Love Op: A Spicy, Cat-And-Mouse, Thriller Rom Com (Love and Other Jobs Book 5)

4. Ghost

For the first time since meeting Mattie, I saw a flash of fear in her eyes. The monster inside of me snarled happily. Got you, little rabbit.

Her back straightened, her body rotating to face me, and then like magic, the fear vanished. Indolent apathy shuttered over her features, and she slid her hands into the front pocket of her bunny-ear hoodie. This time, her sweatshirt had a cottontail at the back and the words “fluff you” in cursive along the front. She faced me with zero traces of worry on her beautiful face. “Do I know you?”

A smile twitched at the corners of my mouth. “Likely not. You haven’t faced consequences a day in your life.”

“Oh, is that what you are?” She snapped her gum loudly between her teeth. “I thought you were someone’s lost grandpa.”

I took a step toward her, and to my amusement, she didn’t so much as flinch. “My gray hair isn’t going to stop me from catching you if you run, Bunny. But you’re not going to run, are you?” I took another step her way, and that time, I saw her legs tense. She was definitely going to run.

“Why would I do that?” she asked, apparently unconcerned.

“I don’t know,” I challenged softly. “Why would you?”

She took a step back, lazy and unhurried. “The word ‘zip ties’ comes to mind.”

“So, you do recognize me,” I grinned wolfishly. I matched her pace for pace as she backed away slowly, leaving the trail and heading into the sparse tree line that bordered the river. It was a futile, if half-assed effort. She had nowhere to go, and I’d made sure there were no hikers near us.

Her irritatingly adorable bunny ears framed her face, emphasizing her enormous, brown eyes that were fringed with thick lashes. She’d had bangs the last time I’d seen her, but those had grown out now, wisping around the curve of her cheeks. Everything about Mattie looked sweet. Trustworthy. When paired with her devilish personality, it was a dangerous combination. She ran her tongue along her bottom lip, somehow both suggestive and innocent at the same time. “Yeah, I just had a hard time recognizing you. My last memory of you was from behind a door.” She flashed her white teeth, still backing away carefully. “My bad.”

Behind Mattie, the river gurgled by with a steady current that looked deceptively gentle. I knew enough about bodies of water to realize that the current could suck a person along with deadly force, despite how it looked on the surface. She backed up another few steps, nimbly keeping her footing as she threaded through trees away from the path. I watched her with quiet amusement. I wasn’t sure where she planned on going, but this game between us was over. She just hadn’t accepted it, yet. “I’m going to be honest,” I said, taking a longer step to close the distance between us. “You won’t see my face again after I drop you off at your parents’. So don’t bother to memorize it.”

The bounce of her cinnamon eyes to the side betrayed her worry. “Thank God,” she replied seriously. “You’re hideous.”

I wasn’t, and we both knew it. I cocked a smile to the side. “What’s the plan, Mattie? Are you going to go with me like a sane person?”

She shook her head, her smile trembling a bit as she chewed that infernal piece of bubblegum. “If you haven’t realized yet that I’m insane, then you’re not paying attention.”

“You’re that desperate to have my hands on you that you’d run?” I needled, closing the gap between our bodies just as inexorably as she ate the distance between the trees and river. “Or do you think, deep down, you’ve earned a little retribution?”

Her hands left her hoodie pockets, and the heels of her sneakers scraped up against the rocky ledge that dropped two feet into the rushing water. There were only two steps left between us. Her eyes went frantic in the next second, and she pulled her gaze over her shoulder to the river. I realized then what she meant to do, but too late. Always, with Mattie, I was five seconds too slow.

With a split-second glance my way, giving me a glimpse of the stark fear on her beautiful features, Mattie jumped into the river. I lunged for her, but my hands swiped empty air. She splashed, full-body, into the water, and although it wasn’t deep, she swam with long, powerful strokes to the middle of the current. The icy water swallowed her whole for a full three seconds before she emerged again. The rushing current churned white and frothy around her body as it carried her downstream.

“Fuck,” I hissed. She was heading for the opposite side, which would take her straight to town. With a growl of frustration, I shucked off my steel-toe sneakers, whipped my green canvas jacket off, and waded into the stream after her. I hadn’t rescued a person from the water in years, but my training kicked in on autopilot. Biting cold stole my breath, and I sucked in hard. I was almost positive my nuts turned into raisins as I submerged to my hips. Then my feet slipped out from under me, and the water got deep fast. The current swept along my legs, tugging me down the river with terrifying force. I kept my eyes on Mattie as she struggled to swim, her wet sweatshirt making her movements sluggish.

I had the benefit of fewer layers and a lot more practice swimming in clothing, so I knew I would catch up to her. It was a matter of what I would do when I had her in my hands that remained in question. At the moment, the idea of gagging her had some merit, and the thought of dragging her stubborn ass out of this freezing water was the only thing that kept me swimming even when my fingers went numb, and my lungs struggled to pull in air. The cold sapped every ounce of energy from me, stabbing my skin with pinpricks of pain and contracting my ribs inward so hard, I could barely draw a breath. It was a familiar feeling. I’d spent more than a year training to swim in cold, black oceans, but it had been over a decade since BUD/S, and I was a bit out of practice when it came to navigating freezing water.

The gray lump that was Mattie in the distance suddenly went under. Panic scrabbled at my reason. Shit. I forced my arms and legs to pump faster, fighting the current to slice through the water in the right direction. I didn’t have time to examine my panic, but I was aware of it. Like those fissures around my cemented heart had widened, I realized that a crevice of worry for Matilda Thorne had shown up in my emotions, and it wasn’t sitting well. I’d seen plenty of people die in stupid ways, so why the concern now? “Get up,” I whispered, slapping through the water against the sideways pull of the river. “Get up. Come on, Mattie.”

Her face broke through the churning water, but only briefly. I was almost to her, and I saw the way her hair clung to her face, obstructing her open mouth as she gasped for air. Then she went down again.

I pushed hard, my muscles screaming. “Back up, Mattie,” I shouted. “Come up!” She did, her throat searching for air audibly. I reached her, striking out one hand for the hood of her sweatshirt. I yanked it back, and her body, sopping wet and heavy as fuck with her layers, collided with mine. Thankfully, the current had taken us closer to the shore, and I turned so she lay back on my stomach. I wished I could get her slogged down hoodie off her body, but I didn’t have time. Not with the cold siphoning my strength and turning her lips blue.

“You,” I growled, swiping through the fishy river with my left arm, “are. So. Dead.”

She coughed, her body limp and already shivering so hard, it was like hauling a tiny jackhammer to shore. Which, thankfully, was close enough that we weren’t in the water for long. Even with training for this exact situation, I struggled to keep both our heads above the choppy water, and I swallowed so much of it, I felt like puking.

“Oh my God!” someone shouted from the trail.

Great. We’d been seen, too. This was going just about as well as my other Mattie take-in attempts had gone. She had the most unhinged way of turning a perfectly linear collection of points into a scattered constellation of chaos.

My feet hit silty shore, and with a groan of effort, I hefted us both out of the water. I flung Mattie’s body onto the shore first, and then hauled myself up beside her. I kept one hand on her shivering, prone body because I didn’t care if she was on the brink of hypothermic death, I knew this coddled socialite would find a way to thwart me and escape anyway.

Feet pounded the trail, and then twigs and leaves cracked as a couple rushed to join us. The man’s neon green and yellow athleticwear refracted light from the hazy sun, and the woman, who looked to be in her forties, already had her phone out from her purple coat. The man reached us first. “Are you alright? My God.”

“We’re fine,” I huffed. My breath fogged out like a dragon’s breath as I sucked in a lungful of air and expelled it with a shudder.

“You must be freezing,” the woman said. “I’m calling an ambula—”

“No!” Mattie and I chorused. I swiveled a look down to her and found her curled up tight, her lips quivering and the tips of her fingers blue. She had her eyes shut, but she shook her head in a jerky motion. “No. Really.”

Her determination to remain hidden really knew no equal. What exactly was so bad about being with her billionaire parents that had this girl going full Jason Bourne? I knelt next to Mattie, and sniffing through my own body-wracking tremors, I addressed the paunchy man. “I have—my jacket.” I pointed back upriver. “On the shore.”

“I’ll get it,” he offered, and then he jogged away, adjusting his ear warmer band and huffing.

“Are you sure I can’t call an ambulance?” the woman asked. She had a thin face and well-worn laugh lines around her mouth, and I imagined she came from a home full of children and love. I’d rarely stepped foot in one of those, let alone grown up in one.

“No, thank you,” I shook my head. I gave her a smile that winced a little. “W-we’re locals. Our place isn’t f-far.”

She gusted out a breath in relief, her gloved hand on her stomach. “Oh, my Lanta, you must have been terrified.”

Mattie’s hand lifted off the grass, like she wanted to grab for the woman. “P-please—”

“Come here, baby,” I soothed, lifting her in my arms and tucking her against my sodden shirt. “It’s okay.”

She fought me, but she was so bone-deep frozen—not to mention pathetically weaker than me—it barely shifted my arms around her. I tucked her face under my chin, and bending down with my jaw against her temple, I effectively smothered any other protests she wanted to make.

“Y’all are so sweet,” the woman said, her eyes sparkling. “Even half-drowned, look at you.”

I gave her a smile that I hoped sold the lovebird thing. In reality, I wanted to strangle my shivering armful of sass. “So much for a r-romantic walk.”

She chuckled gently, putting a hand to her cheek. “Oh, bless. You poor things.” The sound of running feet punctuated the white noise from the river behind us, and the woman turned to find her husband. “Here comes Jim. Oh, Lord, look at him move. He’s a volunteer fireman, you know,” she offered. “He lives to help. He really does.”

Goody. I nodded tightly. “Thankful for h-him.” My joints screamed in protest, like they’d been rusted over, and I knew I needed to get us out of these clothes before I lost strength completely.

Jim arrived, brandishing my shoes and jacket. “Got ‘em! How can we help? Here, take this.” He unzipped his coat and shrugged it off.

His wife made a soft exclamation of surprise and did the same. “I can’t believe I didn’t think of that. Here.”

While they undressed their outer layers, I bent down and whispered in Mattie’s ear. “If you say one more thing, I’m gagging you with my wet socks. Stay still and behave.”

Mattie shifted in my arms, raising her mouth to me like she wanted to respond. Her warm breath tickled across my throat, a millimeter away from pressing against my skin. Then she bit my neck. Hard.

Pain lanced through my neck, and I clamped my teeth together to keep from screaming. Calmly, grinding my molars against the desire to smack the shit out of her, I reached up and took her jaw in a vice grip. I kept my head angled down so it looked like we were cuddling, but I squeezed her jaw so hard, I was sure I heard the joint creak.

She released me, and when I looked down, she had blood on her blue lips. She sucked her bottom lip between her teeth, smiling like she was Satan’s depraved little sister.

Jesus. Fucking. Christ. “You’re an animal,” I hissed.

Her smile shook just as badly as the rest of her. “H-hope you g-get… r-rabies.”

Anger, potent and all-consuming, burned through me. It was so white-hot, it warmed my insides and gave me the strength I needed to get us out of this mess. The only reason she hadn’t really begged these two for help, I was sure, was because they would call the authorities. And she couldn’t have that any more than I could. Emboldened by that realization, I sat her up in my lap. With brisk, ruthless efficiency, I shimmied her wet sweatshirt off her body, followed immediately by her T-shirt. When I reached around her to unclasp her black lace bra, she grabbed my arm.

I batted her hand away. “Socks. Mouth. Sit still, or else.”

“Here, sweetie,” the woman said, swooping down with her jacket to cover Mattie as I unclasped her bra and swished it aside.

I threaded Mattie’s arms through the jacket sleeves, and then definitely not letting myself get an eyeful of her breasts—the last thing I needed was to be attracted to this rabid creature—I zipped it straight up to her chin. She stared at me with huge, chocolate brown eyes, her brows slowly drifting together as she glared at me.

Please. Spare me.I stripped off my T-shirt, and with a murmured, “Thank you,” to Jim, I put on his large, but thankfully warm, coat. I draped my canvas jacket over Mattie’s legs, and although it truly took the last dredges of my fortitude, I managed to stand with Mattie in my arms. I gave the helpful couple a stiff smile. “I’m going to get her to the car.”

“Oh, let us help you,” the helpful woman offered, shivering without her coat.

I shook my head. “You should hurry back to your car before you get cold. I’ll be fine.” I added another—hopefully—charming smile. “This is why I kill myself at the gym, anyway.”

Jim laughed, following alongside us as he walked with his arm around his wife. He chaffed up and down her upper arm in an unconscious, caring gesture that plucked at my frozen heartstrings. “Why else bother if not to save your girl, am I right?”

Mattie snorted, and I hefted her closer, smothering her face into my chest. “Absolutely.”

“Well, if you’re sure?” the woman asked.

I gestured with my chin. “You go ahead. Thank you so much for the help. And the coats.” I glanced down at them. “Maybe I could send you some money?”

“Oh no,” Jim frowned, waving a hand. “I wouldn’t think of it. Keep them. You’re absolutely sure you can make it on your own?”

I juggled Mattie in my arms. “She’s nothing. And moving is helping. But thank you.”

With another hesitant farewell, the couple finally took my obvious hints that I wanted them gone, and they fast-walked away from me, down the path and back to the trailhead. I walked slowly, watching them for a while until they disappeared.

Mattie struggled against me as soon as they were gone. “Put me down.”

I veered off the path, back up the hill and into the heavily wooded area. “After that stunt? You’ll be lucky if I don’t hogtie you the entire way between here and New York.”

She kicked, fighting my hold, and her hands came up to push against my face. It was like holding a wet cat in a bath. I picked up my pace dragging her writhing body further into the woods until we were well out of eyesight of the main path. Then I dropped her to the forest floor in a heap.

Shivering, she struggled to stand, but I was on her in the next second. I pinned her legs between mine and then I caught her wrists in my hand easily before pinning them over her head. She heaved, chest rising and falling and warm breath fogging around me. “If you think I’m just g-going w-with you…” she growled.

“I don’t think that,” I replied evenly. With my free hand, I unzipped a pocket on my coat that had fallen off her legs. When I fished out the syringe, her eyes went silver-dollar huge. I ripped off the cap with my teeth.

“You can’t drug me,” she gasped. She struggled hard, but I had her in a firm grip.

I spit out the cap. “Consequences, Bunny. Have a nice nap.”

Her sharp intake of breath preceded the plunge of the short needle through her jeans and into her thigh. I pushed the plunger, shoving down my conscience along with the midazolam in the syringe.

The drug took effect almost immediately, and her shivering stopped first, followed by a fluttering of her long eyelashes. Her breath puffed out with a little gust of air, and she jerked against my hold before her eyelids fell closed. Then she went limp beneath me. Sighing, I let my fist fall to the forest floor as I sat back and released her.

I’d done a lot worse in my career. I’d tortured and killed. I’d kidnapped plenty, too.

So, why did I feel like a steaming pile of shit?

.