Bound to the Bounty Hunter (5 page)

He grinned.

Perfect.

He stood lost in thought, mostly about Sophie and their night together. His cock twitched painfully against denim at the image of her cuffed, panting, and looking up at him.

Yep, he’d definitely be winning the bet.

A food truck pulled into the lot in a park across the street. The email he’d read earlier surfaced in his brain. Today they’d be serving tomato soup and either a chicken club sandwich or pastrami on rye along with a hot drink or bottled water plus a toiletries pack.

Good to know thinking about soup wipes Sophie from my brain.

Until she resurfaced in a tiny bikini, her long legs wrapped around a pole.

His
.

He rubbed his chin.

He continued to stare out the window when the door opened.

“You still playing white knight?” Zeb said.

Harlan spotted a boy not much older than he’d been when he’d found a soup kitchen that had fed him instead of asking questions, helped him out with clothes, and handed him a note with a cell phone number and the three words that changed his life—
call me, anytime
.

The boy shuffled to the head of the line, head bowed. At the last minute, he raised his head and looked at the server, who smiled at him.

He pushed his hands into his pockets. “Still paying back, brother. Life’s shitty when you’re homeless, but it is fucked when you’re homeless, starving, and want clean teeth.”

Zeb cleared his throat.

Harlan turned.

Zeb poured his frame into a chair, his face serious. “We have a problem. A big fucking problem.”

Every muscle in Harlan’s body locked.

Zeb passed him a sheet of paper. An autopsy picture of a middle-aged white dude— O’Connor. Harlan skimmed his vital stats. Six foot, blue eyes, no distinguishing marks.

“Your girl, Sophie Callaghan, doesn’t add up. There’s a birth certificate issued in the state of Montana, twenty years ago when she was two. Mother is listed as a Jane Callaghan, and I can find no evidence of her birth or death. Father listed as Josiah O’Connor. There’s a notation that the certificate was issued without hospital proof of birth. O’Connor signed an affidavit that Sophie was born in Montana, in a field with no witnesses. O’Connor died six years back. I had to dig hard to get his story out of the woodwork. Turns out he was a con-artist preacher who, with his direct connection to God, could heal cancer, bring rain, grow crops and find love…for a price.” Zeb looked pained. “Sorry, brother.”

A pit opened up in the bottom of Harlan’s stomach, and his internal organs tried to squeeze out his asshole. Soon after Zeb had joined the firm and after a near miss on a surveillance shoot, they’d gotten shitfaced and broken the ice over a bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue. When he was seven, his mom had sold everything for a healing prayer from a preacher when the doctors gave her no hope. All his mom wanted was to stay on the planet longer to care for her only child while cancer ravaged her body. When the prayer didn’t arrive and the preacher disappeared, his mother had died, broken.

He hated the prick preacher who’d stolen his mom’s hope and her dignity. He wanted to find the man his whole life and snap every bone in his body then hack out his heart and feed it to vultures.

At least it wasn’t O’Connor. Wrong ethnicity.

“A small token of consolation. O’Connor liked girls and blow. Took a beating after trying to get out of paying for both. Brain hemorrhage.”

Harlan stilled.

Fuck.

Fuck.

“Leaving Sophie exposed.” He stood, then paced, clenching and unclenching his hands, adrenaline spiking through his body. “What kind of sick father does that to his daughter? Jesus.” Different scenarios played out in his head, all ending badly. “Imagine if any of O’Connor’s victims wanted revenge and found Sophie alone and vulnerable.”

Wait.

Could
still
find Sophie.

He stilled.

Harlan had brought in sick, depraved, and flat-out desperate people who’d do anything for money or revenge. If any of them had found Sophie, could
still
find Sophie, she could slip from this earth in a heartbeat.

“Brother, there’s more.”

Harlan braced, breathed heavily, and nodded.

“I got to her house before she left to come here, took over from Arabella. Someone else is on her. There was a guy parked on her street with a telescopic lens, under the guise of reading water meters. I lifted this envelope from the passenger seat.”

“Arabella didn’t notice him?” A steel band clamped around the inside of his head and tightened. He’d have to deal with that snippet of news later.

Zeb shook his head, his face pained. He placed photos of Sophie on the desk. Harlan’s heart beat out an SOS against his chest cavity. He forced in a slow breath, staring at a montage of photos. Sophie hauling on the lead of a hog of a dog. One of her in running clothes, taken last Monday. One, date-stamped last night, showed Sophie wearing a long trench coat walking out of Pipe’s with Pipe.

“Whoever this crew is watching Sophie, they’re serious. This fucker had high-end camera equipment. Professional. I ran the plates. They don’t match the registration. The car was listed as stolen last week in South Dakota. I’ll confirm if the car changes daily. This type of operation takes money. A
lot
of money.”

“Yep,” Harlan ground out.

“Brother, Sophie Callaghan came into this world aged two. No confirmed birth that fits her age with her parents in fifty states. Someone out there is paying large to keep her under high-end surveillance. Someone with a lot of coin, someone—”

Cold sweat gathered on Harlan’s forehead. He stopped pacing and faced Zeb, who looked grim. “Someone who knows of her possible connection to Petrov and who’ll use her as collateral or someone out for revenge for her father.”

Zeb’s unflinching icy blue stare met his. “That’s what I’m thinking.”

Harlan nodded, trying to digest the information that sat like a lump of concrete in his stomach.

“I’ll keep digging, but I don’t have a good feeling.” Zeb headed toward the door, his phone in his hand, punching out a text. The door closed with a click.

Harlan rubbed the back of his neck, staring sightlessly at the floor. A lot of people had been unhappy when Petrov went straight. The man was a business genius. Everything he touched turned to gold. If he took an interest in an abandoned diamond mine, it would start spitting out diamonds bigger than fists. The man had run guns in and out of countries without a single shipment ever being stopped. He now used those traffic lanes for legitimate purposes.

If someone wanted to get Petrov to open up the profitable transport routes, using Sophie may get the man to change his mind. Worse still was the scenario that a rogue player, or players, wanted Sophie as revenge for her father’s cons.

Harlan had run a financial check. Sophie had under one hundred dollars in her savings account and scraped by on her checking. Anyone looking for revenge thinking she was sitting on a nest egg would be cornered when they realized she had nothing. Maybe they’d play with her before they killed her. Maybe not.

The bad mood that had been kicking around his head like a teenage boy with two broken hands morphed into a starving ten-foot troll. Whether she liked it or not, and he was guessing not, Sophie would be moving in with him.

Chapter Five

“Coming, Titus.”

After a mouthful of noodles, Sophie licked the sauce from a fork and placed the plate and utensil into the sink.

Pongo lifted his head and opened one eye before laying his sorry head back down—tired from waking up.

She smiled at her dog before heading toward the door. “You’ve spent all day sleeping, I swear if ‘Bark in the Park’ has a
Useless Guard Dog
competition this year, I’m entering you.” She laughed when her dog responded with a thump of his tail, and a quick, explosive fart filled the room.

She knew, if push came to shove, Pongo would lick any intruder to death, then gas them with his lethal cocktail, and she loved every inch of his trusting, fart-filled soul.

When a second heavier knock echoed around the room, she hurried her pace. “I’m here.”

The Carrolls must have seen her shoot down the driveway an hour earlier. She’d spent longer in Denver than she’d anticipated. After leaving Harlan’s office, she’d headed for a cappuccino and a huge slab of banana bread. Tequila would have calmed her nerves faster, but busting out the top shelf would delay her stay.

It had frightened and disturbed her how badly she’d wanted Harlan. If the man had touched her neck with his tongue one more time…

Her fingers skimmed the crescent-shaped welts on her palm, where she’d dug for control.

But thoughts of Harlan and his sinful body had to take a backseat, because she had more pressing matters: getting her equipment from the park, listening to Babic’s conversation. Then her demand when she won the bet—Harlan leaving her alone.

Getting to the park unnoticed might not be so easy. Harlan’s people moved fast. A brown sedan had tailed her after she left the office.

After tonight’s surveillance evidence job, she’d lead Harlan’s people on a chase around the streets of Denver before she’d collect the microphone and secure it in the safe.

A win-win situation.

Sophie unlocked and opened her front door, expecting to see Titus’s sparkling brown eyes, leaning on his walking stick, a smile on his face, a fuzzy felt hat on his head. Instead, she gazed into intense dark blue eyes. Harlan’s ripped body filled her doorframe. A black T-shirt hugged every washboard on his rock-hard stomach; faded blue denim had been replaced with aged black molded over long, long, muscular thighs. His full lips were pressed into a tight line.

“What are you doing here?” Blood thicker than molasses finally made its way to her brain. She stood on tiptoes staring past him to see a black demon of a car parked behind her hatchback where the words “Clean Me” were written on her passenger side window. The sinking sun splashed shadowy light across her car.

He scanned the contents of her small house. “How long would it take you to pack a bag?” He gently turned her sideways and walked inside.

Pongo, sensing a new food source, lumbered off the couch, a series of popping noises accompanied him.

She sucked in a breath at Harlan’s grin.

“Did your dog fart?”

She shut the door and followed him in.

“Yeah,” she said, distractedly. “I’m guessing it’s why he was left on the side of the road with ‘unwanted’ written on a note attached to his collar. If he’s in a joyous mood, he can clear a room in less than ten seconds. It’s his gift to the world.”

Harlan stood in the middle of the room, hands on his hips, executing a slow circle. Her couch housed a selection of throws, an empty tube of Pringles
,
and three of her dog’s chew toys.

Dark brows hit his messy hairline when he took in the usual disaster of her living room.

Her hands went to her hips.

Seriously?

After a childhood of moving from state to state with no warning, sometimes in the middle of the night, not having to mold her life and her possessions to fit into one bag was freedom. Leaving a bowl in the sink meant she was coming back.

She folded her arms across her chest. “Why are you here, and why would I need to pack a bag?” Her brain finally shook off the shock that Harlan was standing in her living room. “Are you here because of the bet? Because if you are you can turn around and strut your cute butt out the door.”

Pongo had made a thorough inspection of their visitor’s pockets. Although he hadn’t found food, he gazed up at Harlan like he’d found a new best friend. His stump of a tail beat against the wooden floor.

“Cute butt?” Harlan’s blue eyes twinkled. “Men don’t have cute butts. Babes have cute butts.”

Exasperated that he stood here, and annoyed that he exasperated her, she threw up her hands. “God, you’re right. Women never think
cute butt
. They
always
think,
now that’s a well-proportioned set of
gluteus maximus muscles
.”

Harlan grinned before his face stilled,
his stare focused on her. “Without going into details, you’re being followed. Someone is taking photos of you with a telescopic lens. At your house, walking your dog. Walking out of Pipe’s Bar.”

She rolled her eyes. Did he think she’d been beamed down to the planet and she couldn’t see this was all a ruse to win the bet?

“Where’re the photos?”

“In my office safe. I had you under surveillance when you came to my office. My colleague clocked the guy taking photos of you.”

“So you admit you had me followed.” She leaned forward until their breaths clashed. “Seriously. You need to go. The only reason you’re still breathing is I hate orange jumpsuits.”

His eyes sparkled, and that bone-melting grin transformed his face.

“We need to move. I’ll find out who it is. Since you’re staying with me, no one will get close to you.”

She stepped backward. “I’d no more pack a bag and jump into your machine of a car than I would enter myself in a Miss Venezuela bikini pageant.”

The humor died in his eyes. “This is serious shit, Sophie, you need to listen to me and do what I say.”

Harlan folded impressive arms across his chest, widened his stance, and stared at her. Where was the man from last night and this morning in his office who’d looked at her like he wanted to devour her?

He’d morphed into I-will-control-the-situation-and-you-at-all-costs, and here he stood in her living room doing what he did best.

Demanding.

This Harlan Franco she knew. This man she took bail jumpers from. The man currently looking at her as if she were a stain.

She took a deep breath and held his gaze. Time to dish up some facts so he’d be on his merry way.

“FYI, I’ve got a great security system.” And she did. It had cost a fortune. She’d beefed up security after a cheating husband had followed her back here. Her hands landed on her hips. “My neighbor Titus is the self-appointed neighborhood watch captain. He writes down every car that comes into the street, and if that car hangs around he has a detailed description and the boys in blue on speed dial.”

His eyes narrowed. “You rely on your neighbor?”

She blew out a breath. “Are you listening to me? No, I don’t rely on my neighbor. I
know
this neighborhood. I know the people who live here, their vehicles, and when they change vehicles. I would know if someone was following me.” Between her and Titus, she was confident one of them would have noticed anything out of the ordinary.

Harlan gazed around the room, as if inspecting her security system, his eyes resting on the antique cabinet that housed her treasured snow globes. All ninety-four of them and counting.

Her favorite, the one that had started her collection, sat proudly at the front. Dorothy wearing her trademark ruby slippers, with the date her father gave it to her engraved on the bottom:

S. You are my night and day. 7 May.

The globe calmed her. Made her feel safe.

She had carried on the tradition of engraving the date she purchased a new globe until she’d received her father’s personal effects and the world she’d thought she belonged to exploded.

“I don’t have much time.”

A tentative knock sounded at the door.

She checked the watch that ran ten minutes late no matter how many times she changed the battery. “Turns out neither do I. You need to leave.
Now
.”

His eyes heated and lazily dragged down her body as if she were naked. “Not a big fan of the insubordination, but I have a plan for that.” He reached out and tucked a length of hair behind her ear.

Poof
, there it was, that instant hit when he touched her. Her blood thickened, her heart rate kicked up several gears, and that good old feeling beat a path between her legs.

What is it about this man that makes me want to bite him?

Hard.

She started toward the door on legs made of Jell
-
O. She didn’t know how he did it but, by a feat of physics, Harlan managed to get to the door before her and peered through the peephole.

She tried to push him, but moving Jupiter would be easier.

Close. He was too close. His scent battered her defenses. Standing next to the man, her brain shut down, but her body trembled in embarrassing anticipation.

Why, why, why did she want him more than breathing?

Surprise flared in his eyes.

One hand landed beside her head. “You want me?”

She shook her head. She hated him, hated herself, hated everything about this.

“Hell no,” she said, sounding surprisingly and thankfully formal.

The atmosphere crackled between them. She lifted her chin and refused to get lost in the depths of his deep blues or acknowledge the mesmerizing gold flecks in his eyes.

“Miss Sophie, are you all right? There’s a tank of a car parked in the driveway. I’ve written down the license.” The concerned voice of her neighbor filtered through the heavy wood.

She turned and opened the door, ignoring the wall of man next to her.

“Hey, Titus.” Her neighbor’s dark eyes widened as he took in Harlan, who’d crossed his arms and stood guarding the door as if burly robbers were about to break in. She elbowed Harlan out of the way. “I’ve got your pickled onions.”

“I didn’t know you had a
man
.” Titus’s smile lit up his face. At five-foot-two, he tilted his head back. “Well, I must say I am pleased.” Titus thrust out one hand, leaning on his trusty cane with the other, his eyes trained on Harlan, who grinned and shook her neighbor’s hand, introducing himself.

Sophie’s heart threw in a mini-beat. Titus would hurry down their shared driveway, his cane on “rapid stomp.” He’d tell his wife, Sally, who’d forget in two minutes, so he’d repeat himself, hoping something would stick. All the while he’d be planning her “big day”.

“I don’t have a man, Titus, but if I did it wouldn’t be this man.” She squeezed Titus’s shoulder. “I’ll get your pickled onions, and I’ll see you on Thursday as usual.” She paused, knowing Titus relied on her more than he cared to admit. “You know I’ve got a huge leg of lamb in the freezer I’ll never get through. I’ll roast it up and bring it over.”

The only thing hanging out in her freezer was an expired Lean Cuisine and two frozen fishcakes that had escaped the box ages ago and lay like golden eyes staring at her.

She loved her neighbors and often ate oatmeal for breakfast, lunch, and dinner on a slow workweek so she could help them out. Like her, they had no family. Titus had caught Sophie watering his garden at midnight after she had come back from a job and noticed the normally beautiful flowers looked thirsty. She’d turned down Titus’s requests for dinner until she’d run out of excuses. She’d joined them and they’d sat down to canned tomato soup, toast, and four potato chips laid in a row on the toast. Now every Thursday night she loaded up her groaning credit card at the supermarket and inflicted her cooking skills on them.

“Well now. Since you have a man in your life, you should be on dates, cooking for him. Getting wooed.” Titus’s brown eyes twinkled.

A bark of unexpected laughter broke free from deep in her chest, breaking the tension. “Ah, Harlan doesn’t woo, Titus, he commands his army of small, blond ‘yes-women’.” She checked her watch again. “And I’m commanding him to leave.” She ignored Harlan, walked to her cluttered kitchen table and hoisted the jar of Olde English pickled onions. She held the jar out to her neighbor whose eyes lit up at the size.

“I know you said a small one, but these were on sale,” she lied. Heat radiated from her face. She turned to Harlan whose eyes were trained on her. He stared at her like she was a code and he’d been given the letters,
S
,
E
, and
X
.

“I’ll see myself out.” Titus grinned. “I’ll see you Thursday, and bring your young man. He might want to catch the fishing channel with me after dinner.”

“I’ll be there,” Harlan said.

Sophie turned and glared at him.

“He won’t, Titus, but
I’ll
see you Thursday, if not before, and don’t forget Fly Fishing Phil cheats.” She leaned forward and hugged her neighbor, inhaling his pine aftershave.

Titus lifted his cane and shuffled out the door.

She turned to Harlan. “Now, I have a job tonight, and you need to leave.” She walked to her bedroom, closed the door, and jumped at the sound of the front door slamming. Unable to resist, she opened her door to see her living room and house Harlan-free. Only his spicy male scent lingered. Without thinking, she breathed deeply.

“Wow, that was easy,” she said to Pongo, who opened one eye. “Suspiciously.”

The clock on her bedside table drew her eye.

Crap. I’ve got to get a move on
.

She swapped her polo for a slinky black top. She wore her newish black jeans, the ones that kind of flattered her ass if she squinted. Black boots on her feet. If she didn’t eat so many Pringles her ass wouldn’t be so round, nor her hips, but giving up the Salt and Vinegar? Never going to happen.

She added a touch of gloss to her lips, then grabbed her bag, set the alarm, and locked the front door. Scanning the area, she found no cars out of place.

Sophie sang along with Bruno Mars and headed toward the aptly named strip joint Beavers and Buttheads. She checked in her rearview mirror countless times but only a gray sedan stuck with her until she threw in an unexpected left turn. She let out her breath. Harlan’s words still sat in her brain. If he was telling the truth and someone was following her, tomorrow she’d launch her own investigation.