Though Sierra had met Ace only hours before, she believed him absolutely when he’d claimed he hadn’t known. No way was he faking the roughness of his voice, the hint of dampness in his brown eyes. He’d been well and truly knocked out by the news she’d shared with him. News he had clearly accepted once he’d seen the photo.
Looking at the image of Nova, Sierra had some inkling as to why.
“Coloring’s not the same,” she said, “but I think your daughter looks like you quite a bit, too.”
“The poor girl.” Ace’s laugh was as awkward as she might expect for a man who’d been under such a strain for months on end.
“Hey, I didn’t say she’d inherited your three-days’ growth,” Sierra teased, barely stopping herself in time to keep from playfully reaching out to brush his jaw. “But the shape of the eyes, her cheekbones—believe me, she could do a lot worse. In person, you’ll see she’s even lovelier than this photo—”
“Yes, I will see,” Ace said, capturing her hand in his before she could move away. “Once we’ve proved my innocence so I can go home.”
“You need to let go of me right now,” she warned, her heart crowding into her throat and her body freezing. Except for her free hand, which reached down toward the boot holster...only to find it empty.
The breath deserted her lungs. She must have lost the little spray gun somewhere after nailing the bald creep in the face. Mind rifling through the equipment she’d had on her when she’d set out early this evening, she realized that the only resources that remained were the zip ties attached to her belt and her fighting skills. But with her muscles quivering with fatigue and her coordination off, she didn’t like her chances of subduing the far larger Ace in any kind of physical confrontation...
Raising his palms, he said, “You aren’t—you aren’t scared I’d hurt you, are you? Because I thought—aren’t we a team now, Sierra? Can’t we be? I’ll give you the money like I promised, to take care of your troubles and then we—”
She rose from the chair and took a step back to give herself more distance. Breathing space to remind herself why she’d come tonight. And what this man was to her. He was a means to an end: her own survival. No matter how drawn she was to him, or how sympathetic to his situation. “There can’t be any we,” she corrected, with a curt shake of her head. “After we finish our transaction, I drop you back off at your bunker and we forget we ever met. Then, if you’re very lucky, those guys will never connect the two of us. Never have any reason to think the cowboy who shot one of Ice Veins’s thugs might be some missing Colton.”
His gaze dialed in on her. “Do you really think you’re going to be safe, Sierra? That this Ice Veins and his thugs are going to drop this after we get him his payoff?”
There he went again, using the word we even after she’d warned him off. Just as he’d gone on speaking of paying off Ice Veins even though Ace must surely know by now that she could no longer force him to honor the bargain they had struck. What was his angle in all this? Did he imagine if he solved her problem, she’d feel obligated to find a way to fix his?
“I don’t know.” Her anxiety ratcheted higher. Because what she’d said about forgetting they’d ever met—she already knew that part was a lie. She wasn’t likely to forget him or what he was doing for her, whatever his reasons. “Since I crossed his nephew, Ice Veins has been looking for an excuse to make an example out of me. And now, with one of his enforcers shot? Odds are I’ll never get clear of him, not even if I personally hand him over a stack of cash with a big fat bow around it. But there’s no reason in the world for me to take you down with me.”
Ace had troubles enough, but he also had a real shot at finding out who had set him up and hurt his father, and there were people in his life who still cared deeply about his welfare. Along with that, he had a daughter, and soon a grandchild, whom he deserved the chance to get to know.
“So what’ll you do then, with the money?” Ace asked, worry lines etched into his handsome face.
“I’m not sure. Maybe try to call him, work things out directly. Or could be that going on the run’s my better option,” she said, wondering which, if either, was more likely to raise her life expectancy from hours or maybe days to years.
He moved in close again, so close that she feared he’d once more touch her. But only his gaze did, caressing her in a way that made her—heaven help her—long for more.
“Take it from someone who’s been there,” he said, his voice somber. “Once you start running, you’ll always be looking over your shoulder. That’s not the life you deserve.”
“Ace,” she said, her throat tightening as the hour, their situation and the insanity of the attraction she was feeling to a man she barely knew but couldn’t deny rushed in on her from all sides. Or maybe it was the fact that he truly understood the secret she had been afraid to share with anyone—understood it as only a man currently locked in his own life-changing struggle could.
More likely, her judgment was impaired, too, along with her balance and coordination, for before she understood what she was doing, she pushed herself into his arms. But instead of feeling wrong or off, she felt nothing but relief, her body singing when his strong arms wrapped around her. He held her, cradling her protectively against him, as she hadn’t been held in so very long.
“Why couldn’t I have met you before?” he whispered, planting a chaste kiss atop her head. “Back when life was simple and I could’ve brought you home to the ranch?”
She chuckled. “Oh, yeah. I can just imagine your family’s reaction to your slumming with a female bounty hunter who likes to punch people for sport. You should’ve seen Selina, side-eyeing my outfit and talking down to me as if I were the help. Which I suppose I kind of am, but still...”
He snorted. “Believe me, if Selina didn’t like you, the rest of the family would have considered that a huge plus.” Giving her one last squeeze, he continued, “But Sierra, as things stand, there’s no way I can possibly—”
“Shh.” Breath hitching, she jerked her gaze toward the window as a soft clunking sound carried on the nighttime stillness. “Was that a car door shutting?”
Ace was first to reach the blinds. Carefully lifting a slat, he cursed and warned her, “We need to get out now! Ice Veins’s men’ve found your car—and it looks like they’ve brought reinforcements.”
He grabbed her hand, pulling her toward the door.
“They must’ve gotten a GPS tracker on my car somehow,” she said. “I should’ve known! I should’ve—”
“Never mind that right now,” he urged. “Just move, before we end up boxed in! There are at least three of them out there.”
But Sierra was still so wobbly, she knew there was no way she could escape—especially not with armed men in pursuit. No way she could do anything except get Ace caught, too.
So with her pounding heart in her throat, she told him, “Head off to the right now. Stick to the shadows.”
When he tried to pull her, she jerked her hand away and pushed him forward, “Move! I’m just behind you!”
Except when she exited in his wake, Sierra made a sharp turn, heading to the left with her hands raised.
“Hands up and on your knees, bounty hunter!”
The bellowed words, coming some forty yards behind him, stopped Ace dead in his tracks. As he stood panting in a deep band of shadow, he recognized that voice, that of the bald ox she had pepper sprayed earlier. Recognized, too, that the men must have been closer to the room than he’d imagined when he had emerged.
And that Sierra Madden had made the choice, before she’d pushed him out the door, to give herself up instead of running for it. That she’d made that decision to give him a shot at escape and a reunion with his family, knowing that, without his money to appease them, she had almost zero chance to avoid a gruesome injury—and that was if they didn’t blow her brains out on the spot.
Stomach pitching as he overheard her assurances that she was unarmed and alone, he knew he couldn’t let this happen. Couldn’t leave such a beautiful, brave woman to a gruesome fate, no matter what it cost him.
Taking a deep breath, he pulled out his phone first, powered it on and prayed it would connect before they hauled her off somewhere to maim or kill her. His stomach pitched at the sight of Sierra kneeling with her fingers laced behind her neck as two men shouted down at her. Meanwhile, a smaller, slighter figure cried, “I’m sorry, miss! I’m sorry! I didn’t want to tell them where your room was, but they barged into the office and stuck that big gun in my face!”
“Shut your mouth, you,” warned the bald man before he began pistol-whipping the young clerk.
Bleating with pain, the kid raised his arms in an attempt to protect his head as Sierra called, “Please don’t! He’s just a boy. He doesn’t know anything about this.”
A blow to the side of the teen’s head dropped him like a stone. If he was lucky, he might wake up with a headache. If he wasn’t, they might pump him full of lead, too, leaving him unable to identify the men who’d been here.
Unable to risk being overheard making a voice call, Ace fumbled through the act of tapping out a text, his heart pounding like a war drum. Adding the motel’s name and location, he hit Send, and prayed that Sergeant Spencer Colton would jump at this opportunity to bring him in. And that his relationship with his distant cousin, as strained as it was by this time, would ensure that the officer would arrive with the backup—sans sirens—that Ace had requested to deal with the dangerous armed men on the scene.
A smaller man wearing a calf-length coat with an extravagant fur collar, short-cropped hair and a full, but neatly trimmed red beard was gesturing angrily as he stood over and lectured Sierra. Ace could make out only a few words from this distance, chief among them my money. But a quiet menace carried on the chill breeze and something—perhaps a diamond—glinted coldly as a distant star at his ear.
The loan shark in the flesh, Ace thought. Just as he suspected, the notorious Ice Veins’s personal involvement in this matter meant that Sierra and the clerk both might be long dead before Mustang Valley PD made it here.
“Please,” he heard her saying, “don’t do this. You know I’ve always made good on my dad’s notes, and I’ll keep paying. This is bad business, and I always thought you were a man who put his financial interests first.”
Panic roared through Ace as the loan shark pulled out a thin knife, the blade’s razor edge glinting in the yellow security light. Still on her knees, Sierra jerked her head back as he raised its point to hover above her face, an inch or so beneath her eye.
“Yeah, it is bad business,” the loan shark said, “messing up such a pretty lady. Don’t think I enjoy it. But you were warned, and I won’t have it said that I’m a man who goes around making idle threats—especially after the way you did my favorite nephew.”
“Your nephew—” Sierra’s voice hardened into pure defiance “—is a piece of human garbage.”
The loan shark said nothing in reply, but Ace saw the swift pivot of his body, the flash of steel as he drew back the weapon.
Ace shouted, “No!” emerging from the shadows.
Sierra, who’d clearly tracked the movement, too, threw herself to her side as the knife slashed the air an inch above her head.
“Stop!” Ace yelled, his shaking hands raised. “I’ve got the money. I can pay you. Everything she owes. Every penny of it.”
“Hold it! You?” The big, bald man spun around, the hand cannon’s muzzle traveling in a swift arc to aim at Ace’s chest.
“Don’t shoot him,” ordered Ice Veins. “At least not until I’ve heard him out.”
Vibrating with fury, the human ox ground out through clenched jaws, “But he was the one who killed my partner!”
“In the business of enforcement—” Ice Veins shrugged “—these misunderstandings sometimes happen.”
“But we’re talkin’ Choke here, boss. We worked together for nine, ten years, and this dude—”
Ice Veins’s tone went glacial. “But when it comes to my final payment, which I’ve doubled to fifty thousand, I will tolerate no more misunderstandings—or any more delays.”
Unlacing her hands to glare a challenge, Sierra shook her head. “You and I both know it’s twenty-five, and I’m not about to pay a penny more.”
The small man in the oversize coat, which Ace realized was a rich shade of deep purple, scowled down at her. “I’ll tell you what the debt is...and the interest once you miss a payment and defy me.”
Agile as a soccer pro, he landed a vicious kick against Sierra’s side, one hard enough that Ace could hear the thud—and possibly a crack.
At her cry of pain, Ace yelled, “Stop!” boiling over with a homicidal fury he never would have guessed that he possessed.
But as Sierra moaned, he was drawn up short by the bald thug’s sneer as he sighted along the length of his gun barrel.
“Go on,” the huge man taunted. “Give me an excuse to pull the trigger. Then my boss’ll take your money and sit back and watch while I kick the legs off this little deadbeat so he won’t have to dirty up his fancy boots.”
Ignoring the oversize threat for the moment, Ace focused on Ice Veins—and on controlling his own desire to grab hold of that red beard and jerk the loan shark’s sadistic head off his shoulders. Ace reminded himself he had to play this smart, to draw things out until help arrived. The help that was his only chance of saving both his and Sierra’s lives. “Kill me, and you won’t see a penny. I’m not a man who troubles with cash dealings—” jerking his chin toward Sierra, who was struggling to make it to her hands and knees, he added “—or a man who ever pays full price for damaged goods.”
Shaking his head, Ice Veins spared him a perplexed look and pointed his knife in Ace’s direction. “Just who the devil are you—and what do you want with the bounty hunter?”
“He’s gotta be working with her,” the bald goon said, “the way he took up for her before.”
“The hell I am,” Ace ventured, deciding to try an unexpected tack. One that might just appeal to the man’s desire to avenge his family member, along with his avarice. “The truth is, she came to bring me in, just the way she did your nephew. She packs a hell of a punch, too.” He gestured toward his swelling temple. “She’d just hammered me when your boys interrupted the proceedings—and I’m willing to pay to have a little private time with this lovely lady by myself. This lady...in my own lair, with my own weapons of choice.”
“What?” Brows rising, Ice Veins shook his head and asked uneasily, “That makes no—what exactly are you wanted for?”
Ace caught Sierra’s glance, a spark of comprehension in it, before she turned a seemingly desperate gaze back toward Ice Veins. One hand cradling her injured ribs, she begged, “Please don’t take this monster’s money. Let me zip-tie his hands and take him in, collect the reward and—then I promise you I’ll pay you every penny. The twenty-five thousand can just be a down payment.”
“Or we can do an electronic transfer,” Ace said. “Have that money in your account in five, ten minutes, tops.”
“No!” she cried. “Don’t you get it? This man’s a stone-cold killer. A sick sadist. Surely, you’ve read about his victims in the papers. The things this creep will do to me—” She threw in a shudder so convincing that Ace was almost disgusted with himself.
“They’re lyin’,” the bald ox insisted. “He shot Choke, I’m telling you.”
“What’s done is done,” Ice Veins told him before Ace could offer up some explanation. “All I really care about is how fast you can drop that cash, all fifty thousand, into my account.”
When the bald thug kept muttering under his breath, Ice Veins ordered him to pipe down. “And while you’re at it, shut her up, too. You got a handkerchief for a gag, don’t you? And tie her hands, too. I don’t need her arguments while I’m trying to do business.”
As the thug descended on her, Ace glimpsed Sierra’s face go pale with terror in the moonlight. Trust me, he wanted more than anything to tell her, even as sickening fear crawled up the back of his throat.
With no choice but to play out his ruse, Ace turned his attention to the loan shark. “Just make sure my merchandise stays in good condition,” he told Ice Veins as he pulled the cell phone from his pocket. “I’ve got big plans for her later.”
Ice Veins frowned, discomfort playing over his pinched face, before chuckling and slapping Ace’s shoulder. “Soon as that money hits my account, you can have yourself as big a night as you want. Bought and paid for.”
“I’ll need your account and routing numbers,” Ace said as he opened up his banking app. As he began punching in digits, he kept wondering how long he could string this all out—and if he’d bet tragically wrong to rely on Spencer Colton’s ability to gather reinforcements and make it here in time.
How could he be certain that Spencer had even gotten his text? Mentally, Ace kicked himself, wishing he had copied the message to Ainsley and maybe another of their siblings, too, asking them to call 911 immediately just to be certain.
“Where is it? Where’s the money?” Ice Veins demanded, staring at his own phone. “Has it left your account yet? I’m not seeing it.”
“Let me double-check,” Ace said. “What was that routing number again?”
Clearly impatient, Ice Veins once more ran through the coding until finally, Ace had no choice but to show the man what he was doing and hit the send button, transferring a very real sum of money into the account of a lowlife loan shark.
But with his and Sierra’s lives on the line, Ace told himself the money was the least of his issues.
Or so he thought until he clicked, and a new message splashed across his screen.
Accounts Frozen. Please Contact Customer Support.
His mouth going dry as ash at what he presumed to have been a law enforcement action, Ace turned the screen away, praying Ice Veins hadn’t seen it.
“There it goes,” he said, trying to disguise his rapidly escalating stress level. “It shouldn’t take more than five, ten minutes, tops, depending on how fast your institution is at processing this sort of transfer, and—isn’t it one of those weird bank holidays? So it could be a little slower than a normal—”
“Hand me over that phone,” Ice Veins demanded, his small eyes glittering like the knife’s edge. “I need to see where you sent it. And I need to see what you’re playin’ at right freakin’ now.”