“I agreed to let you come with me to the pizza place, Kellan.”
“Yes you did, Isabella,” he replied in the exact same tone, and shit. So much for the first name thing working on him. “And now I’m going to come with you to the park on Atlantic Boulevard to try and find Danny Marcus.”
Tread carefully, girl. “I don’t need a chaperone.”
“Well that’s a relief, because ‘babysitter’ isn’t on my resume.” Walker spun a gaze over the dusky street, tipping his head toward the spot where her car stood a half a block away before they both started walking again. “I’m not trying to mess with you, but my original argument stands. Pursuing this case off the books in a rough neighborhood without backup is dangerous. Not to mention stupid.”
“Thank you,” she said, although fuck all, he was right. Atlantic Boulevard definitely wasn’t brimming with milk and cookies, especially after midnight. Still, putting her own ass on the line was one thing. Putting someone else’s, especially when that ass belonged to a civilian? That was risky with a capital R. “I already bent the hell out of the rules by bringing you to the pizza place.”
“You’re bending the rules by doing all of this, with or without me. The least you can do is let me make sure you won’t get yourself shot, stabbed, or worse.” Walker paused, his feet coming to a stop beside her Mustang. “Would it make you feel any better to know I have tactical training?”
Curiosity pumped through her veins, riding her quickening pulse, but she stuffed it back in favor of popping the locks on the car and climbing into the driver’s seat. “Unless it’s with the RPD and you have a super-secret badge I don’t know about, no.”
Walker slid into the passenger seat, his body radiating both stealth and strength and his jaw hard-wired in determination. “Even if my training came courtesy of the Army Rangers and I could put a kill shot on damn near anything within two hundred yards of here using nothing more than the Glock in your glove box?”
Holy crap. She knew he’d spent some time in the Army, but… “You were a goddamn sniper for the Army Rangers? How come you never said anything?”
“Because.” He blew out a barely audible breath. “It’s not something I advertise, just like I imagine you don’t brag about being a cop.”
Okay. So he had her dead to rights there. “Still. You could’ve told me when we worked on Kylie’s case together.”
“Then it wouldn’t have mattered,” he said with a lift of one shoulder against the leather seatback. “But now it does. All I’m saying is you don’t have to worry about me when we go find this Danny Marcus guy. I can take care of myself, and I won’t interfere unless you need backup.”
“Like you didn’t interfere with Carmen?” she asked, the words out before she could cage them. Although the hookup with her CI could’ve gone so much worse, Walker had thrown Isabella for one hell of a loop by interrupting their conversation with flawless—albeit a little bit formal—Spanish. The last thing she needed was to worry about a distraction that could twist this trip to the park into a disaster.
No, rewind. The last thing she needed to worry about was what Walker had heard Carmen say. God, when this case was said and done and safe in Peterson’s hands, Isabella’s first order of business was going to be to find a warm, willing bedmate with a whole lot of stamina and some time on his hands.
Walker tipped his head to look at her and added a little more wattage to his smile, which did nothing for the state of her composure. “That wasn’t interfering. I’m charming, remember?”
“You’re something, all right.” Using the pretense of fastening her seatbelt as a cover, Isabella snuck a covert glance at him. Damn it. She’d given him the inch. Of course he wasn’t going to let go until he’d taken every last bit of the mile. “You’re really not going to let me take you back to your car, are you?”
“Not even a little bit,” Walker confirmed. “But don’t worry. You won’t even know I’m there.”
Ha! Pretty flipping unlikely, considering the way his cocky little smirk was suddenly turning her panties into a hot zone. His mouth was weirdly beautiful for being on such a rugged face, those full, firmly set lips set against the backdrop of dark stubble. The occasional flash of straight, white teeth. The suggestive lift at the edges of his mouth that made her wonder what he could do with that quick tongue.
And how many times he could do it.
Good Lord she needed to get some air in this car. Like yesterday.
“Fine,” Isabella said, jamming her keys into the ignition and her finger over the button to lower her window a few inches. Scrambling for something to focus on other than Walker’s potential for superior oral skills, she blurted the first thing that popped into her overly addled head. “I had no idea you speak Spanish.”