“Wait here!” I growl at her.
I burst out the door, find the man, and slow my pace just enough to avoid catching his attention before I want to. I walk right up behind him, putting my hand on the back of his neck. The street is relatively crowded, and I can avoid causing a scene if I play my cards right.
“Make a sound and I’ll snap your fucking neck,” I say into his ear, still walking beside him.
He moves his eyes toward me. “You must have the wrong guy,” he says. He’s probably in his twenties. He’s relatively built and his mannerisms mark him as former or current military to me. What the fuck is a soldier doing playing this stupid game?
“This way,” I say, pushing him down an alley between two buildings. There’s an alcove that blocks us completely from the street a few yards into the alley, and I shove him roughly into it. His chin bounces off the bricks. He spins, landing hard and cupping his bloodied chin. His hand moves to his back, but I’m on top of him in an instant, feeling at the waistband of his pants and finding the gun he was reaching for.
I step back, racking a bullet in the chamber and pointing it at him. “Looking for this?”
He shakes his head, blood dripping from his chin. He’s already sobbing. Fucking pathetic.
I hear footsteps coming down the alley. I turn, seeing Makayla walking cautiously toward me, looking so effortlessly beautiful that she snaps me out of the moment. I feel a wave of pity for this bleeding coward on the ground, as if seeing Makayla in the middle of this gives me some kind of new perspective on the violence, but I push it down. I don’t have room to get distracted. I kneel, still pointing the gun toward him as I roughly open his jacket and pull the mask free.
“Go back to the restaurant, Kay,” I snap.
She stops short when I used my old pet name for her by mistake. “What are you doing?”
“Just go back to the--”
The soldier sees an opportunity while I’m distracted and lunges forward, wrestling me for control of the gun. He has decent training, but I can tell after just a few seconds that he doesn’t have the real world experience to back it up. I let him think he’s putting me in a vulnerable position as he turns me to face the ground, and when he takes the bait and reaches past me for the gun, I grab his arm and yank him forward, using my back as a fulcrum to flip him hard to the ground. I don’t let go of his arm as he flips and I feel it snap and twist as he spins over me.
He screams, curling in on himself and clutching his arm. The sound of his screams bring me back to the war. I feel the sun beating on my back, the layers of sand caked on my sweat and blood soaked skin. I feel the ache of the bullet I took in my thigh a few months ago. My hand is around an insurgent’s throat. My gun is out of ammo and my knife is back near where the IED went off. He’s clawing at my forearm to stop me from killing him but I don’t relent. He tried to kill my men, and he’s going to…
“Stop!” Shouts Makayla.
I snap out of my memory, realizing I’m choking the bleeding soldier. His face is purple and his eyes are staining with red veins. I let go and he gasps, coughing hard.
“What the fuck are you doing?” asks Makayla. “You were going to kill him?”
I ignore her, blood still thundering in my ears. I kneel down, clutching the front of his shirt. “What are you playing at?” I ask.
The fear in his face tells me he’s not about to hold anything back. “Her,” he says, looking past me. “The boss wants her dead. There’s a big,” he stops, coughing hard until blood splatters the pavement beside him. “A big payout for whoever gets her.”
I turn slowly to look at Makayla, whose face has gone pale. “Why me?” she asks.
“I just know they want you dead. That’s all. I swear to fucking God. Just please let me go, man.”
I let his shirt go and he flops back to the ground, rolling to his side and whimpering.
“Come on. Let’s get out of here,” I say.
Makayla takes a step back when I reach for her.
I sigh in frustration. “We need to move.”
“I’ll find my own way,” she says.
“Like hell you will. You just heard him. They want you dead. You’re not getting out of my fucking sight.”
Emotion clouds her features as she shakes her head. It’s then that it hits me. She’s scared of me. She’s fucking afraid. Of me. The realization sinks into my gut like a cold weight, a weight I’ll have to bear if I want to protect her.
I grab her arm and pull her back toward the road. I hate the way she flinches at my touch, but I don’t let up as I lead her back toward my place.
30
Makayla
He lets me into his apartment and shows me a room I can use. It’s furnished in whites, grays, and steel blue. He doesn’t say a word as he pushes me inside and shuts the door. I breathe out heavily when he’s gone, sitting on the edge of the bed and holding up my hand, watching as it shakes.
What the hell am I doing?
Watching the way he treated the guy in the alley and how close he came to killing him… it was like a slap in the face. He’s not just some innocent, wounded puppy I can scratch behind the ears and fix. He’s a man who has killed and may kill again. He’s dangerous. I have no doubt he’s capable of protecting me, but who’s going to protect me from him?
I wander to the bathroom attached to my room, leaning over the sink and splashing water in my face. I look up in the vanity mirror and rub my eyes. I look like a mess. A little over twenty-four hours ago I was cornered in the stairwell by a stalker in a mask. Less than twelve hours ago Jesse sauntered back into my life and shook it to the ground. Thirty minutes ago I saw real, life-threatening violence for the first time in my life and barely stopped Jesse from killing someone. Now?
Now I’m still in his apartment, playing along with this game for reasons I don’t even understand. I could leave. I could just walk out the door and hire another bodyguard. He would let me leave if I really wanted to, wouldn’t he? The doubt in my mind makes my stomach queasy. I should leave. I know I should. But I don’t want to.
I keep thinking back to the journal in his room. I’ve waited so long to see him again and to find out what made him leave me, what he saw in her that I couldn’t give him. The thought of walking away when he’s so close scares me more than the very real danger of staying near him. And as much as I hate to admit it, my decision would be a whole hell of a lot easier if he wasn’t so goddamn gorgeous. Just thinking about the way his green eyes seem to pierce right through me and light a fire in my chest has me squeezing my thighs together to suppress the need that arises for him. The hunger.