RENEGADE GUARDIAN (7 page)

She shook her head so fast that her neck popped. Maya didn’t want him touching Evan. And as for eating, that wouldn’t happen. Her stomach was churning, but thankfully she had enough formula for Evan. Also, thankfully, her baby seemed to be totally unaware of the nightmare going on around him.

Slade got up and first opened the doors off the living room. She’d been right about them being bedrooms. Well, two were. The center one was a bathroom.

“I’ll take the bedroom at the front of the house,” Slade said, and walked into the kitchen.

Maya tried to level her breathing. Tried to think. But most of all she forced herself not to run. Slade had the truck keys—she’d seen him slip them into his jeans pocket—so she literally had no way out of here except on foot.

But she did have a phone.

She hurried to the diaper bag to get it but then froze when she looked at the phone screen. Who could she call?

Sheriff Monroe, maybe.

Then she remembered Slade saying something about the kidnapper perhaps having a
friend
in the sheriff’s office. She didn’t want to do anything to lead the kidnapper right to Evan.

Frantically, she scrolled through the numbers she had stored. Her parents had been killed in a car accident when she was in high school. She had no family except for distant cousins who she rarely saw, but she had friends and coworkers.

And one by one she excluded them.

Anyone she called would automatically be put in danger. And besides, she didn’t personally know anyone with the physical skills to help protect Evan.

Sweet heaven, what was she going to do?

Maya caught the movement from the corner of her eye and whirled around. Slade was in the doorway of the kitchen, his shoulder propped against the jamb, and he was eating a sandwich. He was also watching her. Or rather watching her hold Evan while she panicked. But Slade wasn’t panicking. He looked much as he had when she’d first seen him lounging against her car.

Well, the same except for his eyes.

Those deep blue eyes were still intense. As was the rest of him. But there was something else there, too. Something she couldn’t quite put her finger on.

Wait, she could.

It was the kind of look a father might give a child he loved with all his heart. And that broke Maya’s own heart. Because his love might be warranted if Evan was his son.

Slade pushed himself away from the jamb and walked closer. “Keep away from the windows,” he said. Not one of his growled warnings that she’d become accustomed to. There was a gentleness in his voice.

He reached in the back waist of his jeans and took out a gun. For one terrifying moment she thought he might aim it at her and demand that she hand over Evan.

But he put it on the coffee table.

“There’s no safety on this weapon,” he said, “and if you call anyone, don’t use your cell. It can be traced. Besides, service out here sucks anyway. Use the landline in the kitchen instead.”

Maya shook her head. Was he giving her permission to call someone else for help?

He took out the truck keys from his pocket. They jangled when he dropped them on the table next to the gun. “I’m asking you to trust me, but I won’t force you to stay under my protection against your will. Just be smart about it and make sure anyone you involve in this will put Evan’s safety first.”

It was an out. A surprising one. “You care whether I trust you or not?” she asked.

“Yeah.” He didn’t sound very happy about that. “Let me know what you decide to do.”

And with that, Slade walked away from her and disappeared into the bedroom.

Chapter Eight

Slade sat on the bed and watched the line of light seep through the edges of the blinds. It was both a welcome sight and not so much of one.

Yeah, they’d survived the night without someone coming after them, but that sun was rising on what no doubt would be a hell of a day.

There’d been a steady flow of emails and text messages throughout the night. Some were updates on the case. Others were details for the security arrangements for the interrogation of their suspects—Andrea and Chase and Nadine Collier. Slade hadn’t considered Chase an actual suspect, but then Declan had added a strange note to the arrangements:
“Wait until you get a load of this guy.”

Clearly, his brother had seen a red flag or two in the man’s demeanor, and that was good enough for Chase to land on Slade’s suspect list. But that list, and the interrogations, were just the tip of the iceberg.

Morgan Gambill, the guy who’d escaped during the bomb scare, was still missing. Definitely not good. Because his escape alone was enough to prove guilt of something.

But what?

Slade needed to find out.

Then there was the added annoyance of Randall Martin, the owner of that green SUV, who still hadn’t been brought in for questioning. Randall had stonewalled pretty much every agency involved and, fed up, Slade had ordered the man arrested. And it would happen, as soon as he was located. Yeah, Randall had indeed filed a stolen-vehicle report hours before the kidnapping attempt, but Slade was tired of having no answers. Because no answers meant Evan was in danger.

That thought snaked through his head just as he heard the movement. He’d been expecting it but didn’t reach for the gun he had on the nightstand beside him. The footsteps belonged to Maya. He’d gotten very familiar with their sound because he’d listened for them during the entire night.

And there’d been a lot of them to hear.

When she’d taken Evan in the bathroom so she could bathe him and then take a shower herself. When she had gotten something to eat from the fridge. And when she had fixed Evan a bottle in the middle of the night and then another just a half hour earlier.

Plenty of opportunities to hear footsteps.

And an equal number of opportunities to worry that he’d made an idiot of a mistake by leaving her those keys and that gun. It’d been a gamble. But it had obviously paid off. The proof of that was when Maya stepped into the open doorway of his bedroom.

She’d changed her clothes. A loose green skirt and sweater top. Nondescript clothes provided by the U.S. Marshals Service, but on Maya no clothes were nondescript. The woman managed to make even baggy attractive.

Something he cursed himself for noticing.

“How’s Evan?” he asked.

“Fine. He just finished his bottle and will probably sleep for an hour or two.” She stretched out her arms, caught onto the doorframe with both hands. “You knew I wouldn’t leave even if I could come up with my own safe house and bodyguard. You knew I wouldn’t risk taking Evan away from you. Away from the security you’ve already put in place.”

It sounded exactly like what it was—an accusation. He moved the laptop to the bed and eased his legs off the side. He didn’t get up, because he didn’t want to give Maya any reason to back out of that doorway. This conversation was necessary, though it wouldn’t be pleasant.

Slade lifted his shoulder. “You love Evan, and I figured you’d do whatever it took to keep him safe.”

Her mouth tightened, and she looked ready to curse him out. “I wanted to leave.”

“Yeah,” Slade settled for saying.

The silence came. Man, did it, and it was even more uncomfortable than the stare she was giving him.

“There was a laptop in the bedroom, and I did an internet search on you,” she finally said. And that sounded like an accusation, too.

“I bet there was nothing in that search about me being in reform school when I was fourteen. I was pretty much a renegade in those days. Still am.”

She flinched. But maybe not from surprise. “No. But there was a lot of info about you and your five foster brothers being raised at the Rocky Creek Children’s Facility.”

Slade couldn’t help it. The name of the place always made him scowl. It was too pretty of a name for a hellhole.

“Your foster father, Kirby Granger, was a marshal, and he got custody of all six of you.”

He nodded. “Kirby saved us.”

And now someone had to save Kirby. His foster father was going through cancer treatments, and it wasn’t clear if the treatments or the cancer would kill him. But added to that, Kirby was suspected of murdering the Rocky Creek headmaster, Jonah Webb.

Yet another name that always caused Slade to scowl.

So did the fact that Kirby wasn’t the only suspect. Slade and all his brothers were, too. “I cleared up the question the Ranger had about where I was that night,” Slade volunteered. “I was with someone.” Angelica Sanchez. Angel for short. And she wasn’t nearly as spiritual as her name implied.

“
She
was able to give you an alibi?”

Even though he hadn’t said he’d been with a girl, Maya had obviously guessed. Slade nodded. “There’s still a window of opportunity where I was unaccounted for, but she managed to make that window very narrow by corroborating the time we were together.”

He paused. “Are you going to ask me if I killed Jonah Webb?” Slade tossed out there.

She opened her mouth, closed it and shook her head. “From everything I read about him, Webb deserved to die. I don’t have any warm fuzzy feelings for a brute of a man who would abuse children under his care.”

No surprise there, but Slade hadn’t expected her to cut him even an inch of slack.

He tipped his head to the laptop on his bed. “I did a search on you, too.” But he hadn’t used just the internet. He’d also gotten a thorough background using some law enforcement contacts.

Even in the dim light, he saw the color blanch from her face. “Like Deidre, I had a thing for bad boys.”

He shook his head. “Dominic Luker wasn’t a bad boy.”

Slade hadn’t thought it possible, but she lost even more color with the mention of her attacker/ex-lover’s name. He heard the shivery sound her breath made.

“He was a sociopath,” Slade clarified, and decided to end it with that dime-store diagnosis. He seriously doubted that Maya wanted to discuss the details of the attack that had nearly left her dead.

And unable to have children.

Several of the sixteen knife wounds Luker had given her had seen to that. But she hadn’t given up. She’d recovered, finished law school and started a nonprofit victims’ rights group.

Except recovery maybe wasn’t the right word.

Yes, Luker was out of her life permanently since he’d been killed in a prison shank fight. Ironic for a man who loved knifing women.

But Luker had left his mark on Maya.

She had no close friends. Hadn’t been in a real relationship since the attack and had basically thrown herself into work. Well, until she’d adopted Evan. According to her coworkers, she had no immediate plans to return to work but would instead live off the modest inheritance her late grandmother had left Maya when she was a toddler.

“So we know each other’s secrets,” she concluded. She walked closer. Slow, tentative steps. But that wasn’t a tentative look on her face. “On paper I suspect neither of us looks like a parent-of-the-year candidate. But given the chance, I’ll be a good mother.”

Her voice cracked, and there was just enough light now for him to see the shine in her eyes. From tears that were threatening to spill.

There it was again. That punch. And this time, it wasn’t from heat between them but from that need deep inside him to comfort a damsel. Not that she was exactly the damsel type, but he’d just brought up some of the worst memories of her life and his sheer presence was a reminder that she might lose her son.

Slade went to her, but when he reached for her, she batted his hands away. “Don’t. If you touch me, I’ll fall apart.”

He had his own reasons why he shouldn’t touch, but Slade touched her anyway. He pulled Maya into his arms and braced himself for the tears.

But she didn’t break into a sob.

Nor did she move.

She stood there, seemingly frozen in place with her arms down by her side while he held her. It took him a couple of seconds for the
oh, hell
to dance through his head. For her, being held by a man might bring back the memories of her attack, and Slade would have jerked away from her.

If she hadn’t lifted her hands.

First one, then the other. And she put them on his waist. Definitely not pushing him away.

Just the opposite.

She inched closer to him until they were body-to-body.

“I hate the danger,” she said. “It’s broken down a barrier that I’ve spent years putting up.”

He knew all about barriers. Knew that sometimes, like now, they were a good thing. But danger, especially shared danger, could indeed bring down walls and forge bonds that could get them in all sorts of trouble.

And maybe even save them.

The best way to keep Evan safe was for them to work together.

“This has nothing to do with Evan.” Her voice was a breathy whisper, so soft. Like the rest of her body. And that scent of hers that dulled his mind just enough that it took a second or two for that to sink in.

“I never thought it did.”

“I don’t want you to think I’m trying to get close to you,” she clarified.

But no clarification was needed. That wasn’t the grip of a woman planning to seduce a man to get him to back off. Or even to soften him up. Her touch was tentative, but the tentativeness didn’t make it to her eyes.

Her grip tightened slightly. She inched even closer. “And this has nothing to do with you being a bad boy.”

“Good thing. Because I lost my bad-boy status years ago.” Yeah, it was a poor attempt to lighten things up, but since she looked ready to shatter into a thousand little pieces, he thought she could use the levity.

It worked.

The corner of her mouth lifted just a fraction. “I don’t think it’s a status you can lose. It comes with the looks and the attitude.”

Her gaze combed over his face. Lingered on the dark stubble that was there. Before her attention went lower, to his chest. Only then did he remember his shirt was wide open.

Oh, man.

He was in trouble here. Yeah, she might not be trying to seduce him, but she was doing it anyway. And for multiple reasons he wanted to keep his hands off her. After all, they might end up in a custody battle.

Or together on the receiving end of another attack.

But that didn’t stop him.

Hell, maybe she was right. Once bad, always bad. That was the only explanation Slade could come up with as to why he lowered his head and brushed his mouth over hers.

Maya made a sound of startled surprise. Now she’d pull back. Maybe even slap him into the next county.

She didn’t do that, either.

She stared at him as if trying to decide what to do, and while she was deciding, Slade took a nosedive off a cliff. He snapped her to him and kissed her the way his body was begging for him to kiss her.

The taste of her slammed right through him, and it evaporated what little common sense he had left. But it wasn’t the taste that made things escalate. It was that little sound she made. A little catch in her throat. The sound not of surprise or protest.

But of pleasure.

She slid her arms around his waist and upped the already bad situation when her breasts landed against his chest. Yeah, she had on that skirt and top, but since his chest was bare and also since she seemed to be wearing the thinnest bra ever, he could feel parts of her that he shouldn’t have been feeling.

That didn’t stop him from feeling anyway.

It’d been a while since the slow burn had turned into an ache. He generally liked to dive right into sex so he could, well, find relief and then leave. Of course, the leaving didn’t happen right away, and despite his badass reputation, he didn’t fall into bed with many women.

But there’d be no leaving with Maya.

Nope. He had to stay with her until the danger was finished. Until they had the results of the DNA test.

And maybe even after that, if Evan was his son.

That finally sank into his hard head—his quickly hardening body, too—and Slade moved away from her.

“I don’t do things like this,” she mumbled, and she made his body beg when she flicked her tongue over her bottom lip.

“Ditto.”

She gave him a flat stare that was somewhat diminished because she was flushed with arousal.

“Ditto,”
he repeated.

“Not with those looks,” she added, also in a mumble.

He took her by the arm and put her in front of the mirror. “Look at yourself. You’re a knockout.”

Maya laughed, but it wasn’t from humor. She pulled up her sweater top, and the first thing that caught his attention was her barely there bra and her breasts that seemed ready to spill right out of it.

But then he saw the scars.

They were thin white lines, barely visible in the thready morning light. But he figured this was a case of more than skin-deep. Those scars had cut her to the core.

There was nothing he could say or do to lessen the pain she’d always feel, but Slade wished Luker were alive so he could hurt him for what he’d done to Maya.

Slade reached out and ran his index finger over one of the scars. He barely touched Maya, but she shivered. Not from heat this time.

“It’s not exactly a
ditto,
but since you’ve shown me yours, I’ll show you mine.” He pushed back the side of his shirt, unzipped his jeans and lowered them and his boxers.

Maya’s eyes widened. “What are you doing?”

“Not
that,
” he assured her. Though with the taste of her still in his mouth, getting naked with her held plenty of appeal. Thankfully, he did have some shred of common sense and control left.

Some.

“My scar.” He stopped lowering his clothes at about the midhip-bone point so she could see the healed wound.