Chapter 4
When I reached the safe house, I called out, “It’s me,” before I unlocked the door and walked into the living room. It was probably unnecessary. James had likely been watching the window.
He was on the sofa, a handgun beside him. He had circles under his eyes and two-day-old stubble, but it only made him look more ruggedly handsome. “Run into any trouble?”
I shut the door behind me. “No. How’s your headache?”
Irritation flickered in his eyes. “It’s fine.”
“Did you get any sleep?”
“I’m not a goddamned baby,” he said in a surly tone.
I could have taken offense, but I was feeling generous after the three calls I’d made on my burner. Besides, I knew his frustration wasn’t directed at me. “You and I both know sleep will help.”
“I’m fine.”
“I know it’s early, but I say we eat dinner and then I’ll start cleaning.”
“You’re not the maid,” he snapped.
“Maybe not, but I don’t see one hanging around, so someone has to do it.”
“Carter should have made sure it was clean.”
I set the food bag on the coffee table and sat down beside him. “Carter’s doing the best he can.” I reached for his face, and when he didn’t pull away, I pressed my palm to his cheek, turning his head to face me. “You’re doing the best you can.”
“But it’s not enough, is it?” he asked bitterly.
I pressed a soft kiss to his lips, and to my surprise, he grabbed the back of my head and held me close as he took over, his mouth hungry for mine.
A wave of desire rolled through me, and for the hundredth time that week, I wondered if sex was slowing his recovery. But every time I brought it up, he shut it down, saying he’d waited long enough to have me, and he wasn’t waiting any longer.
I eagerly kissed him back while he reached for the button on my jeans. Moments later, I was naked, and his clothes were on the floor next to mine.
I straddled his lap, my hips resting on his thighs as his hands worked their magic on my body.
“I missed you,” he murmured against my lips, before his mouth trailed kisses down my neck, then lower.
It was hard to concentrate on his words. “I wasn’t gone that long.”
He didn’t answer. He just kept touching me, pushing me higher and higher. When he finally slid inside me, I was more than ready. We moved together hard and fast, like neither of us could get enough, and it didn’t take long before we both fell apart.
I closed my eyes and rested my forehead against his, trying to catch my breath. Sex had never been like this with any man before him. I’d tried to blame it on our precarious situation—the danger we were living in had heightened our senses—but I knew that was a lie. At least for me.
His fingers trailed down my back, soft enough to raise goose bumps.
I lifted my head slightly and smiled down at him. “You sure know how to make living on the run exciting.”
He didn’t smile back. “I’m sorry.”
I shoved his chest lightly. “Are you serious? At the risk of boosting an already too-large ego, sex with you is the best I’ve ever had.”
He made a face and scoffed. “Please. There’s no way Limp Dick Kemper could have satisfied you.”
I laughed. “I’m not sure anyone has ever called my former partner that.”
He gave me a sardonic look. “Tell me I’m wrong.”
“That he has a limp dick or that he couldn’t satisfy me?” I made a face. “I never knew what being truly satisfied meant until I had you.”
Embarrassed by my admission, I nodded to the bag on the coffee table. “Your steak’s getting cold.”
He lifted a hand to my face and smoothed back my hair. “Give me a moment.”
“To recover?” I teased.
His gaze held mine. “To look at you.”
Heat flooded my cheeks. I started to pull away, but he held me in place.
“Don’t look away,” he murmured. “Why does it bother you that I want to look at you?”
My gaze found his again as I tried to figure out how to answer. “I don’t know. A lot of reasons, I guess.” I drew in a breath and made myself hold eye contact. “I know I’m not beautiful. You could do so much better than me. Hell, I’m sure you have.”
His face tightened. “Who told you that you’re not beautiful?”
I tried again to get off his lap. “I need to get cleaned up.”
He rolled us, pinning my back to the sofa as he loomed over me.
I could have felt intimidated or threatened, but I knew he wouldn’t hurt me. Not physically, anyway.
“You’re not gettin’ out of this. Why don’t you believe me?”
“I’ve looked in the mirror, James. Many times.”
He stared down at me as if I’d spoken a language he didn’t understand, then shook his head. “You really don’t see it.”
“No, and that’s okay.”
“I do,” he said in a husky tone, his thumb brushing along my cheekbone. “Your eyes are—dark and intense. Like you’re two seconds away from calling bullshit.”
I huffed a laugh, but it caught in my throat when he kissed me, slow and sure, then tugged my lower lip gently between his teeth.
Heat pooled between my legs.
“And your mouth.” He kissed the corner of it, then a line to my jaw. “Your hair.” His fingers threaded through the strands. “Your neck.” He pressed a kiss to my pulse point, and my breath hitched.
“And this.” His mouth drifted lower, and I squirmed as his hand slid between my legs. I let out a helpless sound.
“That,” he murmured in satisfaction. “I love that sound. I love how you react to me.” His fingers kept working, steady and relentless, until I was right on the edge again. He leaned into my ear. “Come for me, Harper.”
I obeyed, buckling against his hand as the orgasm rolled through me.
When it passed, I lay beneath him panting, and he kissed me again, softer this time. “You’re beautiful, Harper Adams. Don’t you ever doubt that’s what I see.”
I blinked up at him, caught off guard at the intensity of his gaze. “You really believe that.”
“I won’t lie to you,” he said. “Not about something that matters this much.”
I released a short, bitter laugh. “About my beauty?”
“No.” His eyes held mine. “How I feel about you.”
My face heated. He was more open than I’d expected, and I didn’t know how to handle it. I pushed on his chest. “Now your steak is even colder, and steak’s never good heated in a microwave.”
He lifted a brow. “Who said there’s a microwave in this dump?”
I burst out laughing, and he grinned back.
I wanted to bottle this moment up and tuck it away for later. I wasn’t sure what was in our future, but I suspected once we started digging into this case, we wouldn’t find many quiet moments.
“Fine,” I said. “Then I’ll heat your steak up in a skillet, assuming we’ve got one, and a stove that won’t burst into flames.”
I pushed at his chest and started to get up, but he caught my wrist. “It isn’t your job to wait on me.”
I snorted. “I should hope not. But if I’m heating up mine, then I can heat yours too.”
I slipped free and headed to the bathroom, hoping he didn’t follow. I needed a minute—or twenty—to get myself together.
Whatever this was with James … it was getting real, and I didn’t know how to handle that. I’d gotten good at running whenever things started to get real. But I didn’t want to run from him, and that was what scared me most.
When I came out, he was in the kitchen, standing in front of the stove. He’d found a skillet and was heating up the steaks and the green bean sides.
“James, I was going to do that.”
“I’m not an invalid.”
“I know.”
“I need to start doing more. I’m tired of sitting around.”
I braced a hand on the back of a kitchen chair. “If you do too much, you’ll slow your recovery, not help it.”
He glanced over his shoulder, his mouth set in a hard line. “We’ve sat around too long. We need to take the offensive.”
Relief flickered through me, but I suspected our versions of offensive didn’t match.
“I’m glad you agree. I made a few phone calls while I was out.”
He turned fully, eyes going sharp. “Who did you call?”
“First, I called Louise. She’s been leaving me messages. She was so insistent I call her back, I knew something was up.”
A scowl pulled at his mouth. “And?”
“She said my dad had contacted her. He was about to file a missing person report because I wasn’t returning his calls.”
He rolled his eyes. “Like he gives two fucks about you.”
“I know,” I said. “Which is why I called him too.”
The dark look in his eyes confirmed he liked that even less.
“We’ve got a few problems,” I said. “The first, less important one, is that Louise put together that I left town about the same time you stopped appearing at the tavern.”
“She thinks we’re together?”
“I didn’t confirm it, but she’s not stupid.”
“What does she think we’re doin’?”
“Her first thought was that I’m going after the Little Rock PD.”
His gaze went darker. “That’s next on the agenda.”
“I told her that. She wants in when we go after them.”
“So she knows I’m helpin’ you?”
“I didn’t confirm it, but she knew.” I held his stare. “And she insinuated she thinks it might not be all business.”
He studied me for a long beat. “How do you feel about that?”
“Honestly? I’m not sure.”
He gave a short nod, like he’d file that away and deal with it later.
“I’m not ashamed of you,” I said, like I was daring him to argue.
He went still.
The truth was part of me was hesitant to admit I was in anything with James Malcolm because of his reputation. What would Louise think? What would the good people of Lone County think? The disgraced Little Rock detective screwing a criminal…
I pictured their judgment, and all I felt was cold, familiar defiance. They already thought the worst of me. What difference would it make if they thought I was sleeping with James? Still, I didn’t like the thought of those people knowing anything personal about us.
“What about you?” I asked.
Confusion filled his eyes. “What about me?”
“What about the people in your world? What are they going to think about you being with an ex-cop?”
“The people I care about already know.”
Carter. Misti and his other employees. But I was sure there were others. People he didn’t talk about. “What about your FBI handler?”
Surprise flickered in his eyes, gone so fast I almost doubted I’d seen it.
“Who says I have an FBI handler?”
“Come on, James. You didn’t get out of prison because the system suddenly grew a conscience. You got out for a reason.”
“Why would they bother? What criminal would trust me after I turned on a cartel?” His voice went flat. “I’m a turncoat. No one’s gonna tell me anything.”
“Then how did you get out?”
“They had a flimsy case.”
I believed that, but I also knew he wasn’t telling me the whole story. While I could choose to take that personally, I was pragmatic enough to know we hadn’t reached that level of trust yet.
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll buy that—for now. But we still need to talk about how you brought down the Hardshaw Group.”
He scowled, turned back to the stove, and flipped the steaks over.
“If you’re looking for lessons on how to bring down the Knoxes, then you’ll be disappointed. That took nearly a year to gain their trust and infiltrate their group. Which meant doing things I wasn’t happy doing to prove my loyalty. The Knoxes aren’t going to trust either one of us.”
He shifted to look at me again, his eyes hard. “Why did you call your father?”
“I told you. So he wouldn’t file a missing person report.”
“You could’ve had Louise tell him you’re fine. Or contacted the sheriff’s department directly in case he’d filed already.”
“You and I both know I needed to talk to him.”
The muscle on his jaw ticked. “How’d it go?”
I told him about Nicole Knox contacting my father and threatening to kill him if I didn’t hand the file over. And that she’d supposedly forgive and forget if I gave it to her.
“My father suggested I drop it off somewhere for her people to pick up, then disappear. Presumably, far, far away.”
“How convenient for him.”
“She won’t know if she gets the original file. And honestly, I don’t think she cares. She just wants to know what Mom had gathered, so she can prepare for any blowback.”
“That makes sense.”
“But she also wants to make me pay.”
“That’s a given.” His gaze narrowed. “Who else did you call?”
I didn’t ask how he knew. “Carter.”
He gave a short laugh. “Did you call to give him hell over the safe house?”
“No. I told him about Nicole and my father.”
“That’s it?”
I hesitated. “I ran an idea by him.”
His brow furrowed. “What idea?”
I hadn’t planned on having this conversation while he stood at the stove, reheating our food. I’d hoped we’d be sitting down, but stalling wasn’t a good idea. Better to rip off the Band-Aid.
“I want to go to Little Rock and get in contact with some of my old sources.”
“I’m fine with going,” he said, eyes flat. “You and Carter are the ones who keep telling me I need more time to recuperate.”
I drew in a breath, steeling myself. “Without you.”
I’d expected him to blow up, not the steely silence I was facing now.
I knew from interrogating suspects that responding with silence made people want to fill it. It felt strange being on the other side. It only took five seconds for me to cave. “Hear me out.”
He lifted the fork in his hand like a warning. “I’m listening.”
“I want to reach out to some of my old contacts and see if they know anything.”
His face stayed hard. “What kind of contacts?”
“People who keep their eyes and ears open.”
“You think they know something about the Knoxes?”
“Maybe,” I said. “Maybe not. But it’s a good place to start. My internet searches have been useless, not that I’m surprised.”
He studied me for a moment. “So, why do you want to go without me?”
“For one, you’re still not one hundred percent, but for another, some of them won’t talk if you’re there.”
“You think they’d shut their mouths because of me?”
I snorted. “Maybe one or two of them, but the others won’t talk to anyone but me.”
“You’re not going to Little Rock alone.”
“Are you planning to have one of Carter’s hired guys babysit me?” Like hell that was going to happen, but I planned to hear him out.
“Hell no,” he said derisively. “I’m going with you.”
I wasn’t surprised, but I shook my head. “No.”
His brows lifted. “No?” he asked incredulously.
“Hanging out in the car for twelve hours gave you a headache. And you want to do another three hours, round trip?”
“We won’t come back,” he said, turning back to the stove like that settled it.
“You mean we ditch this safe house? We just got here.”
“We should be in Little Rock anyway. The Knoxes won’t be looking for us there. Not yet.”
“You have a safe house in Little Rock?”
“No, we’ll stay in a hotel. Somewhere they won’t think to look.”
“Where?” I asked, skeptical.
He reached for the phone in his pocket. “Let me handle it. But don’t unpack anything. We’ll eat, then head out.”
I wasn’t sure he was ready, or that his plan was as solid as he thought, but at least we were finally doing something. And if I were honest, I was grateful I wasn’t doing it alone.