Chapter Three
I followed her .
With a bogus excuse to Dax about being tired, I’d walked out the front of the bar, then hauled ass to my car and barely caught up to her as she got on a bike. She didn’t even have a fucking vehicle.
I called Luna back as I drove.
He chuckled as he answered. “That didn’t take long.”
“I changed my mind. Can you run that plate number after all?”
“Already ahead of you. It’s stolen.”
Fuck. “Seriously?” Staying a few cars back, I followed her as she went down a side street then cut back out to the street the bar was on.
“Well, the plates are. They belong to a stolen Toyota Camry.”
Damn. “Thanks for looking into it.” Her hand hadn’t been cut bad, I’d seen way worse, but it couldn’t be comfortable riding a damn bike.
“You wanna tell me what this is about?” Luna asked.
No. “Just a hunch.”
“Let me guess. It involves a woman.”
Shit. “Doesn’t it always?”
Luna chuckled. “Fess up, who’s your lucky chica?”
“She’s not mine,” I admitted. “She works for Dax Tyler.”
Luna whistled low. “The homeless brunette that’s got trouble written all over her?”
I frowned. “You know her?”
“Know of her. Met her once—if you could call it that.”
“What happened?”
“It wasn’t what happened, it’s what didn’t happen. Dax had been suspicious when he’d hired her, and he’d asked me to run her social. He suspected it was fake, and it was. When I went to give him the news in person, she was there working. He introduced us, but she didn’t shake my hand or even make eye contact. Like a spooked animal, she backed off and disappeared. I gave Dax the news she wasn’t on the up and up, in fact, I couldn’t even find anyone with her name when I ran a background check. I thought Dax would fire her on the spot, but the idiota only shook his head and said he’d have to pay her under the table.”
I watched her pull into a dump of a motel. “Jesus.”
“So that chica is connected to the stolen plates?”
“I’m not sure, but I’m guessing she is.”
“What happened?”
“I was having a beer with Dax, we heard a crash in the back and we found her holding up that wire shelving unit in the hall as the back door slammed shut. The shelf’s brackets were ripped out of the wall, and when I ran out back, I saw the black Mustang I told you about with the plates.”
“Who was driving?”
“Couldn’t see.” I watched her carry her bike up the outside stairs, then disappear inside room 2B.
“Damn, amigo. You’re home hours and you’re already neck deep in mierda.” Luna chuckled. “You’re going to fit in perfectly at Luna and Associates. Can’t wait to have you on board.”
“I was gonna reup,” I admitted.
Luna read between the lines. “But?”
“My mom’s not great.”
“Something happen? Is that why you’re home?”
“She fell. She’s fine, but the nursing home called me to authorize the treatment plan with the hospital.”
“Shit, man. I’m sorry.”
“Thanks.” It was what it was.
“Well, brother,” Luna said with meaning. “I can’t wait to work with you.”
He couldn’t see me, but I nodded. “I appreciate it. ”
“Feeling’s mutual, amigo. I got more business than I can handle, you’ll be doing me a favor. It’ll be good to be in the trenches with you again.” He half laughed. “But let’s hope it’s minus the long-range targets.”
André Luna was the best sniper I’d ever met. It’d been an honor to be his spotter for two tours. “Hope?” His new business was personal security, and he was located in Miami. “What kind of clients are you protecting?”
This time he laughed in earnest. “All kinds, amigo, all kinds.”
Fucking great. “Can’t wait.”
“Copy that. I gotta run. See you in three months.”
“It’s a date,” I joked.
Luna sobered. “Stay safe, mi hermano.”
“Roger that.” I hung up and stared at the piece of shit hotel, wondering what the hell I was doing.
I should’ve been at the hospital with my mom, but she didn’t recognize me anymore. Fucking dementia. Sixty years old and she didn’t know her own name, let alone that she had a son. Tomorrow she was being transferred back to her nursing home, but to a new wing where they could keep a closer eye on her and rehab her broken arm and collarbone.
I still wasn’t sure how she’d broken them. The staff at her nursing home wasn’t sure either. They’d found her in a bush on the grounds five days ago, unconscious.
The whole ordeal had triggered a call to me, and twenty-seven hours of flights and a pissed off CO later, here I was. Supposedly to clean up the mess, but there was nothing I could do. Mom didn’t know who the hell I was, she didn’t know what had happened to her, and all she wanted was chocolate pudding and her TV tuned to a damn game show.
So I was fucking sitting outside some chick’s motel, trying to talk myself out of knocking on her door.
I had hours before I had to fly back out. I should’ve been fucking, eating a decent meal or sleeping.
But I wasn’t.
I was stewing over a black Mustang with stolen plates and a hot mess of a chick with bruises and trust issues so deep, she was un-fucking-savable.
Screw it.
I took the key from the ignition of my Ford Raptor, and stepped out just as the door to her room opened.
Wearing a backpack, she maneuvered the bike out then carried it down the stairs.
I got back in the truck.
She hit the bottom of the steps, but she didn’t get on her bike. She headed toward the office. Propping her bike outside, she walked in and thirty seconds later she walked back out and got on her bike.
I waited to see which direction she headed, then on a hunch, I got out of my truck and jogged toward the office.
An old man behind the counter greeted me when I walked in. “Welcome to Sea Court. Need a room?”
“No, sir.” I shook my head. “I want to leave a message for the woman in 2B.”
His smile was tired. “Well, you just missed her. She checked out. Sad to see her go. She was a good egg.”
“Thanks.” I was out the door and jogging back to my truck as I scanned the direction she’d gone.
A few minutes later, I caught a glimpse of her as she turned off the main road the hotel was on. I gunned it through a yellow light and drove ahead of her. Cranking the steering wheel, I pulled a few yards in front of her, cutting her off.
She stopped short, and the anger on her face turned to shock when I got out of my truck.
“You could’ve hit me,” she accused.
“Never would’ve happened.” I walked around the truck and reached for her bike. “Come on, you’re coming with me.”
She looked at me like I was crazy. “No, I’m not.”
“You checked out of the hotel, you’re lying about your name, and you don’t seem to have anything except the sack on your back and this bike.” I leveled her with a look. “I’m taking you to dinner. It won’t kill you.”
She looked perplexed for half a second then blurted, “It’s four o’clock.”
I was totally fucking aware of what time it was and how few hours I had left in the States. “I’m hungry, and you’re coming with me.”
“I’m not going to dinner with you,” she protested, but there was zero force behind her tone.
“You got somewhere better to be?” I challenged.
When she didn’t say anything, I urged her off the bike. “Come on. Free food.”
She swung a leg over, and I lifted her old-as-fuck ten speed into the bed of my truck, then I opened the passenger door for her.
She hesitated. “You’re a friend of Dax’s?”
For a second I wasn’t sure why she was asking. She liked Dax? She trusted Dax? A friend of his was a friend of hers? She didn’t trust me? I settled on trust. She was skittish as hell, and I figured she needed reassurance, so I pulled my cell out of my pocket and held it out. “Call him. Let him know you’re with me.”
She eyed the phone. “What’s that gonna do?”
Jesus. “It’s going to alert someone to your whereabouts.”
She didn’t take the phone. “I don’t know where you want to take me.”
In truth, I didn’t give a fuck where I took her, because I didn’t want to just take her for food. I wanted to fuck her. I wanted to spend hours getting personal with her smooth skin and sinking my hands in her hair. I wanted to figure out exactly where my tongue on her body would net me a moan that would break that locked expression she wore.
And if I was being totally fucking honest, I’d admit I felt responsible for her. I shouldn’t, and there was probably a host of psychological bullshit behind the why of it, but I wasn’t gonna analyze shit right now. I was home for mere hours, and I didn’t give a fuck where I took her, as long as it wasn’t back to that shit motel .
I gave her a choice. “Do you want to go out to eat or eat at my place?”
She glanced down at her clothes.
Her gesture and the reason behind it hit harder than seeing my mom in the hospital. “You like burgers?” I tucked my cell back in my pocket.
She shrugged.
“What’s your favorite food?”
“What’s yours?” she countered.
“Anything not an MRE.” I didn’t give a fuck what I ate at this point, anything would taste better than what I’d been eating downrange.
Looking across the street, she didn’t respond.
I followed her gaze, but there wasn’t shit except an old strip mall and some rundown apartment complexes. A black Mustang with stolen plates was nowhere in sight. “Come on, get in the truck. I promise you’re safe with me.”
Inhaling, looking around one more time, she got in.
I closed her door and rounded the front of the vehicle before sliding behind the wheel. Pulling out into traffic, I tried to remember the last time I was on a date. The fact that I couldn’t was either fucking pathetic or a direct reflection on the women I’d chosen to spend time with. Probably both.
I took the corner and remembered there was a decent Italian place near the hamburger joint. “You like Italian over burgers?”
Studiously staring out the window, she shrugged again. “I don’t care.”
I fucking cared. She looked like she could use more than a few decent meals, and I wanted her to eat what she fucking wanted. “This a problem for you? Saying what you like?”
“I like being in air conditioning.”
No shit. “Me too.” Miami was hot, but it was fucking child’s play compared to Afghanistan in the summer.
“You don’t look like you need to worry about air conditioning. ”
She didn’t say it with attitude, but my shoulders still stiffened defensively. “I don’t in Miami. Afghanistan is another story.”
Her gaze cut to me before she quickly looked away. “Is that where you came from?”
“Yeah.” I paused, wondering how much to tell her. Fuck it. It’s not like I had shit to lose with her. “And that’s where I’m going back to.”
“When?”
Tomorrow. “Soon.”
“You’re deployed?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“But you’re in Miami.”
“To see my mom.”
This time she didn’t try to hide the fact she was looking at me. “I don’t understand. The military lets you come home from deployment to see your mom?”
“They do when it’s your only living relative and she lands herself unconscious in the hospital.” And you ask your CO for the favor of a lifetime.
“I’m sorry.”
“Nothing to be sorry about. She’ll recover from her fall, and the late stage Alzheimer’s I’ve had years to come to terms with.”
“Oh.” No intonation, her response was almost too noncommittal.
I let it go. “So burgers or Italian.”
She shrugged noncommittally. “Since you have to go back to Afghanistan, where do you want to eat?”
One hand on the steering wheel, I rubbed my hand over my chin. I needed a shave. “Honestly?”
“Is there any other way to be?”
I refrained from smirking. “I don’t think you want to ask me that question, Brookelyn.”
She shifted in her seat when I said her name.
I read between the lines. “You don’t like being called Brookelyn?”
“It’s my name,” she clipped .
Sure it was. “Collins isn’t my first name.”
“Is that what I’m supposed to call you?”
If I was being honest, I’d never had this bizarre of a conversation with a chick before. I picked up women in bars, usually Dax’s bar when I was on leave, and then we fucked and I went on my way. Stupid flirting, sex talk, empty promises about hooking up again, all of that I’d encountered. But nicknames and food choices and shit about honesty? This was fucking new. “Garrett is my first name. Garrett or Collins, take your pick.”
“I like Garrett.”
“Was that so hard?”
She kept her gaze glued to the window. “Was what hard?”
I glanced at her and smiled. “Telling me what you like.”