Lily's Outlaw (Once a Marine, Always a Marine Book 2) (10 page)

Chapter 9

Lily’s house was bright and sunny, but also cozy with big furniture that a man wasn’t afraid to sit on. Jesse had taken his shirt off and given it to Lily for the dryer, but since his pants were barely wet, he kept those on.

“We leave in ten minutes, if not sooner,” Jesse called down the hall.

“I know we can’t stay, but at least let your shirt dry.”
 

She disappeared to retrieve the pictures she’d taken. She was finally going to trust him, and it was about damn time.

He found the remote and flipped on the television. He set his bag at his feet with his gun sitting within easy reach. He searched the local news station and waited for something interesting to come on. When it did, he sat forward and steepled his hands. There was no such thing as coincidence in his world.

“What was the name of that Army General from your picture?”

“Alton Maddox,” she yelled back. “Why?”

“You need to come in here.”

“What’s up?” she asked. She had a manila folder in her hand.
 

She’d changed into a peach-colored tank top and white shorts and if he hadn’t been positive that their time at this house was about to be compromised, he might have stopped everything to explore all that creamy skin again.
 

Jesse pointed at the screen. The banner at the top said Army General found dead, and the scrolling banner at the bottom said that the General had been found deceased at his vacation home in the mountains of Colorado. It was ruled a homicide. It was news in Texas because this particular General ran one of the largest bases in the state.
 

“That is no coincidence, Lil.”

She sat down hard on the leather couch. “He was only in his fifties.”

“Cold-blooded murder tends to shorten a life span.” He knew his tone was grim. “The Army isn’t going to release any details to the media and will do their own investigation as soon as they can, but the local police department would have arrived on scene first. They might even have the body since, technically, it’s their jurisdiction. I’ll call a friend and have him get some info for us, like if the General was tortured or not.”

“Because that’s what the Huerta cartel is known for.”

Jesse nodded. She’d gone a little pale and he pulled her into his arms to give her a hug. “I will not let anyone hurt you.”

She sighed. “I know. I guess I thought I could handle it when they were only after me.”

Jesse pulled back and looked into her misty cat’s eyes. “I’m not okay with that.”

“I’m so glad you aren’t.”

“Now, how about you let me in on what’s really going on?”

Lily sighed and set the folder on the table. “Whoever searched my house did a very thorough job.”

“Robert?”

She shook her head. “He’s the type to hire someone else to do that. Whatever reason he was really here for, it wasn’t to do the initial search. How did you find me so fast?”

Jesse grinned. He’d wondered when she’d get around to that. “I bugged your camera.”

“When you found the other one, you planted your own? All my noble effort was worthless, wasn’t it?”

He nodded. “It would have been nice to wake up with you in my arms, instead of you sneaking out like you missed curfew and were about to get grounded. We could have had morning sex and taken a shower together.”

Jesse watched as her faced flushed and her eyes dropped to his chest. “That would have been nice.”
 

He was getting hard just thinking about morning sex, and shower sex, and then bed sex. But he willed his body under control. He wanted to hear from her what she’d gotten herself mixed up in and then they needed to leave her home and find a safer place.

“So next time, don’t leave me high and dry.” He redirected her attention from his chest to the folder on the table. “How did they miss this?”

Lily grinned. “I have a false bottom to a drawer in my bathroom. I cover it with tampons and pads. I figure it’s safe to assume it’s usually men that do house searches and I have yet to run into a man that wanted to handle anything labeled feminine protection.”

Jesse laughed. It wouldn’t have stopped him because he had six sisters who used to do that very same thing. He’d learned early on in a house full of women to just ignore anything unpleasant or leave the house during Hell week. But if he wanted dirt on his sisters, he went into the tampon cabinet. They all hid their diaries in there.

“Anyway,” she continued. “This is the original shot I had.”

The General was a tall man and kept in shape, but his muscle was running to fat and he’d developed love-handles around the middle that sagged over the tops of his khaki pants. His hair was gray and regulation short and his face was average. Unremarkable.

Ramon Garcia was a bit of a surprise.

Even taller than the General, he had sleek wiry muscles and a hard face. There was no mercy there. No give. The wicked looking scar that ran from his chin along his jawline to his left ear told Jesse that this man was brought up hard and would go out that same way. Knife wounds were as easy to read as gunshot wounds.

“What else do you have?”

Lily opened the folder again and began sliding out photo after photo. “I knew the General was based out of Fort Hood so I set up camp and began watching his comings and goings. I wanted to know who he was meeting and when.”

Jesse looked at each photo. Lily gave them to him in a timeline. Most were innocent enough but showed that the General, like most people, had regular habits. Coffee off-base on Tuesday. Dinner with some other brass in town on Thursday. And meetings every so often at a seedy little motel on the outskirts of town. That was the picture he focused on.

“I recognize this man.” He tapped the face of the man meeting with Maddox. But how he knew him wasn’t coming to him.

“You should. That’s my stepfather.”

And just like that, he remembered. William Tate had married Lily’s mother when Lily was ten years old. He owned a chain of gun stores across Texas. He was very rich, very connected, and not at all interested in raising a little girl. He’d aged well, still had his hair and looked successful.

“Do you have any idea what they are talking about?”

She shrugged. “No idea. I don’t do listening devices, just telescopic lenses for my cameras. But this is six months of near constant vigil. I only caught them meeting this one time.”

“And what happened after that?”

“I went home and confronted William. I asked him why he was meeting the General in plain clothes at a motel that rents rooms by the hour, especially when he’s been to many functions at the house.”

Jesse nodded. “And when was that?”

“Two days before I was kidnapped.”

***

“What the hell are you doing?”

“Cleaning up loose ends,” Ramon replied calmly.

“And am I a loose end?”

The voice was tense and that made Ramon smile, though he kept his voice detached. “That depends on you. I will be there by the end of the day and we will discuss the situation and what else needs to be done. To protect both our employers.”

“You’re here? In Texas?”

“I will see you soon.” Then Ramon disconnected the call.

Loose ends were only a problem when allowed to exist longer than they were useful. Ramon placed a second call. The man who answered was prompt and efficient. “Si?”

“The General has been taken care of.”

“Good. Are you already in Texas?”

“I am on my way now.”

“We no longer need the greedy American.”

“Understood.”

“And, Ramon? Make sure you get all negatives from the woman before you kill her.”

The reminder of his recent failure caused a ripple of unease inside of him. The man to whom he’d reported was the Huerta cartel’s number two man. A position Ramon aspired to achieve one day. But not if he didn’t prove himself capable. Otherwise, it would be a bullet to his head and an unmarked grave.

Just like Pedro.

***

 
“I don’t know if Robert is involved,” Lily said. She ran a hand through her hair to shove it out of the way. “He’s just not the type to get his hands dirty, in any way. His moral compass is shot, no doubt, but he’s never had so much as a parking ticket.”

Jesse frowned. “People change, Lil. And he’s close with your mother and stepfather. And what was he doing in your house for at least an hour? Lily tried to think of a plausible reason and just couldn’t come up with one. It was strange that he would pick now, of all times, to try and reinsert himself into her life.

She shrugged. “I have no idea why he was here.”

She stood up; restless and knowing they only had about five minutes left before they had to leave. And she was having problems keeping her eyes off Jesse. His perfectly sculpted pecs and washboard abs, which she knew felt as hard as they looked, were too much of a distraction for her to be analytical.

“Let me check on your shirt. It has to be dry by now.”

She bolted down the hallway. The dryer was still going and she leaned forward against it, the warmth and movement soothing. Lily shouldn’t be allowing Jesse to be more involved, but darn it, he’d kept her safe and saved her life. More than once.

And she was terrified.

Maybe admitting it was a good step. Along with admitting that she could fall wildly, wantonly, in love with Jesse James Calhoun. A man who avoided marriage but made her feel like maybe she should give it another shot. Or at least a good long consideration.

She sighed. And she still wasn’t being completely honest with him. That was going to come back and bite her. But there were some things that she had to face herself. And it wasn’t necessarily about protecting Jesse anymore. It was about her, Lily. And proving that she was a capable, intelligent woman who needed to stand up for what was right.

Pull up those big girl panties. Taking a deep breath, she fixed on her goal once again. She had her evidence, now for one tiny detail before going to the police.

And then his arms wound themselves around her waist from behind and she was pulled back against all those muscles she’d just run from. “Jesse.”

“What are you doing back here? Solving the world hunger problem?”

Lily chuckled and turned, letting her shoulders relax. The tension slid away as she moved her hands slowly up his bare shoulders to link behind his neck. “Something like that.”

“Well—” he kissed the side of her mouth, “—you can do that after you pull my shirt from the dryer and we vacate.”

“It’s almost done.”

“Now, Lily. We are leaving now.”

She lost her will a little when he kissed her. He knew it, and she knew it. Lily trusted his instincts and she didn’t want to put herself or her neighbors in jeopardy by being stubborn and staying a few minutes longer. But she liked to argue, just a little, because she liked the way he persuaded her.

“Grab anything else you think you need because we won’t be back until this is finished.”

Then he let her go and she stood there in a stupor. It should be illegal to kiss like that.
 

Shaking her head to clear it, she walked into her bedroom and grabbed her brush and some cosmetics to go with her clothes in the backpack. She also unearthed a second folder with a different set of photos and some other papers that she’d be using in the confrontation that was coming.

She just hoped Jesse would still want to kiss her after he knew the truth.

Chapter 10

“I feel silly spying on my ex-husband.”

“I want to know what the hell he was doing in your house,” Jesse said. “You said yourself that he’s never done that before. So why now? And why the come on?”

Lily slouched low in the front seat of the rented minivan. She would have never thought that good surveillance was done from a vehicle more suited to soccer moms, but Jesse said that no one looks for minivans. They just blend into the landscape.

“I honestly don’t know. I’ve never seen him anywhere but political fundraisers or fetching for my mother. And the come on was reflexive. He’s always been that way and he really thinks no one can resist his charm.”

“So you really think your mother sent him over to check on you?”

Lily shook her head and let out a disparaging chuckle. “She’s never cared much about anything that was happening to me.”

Jesse nodded but didn’t face her. “Exactly. So he used the lie to distract you from the real reason he was there.”

He had a small pair of binoculars held up to his face that were shielded by a black baseball cap pulled low over his brow. Golden stubble covered his jaw but when the light hit his chin, hints of red shone through. It was such a strong jaw, and oh so kissable.

“There he is.”

Lily lifted her own set of binoculars and aimed them toward the chic French restaurant where Robert Worthington III and his female guest were led to a table on the patio. Robert was in a different, but no less expensive suit, and his guest was about to burst out of a skin-tight red sundress that had every male eye checking out her assets.