Dev wanted Keyes’s happiness and knew this most recent event jeopardized everything for his friend. After a few long moments, the car backed up. Alec and Keyes left the parking lot, breaking Dev of the trance that held him spellbound.
Dev took a cleansing, centering breath. First things first. He needed to get back to the ink parlor ASAP. He’d be hearing from Keyes soon based on the note he’d left on Keyes’s bike on the way to the jailhouse. He needed to be a reassuring friend. Try to calm and be available for Keyes as best he could. He’d have to remember to guard his words since the entire fucking government listened to every word he said.
Fuckers.
Dev placed the binoculars in his saddlebag and took time to send his father a quick text message. “Keyes went to Cummings’s house to protect an abused kid. Dude at the jail was a CPS worker. Keyes was never interviewed by him.”
Sounded convincing, especially since it was at least a partial truth. He pressed send.
He gathered the rest of his shit then mounted his Harley. He was off, twisting down the ramp, following the exit out of the garage.
Surely, Cash had to have figured out by now that Dev wasn’t at the ink parlor. He’d assigned himself to be Dev’s tail today.
Bet the agent was having a fucking cow over his whereabouts right now. That’d be painful to birth.
It didn’t matter. Dev had needed time to reconcile all this foreign emotion and uncertainty inside him. He was focused now, ready to get this operation behind him so he could move on to a better life.
Chapter 37
Unbridled fury wasn’t in the top ten words to describe Cash’s anger level when he finally heard Dev’s Harley pipes sounding off in the distance. His dangerous gaze snapped toward Joe who looked relieved, yet worried as hell.
“Tell Shanna he’s here.”
Cash took long, purposeful strides from his apartment toward the back door. Rage, resentment, and pain pumped through his veins. More than even those emotions, he was concerned as hell. Every member of his team had been working in overdrive, trying to find what had happened to Dev. Cash had feared for Dev’s life.
He pushed through the back door, the cool early evening air did nothing to appease his heated frustration.
For the first time, Cash wasn’t taken by the look of the biker on his bike. He seethed on the inside. Tension tightened the cords and muscles throughout his entire body.
Dev had made a grave mistake by confusing Cash’s generosity as a manipulatable cowardice. He was done. His hands went to his hips, his chest pumping up and down with heavy breaths. Dev pulled through the gate and parked his bike within inches of Cash’s feet. He didn’t budge a single muscle.
The dark sunglasses made it hard to know for sure, but he suspected that fuck-you glare that Dev always wore in his eyes was there and aimed at Cash. He’d show the bikerfuck you.
At the exact moment when they had exhausted every measure to find Dev, when Cash had decided to push the nuke button on the entire operation, sending the calvary in to locate Dev and blow the case apart, Dev’s text messages to Keyes transmitted in real time over Joe’s computer screen. Once Joe verified the text messages did in fact come from Dev’s phone, texted by Dev himself, overwhelming relief flooded Cash. Dev was safe. That lasted about two minutes flat before rage consumed him.
Cash had crafted an email to his superiors to explain Dev was out of the investigation. He and his children were to be placed in a forced witness protection as far away from Dallas as they could get them.
The email sat waiting for Cash to push send. He hadn’t yet, only because his frustration level was so high that he needed to cool down. Level-headed people didn’t react based on anger. Once Cash went back upstairs, the draft was as good as sent.
As he started to say that very thing to Dev, then tell him to spend the next few minutes packing his belongings, Dev yanked his perfectly fitted sunglasses off his face. Their gazes connected. Thefuck youwasn’t there.
“I’m sorry,” Dev said as he booted the kickstand into place and dismounted the bike. “I know I freaked everyone out and the blame’s all on me.” The biker was full of remorse as he came straight toward Cash.
Cash threw out his arm, not allowing Dev to pass. They were having this conversation right there, whether Dev liked it or not. Instead of bypassing Cash, Dev walked straight into him, cupping a hand around his neck, drawing Cash forward. It startled him as Dev pressed his lips against Cash’s closed mouth. It wasn’t a chaste simple kiss, nor a deep passion-filled kiss. It was a sampling of something sweet and possessive that Cash didn’t participate in but allowed to happen.
He refused to be led by his dick for another second.
But the crazy organ inside his chest disavowed that declaration.
His cock did too.Treasonous bastard.
They double-teamed him. His rational brain against his heart and that hardening appendage that he was about to cut off for life. The steady growing organ behind his fly slowed at the thought of never being satisfied again.Good.
“Don’t be too mad at me,” Dev whispered against his cheek. Cinnamon on Dev’s breath caught him by surprise. Maybe the biker had prepared to talk so closely to him. “I was at the jailhouse with Keyes.”
His cock completely deflated at the lie Dev tried to use. His resolve built faster than any other time before. Dev was going into witness protection. “No, you weren’t. We had people there, watching for you. You can’t lie to me like that anymore. I’m done.”
Dev chuckled as if Cash’s threat level was nothing more than a tremor registering as a one on the Richter scale. He stayed in Cash’s personal space. “I promise you, baby, that’s where I was. You aren’t ever gonna find me unless I wanna be found, and I wanna be found by you. I have a new deal to make. Come upstairs with me. Let’s talk about it in private. Just me and you.” Dev’s eyes slid to Cash’s lips where he bent and placed another lighter kiss.
