“Not with you. You live and breathe the job—on duty and off.”
Which was why she’d left him. “Deputy.”
She dug into the plastic bag of clothes he’d set between her feet. “What do we do now?”
Now that they were on the move, his tension eased up a fraction, although he knew he wouldn’t be fully relaxed until after Layla testified. Looking over, he saw the bullet-hole scar on her back and the rapidly bruising flesh on her elbows from when he’d tackled her to the ground. His teeth grit again. “We’re going to drive straight through to San Diego. Fourteen hours a day on the road will get you there on time. I know that’s not going to give you much opportunity to go over your testimony with the assistant U. S. attorney.”
“Well . . .” She exhaled harshly and straightened. “Missing witness prep is better than death.”
Fucking understatement of the year, but so like her. The daughter and sister of Navy SEALs, she’d been raised to be a straight shooter. The day she’d turned eighteen she had marched right up to him at her birthday party and tossed a gauntlet at his feet—Teasing’s over, Bri. Put out or get shut out. I’m not hurting for dates.
Prior to that day, he’d told himself to wait a little longer. Let her go to college, spread her wings. He knew once he had her, their future together would be cemented for both of them. She’d be his and he would be hers ’til death parted them.
But faced with the possibility of seeing her with other guys, laughing and playing and fucking other guys ...
His hands tightened on the steering wheel. “Tell me what happened.”
She glanced at him, then yanked a new shirt over her head. She slid the vest on over it with impatient but practiced movements. “What are you talking about?”
“Tell me how you got into this mess.”
Sitting back, she put her seat belt on. “Steph and I headed down to Rosarito and Tijuana for spring break. She hooked up with this dude she met at Papas and Beer, and since she was drunk and hellbent on getting it on with him, I had to stick with her. I wasn’t going to let her take off with some strange guy all by herself. So he rounded up a friend of his and we climbed into a Camaro and headed back up to TJ.”
Fighting to relax his tautened jaw, he bit out, “You fucking know better!”
“What’s the problem, Deputy? Living dangerously only applies to you?”
“Don’t even try to compare reckless partying with the job I do.”
Layla stared out the passenger-side window, frustration vibrating from her slim body. Her feelings about what he did for a living had broken them apart. He understood that losing her father and brother had set her against the military, so he’d finished out his naval service and arranged to stay stateside by joining the Marshals Service. She hadn’t liked it, but she’d tolerated it. Until he joined the Shadow Stalkers.
“Go on,” he said tightly.
“Why? So you can get your kicks out of treating me like a kid?”
“Layla.” He shoved a hand through his hair. “I can’t help how I react when you’re in danger.”
She glanced at him with those cool eyes that turned him inside out. “Now you know how it feels.”
Brian took the hit. He’d made the worst mistake of his life thinking she’d come around eventually and take him just as he was. Instead she’d been shot and absorbed into WITSEC before he knew what hit him. It was the worst irony that she’d joined his world, and instead of bringing them closer together, it had taken her further away from him than ever.
“We made it back to TJ,” she continued. “We were near the border—not too far from that town square with the mechanical bull—when we slowed for a turn. These two guys stepped out of the shadows and lit us up. It seemed like we were getting shot at from all sides. The guy who’d joined us at the last minute fell out of the passenger side and I squeezed out after him. That’s when I got hit. He did, too. He threw himself over me, but I think they wanted him alive, because they stopped firing. I think he knew they’d stop for him and that’s why he did it. To save me . . .”
Her voice had softened with every word until the last was hard for him to catch.
“He was the undercover DEA agent? Sandoval?”
Layla nodded. “Ricardo Sandoval. Although I didn’t know that until later. The gunman standing above us . . . I remember looking up at him over the barrel of a semiautomatic and seeing a sick glee on his face.”
“Angel Martinez.” It was her testimony against Martinez—one of the cartel’s most prominent lieutenants—that endangered her life. They would not have risked the offensive they’d taken today, on American soil, for anyone less.
“Yes. Martinez. Agent Sandoval swung at his thigh with a knife he had. Blood spurted everywhere and Martinez dropped like a ton of bricks. The other shooter started firing again, but the shots were wild. It was chaos with Martinez hollering. Sandoval dragged me around the back of the Camaro and into an alley that emptied into another street. Some guys speaking English were partying nearby. I screamed at them for help. They turned out to be marines from Pendleton and they got us back to the border. Agent Sandoval d-died later that night.”
Sandoval’s murder had been nationwide news when it broke—the blatant attack had hit a nerve first struck by Enrique Camarena’s torture and killing by the same cartel. Layla had been the “unidentified witness” referenced in the reports. Although Brian had heard the story before, listening to Layla tell it, hearing her voice crack and tremble as she spoke ... Fuck it all, she should have been with him, would have been, if he hadn’t been so goddamn stubborn.
“You still have nightmares, baby?” he asked quietly.
She looked at him, brushing her wind-whipped hair out of her face. “How did you know?”
“I know you.” He reached out and caught up her hand. “You hold your pain close to the chest.”
Her gaze dropped to their joined hands. “So do you,” she said quietly.
Brian didn’t know if she was referring to her brother Jacob’s death or their breakup. “Sometimes.”
“I’ve seen you laugh and I’ve seen you spitting mad, but I’ve never seen you cry.” She pulled away. “When I told you we were over, you didn’t even blink. I should have seen that coming. I was too young and naïve, I guess.”
His fist clenched, his palm aching from the loss of her touch. His damn pride had gotten in the way before, and it was clogging his throat now, preventing him from saying words that would slice him open if she threw them back in his face.
Still, he had to say, “You knew what you meant to me, Layla.”
“I knew it wasn’t enough. We had Jacob and great sex in common. That was it.”
“Bullshit.” He checked his mirrors for the millionth time, canvassing for trackers. “The sex was great because we had something special.”
“Then why didn’t you come after me when I left?”
There it was. Colossal fucking mistake number one. “I thought you needed a little time to cool off.”
“No,” she argued, setting her elbow on the windowsill and her head in her hand. “You thought I needed to grow up. That I’d eventually see things your way, which just goes to show what a mistake we were. I’m always going to be Jacob’s kid sister to you. I grew tits and reached the age of consent, but you were never going to treat me as a woman who deserved a say.”
“You’re starting to piss me off.”
“Hitting too close to home?” she taunted, with a sly smile that made his dick hard.
“No, sweetheart. You’re way off base.” At least in regard to the way he felt about her. Yeah, the sex between them had always been white-hot—in that aspect of their relationship, they’d never had any trouble—but he loved her, too. So much it ate at him. There were times in the last few years when he’d been half-insane with the need to see her and hear her voice, to hold her and feel her hands on him.
Silence fell between them, thick with all the things that needed to be said. With every mile that passed, he was taking her closer to the point where he’d lose her again. Once she testified, she’d get sucked back into WITSEC. A new identity, new location and occupation, a new inspector to check on her. He had three days to clear things up and fix everything that was fucked up between them. Three days to remind her of how good they were together. She was a captive audience, with no one around to screw things up for him.
Except himself. Unfortunately, he could do that well enough on his own.
Time was racing away from him, but that didn’t stop him from sitting there with his jaw locked shut and his gut churning. Scared shitless by the possibility that she was over him by now. She had grown up since he’d let her walk away, while he was the same guy he’d been before—rough around the edges and unable to say how he really felt about the most important thing in his world.
Chapter 3
I’m going to head over to the diner and get us something to eat.”
Layla arched a brow at the brooding, impossibly sexy man standing by the motel room door.
One motel room. With one king-sized bed.
Outside in the parking lot, there were so few cars or rooms with lights on that it was obvious the motel had a room available with two beds.
He met her gaze with a defiant scowl, knowing damn well what she was thinking. “What do you want?”
“Looks like you already made that decision for me,” she shot back dryly.
“To eat,” he grated.
Him, for starters. But she wasn’t going to let him off easy. He could have at least been subtle enough to get two beds, even if she was a sure thing.
They both knew they wouldn’t be able to keep their hands off each other when they were alone. Especially not while they were getting stripped down for showers and there was a bed nearby. In their present situation, while they were on the run and people they’d respected had paid with their lives, they were going to need each other more than ever. And time was so short. She had less than seventy-two hours with the man she’d loved for as long as she could remember.