The Alpha Bodyguards Books #4-6

Chapter Fourteen

A knock sounded on the front door as I was about to tell her about Afghanistan.

I squeezed the water out of her hair and grasped her arm to pull her upright. “Stay here.”

Weariness, more so than in the hospital, crept into her tone, and she dropped her hands from my waist. “Expecting someone?”

Having her hands on me was fucking with my head, but I still knew what she was asking. “Yes, Preston. He works with me.”

“Is that who was at the hospital and who drove us here?”

“No, that was Ty.” She looked so damn small and fragile sitting on my tub with my oversized towel wrapped around her. “I’ll be right back.” I strode to the front door and opened it.

Preston waltzed in with a scowl and a flower-print suitcase. His gaze cut across the living room. “You fucking owe me.” He dumped the suitcase next to the entry table as his restless energy bled out around him. “Actually, you more than owe me. How the hell do you step foot in her place? There’s shit everywhere.”

Alarm spread. “It was tossed?”

“If by tossed, you mean someone hung scarves on lamps and tacked hippy shit to the walls and left a week’s worth of dishes in the sink, then yeah.” He shook his head. “It was tossed.” Agitated, looking like he wanted to crawl out of his own skin, he scanned my place again.

“Anyone waiting outside her place?”

Distracted by whatever the hell he was looking at, a beat passed before he shook his head.

I barely refrained from snapping my fingers in his face. “You sure?”

He looked down the hall, then glanced toward the kitchen. “Yeah.”

Goddamn it. “ Focus, Preston.” What the fuck was he on?

His gaze cut to the floor, and he tapped his foot twice, then twice again. “I am fucking focused.”

I lost it. “How the hell do you know someone wasn’t at her place if you can’t stand still for five seconds?”

His head whipped up, his steel-eyed gaze cut to me, and he went still dead still. “No security cameras once you get outside the elevator, fourteen four-by-six windows, four columns, eighteen recessed lights, seven paces from the front door to the wall safe behind the landscape picture, six doors in the hall, wolf range, subzero fridge, six barstools and one penthouse pecker asshole. I fucking pay attention. You wanna know about her place now?”

I blinked, then somehow managed to tip my chin.

“Five coffee mugs in the sink, twenty-seven pairs of underwear, no security cameras anywhere on the property, sixteen units, twenty-four parking spots and zero fucking bad guys unless you count the old man in two-B who stole the paper from the doorstep of four-A seventeen seconds after it was delivered.”

Jesus Christ . “You counted her underwear?”

“You didn’t?”

I held his incredulous stare and gave it back. “How do you know it’s a wall safe?”

His eye contact didn’t waver. “Picture’s skewed. Eighth of an inch. Nothing about you is crooked. There’s a wall safe.”

I didn’t confirm or deny it, but now I wondered if the guys called him Trace behind his back because tracked shit or because he never left a trail. Either way, I wanted him out of my place, stat. “Thanks for getting her stuff.”

One of his eyes narrowed in challenge. “You owe me.”

I didn’t say shit. I wasn’t going to commit to owing him a damn thing.

“That’s what I thought.” He nodded once then his expression went blank. “By the way, you and Luna are overthinking this.”

I bit. “How so?”

He reached out and straightened the picture covering my wall safe, then he spun in a circle. “Ever been in a gang?”

He knew who I was. “No.”

“Ever been friends with someone who has?”

“No.”

He nodded slowly. “Not surprising.”

The fucking point? “I don’t hide where I come from.”

“Me either.”

“Where’s that?” He’d enlisted after me and deployed after I was already back stateside. I didn’t know shit about him except that Luna had recently hired him and he seemed like a loose cannon.

“Here and there.” He looked up and made eye contact with me for the second time since I’d known him. “Mostly the streets.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“I’m not.” He fingered the edge of the kitchen island, then rested his hand on his piece. “Sorry, that is.”

Fucking great. “I need to get back to what I was doing.”

“What or who?”

My jaw ticked. “Watch it.”

Unfazed by my warning, he switched subjects. “I’m not sorry about where I came from because it taught me to appreciate certain things.”

I didn’t respond. This was the most he’d ever spoken to me, and I wasn’t sure that Luna hadn’t lost his fucking mind hiring him.

“Lots of thing you take for granted until you don’t have them anymore,” he continued. “Roof over your head, closing your eyes without fear of being stabbed, hot meal, running water, a name you can call out at four fifty-seven a.m.”

His back was to the clock in the kitchen. But mine wasn’t.

I saw the glowing numbers.

Four fifty-seven.

My arm brushed against my holster and the weight of my own gun. “Your point?”

He took a step backward. “Kids off the street don’t join a gang because they got options.”

No shit. “Never thought they did.”

He ignored my comment. “They join because they don’t wanna get stabbed in their sleep or shot for the shit rations their food stamps get them. They pick up a gun and choose a color because it’s security.” He took another step backward, moving around a table that was behind him and not in his line of vision.

I needed him to get to his point and get the fuck out, but I also wanted to know what he was getting at. “Is that why you joined the Marines? Security?”

“No.” He stepped another pace backward. “I joined because the ammo was free.”

Fucking psycho. “Great. Why are we overthinking this current situation?”

Reaching behind him, his hand unerringly landed on the doorknob. “That kid who had his ski mask pulled off? Jail isn’t security to him. Getting caught’s a death sentence. The cops will try to make him roll on his friends, then lock him up when he doesn’t. Once he’s in lockup, he’ll get shanked for the simple fact he chose a color to give him security. He has no choice now. In his eyes, it’s kill or be killed.”

My jaw ticked. “I’m not going to let anything happen to her.” I’d kill any of those Tres Angulos pricks if they came after her.

Looking at me like he was seeing me for the first time, he studied me a moment. “Good. That’s good. Keep that thought.” He paused. “And remember, the guy she pulled the mask off has something you don’t have.”

Fucking prick. “What’s that?”

“Time.” He opened the door. “And lots of it.”

“Meaning?”

Trace shrugged. “You can’t stay up here forever. He can wait you out.”

“Luna will find him.” I wasn’t staying holed up indefinitely.

“Maybe.”

“Not maybe,” I argued.

“And that’s where you’re overthinking this. He’ll find her.”

“No, he won’t,” I ground out.

He shrugged again like this wasn’t a life-or-death matter. “Maybe you’ll get lucky doing it your way, but hiding her away is less efficient than dangling her as a carrot. Either way, you know where I’ll be.” He walked out.

I wanted to hate him, but he had a point.

With a sense of dread, I walked back into the bathroom.