Chapter Five
Rick
Rick jumped back as Kaylee swung her left foot up, dangerously close to his nuts. After the hell she’d put him through and two years of frustration since, there was no way he was letting her slaughter the family jewels.
“Uh-uh. Be nice, Kaylee. You’re caught.”
Satisfaction coursed through him as he held her fast against him, finally capturing his prey. Her black ball cap fell off as she struggled, and her long hair tumbled loose. “Let me go!”
The high, desperate tremble in her usual throaty tone would have stirred sympathy in him once upon a time. Not now, though. Kaylee Taylor was very talented at manipulating emotions. She could have won an Oscar for the way she played him years ago.
Not Taylor anymore. Kringle.
Her new last name. A Christmas-themed last name for a woman living in a town called Holiday. Fitting. He’d assumed when she’d left him writhing on the bathroom floor and disappeared into thin air that she might have changed her identity, but he hadn’t expected her to keep her first name the same.
Her surname wasn’t the only thing she’d changed.
Her blond hair had been dyed chocolate brown, and she’d gained some weight, deliciously filling out the subtle curves she’d had at twenty-one.
Both looked really good on her, but he wasn’t going to admit that out loud.
When she disappeared on him, he’d been naive, taken in by her big, sad eyes and the feelings she’d brought out in him, making him want to protect her. To believe her and trust her.
Rick only needed to be burned once to get the message. He couldn’t trust anyone, especially a scared witness.
“Let you go? Yeah, that’s never going to happen. You and I are going to be stuck like glue until we get back to California.”
He’d taken three weeks of vacation and told his boss, Scott, that he was going to use the personal time to get his head on straight.
Maybe visit his family, which was a load of bullshit.
Although he preferred to keep his personal life separate from his professional one, Scott knew Rick hadn’t gone home to see his family in years.
The holidays meant nothing to him, not since he was a little kid, before his abuela died.
Still, he’d let his boss think he was headed south for Christmas so he could finally see justice served.
“You can’t make me testify,” Kaylee argued, jerking against his grip and nearly throwing him off balance. She was stronger now, and as he swung her around to face him, she snapped, “I have rights.”
Rick snorted. “Yeah? Did you pay taxes recently? How about fraud? Identity theft? Face it, you need me to avoid getting slapped with a slew of charges, and I’m willing to help as long as you do what’s right.
” Her hazel eyes dropped to the ground, and he knew he’d made his point.
“Don’t push me, Kaylee, or you’ll spend the rest of your twenties in a concrete cell. ”
When Kaylee’s heart-shaped face rose once more, tears coursed down her cheeks. “Please. Don’t make me do this.”
Rick ignored the small pinch in his chest, the part of him that was still drawn to her. The sliver of his heart that cared what happened to Kaylee.
The first time he’d met Kaylee was in a fleabag motel. He’d been an agent for less than a year, so being a glorified babysitter for a witness hadn’t been a surprise. He’d made several assumptions before he’d walked through the door of that room, but all of them had been off the mark.
Sitting on the edge of the bed was a young blond woman, her long hair disheveled.
Wide eyes, the color of honey and evergreen trees, swung toward him.
Her cheeks were streaked with black from running mascara, and her mauve lipstick was smudged down her chin.
An oversized T-shirt hung off her thin shoulders, and the black sweats she wore covered her feet.
“Who are you?” she’d asked, her voice shaking.
“Special Agent Enrique Diaz.” He’d knelt in front of her and covered her clasped hands. “You can call me Rick.”
He’d been so naive. It was the only reason he’d let her snow him. Whatever she’d slipped into his food or drink had him glued to the toilet for hours, and when he’d finally been able to tear himself away, she was gone. There was no way he was taking any chances again. And as for letting her go?
Wasn’t going to happen again. There was too much at stake.
“You can come in as a witness or a criminal. Only one gets you protection.”
“Right,” she scoffed. “Like I’d really trust any cop with my life. After everything that happened, would you actually charge me for protecting myself?”
Rick had a feeling that when Kaylee found out her best friend’s boyfriend was an undercover agent, it shook her faith in law enforcement.
Wyatt’s assignment, posing as a preppy frat boy in order to get in with the Pit Vipers Motorcycle Club’s drug operation, shouldn’t have been complicated, but he’d gotten greedy.
Not only did he steal money from Ansel Atkinson, but he’d fallen in love with Elasia.
And love made you do stupid things, like slip up and get your girlfriend killed.
Or put her friend in the path of a psychopath.
The Pit Vipers Motorcycle Club was set up within California’s Murder Mountain territory, and their leader, Ansel Atkinson, wasn’t one to fuck around with.
The FBI had been watching them for years, slowly building a case, but they needed evidence.
Witnesses, something that was hard to find.
Although they hadn’t been able to prove it, the rumor around Klinesville, California, was that Ansel and the Pit Vipers were known for making people who crossed them disappear.
Even the wiretaps they had from Wyatt were circumstantial at best, and once Wyatt’s skimming was introduced, his credibility flew right out the window.
It was hard to imagine what possessed Wyatt to take Elasia and Kaylee with him to the bar. Maybe he’d thought the two of them would add to his cover, or he’d wanted to spend all his time with Elasia and gotten cocky, thinking he was too indispensable to the Pit Vipers as a dealer to be in danger.
Unfortunately, Wyatt’s mistake hadn’t just come back to bite him in the ass, but his girlfriend, too. He should have realized how dangerous it was to piss off a den of snakes.
Which was why getting Kaylee to agree to come back with Rick to testify was so important.
They were so close to having what they needed to bring in Ansel and the rest of his crew so they wouldn’t be able to hurt anyone else.
Kaylee’s firsthand account of the murders of her friend and a federal agent would be the cherry on top.
“It’s not a negotiation anymore, Kaylee,” he said, gripping her wrist in his hand. “Now, are we going to do this the easy way or the hard—”
A jolt of electricity hit him in the middle of his back, and the last thing he saw before he blacked out was the ground coming up to meet him.