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Cam shrugged. “Some cases work out like that.”
“A little too often with me.”
Carlos thought he’d buried everything the case with Ivy had blown to bits—the emotion, the need for connection, the awe at how the right woman could change everything—but he’d been wrong. All it had taken was Mika and everything had made its way up to the surface. God knew how long it would take him to stow it all again.
“Boo-hoo. Suck it up.” Cam rolled his eyes. “You want someone to pat you on the head, go get someone else to bring you your toys.”
“I never asked you to.” He curled his hands into fists but kept them at his side. Friend or not, the other man needed to leave.
Cam snorted. “You didn’t have to.”
The laptop sat on his kitchen island, calling out to him. With it, he’d be able to monitor Alex’s and Will’s progress on the case, follow up on a few leads on his own, and watch over her. It might not be too late.
Carlos shut the door, crossed the room, and slid his fingers across the laptop’s aluminum shell. “Tony took me off the case.”
Cam shrugged. “So put yourself back on it.”
The temptation was there, palpable and undeniable. It pushed against the alcohol haze fogging his brain and made it hard to remember why he couldn’t do this. “I have other things to do.”
It was a weak denial, and Cam laughed in response. “What? Like a second bottle of bourbon?”
“It’s just a case.”
But it wasn’t. If it had ever been just a case, that had ended the moment he walked out of Grounded Coffee and saw Roger holding a gun to Mika’s head. Being around Mika twisted him up inside and turned the world he thought he’d finally figured out on its side. He didn’t understand it, but he couldn’t deny it.
“Yeah, keep telling yourself it’s just a case.” Cam walked to the door, opened it, and took a step through before pausing. “I don’t know what is going on between you and Mika, but if nothing else, you owe it to her to see this thing through. Hell, you owe it to yourself.”
The door clicked shut behind Cam.
He shouldn’t do it. For the past year he’d done everything in his power to prove himself to everyone at Maltese Security. He’d answered every call for help, put in overtime on every case, and he’d taken the work the others didn’t want. He’d paid his dues and put in the time. If he did this, he’d be throwing it all away.
He shouldn’t do it, but he knew he would.
Mika was in danger because of his mistakes. He would do whatever it took to make sure she didn’t pay the ultimate price.
After his sixth day off from Maltese spent drinking toxic bodega coffee while sitting in his car parked strategically down the block from Mika’s apartment, Carlos had a hole in his stomach the size of Wisconsin—only a Rhode Island–sized portion was due to the shitty coffee. Through his binoculars, he watched Mika stroll past one of the windows, then stop and stare out. She looked so beautiful it sucked the air right out of his lungs. The urge to bolt up the stairs to her was as tangible as the binoculars in his white-knuckled grip and as ridiculous as the idea that she’d ever forgive him for what he’d said.
And she shouldn’t—which had been the whole point.
He gritted his teeth and forced his mind back to the problem at hand and not the clusterfuck that had brought them to this point. The bad guy was still out there. If Carlos could see her, so could the masked man. What the hell kind of half-assed job was Will Roscoe doing protecting her? The bad guy was still out there, and Mika was standing in front of her window like a sniper’s wet dream. He reached for the door handle. She looked over her shoulder, shrugged, and faded back into the room.
About damn time Roscoe did his job.
For the millionth time in the past hour, he checked his laptop sitting open on the passenger’s seat. The program he’d developed that searched the entire Harbor City Police Department arrest database was still running. If he didn’t get any hits on arrestees with a throat scar and a limp, he’d have to call in some favors for a peek at the federal records. The bad guy hadn’t left any physical evidence behind besides Roger’s dead body, but Carlos wasn’t giving up. Carlos would find him and make sure he’d never go after Mika.
A Prius parked behind him and Alex Lee got out. Just what he needed, a chat with Maltese Security’s resident pot stirre
r. Alex moseyed up to Carlos’s driver’s side window. He could ignore him, but that wouldn’t make him go away. Head lice were easier to vanquish than Alex. He rolled the window down.
“You have a weird-ass idea of vacation,” Alex said as he leaned a hip against Carlos’s car. “Don’t think we missed that even though you’re off the clock, you’re mysteriously still logged on to the Maltese Security system.”
Carlos flipped him off.
“Or that you have an alert set for when anything about Mika comes through.”
Carlos hit the button to roll up his car window.
“Or that you’ve spent every night for the past week sitting in your car.” Alex managed to get the entire sentence in before the window was even halfway up. “Don’t worry, Roscoe’s taking good care of Mika. Real good.”
