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Kyle’s eyes flew open in the dimness. Unsure what had woken him, he blinked up at the stained ceiling tiles of the rental cabin and listened to the sound of the rain on the roof. What time was it? What day was it?
“Kyle.”
He jackknifed up into a sitting position at the rasp of his brother’s voice, coming from the bed next to the window. “What’s wrong?” Josh lay on his back, face pinched and ashen above the dark growth covering the lower part of his face.
He put a hand on his brother’s forehead. It was burning hot. Hell. “Did you sleep?”
They’d been up most of the night, talking and making plans. It had been two days since he’d been spotted in the mall parking lot. Two days since he’d failed to get the receipt back from the vet tech. Now time was running out.
He needed that fucking piece of paper with the information about the money’s location, the access code for the locker where it was stored, and details about the next shipment if they were going to be able to make enough to stay on the run for a while.
“Some.” Josh grimaced, tried to shift. He had seemed to be improving last night, had even eaten a decent meal at supper. Now he looked bad again, and neither of them had gotten more than a couple hours’ sleep.
“Wait. I’ll help turn you.” He reached beneath his brother’s back and carefully turned him onto his uninjured side.
Josh hissed and went rigid, blanching.
“I’ll get you more meds,” Kyle blurted, rushing for the table in the adjoining kitchen.
He shook out four extra strength tablets that he’d bought at the drugstore the other day and helped Josh with the water glass. He pressed his lips together. Over-the-counter meds weren’t nearly strong enough. He was going to have to get something stronger, and more antibiotics. Tonight.
“What happened to your truck?” Josh said weakly, his gaze fixed on the window looking out at the SUV parked in the driveway.
“Had to get rid of it.” Either the vet tech or the semi driver would have reported his license plate, so that night he’d driven inland and found a used car dealership willing to do a straight-up cash deal for the compact SUV now parked outside.
Then he’d driven his truck to a spot high up on the cliff here on the coast, doused the interior with fuel, and lit the match before pushing it over the side. Even if the cops had already found it, there wouldn’t be any prints or DNA to lift.
“You find out the woman’s name and address yet?”
“Heard back a few hours ago.” From a guy he’d contacted within the organization who was good at hacking databases. It had cost him a couple grand, but worth it. “Her name’s Danae Sutherland, and she’s apparently renting a place in Crimson Point.”
“You sure she has the paper?”
“Has to. Saw her shove a bunch of them into her bag at the clinic.”
“How are you gonna get it back? You can’t go to that clinic again. And you can’t—” He broke off, sucking a breath through his teeth, his face twisting, hand pressed to his side.
“What’s wrong?” Kyle demanded, tensing.
Josh glanced down and slowly removed his hand from his ribs. There was blood all over his palm, and the bandage was soaked with it. “Shit,” he muttered.
Kyle ran to the bathroom and rummaged through the stuff he’d bought, returning with more gauze pads, tape, and a new tensor bandage. “Lemme see,” he ordered, pressing down on his brother’s shoulder to keep him still, then reached for the edges of the tape covering the dressing.
Blood spilled down Josh’s ribs, the wound puffy and red. “You’ve popped some stitches,” he told his brother.
“Hurts,” Josh said, shivering.
Working fast, Kyle soaked some gauze with hydrogen peroxide and gently cleaned the wound, flinching when his brother groaned and swore. But there was nothing he could do to close up the edge of the wound. All he could do was pack more gauze over it and then bind it tight by winding the tensor bandage around his ribs.
“Keep pressure on it,” he said, placing Josh’s hand back on top of the tensor bandage. “And try not to move.”
Josh groaned and closed his eyes, cheeks flushed, body shivering. Kyle pulled the blankets up to his brother’s chin, the frantic urge to do something beating at him.
Taking him to the hospital remained a last resort. The cops would have both their images on file by now, either from the vet clinic cameras or the ones at the drugstore. If he dropped Josh at the Emergency Room, they would arrest his brother as soon as he got there, and Kyle would have to run.
He couldn’t risk them being separated or caught. If they were caught, that vet tech would testify against them and seal their fate.
Kyle’s decision was easy. There was no way he was abandoning his brother.
There was also no way he could move Josh now without more medical treatment.
“I’m going out,” he told Josh, stalking over to the door to pull on his jacket. If she’d already turned the receipt over to someone or thrown it out, he was basically screwed. He had to recover it, no matter what it took.
“Where? What are you gonna do?” Josh asked.
“Kill two birds with one stone,” he answered, and shoved his pistol into the back of his waistband. “Don’t move around while I’m gone. I’ll be back soon, and we’ll get that bleeding stopped.” With help.
He would go to the vet tech’s house. Get that paper back, then eliminate her and the threat she posed. But not before he used her to save his brother again.
****
“When will you be done?”
Behind the wheel of Professor Plum, Danae smiled at Ryder’s question as she parked along the curb in a spot just down from the front of the clinic. Rain drummed against the roof, hood and windshield. “Around five-thirty or so. Why, you gonna miss me while I’m at work or something?” She’d taken the morning off for another meeting with the FBI, and then another with Noah.
“Hell yes, I’m gonna miss you,” he growled, leaning over from the passenger seat to capture her lips in a searing kiss, one hand curling around her nape to hold her still.
He’d been all but stuck to her side since the incident at the mall the other day, even patrolling around the clinic while she was at work. They’d also spent a lot of “quality” time together since getting home from the police station the other day. Including last night, after sitting down to eat dinner together with Finn at the table.
And again this morning when she’d popped over to the cottage and found him just out of the shower.
Seeing him in nothing but that towel wrapped around his hips had inspired her. She’d walked in, shoved the door closed, and jumped him.
The towel had lasted all of three seconds, and then she’d sunk to her knees to take him in her mouth, her insides turning hot and molten at the way he’d grasped handfuls of her hair and eased in and out of her mouth. She had barely begun before he’d hauled her to her feet, stripped her, then bent her over the end of the couch and gave her a hard, intense orgasm.
As if sensing her thoughts, he pulled back to peer into her eyes, made a low, guttural sound at whatever he saw there. “If we weren’t in the middle of the damn street, I’d slide my hand into your panties and make you come all over my fingers right here and now.”
She shivered, heat rolling through her. “Tempting as that offer is, I’d rather wait until we’re alone later. So you can use your tongue,” she added in a naughty whisper. It felt so good to be a sexual being again. She’d missed it, and Ryder was a deliciously generous lover.
He grinned, chuckling as he kissed her again. “Can’t wait.” Then he sobered. “Sure you’re okay with me leaving?” He had an online therapy appointment, and she completely understood him wanting the privacy of his cottage for it.
“Of course. Sierra and the receptionist are both inside.” She wouldn’t be alone. The FBI had informed her that the suspects had left the area now, and Grant’s stepdad was long gone too. She hoped he never returned.
“I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
“I can’t believe you’re going to run back through the rain instead of taking my car.”
“Gotta burn off some of this sexual frustration somehow,” he answered, taking her hand and placing it on the bulge in the front of his track pants.
“You’ll be soaked by the time you get back.” It was already raining steadily, and the forecast called for a deluge to begin soon, along with high winds.
“Nothing a hot shower won’t cure, and then I’ll be back straight after.”
Danae squeezed his erection gently, rubbing her palm over the swollen head, delighting in his low moan. She loved that she held the power to do this to him.
She’d made up her mind to live in the moment and enjoy every minute they had together, rather than live the next few days in dread, anticipating him leaving. “Don’t burn off too much.”
He nipped at her lower lip, sucked it softly, giving it a caress with his silken tongue. “Go, before you break my control.”
She stood on the sidewalk to watch him jog away through the gray rain, admiring the view. The man was a specimen. When he was half a block up the street, she wolf-whistled, earning a grin he tossed at her over his shoulder that almost melted her knees, then forced herself to go inside the clinic.
The receptionist smiled at her from behind the front desk, on the phone with someone. It was so much easier coming in here knowing other people were around, though it was impossible to forget what had happened in the staff room the night of the attack.
Danae waved on her way through to the back, and Sierra gave her a bright smile when she came through the door. “Was that Ryder I saw run past a minute ago?”
She looked away and set her purse on the counter, ordering herself not to blush. “Yeah, he’s running home. Insisted on driving down here with me, just in case.”
“Well, he is a bodyguard.”
Yes, he was. And his career would take him away from her soon enough. But she wasn’t going to let herself focus on that now.
“He’s being overprotective,” she told Sierra. “Noah called last night to say a different department down south found a burned-out pickup belonging to Kyle Vanderhoff at the bottom of a cliff. His brother hasn’t turned up at any hospital or clinic anywhere in the area either, so they’re probably far away by now.” The evidence made her feel a whole lot safer.
“Good.” Sierra squeezed the top of Danae’s shoulder on the way by. “Let’s get to work and then I won’t ask a million questions about you and Ryder making out like a couple of horny teenagers in your front seat a minute ago,” she teased.
Danae blushed, and thankfully Sierra didn’t bring it up again. By mid-morning they’d made good headway in catching up after the holiday disruptions. A new shipment of supplies was due in the next morning, and the first spay of the day arrived soon after Danae had finished prepping the O.R.
Ninety minutes later, Sierra came in as Danae finished prepping for the next patient, perusing the contents of a file. “Hey, I’m missing the latest lab report from the oncologist for the Boxer mix coming in next. Have you seen it?”
“Yeah, it’s in my—”
Crap. In her workbag, along with all the other files she had hastily shoved in there the night she’d been held up and needed to reorganize. It was sitting at home on her kitchen table because she’d been too damn preoccupied with getting over to Ryder’s this morning for a pre-work quickie to remember to go back and grab it.
“It’s at home. I’ll run back and grab it.”
“And the receipt for the new cauterizing machine?” Sierra asked.
“It’s in there too.” She glanced at her watch. There was still time to grab it and get back before she needed to prep the next patient. And Finn should be home too. “Be back in fifteen.”
“Okay.”
She rushed down the sidewalk, hopped into Professor Plum, and pulled a tight U-turn to head back up Front Street. It was raining in earnest now, the afternoon light already beginning to fade under the heavy gloom of the dark clouds. When she got home, the warm glow of the Christmas tree in the front room window looked so cozy.
She dashed through the rain to the side door. It was locked. “Finn?” she called out as she stepped inside.
No answer, and she didn’t hear his voice coming from his room. Maybe he hadn’t gotten home from work yet.
She wiped her shoes on the mat and rushed into the kitchen. Her leather bag was there on the table where she’d left it, along with a note.
Miss you already, it read in Ryder’s bold, uppercase block lettering.
Smiling, she folded it and tucked it into her pocket, then opened her bag and double-checked to make sure the paperwork she needed was inside.
The side door opened behind her. She turned toward it, a greeting smile in place. “Hey, buddy—”
The words died on her lips and she took a hasty step back as a man’s silhouette filled the hallway instead of her son’s.
Kyle Vanderhoff. Aiming a pistol at her.
His eyes shot past her to the bag on the table, then the papers in her hand. “You’re coming with me,” he growled.
She backed up a step, terror clawing at her. How? How had he found her? He was supposed to be far away from here.
“Mom?”
She whirled, fear coating her insides like ice when Finn’s voice reached her from down the hall. Kyle whipped around too, pointing his weapon toward Finn’s room.
“No!” she cried, holding her hands palm out in a supplicating gesture. Instinct took over, demanding she protect her son. “I’ll go with you, right now,” she told Kyle, blocking the route to Finn’s room with her body. “Just don’t hurt him. Please.”
Kyle stalked over and grabbed her workbag. “Put your purse and the papers inside,” he snapped.
She did and let out a startled cry when he grabbed her by the back of the hair and started dragging her toward the front door.
“Mom!”
Her son’s frantic shout sent a new wave of terror over her. “No, Finn! Stay back and get out of here!” she yelled, her heart threatening to explode.
Kyle hustled her outside to the SUV sitting behind her car, opened the passenger door and shoved her across the console into the driver’s seat. “Drive,” he snarled, still holding the gun on her as he slammed the door shut beside him.
Hands shaking, Danae started the engine and did as he said. Catching a glimpse of Finn’s scared face in the window as she drove away, a measure of relief hit her that at least he was safe.
