Blade (The Alpha Elite #11)

Chapter Sixty

Blade

R ecognizing one of the shooters from my deep dive on her yesterday, cursing myself for not seeing this coming, I kept the woman close as I scanned the street. Leading her around the side of the building, I bypassed my company Range Rover.

Second vehicle that’d taken fire when I’d been with this woman.

That drive-by two years ago had been gang related. I’d run it down after I’d started at AES. But today wasn’t.

Fucker behind the wheel was one of her husband’s lackeys.

This shit was my fault. If I hadn’t run facial rec and hacked into those sealed records, there wouldn’t have been a way to backdoor her location. Unless it was whoever the fuck had bought her the cell.

I glanced down.

Clutching the phone in both hands, she frantically scanned the street.

“Shooters are gone.” I took the cell from her. “How long have you had this number?”

“Hey!”

“How fucking long, woman?” I took out the SIM card, then dropped it and crushed it.

“Two years. Wait. What are you doing? Stop!”

She’d been fucking shot at, and she was worried about the goddamn cell. “Wasn’t secure.” Filing away the timeline on how long she’d had the phone, I broke it open and quickly looked for tracking devices but didn’t see shit.

“No! My texts! That’s my cell phone .”

“I’ve got a new one for you. What fucking texts?” I tossed the cell in the coffee joint’s dumpster.

“Y-your texts. Oh my God .” She looked behind us and stumbled in those pink, fur-lined boots.

“I’ll send you new texts.” I glanced at her bag as cop sirens sounded in the distance. “You got any other devices on you? In your bag?”

“What?” Looking panicked, she glanced up at me. “You said target secure . When you were on the phone. I heard you.”

“Devices,” I reminded her. “Any other phones, tablets? You got a laptop on you?” We were out of time.

“No. Who was the target?”

An AES Range Rover peeled around the corner and slammed on the brakes. The front window went down, and Vance “Victor” Conlon, the former Marine fuck, smiled. “Right. This is interesting.”

I opened the rear door. “Get in.”

The woman stood her ground. “I can’t leave my Jeep.”

The sirens got closer. “I’ll handle it.”

“Like you handled my cell?”

Fucking Christ . I grabbed the new burner from my pocket and gave it to her. “New phone. Secure. No fucking strings. Give me your car key.”

She looked from me to Victor.

Victor chuckled. “Right. I can see where you’re coming from, love. His delivery sucks. Which vehicle is yours?”

She fucking told him. “A green Jeep Cherokee. It’s in Del Cielo’s parking lot, but I can’t leave it there.”

The fucking prick held out his hand as the cops turned onto the far end of the street. “No problem, love. If you give me the keys, I’ll take care of it before the police get here. But you need to be quick.”

She dug in her purse, and a second later, she was climbing into the back seat of the Range Rover to reach his outstretched hand. “It’s slow to start sometimes.”

“Got it, love.” The fucker winked at her, then was out of the Rover.

I shut her door and rounded the front of the SUV to intercept. “Sweep it for tracking devices, then take it to my penthouse. You can pick up your ride later.”

“Where?”

“Track it.” Fucker tracked everything else.

“Right. An invitation to hack, shooting in broad daylight with witnesses, and a young brunette who makes you more pissed off than usual.” He grinned. “This is going to be fun.”

“You hack my shit, you’re gonna have a problem.”

The prick chuckled. “I’m not the one who opened fire with witnesses.”

Fucking pussy. “That’s the difference between us.” Fifty yards out, the cops fought traffic. “Get her ride out of here.” I got behind the wheel, slammed the door, and her raspy voice was on me.

“What did you say to him?”

Throwing it in Drive, I gave her an opening to tell me who she was. “To scan your Jeep for tracking devices.” I swung around and took off in the opposite direction of the incoming cops.

“My… wait. Where are we going? You need to stop. Your friend has my keys.”

“Victor’s not my friend. He’ll take your ride to my place.”

She spun in her seat as Victor took off in her ride. “We’re going to your place?”

“Yeah.” One of them.

She turned back around but didn’t comment.

I glanced in the rearview mirror, then that shit from the bar fucked with my head. “We gonna talk about last night?”

She dropped her head, and her voice went quiet as hell. “No. But I’m sorry—about all of it.” She nervously swiped her thumbs across the burner, but the thing wasn’t on. “And about today.”

“We’re gonna discuss that in a minute. Last night at the bar, you do that shit often?” I was still pissed I hadn’t killed that biker.

Inhaling, she looked out the window. “Do you?”

“Not discussing me.”

Color hit her face, and she met my gaze in the rearview mirror. “But you get to ask anything you want about me?”

“You got questions, ask.”

The woman didn’t hesitate. “How many people have you slept with? Because that’s what you’re really asking me, isn’t it? You’re angry that you… saw what you saw. So now you want to take it out on me and judge me, like you don’t do the exact same thing and sleep with strangers too.”

“One, I don’t sleep with women.” I never hung around that long. “Two, I’m not vulnerable like you. Three, I don’t fuck around. Four, I checked in with you several times two years ago. Gave you safe words. Gave you choice. Don’t ever fucking compare me to that piece-of-shit biker. Asking again. You do that shit often?” Isolate last night, and she was right. I had no goddamn right to ask. Or judge. But combine that with what just went down, and I was looking at it from all angles. For all I knew, she’d fucked some cartel asshole last week and this was the fallout.

Her arms crossed, then her voice broke. “Screw you.”

I glanced in the rearview mirror.

She turned her head, but not before I saw her eyes.

She was fucking crying.

Stopped at a light, I turned and grabbed her chin. Then I brought her gaze back to mine, and reined it the hell in. “Hey.”

“No, okay?” she blurted. “I don’t do that often. In fact, I haven’t done it in a really, really long time. Like two years long. There. You happy now?” Tears fell down her face.

A half ton of possessive, jealous bullshit I had no right to own lifted off my chest. “No, not happy.” I swiped at her cheek with my thumb. “How long you been living out of your car?”

Jerking out of my grasp, she turned away. “I don’t want to talk anymore.”

The light turned green, and I hit the gas. Then I fucking stepped in it. “At the coffee joint, you came after me.”

She didn’t say shit.

“Why?” I demanded.

A five-foot-nothing brunette who turned me on my ass every damn time I laid eyes on her caught my gaze in the rearview. “I wasn’t coming after you. I only wanted to know how you found me.”