The Protector of Ambra (Mercenaries of Fortune, #5) (6 page)

Now though...

He reminded himself that she was still his patient. Without the immediacy of pain and death, it took a little extra work. She was beautiful and he hated himself for noticing.

In the interest of not becoming
that
guy, he roughly pulled her arms into her sleeves, washed up and started driving.

Half an hour later, she started to come to. “Pierce?”

“You officially beat your grandmother in cool story contests. At this point, it’s done. You win forever. I put in a few stitches. Don’t worry about—”

“Water,” she said. Her eyes remained closed. She greedily gulped what he offered, not slowing even when he warned her about how rough coming out of anesthesia could be. “I can handle myself.”

“You may feel the urge to get sick. That’s totally normal.”

“I’m fine.”

“Melody—”

“Someone died because of me. Because of you. I don’t know who I’m more disgusted with.”

“I didn’t—”

“You killed a man for a toy.”

“I killed a man for an ancient...no, I didn’t actually. But had I removed him from this earth, it would have been to save your life. You’re welcome by the way. Oh and in case you were wondering, the guy who tried to kill you will be just fine. His shoulder might hurt, but otherwise I’m afraid you’ll have to find something else to be angry about. Like that time I saved your phone or that day I sewed your back up or maybe that time when I try to save your job at the risk of losing my own.”

Melody snapped her arms around her waist and turned to the window.

“You need to throw up?”

“Nope.”

“Are you having a tantrum?”

“Just drive.”

Pierce dropped it. He wasn’t going to sit there and catch an attitude from this woman after all he’d done today.

It took a few minutes of stony silence for his rage to clamp down a little. He wasn’t sure what annoyed him more. Her ungratefulness or that she thought he’d take a life so carelessly. He’d removed men from this planet before. He’d also seen them taken from his care by fate. Living like that made him a little more aware than others of how precious life was.

So, no, he wasn’t going to kill a guy over a
toy.

Besides, their would-be killer’s gun had been jammed and open at his feet. Pierce wouldn’t have been so kind if it’d been in the man’s hands. It was lucky for all of them.

Killing wasn’t a natural thing for Pierce. He’d done it for his country. He’d done it to save his friends. But it was anathema to everything he’d dedicated his life to.

His eyes drifted to the backpack on the floor and the treasure it held inside. All of this for a little taste of adventure and a small damned piece of clay. He wouldn’t be able to look at the thing if he had killed someone – unnecessarily – to get it.

“I’m not a killer,” he said softly.

It had been a good ten minutes since either of them had spoken. He waited for an “I know,” or “I’m totally sorry for not acknowledging your awesomeness,” but he got nothing.

He ought to go home and say to hell with it. Even as he lied to himself that leaving her on her own was an actual possibility, the back wheel popped and thudded.
Shit.
“A flat tire. Nothing but good luck today.”

He jumped out to change it. No surprise of what caused it. Almost immediately, he saw a gunshot that had finally taken the breath out of something. Metal clanged on metal as he pulled out the jack and started working on getting that wheel ready.

The jeep’s door slammed shut. If she was getting out to tell him how he was doing this wrong too, he’d lose his fucking mind. He sighed and prepped himself for another unnecessary fight where he was the bad guy for doing all the right things.

He turned at her grunting behind him, but there was no danger or attack. Only Melody hefting up a large rock under each arm. Before he had a chance to warn her of popped stitches, she’d already dropped one under a front tire to stabilize the jeep and was kicking it into place.

She’d done this before. It irked him. As much as she pissed him off, he hated that she didn’t have anyone around to change her tires. He hated it as much as he loved that she was woman enough to know how to do it.

Lug nuts off the spare on the back, he went to get the jack, but Melody was already standing over it. She twisted her thumb toward the jeep. “I’ll get her off the ground.”

The question, “need help,” almost passed his lips, but the fact that she’d gotten out of the car said enough.

Her help couldn’t have been to counter any charges of laziness either. Not with her injuries. Injuries, likely, he’d have to re-bandage. Combined, those things meant she was doing all this because...well...she wanted to. Maybe this was her way of being on board. “Take it easy. Those painkillers won’t work forever.”

She sniffed. She coughed. And his stomach bottomed out as the mewling sounds of her tears carried in the air.

Anger was a tricky thing. It happened to him at the worst of times, but usually fizzled away. The sound of her crying left no time for fizzling. He shot up, pivoting so fast that his bum knee popped and snapped.

It was a twisting, tearing pain as the cartilage stretched, reaching in vain for a stronger connection that wasn’t there. He ignored it all, half hobbling, half flopping to get to her. “Hey, hey. Look I’m sorry. I thought I had this figured out and—”

“You did.” She sniffed again, wiping her nose on her arm. “You’re a liar. I hate liars.”

“I picked that up.”

She shook her head, shaking her hands in front of her. Every part of her turned salmon red. From her blotchy face to her splotchy fingers. “I don’t condone what you did. It was wrong—”

“Got it.”

Some women were beautiful despite their tears. Melody wasn’t one of them. Her cheeks puffed out and her bloodshot eyes looked like death warmed over. Not cute and not something he intended to see again.

“No more tears from you.”

Melody evoked a sense of obligation. Something about her – or maybe something about him with her – made him need to prove his worthiness.

She’d just seen him do, in her eyes, a horrible thing. He’d make sure it wasn’t the last thing she saw of him. “This guy you’re hunting, forget him. This place isn’t safe and I was an idiot to bring you out here. Especially knowing what I intended to do first.”

Melody dragged the hem of her shirt against her nose. “Agreed. But it’s my fault too. You know what you’re doing. I’m the idiot for being out here in the first place. Without you, I’d be lost in the city with nothing.”

Going slow so she wouldn’t move away, he wrapped his hands around hers, bridging the distance between them. Her fingers were like little birds’ feet. Soft, delicate and trembling. “I meant what I said. Forget this Noah guy.”

“Can’t. Too much is on the line. I never told you why I started that business, did I?”

“I assumed you liked to eat.”

Her lips puffed out a laugh and she cocked her head to the side. “Yeah. That too. When we were kids, Mama didn’t have a lot of money. Every weekend though, she scratched up enough for a red box of brownie mix. We loved baking. Then on Monday, Angie and I would take those to school – man, we were the most popular kids in the cafeteria ever.”

“Let me guess. You guys never got tired of eating them?”

Her face scrunched and she pulsed her hands in his. “Of course, but it was making them that was most fun. We never hit that bad teenager stage. I mean, we
were
teenagers, but we were too busy surviving to be bratty. When you see your mom suffering every day, the last thing you want to do is be a jerk and make her suffer more.”

The lines on her face softened as she spoke of those she loved. There was a sliver of delight that not once had she spoken of a man that way. Her devotion to her family was beautiful. It left him a little envious. He wanted that from someone. Perhaps that was why, despite the end of her tears and shakes, he hadn’t let go of her little bird hands. “You three are a team.”

“That’s why I’m here. They’re depending on me to get this money situation fixed and bring this guy to justice.”

“Forget him, Melody. In my line of work, we discuss primary objectives. The one thing that must be accomplished. You don’t need to hunt this guy down. I’m a wealthy man. I can give you the money. I’m happy to.”

She snatched her hands away and cleared her throat. “I don’t take handouts.”

“Then I’ll loan it to you.”

“I have enough loans already,” she said, staring up at him like his father watched the stock market: a mild obsession mixed with a touch of self-importance. It led to missing the big picture and she sure as shit was.

Eyes never leaving hers, his hand blindly sought her grasp again. “I’m offering you what you came for.”

“I came for justice.”

“I thought you came for your family and before you say it, Melody, they’re not the same thing.”

“They are for me.”

He opened his mouth to set her straight, but a phone rang. His, specifically and it was Ambra’s home base. “Well, all this is moot anyway. I’m toast.”

P
ierce sucked his lower lip with a loud
pop
and slid down the side of the car with a very weak, “Hello?” Phone pressed to his ear, for the first time he looked truly fearful. “I’m here. Uh-huh. Late night.”

His lies were as smooth as freshly whipped buttercream.

“What do you mean, she’s pregnant?” he screamed into the phone. Pierce waved away her gasp and pointed to his chest. “Not mine,” he mouthed and shot up to finish the call in privacy.

Was he lying about that too? She didn’t think so. But the whole thing led to more questions. Who really was this guy? The doctor thing, she believed full out. She’d seen evidence of it since they met. Even now, the last she heard before he limped out of earshot was about safe levels of some drug in the second trimester.

So doctor? Fact.

Government agent? Possibility. He had unusual tools and the skills to use them. Or not use them. His hand-to-hand combat was nothing to laugh at either.

He rubbed his knee as he walked. Proof of some previous injury? Did the CIA let guys with a limp hang around? That was suspect. And if not the CIA, then what – the FBI or something more nefarious?

That last question didn’t hold much water. He didn’t abandon her, though she deserved it. If he’d meant to hurt her, that would have happened already too. The only thing he’d done to her, was help and smoothly insert that he thought she was running on a tank full of stupid. Maybe she was. She’d been so focused on the injustice she had to make right, that she’d hauled off with a stranger in the Mexican jungle. Dumb or determined? The lines were starting to blur.  

As far as she was concerned, truth, love, justice and honesty were one in the same. She’d promised her mother she’d put Noah’s butt in jail and that’s what she was going to do. That’s where liars and deceivers belonged. That’s also what made Pierce such a puzzling man. He’d offered her his time, his neck and now his money.

He wasn’t fitting into any of her cookie cutters. Orders and rules made society run, yet here he was saving her butt. The only thing missing was the cape.

He was still a thief and a liar. A man who lied once, would lie again. Her mother had told her that and she’d seen it with her own eyes.

Then again, it was heartwarmingly satisfying to see a man who loved his work as much as she loved hers. He
got
it. That drive to wake up every morning and deliver the best of yourself.

Not once, not even for a second, had she ever considered giving up her job. It didn’t compute that the work was too hard or that she could do something that took up less of her life. Her job was her life.

And Pierce got that.

It was why he was helping her. Everything came back to one solid truth, though. He was a liar.

He came back a few minutes later, tapping his phone against his chin. “I shouldn’t be here.”

“We can’t leave,” she said, with a small amount of fear beating against her chest. “We’ve come so far—”

His hands dropped to his sides and his back
thunked
against the side of the jeep. “No, you stuck with me through mine, I’m following through on yours. I just shouldn’t have been here. When they needed me, I’m here obsessed with a damned clay figurine.”

“Not you. You forgot your primary objective?”

He looked up and shook his head. “Cute.”

“No, it’s just sometimes small-minded people need to be reminded of the big picture.”

He pivoted away and held open the door. “Funny. Now get in. We’ve got a bad guy to catch in the act.”

They drove for minutes in silence. He stared at the road, but she knew he was looking well beyond it. She had a dozen questions. Who was the pregnant woman? Was she safe? He wouldn’t have gotten off the phone if she wasn’t. “Tell me about her.”

“Who?”

“The lady on the phone.”

His lips twitched up and his shoulders sank back into the seat. “A good friend. Apparently not good enough to tell me she was pregnant,” he said with a headshake. “Everyone has their secrets to keep, though. I don’t think our boss knows. He’s going to kill her.”

“Women aren’t allowed to have families where you work? That’s rather misogynistic.”

Pierce snorted again. “It’s not so much the
what
. It’s the
who
that might be the problem. After her brother finishes with the guy that got her preggers, I’m going to rip into what’s left. Might not be much,” he added softly. “I tell you one damned thing. If she gets fired for this, a whole lot of people are walking out right with her.”

The soft fondness with which he spoke about this woman birthed a few super unnecessary bubbles of jealousy. Not at the woman in particular – there was love, but not of the romantic sort in his words. His life made her envious. Apparently, he had one. This man, so consumed by his work, still managed to create relationships. It sounded as if it was the same for others staffed with him.

She couldn’t think of the last time she’d sat down over dinner with someone not from her family. Pierce had an existence outside of his office. All she had was her office. “How do you guys balance life and work?”