d done what any of us would have done when trapped: fought to escape. Her story was tragic but understandable.
If we threw her to the client, he’d almost definitely kill her. How would we be any better than the asshole boyfriend she’d finally escaped?
I cleared my throat. “We all know what’ll happen to her if we hand her over. She’s going to end up dead, and possibly tortured plenty before then. All because she ended up in the wrong place at the wrong time? I thought we only hurt people who deserve it.”
“It wouldn’t be us hurting her,” Garrison said with a twitch of his jaw that indicated he wasn’t as indifferent to Dess’s fate as he was pretending. “Would you rather we handed ourselves over instead?”
The sneer in his voice would have raised most people’s hackles. I knew it was just Garrison being his usual arrogant asshole self.
“Well, personally, I’m confident that I can defend myself if the client tries to pick a fight,” I replied evenly, deliberately poking at him with the words. The implication was, of course, that he wasn’t so sure of himself.
Garrison’s eyes flashed, and his jaw tightened even more. “Why would we put ourselves in danger if we can avoid it?”
I shrugged. “What part of our code makes using an innocent girl as a shield an acceptable approach? Or are you in favor of throwing out the whole code now, just because she made you feel incompetent?”
“We think she’s innocent,” Garrison retorted. “Do we really know her?” At the edge that came into his voice, I knew I’d hit another solid blow.
It was way too easy heckling Garrison. He’d never drop his mask completely, but he couldn’t put on a total front with us. We might not know all of each other’s dirty secrets, but we knew the biggest one that mattered right now, the one we were all mixed up in. It was good for him to remember that.
Besides, Julius was listening. I was mostly talking for his benefit.
I shot Garrison a wide smile. “I think I know her better than I know you.”
His mouth snapped shut. It only took him a few seconds to loosen up his posture, taking a deep breath and regaining his composure. “Then I’m doing the job Julius hired me for well.”
“Enough,” Julius ordered, raising his hands. We both fell silent, our attention turning to him. He frowned, and then tipped his head toward us. “We don’t know how true her current story is. We also don’t know if those necklaces are even what the client was worried about. Acting without information—or with the wrong information—is what screws people over. We’ll take her to the mansion today and see how she reacts to the crime scene.”
Talon frowned. “The client could have eyes on the place now.”
“The client doesn’t know who we are or what we look like,” Julius said. “We can play it cool, just walking by. We won’t stick our necks out too far, but we’ll see what she gives us. If she puts one toe out of line, she’s gone.”
Garrison sighed but nodded. Talon rubbed his hands together as if he was ready to get going immediately. Relief coursed through me. I didn’t know what’d happen to Dess after today, but I’d convinced Julius for now. Which meant I had a little more time to figure out that intriguing part of her.
“Do we have any leftover pasta from dinner last night?” I asked, springing to my feet. My stomach had been growling for the last half hour, and I couldn’t wait any longer. Carbs were the fuel for the energy I couldn’t help expending even when I was sitting still—well, relatively still.
Julius’s mouth curved into an amused grin. He gestured me toward the door. “It’s in the fridge. We all know better than to get between you and your noodles.”
I snorted and trotted down the steps to the safe-house apartment. When I reached the fridge, I paused, the door to the bedroom we’d stuck Dess in drawing my gaze.
Our guest deserved some breakfast too, didn’t she? Although somehow I suspected pasta first thing in the morning wouldn’t be to her tastes.
I strolled to her door and knocked, turning the lock in sync.
“What?” she said, sounding alert enough to reassure me that I hadn’t woken her up.
I peeked inside. She hadn’t turned on the overhead light, so the only illumination came from the small window at the top of the wall. Dess sat on the bed at the edge of the stream of sunlight, one leg crossed and the other pulled up next to it, providing her chin a place to rest. She considered me with obvious wariness. Her long black waves cascaded down her arms and brushed her raised leg, where her toned muscles showed through the fitted sweats.
With legs that looked like that, I’d fight for her to stay here forever.
“Good morning,” I said. “I thought you might like some breakfast. Come out whenever you’re ready.”
Leaving the door open, I ambled back to the kitchen, dumped the garlic chicken linguine onto a plate, and shoved it into the microwave. By the time I’d finished tapping on the controls, Dess had emerged into the main room of the apartment.
She glanced at the other guys, who’d just come back in, and then at me. “I wouldn’t mind breakfast. What are you offering?”
I’d already looked through the cupboards. Steffie updated our safe-house stashes on a quarterly rotation, so while we didn’t have much of anything fresh on hand, there were plenty of non-perishable options. “Since I’m assuming you’re not a weirdo like me who would eat pasta ten times a day if I could, there’s pancake mix, frozen waffles, and a couple different kinds of cereal.” We’d thawed the freezer milk for the latter yesterday.
Dess cocked her head. “Cereal sounds fine. Point me to it, and I’ll get it out.”
She’d learned to be cautious. Did she realize that we’d drugged her before, or was it force of habit? She’d still been shaken up by the accident when she’d accepted that mug of cocoa from Garrison yesterday.
I appreciated her sense of self-preservation even if it worked counter to our goals. As the microwave beeped, I made a quick motion. “On top of the fridge. Bowls are in the cupboard beside it. Help yourself.”
I grabbed my linguine, sat on a stool at the far end of the island, and started shoveling down my fuel, pausing to savor the first bite. I might eat it mainly for the energy boost, but I enjoyed a well-prepared plate all the same.
As Dess contemplated the two boxes of cereal and tentatively poured herself some of the nut-laced, not-so-sugary kind Julius favored, Julius and Talon drifted over. Julius took the cereal box after Dess finished with it, and Talon grabbed a smoothie he’d mixed earlier out of the fridge. Watching him chug it, I held back a grimace. I’d seen what he put in those things, and I’d sooner have licked the lawn out back.
Garrison sat on the sofa, watching us as he nursed the rest of his cocoa. Sometimes that was all he put in his stomach until lunch.
Dess perched on the stool a few feet over from me, braced toward the edge as if she thought she might have to spring off it at any second. I didn’t need Garrison’s skills with body language to pick up on the signs that she’d needed to be on guard a lot in her life before now.
She ate a couple of spoonfuls, chewing slowly and thoroughly. Her gaze dropped to my leg, which was doing its typical bounce against the rung of the stool.
“Do you ever sit still?” she asked, not with the snarky tone Garrison would have used but like she was genuinely trying to understand.
I’d spent my entire childhood being chastised for my restlessness, but I wasn’t that kid anymore. I had better things to worry about.
I flashed her a smile. “Rarely. It helps me focus. All the energy I need to power this brain ends up filtering down into my body too, and I’ve got to let it out somehow.”
She cocked her head again as she chewed. I liked the hint of playfulness that came into her face at that angle. “I guess that makes some kind of sense.”
“About as much as Blaze ever does,” Garrison had to remark. We both ignored him.
“I find many good ways to put it to use,” I said, letting a teasing note come into my voice. I wasn’t going to turn all my charm on a woman who’d just fled an abusive relationship, but a little light flirting couldn’t hurt. Maybe it’d make her feel better knowing at least one man could appreciate her without beating up on her at the same time.
“Feeling better today?” I added. I took another bite of pasta and motioned to her wrist.
Dess let out a soft chuckle. “I feel kind of like I was hit by a small train.”
Her tussle with Julius and Talon yesterday wouldn’t have helped her healing, but she didn’t sound upset about it.
“Not a large one?” I joked.
“A large one would have finished the job,” she said dryly.
A laugh I didn’t have to force tumbled out of me. Dess didn’t strike me as a woman who put much stock in being funny. She seemed like she lived a serious life with serious problems, but she obviously didn’t let it get her down too much. I liked that about her too.
“Well, I’m definitely glad you didn’t meet one of those, then,” I said.
“No? It seems like I’ve messed with your job quite a bit.”
“Aw, totally worth it to have a pretty face like yours around instead of only having these lugs in sight.” I winked at her and gulped the rest of my pasta. Even a heaping plate always seemed to vanish so quickly.
Dess’s posture tensed. Maybe I’d said something that’d reminded her of her boyfriend’s comments. I chucked my plate and fork in the dishwasher and came back to lean against the island a little closer but not too close to her. “But hey, having a new voice with new thoughts in the mix is an excellent addition to the crew too.”
She relaxed enough for a sly glint to come into her eyes. “Does that mean you’ve considered my offer to check out the crime scene and see if I can help?”
“That’s Julius’s call. I’ll let him talk to you about that. But I can promise you that I have no doubt I’d enjoy your company.”
She gave me a bemused look as if she wasn’t sure how seriously to take me. “You hardly know me.”
The words echoed Garrison’s point—made with much darker intentions—so well that I had to counter it. “Well, everything I know, I like.”
Just then, a strand of her hair slipped from behind her ear to drift across her face. I reached automatically to tuck it back, my fingers just grazing her cheek—
Dess moved so suddenly I didn’t have time to so much as catch my breath. One instant I was touching her face, the next she’d lunged forward to shove me against the edge of the island, one forearm smacking the center of my chest and the other hand at my throat. There was no humor at all in her eyes now, only fury and… and something behind it that looked more like panic. The faintest tremor ran through her limbs against my body.
“Keep your hands off me,” she snarled, her voice somehow soft and yet full of the promise of death at the same time. My pulse stuttered. All at once I was sure she could kill me in the space of a second if she’d really wanted to.
“Get your hands off Blaze, or you won’t be around to have any opinions on what he does with his,” Julius said with just as clear a threat in his tone. He’d whipped up his gun from where he’d taken a seat at the corner of the island, and he aimed it at Dess. Talon had drawn his as well. I couldn’t see Garrison in my current position, but the click of a safety from several feet behind me told me that for all his snark, he’d leapt to my defense as well.
Dess jerked her hands back to her sides, with a wince as her braced wrist brushed her side. I stared at her for a moment before yanking my gaze away. The other guys gradually lowered their guns.
“I don’t want him touching me, or any of the rest of you either,” Dess said tightly, her gray eyes smoldering like embers. Then she sat back down on her stool and picked up her spoon as if she hadn’t just pinned me against the countertop like I was a fifty-pound child.
My throat didn’t even hurt, but my pulse was still racing. Someone had definitely hurt Dess before—bad. But she had more capacity to deal out hurt than I’d given her credit for too. I swallowed hard and stepped away.
I’d spoken up for her. I really hoped that hadn’t been the wrong call.
