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“Look at the way he hovers over her,” I couldn’t help saying to Talon. “He needs to give her some space.”
Talon didn’t comment, simply getting into position on the next mini green. I watched him line up his shot before I switched to studying the Maliks some more. “It also seems pretty careless to take his family out in public when his life is under threat. Do his bodyguards have any idea how to do their job? We’ve been behind him the entire time, keeping watch, and nobody has looked twice at us. Shouldn’t he be more concerned about protecting his family? Especially the daughter who he just got back.”
I narrowed my eyes at Damien. He didn’t even bother to position himself to block his family’s backs.
Talon raised his eyebrows at me. “Do you actually think he’s being sketchy or are you just bothered seeing Dess that happy with them?”
“Why would that bother me?” I shot back automatically, and then my gut twisted. It had been bothering me. I wasn’t going to lie to myself.
“The reporters are keeping their distance because Malik insisted that they give Dess some room without having cameras in her face,” Talon said into my silence, pointing to where I remembered seeing them outside the mini-golf place. “That shows that he cares at least a little bit about her healing from her kidnapping.”
“It’s the least he could do,” I muttered.
“He could have been milking the publicity.” Talon rubbed his jaw. “And this place isn’t that public. We walked through a metal detector to get in. The course has a pretty good wall around it. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s easier to get into the country club grounds.”
“All right, all right.” I glowered at him, and he gazed evenly back at me. “I’m looking out for her here too,” I reminded him.
“And so am I,” Talon said. “But the more people who are doing it, the safer she’ll be. So far, he hasn’t appeared to be a threat to anything except how much time and attention she has left to give us.”
He took his swing. The damned ball soared across the green and thumped to the ground right next to the hole, which it promptly rolled into.
I should have brought Blaze. He wouldn’t have golfed me under the table.
But Talon had a point. I had to acknowledge that Malik could have taken the opportunity to advance his political capital and instead had focused on his family’s needs. Having a kidnapped child would go a long way to prop up his anti-criminal agenda, and not using the story to his advantage showed a level of commitment to Dess that I couldn’t deny.
I wondered if the reason I was so hesitant to trust Malik—the reason I struggled to trust Dess alone with him—wasn’t because of Malik at all. I’d witnessed powerful people making decisions that hurt everyone around them plenty of times, and I’d rarely stepped in unless I was getting paid to. The only difference was that Dess was involved, and the thought of something happening to her… Even imagining it for a second sent a jab of pain through the center of my chest.
I didn’t have a strategy or any sort of plan to fix this situation if it went sour.
I watched Dess bite her bottom lip as she looked between her ball and the hole. She was so gorgeous she literally took my breath away. She clutched the putter and took a shot that wasn’t half bad this time. With a grin I could tell wasn’t forced, she bobbed on her feet and glanced at her parents, soaking in their approving exclamations.
Normally I was in total control of my reactions. Why was I letting Dess’s association with her birth family get to me so much?
Because every time she stepped out of arm’s reach, some part of me screamed that I had to protect her. I’d always treated her as an equal within the crew… but she was more than that. I sure as hell didn’t have the same urges and impulses with the other men as I did with her. I wanted her—and I’d also have done anything to know she was safe and happy.
Shit. Was I falling for her?
I’d never cared this much about another woman—that much I knew. But as I watched her with her family, I wasn’t sure it mattered anyway. She’d eventually have to make a choice. Her father was a criminal hunter, and I was a criminal. Telling her how I felt would only make it harder if she decided to pursue a life with her family. I couldn’t do that to her.
I wouldn’t do that to her. I’d keep my mouth shut until she decided where she wanted to take her life from here.
My phone vibrated in my pocket. I tore my eyes away from Dess as I pulled it out. A text from Blaze had popped up on the screen. I scanned it and then turned to Talon reluctantly.
“Blaze has found a concerning post online that he thinks we should see. It looks like Dess is safe enough here. We’d better check this out.”
* * *
We found Blaze in the hotel room with his gaze skimming back and forth between his laptop and his propped-up tablet. At the pace with which he flicked through the content on both, I wondered how he could read anything they said.
I closed the door firmly behind me, jarring him from his state of concentration. He swiveled in his seat and then pressed his hand against the spot in his side that still gave him a twinge of pain when he moved too quickly. “I wasn’t expecting you back this fast.”
“More like you lose all sense of time when you get in that state,” Garrison snarked, coming over as we gathered around Blaze at the table. “Are you going to spill the beans now?”
I nodded. “Yes, what did you find that was so important?”
Blaze dragged in a breath. “It could be nothing. But the details, and the way it’s written… Well, I’ll let you have a look first so you can draw your own conclusions.”
He spun toward the devices and clicked on his keyboard. Several windows fell away, leaving one that he maximized on the laptop’s screen.
