Chapter 14
Lovelyn
With the doors locked and my purple bag on the back seat next to Kane’s black holdall, I clipped in my seat belt. “Good to go.”
His gaze eased over me, taking in my change of clothes. I’d kept the cream jumper, though now had a bra and strappy top underneath and paired it with a warm, plum-coloured long skirt. Somehow, his attention on me was always heated, no matter what I wore.
“Did ye wake your ma to tell her that you’re going?”
“No need. Empty house for a few nights.”
If he thought the answer strange, he didn’t say, only gunning the engine for a path I wasn’t yet sure of. Kane took us out of the suburbs and onto the road that joined the motorway heading south out of Deadwater.
Against the thrumming of the road and the whine of the wind through his partially open window, he stayed quiet. While this appeared to be his default mode, I wondered if I’d used up all his words for the night in obtaining his confessions.
I tested the water. “Where are we going?”
“Manchester, but for a maximum of a few hours. Where were you going?”
“Warford. That’s under an hour away. We were heading in the same direction.”
He lifted his chin in recognition.
I expected him to slump back into silence, but he surprised me.
“You asked about the threat to Dixie. Her previous attack is my clue. The timing is very close to when Mila’s grandfather died.”
The man had been grandfather to all of them, but I didn’t correct him.
“You’re connecting that to the Marchant family? She told me she was a victim of the Deadwater murderer.”
That person had killed four others in the same way they’d attacked Dixie, their throats cut. Surely that couldn’t be a coincidence.
“What if she wasn’t? It’s possible her attempted murder was by that same method in order to conceal the true perpetrator. It makes sense that she’d run after realising the same thing. Her life is in danger, even if I can’t work out why.”
Information slotted together in my head, new connections made and a fresh picture emerging. “Thank you for sharing.”
“If you want honesty, then you should know my interest isn’t purely in being a good brother.
I don’t know her. She doesn’t know me. There’s more to it than that.
” He worked his jaw, suggesting the act of telling was difficult.
“Her vote is crucial to getting Marchant Haulage out of the stalemate. We can’t do that if she’s dead.
If we don’t have her, the vote goes to unknown parties. We need to bring her back.”
I bit back the next words that wanted out of my mouth. From helping Mila research the Marchant family, I was fully aware of how many people were supported by payouts from the business. Kane’s branch of the family tree was one of them. He didn’t get the money, I was certain of that.
His mother was a much more likely recipient.
There was urgency around his drive to fix the business. A company he’d shown zero interest in until now, according to his sister. I was sure it was to do with his mum. I was equally sure that any progress I’d made in getting him to open up would reverse in a heartbeat if I pushed him on that.
The emotional state I’d been in all day flexed its claws in me again.
I liked it when he spoke to me.
It felt precious. A tiny amount of trust from a man who gave up so little to anyone. He was so closed off, and for a woman like me, who needed information like I did air, every hard-fought word was a gift.
Outside, the night flickered by in black skies and yellow-lit empty road.
Kane turned the tables on me. “Where did Warford come from?”
“I finally found something in the tablet. A train ticket notification. Only that, though. Once we get there, I don’t have a location to try.”
Kane rubbed his cheek, shadowed from stubble. “I have some ideas of where to look.”
“Let me guess, it starts and ends with their red-light district?”
He released a laugh.
I stared.
He caught me. “What?”
“That sound. I didn’t know you were capable.”
He pressed his lips together in a return to his typical grumpy expression. Almost. He was beginning to relax around me, and that gave me a tight feeling in my chest I couldn’t explain.
A while on, my head was nodding. I wasn’t used to late nights, and it was after two.
“Sleep if ye want. Are ye warm enough?” Kane’s low tones curled around my brain.
“Can you close the window?”
The noise of the wind whipping by filled the car on our flight along the motorway.
“I need it open. My hoodie’s in the back.” He reached to snag it for me.
Under the warm top that smelled of him, I let myself rest in the presence of my own pet predator.
Sometime later, I woke to a light touch on my face. I blinked my eyes open to find my door open and Kane standing over me. We were parked in an underground car park, yellow lights over concrete and oil stains.
He’d stroked my cheek. I was almost certain.
“We’re here. Need me to carry ye upstairs?”
He already had both of our bags over his shoulder. I rubbed my eyes. “No, thank you. Where are we?”
“My apartment. For the next few hours anyway.”
Kane locked the car then directed me towards the back of the space. More slowly, I followed, taking him on from a sneaky side view.
I’d dreamed about him.
Vivid images of him using that huge, hot body on mine crowded my thoughts.
Not all that long ago, he’d kidnapped me, and I’d been in the back of his van having random musings on never having hot sex.
Then, somehow, I’d come to terms with Kane and joined him on a woman-hunt, teaming up to share information.
That wasn’t all I wanted to share.
My body felt loose and ready. Warm from sleep and primed for going home with a man who alarmed and excited me.
So lost was I to my dirty imagination, I didn’t spot the group of men enter from a side door to the street until one of them cackled, hyena-like.
Kane drifted closer to me, his knuckles grazing the back of my hand.
The gang was between us and the lift. Four men, each with the brand of swagger that came from spending the night up to no good, convincing themselves they owned the city.
Alone, I would’ve turned and sprinted in the other direction. Probably locked myself in my car until they’d gone. But I didn’t have the keys, and despite Kane’s sign of awareness, he didn’t appear troubled.
The first to notice us strutted on expensive-looking trainers, purposefully getting in our way. His buzzcut had stripes in the bristles, and a faded tattoo of a crown sprawled across his neck. His grin at me exposed a row of uneven teeth stained a smoker’s yellow.
“Lovely little package you’ve got there. Shame about the escort.”
Kane’s breath left him in a slow, unimpressed sigh. “Don’t bother.”
They bothered anyway, spreading out around us in a fan.
A second man stepped closer, his wide shoulders stuffed into a grey hoodie, eyes red-rimmed, pupils blown from something stronger than alcohol. A weapon of some kind glinted at his waist, his fingers stroking it.
He jerked his chin toward Kane’s bag. “What’s in there, big man? You’re going to want to give it up.”
His gaze dropped to my chest without apology. “Or she will.”
A knot of tension tightened between my ribs. They were mugging us. I should call the police. Except they’d take my phone if I reached for it. Kane’s touch brushed the back of my hand again, a silent warning that he’d already switched to war mode.
The third man leaned against a concrete pillar, long-limbed and reptilian, with a narrow face and a scar running through one eyebrow.
He had the shiftiness of someone always two seconds from throwing a punch or running from one.
“She doesn’t look local,” he drawled, gaze travelling over my jumper and skirt.
“Your girl’s dressed for church. Got her confessin’ all sorts, eh? ”
His buddy snorted until he wheezed.
Kane’s voice lowered, quiet enough to force them to lean in to catch it. “Walk away.”
The leader let out another cackle. “Don’t think we will.”
The fourth man approached from the flank, the smallest of the group but wiry, jittery, and with his jaw clenched.
He assessed me with the oily calculation of someone mentally rearranging the world into things he could take and things he couldn’t.
“He keeps you on a short leash, yeah? Bet you don’t make a sound when he’s on you. ”
Heat crept over my throat. Embarrassment, anger, something darker. Before I could bite back a retort, Kane inched forward.
The atmosphere in the car park altered.
He didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t square up. He merely shifted his weight, but the movement radiated a controlled danger that turned my skin electric.
Then everything broke open.
The buzzcut guy was closest, still grinning. He tossed a head tilt my way. “Grab her.”
Fear claimed me. Just as fast, Kane’s fist sank into his solar plexus.
The grin slipped from Buzzcut’s face. He bent double, collapsing to the pillar with his eyes bulging.
The weapons guy swung for Kane’s head. Kane blocked the hit, seized the man’s wrist, and twisted so sharply a crack rang out across the car park. The man dropped to his knees, moaning, a knife clattering across the concrete.
I squeaked and clasped my hands to my mouth, my focus never leaving Kane. He was someone from an action movie. Reacher or Bourne. Cool and controlled.
Scar Face launched himself from the pillar, trying for Kane’s ribs.
Kane stepped aside with minimal effort, caught the back of the man’s hood, and slammed his forehead on the nearest car bonnet.
Once. A second time. The surface dented inwards, groaning under the impact, and the man slumped over it, sliding to the floor with glassy eyes.
The smaller man hesitated only a heartbeat then lunged for me.
His hand clamped around my forearm. The grip was rough, urgent, already bruising. He dragged me to him, breath hot and sour.
Kane moved with a violence that stripped the air from my lungs.
He drove his body into the attacker with a tackle so hard it sent both of them flying across the concrete, the hold on me broken. The man’s back hit the floor with a thud. Kane landed above him, pinning him with a forearm across the chest.
The other three groaned on the floor, clutching ribs, wrists, faces. None dared move.
Kane straightened and stood over the last one, his chest steady and breath even. His expression held no fury, no heat. Only cold precision, the icy calm of a man who had learned how to finish a fight before it truly began. Or survived worse.
A smear of someone else’s blood darkened his knuckles. He wiped it on the hem of the nearest man’s hoodie with the same disinterest he’d show if cleaning a spill from a countertop.
“Warned ye,” he said.
He turned toward me.
His gaze tracked my body, taking in the rapid rise and fall of my chest, the tremble at my knees, the flush that had spread all the way to my collarbone. The light above us buzzed. Somewhere, one of the men whimpered.
None of it mattered.
He was the only thing in my focus.
Everything had happened so fast that my fear barely grew, not when I’d become an observer in a real life MMA match. It had been far from a fair fight, though. Four to one, except none of them had stood a chance.
Deep, startling attraction curled inside me, winding up my spine and down low. I’d never seen anyone take another down so easily, let alone a whole gang. He’d barely broken a sweat.
“Are ye okay?” he asked.
I nodded. Words refused to form.
His gaze deepened, slow and deliberate, as if recognising my struggle for what it was and absorbing the reaction straight into his bloodstream.
Behind him, the gang leader tried to push up on an elbow.
Kane placed his boot between the man’s shoulder blades and pinned him flat again, focused on me rather than the restrained body beneath his foot.
A sharp shiver travelled through me.
“We should go upstairs,” I finally managed.
“Aye, we should. Before I do something I’ll regret.”
As if tonight’s violence counted as nothing on his ledger. I had no idea what he meant. My pulse hoped it involved me.