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Tears stung at the back of my eyes as I walked into the kitchen. It was small and crowded, stuffed with every kind of commercial kitchen appliance Cookie could get his hands on. I wasn’t sure if he knew how to use half of what he had.
Cookie had put the bags of garbage near the back door for me. I opened the door and held it open with my foot while I grabbed the two bags.
I hadn’t taken a half a dozen steps toward the dumpster when a strong arm wrapped around my waist. I dropped the bags, inhaling to scream, and a hand, meaty and sweaty, clamped over my mouth. Agent Pierce, I thought, berating myself for not being more cautious. When his “Nice Guy” approach hadn’t gotten him what he’d wanted, he’d resorted to violence. I should have expected that.Men like him don’t care what lines they have to cross to get what they want.
“It would be a mistake to scream.” Shit, that wasn’t Agent Pierce. So who was it? His partner? Someone else? Just how many people had come here to track me down, and were they all working together? Not that it mattered, really. I wasn’t about to go willingly with any of them. I struggled in the man’s grip, but it was like trying to fight a steel wall. “Settle down,” the man crooned. Bile splashed the back of my throat. “You did a good job hiding since Las Vegas, but our boss needs to speak with you.”
Las Vegas? The memories of what had happened there made me shiver. I could still hear Elias screaming as men busted through our front door. I had given myself shin-splints running with my boy in my arms. But I couldn’t afford to get lost in memories now. Instead, I opened my mouth just enough to set my teeth into the man’s palm. He grunted in pain and squeezed my nose shut, cutting off my airway.
“That wasn’t nice, you bitch.”
The lack of air burned my lungs, and the harder I tried to fight, the less my muscles seemed able to move. Dark spots danced in front of my eyes. I was going to pass out. My last coherent thought: Elias.
TWO
ADRIAN
Fuck. I came around from the side of the restaurant to find a wall of a man bear-hugging Nataliya to his chest. She was struggling against him, but her movements were weak, and it was easy to see why. He was cutting off her airway, and she was on the verge of passing out—or worse. If his grip was too tight, a crushed trachea could kill her…and maybe that was what he wanted.
I picked up the nearest thing I could lay my hand on—the lid of a garbage can—and brought it down on the guy’s head. It didn’t knock him out, but it startled him enough that he dropped Nataliya to the ground. As he spun and swung out, I blocked him, keeping an ear out for her coughing as she took in a lungful of air. Good, I thought, even as my eyes focused on the man in front of me.
He got his wits about him too quickly for me to have a chance to get to my gun, and he roared as he lunged at me. I feinted to the left, ducking another swing of his massive arm, then grabbed his swinging arm and used the leverage of his moving body to bring him down into my knee.
The man’s nose exploded into a globby, red mess, and he howled in pain. I brought my fist down into his face again, and he collapsed into a heap.
“Pierce!” Nataliya called, terror choking her voice. She was pointing over my shoulder, and I whipped around, freeing my 9mm from the back holster and aiming at the new arrival running our way. I fired, center mass, and the man grunted with the hit but didn’t fall. So he was wearing a vest, then. Damn. He kept coming toward me and fired back at me. It went wide, as I expected—it was a rookie move on his part to even try to aim while running. Nataliya shrieked, scrambling so she was pressed against the diner’s brick exterior. I was glad she was as out of the way as she could be, given the situation.
I fired at the man again. We didn’t have long—someone from the diner would have heard the shots and the screams. The police had probably already been called. This time, I hit him in the leg, and the man crumpled with a scream. I approached him warily, kicking the gun away from his hand and waiting to see if he went for a backup piece. Thankfully, he was more focused on clutching his leg and moaning. I turned my gun to use the handle as a club and knocked him out, glancing over to make sure the first guy was still down.
With the threats taken care of, I turned to check on Nataliya, but she was…gone. Of course she is, idiot, I scolded myself. What did you expect a civilian to do? Honestly, moving to put some distance between herself and a gunfight was probably the smartest thing she could have done. But it didn’t make it any less frustrating to have her vanish after all the months I’d spent trying to track her down. Figuring she must have gone around to the parking lot in front, I followed after her, feet heavy on the concrete.
As soon as I spotted her, I broke into a jog to close the distance between us. I put my hand out to touch her shoulder, to tell her she was safe.
Nataliya immediately drove her elbow backward into my gut, screaming at the top of her lungs.
“Ow!” I yelled. “Goddamn it!”
Nataliya looked over her shoulder, ready to hit me again, and her pretty, hazel eyes went wide. “Oh. It’s you.” Despite the tension of the moment, I couldn’t help noticing that she was gorgeous. The kind of beauty that didn’t seem real: delicate with a plush mouth that looked amazingly soft. Quite a contrast to her fierce eyes hard enough to cut through steel. “You shouldn’t grab someone who’s just been attacked like that.”
“I’ll remember for the future,” I said, voice breathier than I would have liked. She’d knocked the wind out of me. “Where are you going?”
She scoffed. “After all that, did you think I would stay?” Her words were harsh, and she winced, pushing a hand through her hair. “Look, thank you for stopping those men, but?—”
“You’re right that we need to go—but I still have questions,” I said. “Come with me. I’ll keep you safe.” I heard a groan behind us, and in the distance, there were sirens. Fuck. “We need to go. Now.”
I could see in her face that she didn’t fully trust me, but I got the sense that she was more scared of the sirens and the thugs than she was of me. Fine with me—I’d take being the lesser of three evils. I pulled her across the street to where I had parked. “Am I under arrest?” she asked as I opened the passenger side door for her.
“Have you committed a crime?” I asked, ushering her into the seat.
She glared at me. “You know I’ve been using a false identity. Surely that’s…” she waved a hand dismissively, “…fraud or something. That’s what you’re holding over my head, right?”
“I’m not here to arrest you. I just need information.”
“And there won’t be a Federal agent banging on my door in a few days?”
“Will you even be at your door in a few days?” I shot back. She frowned but nodded as if conceding the point. We both knew her identity here had been burned. Sticking around wasn’t an option. Not if she wanted to stay alive and keep herself and her son out of a dangerous man’s hands.
I pulled away from the curb just as a police car pulled in. We were able to drive past without getting flagged to stop. “Where are you taking me?” she asked.
