Avenging Angel (5 page)

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Authors: Tara Janzen

Tags: #Romance

BOOK: Avenging Angel
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She slid into the sedan ahead of him and found her place in the middle of the seat, letting her head fall back. She didn’t know if Austin had come to her apartment to hurt her or not, but she strongly suspected he had. It was unbearably naive to think otherwise. He hadn’t talked to her in four months. Then, suddenly, the private company they’d put together was all over the newspapers and he needed to see her on a moment’s notice.

The only thing that didn’t fit, that didn’t make sense, was the man next to her. He closed the door and let out a low sound, like a groan. Surprisingly, after praying for him to drop dead in the store, she felt the stirrings of compassion. She quickly squelched the absurd emotion. She wasn’t in a position to be doling out compassion to a man who had kidnapped her, threatened her, and done his best to humiliate her.

“Why are you doing this?” she asked.

He shifted the car into drive and released the parking brake. The sedan eased forward.

“Are you working for somebody? What’s in it for you?” She kept at it, demanding answers to her questions. “You owe me an explanation.”

“Shut up . . . please,” he said, his voice painfully tired. He checked in both directions for traffic before pulling onto the road.

Johanna leveled a glare at him he didn’t see and stiffly crossed her arms in front of her chest. She didn’t stop talking because he’d asked, but because she didn’t want to waste her energy, or his. He hadn’t had the grace to collapse in the store where she would have been safe. She didn’t want him to do it behind the wheel of the car while she was in it.

She needn’t have worried. He drove only a couple of miles before pulling into the parking lot of a brand-name highway motel. She didn’t voice a single complaint when he dragged her inside to register. She had the routine down pat, and her other option had been a big roll of tape he’d shown her. Nor did she hesitate when he ordered her into room number seventy-two. They were in a motel, and she didn’t have a doubt in her mind that she could outlast him in the consciousness department. From her observations, it was a miracle he was still on his feet.

The accommodations were clean and color-coordinated, neatly appointed. They were more than she had expected from him. From the looks of him, she would have expected him to choose a flea-bitten rat hole facing an alley somewhere.

She put the grocery bag on the desk while he checked the bathroom, his duffel bag gripped tightly in his fist. He took one quick look and turned back toward her.

“If you want to use the facilities, now is your chance. You can close the door, but if you lock it, I’ll blow it off its hinges.”

Ever the gentleman, she thought sarcastically, stepping around him on her way to the “facilities.” She had immediately spotted the telephone in the room, and she’d had an overwhelming urge to call Henry. Touching base with her partner would give her a sense of security, and she was badly in need of that. Unlike her captor, Henry was civilized and brilliant. True, he was also slightly scatterbrained and nearly eccentric in his habits, but he was as dependable as the day was long, and he was a damn good lawyer. She needed a damn good lawyer to begin her case against Dylan Jones immediately. She was going to bury the bastard in warrants.

* * *

Dylan eased himself into a chair outside the bathroom and rested the shotgun across his knees, promising himself he’d get up in a minute. He had a lot to do before the comfort of sleep could be his. He closed his eyes for a moment and took three deep breaths. Each one hurt in a different way. God, he was tired.

Stifling a groan, he leaned sideways in the chair and dragged the grocery bag closer to him. He ripped the paper bag down the middle with one hand, spilling the contents over the desk. His first choice out of the pile was a quart of milk, something healthy and wholesome. In between long, gulping swallows, he devoured one of the sandwiches and three candy bars, hoping to give himself a sugar rush without making himself sick. Something about profuse bleeding always made him nauseous.

Next he downed four aspirin and three ibuprofen tablets, wondering why, out of all the bad guys he knew, he had to be the only one who didn’t have a stash of illicit drugs to fall back on in an emergency—because he was certainly facing an emergency. His gaze dropped to the sewing kit for an instant before he looked away. Time enough for that later.

He grabbed the bottle of sport drink and twisted off the top. After drinking half of it, he set the bottle aside and checked his watch. He’d give her five more minutes.

She opened the door at his third knock and gave him a scathing once-over, one eyebrow lifted in haughty disdain.

He would have laughed if he’d had the strength. “Right,” he drawled, agreeing with every nasty, low-down thing she was thinking about him.

She started to sweep past him, but he blocked the door with the shotgun.

“You don’t have to leave,” he said. “All I need is a shower, and I’m not shy.”

At first Johanna didn’t understand, but as his meaning sank in, her cheeks flamed. He couldn’t be serious.

Proving that he was damn serious, he sidestepped into the bathroom and slowly closed the door behind him. She heard the lock click into place.

“Let me out of here,” she said, her tone low and a little unsteady.

He shook his head. “I’m going to need help.”

“You can go to hell.”

He shrugged out of his long, khaki overcoat, wincing in obvious pain.

“I am not bathing you,” she warned him, taking a step back.

“No, you’re not,” he agreed. “But you’re safer in here where I can keep an eye on you, and when I’m done, I’m going to need some help.”

“Help yourself.” She took another step backward and came up against the sink. An edge of fear skittered across her nerve endings.

His coat fell in a pile at his feet, and her gaze dropped down his body. He was soaked through, his black T-shirt clinging to lean, solid muscles and the flat, hard plane of his abdomen. His jeans rode low on his narrow hips and encased the length of his legs in soft black denim down to where they broke across his boots.

He moved to lean the gun against the wall, drawing her gaze back to the weapon and his arm. Cords of muscle slid smoothly under his skin, but it was the blue star tattooed halfway between his elbow and his wrist that riveted her attention. Her heart started pounding too fast as she stared at the indelible design marking his skin. She’d seen that tattoo before, exposed by the rolled sleeve of an impeccably white shirt—in Chicago.

Against her will, her gaze traveled back up the length of his torso and locked on his face. The light was very good in the bathroom, bright and sharp, delineating the curves of his cheekbones and the sharper angle of his jaw. She looked into his eyes and swallowed. Within those dark, feral depths was something she’d once felt too intensely ever to forget.

His hands went to his belt buckle, and Johanna’s panic stirred to full flight. She knew who he was.

Four
 

Dylan knew the instant she recognized him. His hand stilled on his belt, and his gaze slipped away from hers. He wished she hadn’t remembered.

A mocking voice inside his head called him a liar. He’d made a career out of being invisible, but some part of him liked to think that no matter how deep he went undercover, he was still Dylan Jones. He liked to think he wasn’t the only person who saw beyond the bad-guy surface to the good guy underneath. He liked to think that when a man bared his soul and nearly risked his life for a kiss, that the woman he’d risked it for would remember.

Well, she remembered all right. His gaze lifted as he finished with his buckle and pulled his belt free. Memories and stark disbelief were written all across her pretty, pale face, and it terrified her more than when she’d thought he was a stranger.

 “
You
,” she gasped, the word less than a whisper.

He swore silently, wondering what to do next.

After a second’s hesitation he said, “You don’t need to be so frightened. I’m with the FBI.” At least he thought he was still with the FBI. It had been a while since he’d heard from anybody on the other side of the law, from anybody on the right side. He heard from the wrong side every hour of every day. He lived, breathed, and would probably die on the wrong side of the law. He’d accepted that fact weeks ago.

She slowly shook her head and backed farther away from him, wedging herself between the vanity and the bathtub. It was as good a place as any to his way of thinking.

“If you want to sit next to the sink, that’s fine with me,” he said, walking toward her, his boots making soft scraping sounds on the tile floor of the bathroom.

“I want to leave.” She tried to move away, but there was no place left for her to go. He saw the panic come back into her eyes.

No doubt about it, he made a hell of a hero.

“Sit on the counter,” he commanded her, his voice gruff, his patience at an end. He didn’t have the time or the strength to coax her into anything, and in truth there was little need; he already had her cornered. He slowly reached for her hands, pinning her with a glare he hoped would keep her in her place. “If you fight me, you’re the one who is going to get hurt, and I really don’t want you to get hurt.”

His words must have sunk in, because when he finally closed his hand around her wrist, she didn’t struggle. He made a loop with his belt and slipped it over both of her hands. He tightened the loop with a quick jerk, just quick enough and tight enough to remind her he was in charge.

“Dane . . .” The name whispered from her mouth, catching him unaware. He swore and his fingers trembled as he tied the belt back through itself. That was what she’d called him that night,
Dane
, the name she’d known him by.

“My name is Dylan Jones.” And so help him God, he wanted it back.

“Dane Erickson,” she said, her voice gaining a small measure of steadiness.

He didn’t have the strength to argue with her. He bent down and got the tape out of his coat pocket. Within minutes he had her secured to the shower rod with a length of doubled and twisted cloth tape. She could continue to stand if she wanted to, but he’d given her enough slack to sit on the vanity, a kindness he doubted he would be thanked for providing.

Letting out a deep breath, he dropped the roll of tape to the floor and checked to make sure the shotgun was within easy reach of where he’d be in the shower. No one was going to get to her without going through him first.

Despite the smallness of the space they were in, he managed to ignore her presence as he struggled with getting out of his clothes. His boots went first, then his socks. Before he attempted the more difficult stuff, he leaned over the bathtub and started the water running.

Johanna stood stock-still in her prescribed area, stunned into silence by her realization and the situation. She’d been kidnapped by Austin’s private bodyguard, Dane Erickson, and he was stripping in front of her, taking off his clothes piece by piece.

She swallowed hard, watching him and feeling complete mortification sink through every pore in her body. She had never expected to see him again, of all men, let alone see so much of him.

Color rose hotly in her cheeks. Dane Erickson had always been impeccably groomed, not like this man with his shaggy, raked-through hair, beard stubble, and bruised and cut face. But it was Dane, unbelievably. She had to stop him from taking his clothes off. She couldn’t just stand there and watch him get naked—not him.

“You—you can’t do this,” she stammered. The immediacy of her current problem completely overrode her concerns over being kidnapped.

He ignored her and tugged his T-shirt out of his pants.

Desperate, she tried a new tack. “Whatever happened between you and Austin shouldn’t involve me. I’ve got my own problems with him. He’s not going to like that you’ve taken me.”

“I don’t give a damn what Austin doesn’t like.”

Despite his thoughtfulness with the chocolate, Johanna got the distinct impression he didn’t give a damn what she didn’t like either, because she certainly didn’t like watching a man over whom she’d made a fool of herself undress.

And it was him. The smile had been a dead giveaway, but she’d been too frightened to put the feelings together with the right facts. Dylan Jones moved with the same controlled grace, the same efficiency, the same hint of wariness and threat that had set Dane apart from all the other men around Austin. Once, in an attempt to impress her, Austin had told her how much he’d had to pay to get Dane. The quiet, dangerous ones, he’d told her, always placed the highest price on their services. If they were also intelligent, the price went through the roof. The lesson, of course, hadn’t really been about how good Dane was, but rather how powerful Austin was. He bought men like Dane; he could buy a woman like Johanna. At the same time she’d known he was wrong about her. Now she knew he’d also been wrong about Dane.

The man in front of her had obviously never been bought, not even at Austin’s outrageous price. Groaning softly, he straightened, his hands sliding to the front of his pants. He slanted her a quick glance.

“I don’t recommend watching,” he said in a flat tone.

Horrified to have been caught staring, she squeezed her eyes shut. Lord help her. She’d really gone and done it this time, gotten herself kidnapped by a man who had a reason to think she might actually enjoy the experience. Logically she knew the work she’d done for Austin was the reason for her abduction. When she considered her abductor, though, she knew her imagination was also to blame. It and a wayward curiosity had led her into one regrettable indiscretion she was sure he hadn’t forgotten. And if by some outside chance he had forgotten, her uncontrollable, blossoming sexual awareness of him was bound to remind him.

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