Chapter 7
Seven
Her witnesses were still inside. While fire lit up the night sky and the acrid odor of burning fuel seared her lungs. While neighbors rushed outside, shouting, as the storm raged.
And while she lay in the cold, soaked grass, Asher Morrison’s body pinning her to the ground.
Okay, protecting, not pinning, but it felt a little that way with his arms bracketing her shoulders, his head down against hers, his legs bracing him above her.
Very husband-like.
Except they weren’t married, and she had a job to do.
Destiny and Roger were still inside, in an unsecured house.
“Get off! Get off!” She scrambled out from under Asher as he pushed himself up and away.
Fire roared from the twisted metal that used to be the junky car next door. Heat hit her face even from fifteen feet away. Orange flames reflected in the windows of neighboring houses.
Rain soaked her through to her bones.
“Destiny and Roger—”
“Go!” Asher said. He was already moving toward the car.
Daphne ran for the house, ears ringing from the blast, shaking a little. She’d set the system to auto-rearm after thirty seconds—a habit she’d picked up from Ruthie. She hit the door hard, and the system beeped—thirty seconds to disarm.
Destiny stood in the living room in her silk nightgown, hand pressed to her chest. Face pale in the lamplight. “What’s going on?”
Roger emerged from his bedroom wearing rumpled pajama pants and an old T-shirt. Face pale. “Are we under attack?”
“Bathroom. Now.” Daphne didn’t mean to bark. “Move.” And maybe it was overkill—after all, it seemed like an accident, but…
But she was paid to be paranoid.
“What—” Destiny.
“Now!” She herded them down the hallway to the master bathroom. The one with the reinforced door she’d installed on day two. Steel core wrapped in wood veneer. Deadbolt that could withstand a battering ram.
She pushed them inside. Destiny stumbled slightly on the tile floor. Roger caught her arm.
“Stay here. Don’t open this door for anyone except me or Asher. Understand?”
Destiny nodded. Roger’s dark eyes were wide with fear. He looked young suddenly. Not the forty-year-old entitled witness, but a scared kid.
Daphne closed the door. Heard the deadbolt slide home from inside with a solid thunk. Then she grabbed her tablet from the kitchen counter, where she’d left it charging. The screen glowed bright in the dim house.
She pulled up the security feeds. Four camera angles. Rewind.
9:48 p.m. Nothing. Empty street. Pools of yellow streetlight. Dark houses, the rain just starting.
9:52 p.m. Nothing. A golf cart passed, splashing in puddles.
10:03 p.m. Movement. Small. Low to the ground, near Asher’s car parked in the driveway.
She zoomed in. Enhanced the image. Pixels fractured and reformed.
Something dark. Small animal, maybe. Too grainy to identify clearly.
10:19 p.m. Lighting strike. It blinded the screen.
10:23 p.m. Asher and her on the porch. Then moving toward the car, her on his six.
10:24 p.m. Explosion. The feed went white. Overloaded by the flash. Then it cleared, and there they were, tangled up on the ground.
She replayed the footage, searching for sabotage.
Just the wind. The storm.
Outside, sirens wailed. Multiple trucks. Fire engines. Police cruisers. So much for keeping a low profile. Through the window, she could see lights turning on in houses up and down the street.
Footsteps thundered behind her, and Daphne spun, her weapon up.
Asher stood in the doorway with his hands raised slightly. “It’s me.”
She lowered the gun, her heart hammering. “Don’t sneak up on me like that.”
He gave her a look and came inside.
“Perimeter?”
“Secured. Fire department’s here. Police on the way.” His voice was calm, and for some reason, his steady presence made her breathing slow. Made her hands stop shaking quite so much. “Neighbors are contained. Everyone’s accounted for.”
“Was it an attack?”
“Probably not.”
“Are we compromised?” She gave him a hard look.
He frowned at her. A beat. Then, “I don’t think so, Daph.
I think the tree dented the hood of the car and pushed it down across the top of the battery, then possibly touched the top of the positive battery terminal, which created a short and started the cables on fire at the engine block.
And that fire caught onto some of the oily grease on the side of the engine, and poof.
Catastrophe.” He gestured with his hands at the end.
“That’s an oddly thorough analysis.”
“My dad was a mechanic.”
And then she saw his hands. “You’re burned.”
Asher glanced at his palms like he’d forgotten about them. Red skin. Blisters forming across the fingers. Raw patches where he’d gripped something hot. Not severe but painful. The kind of burns that would hurt for days.
“It’s nothing.”
“That’s not nothing.” She stared at the burns. At the evidence of what he’d done. “Mark. You pulled Mark out.”
“He wasn’t in his car, but the door blew off, knocked him over. I pulled it off him.”
“Is he—”
“Alive. Burned, but the local security is taking care of him.” He moved into the bathroom. His presence filled the small space. Solid. Competent. The kind of person you wanted beside you when everything went wrong. “His wife Renee is with him.”
She swallowed, sat in the chair.
Outside, a fire truck had pulled up, and Asher turned in the doorway, watching. The light pushed against his outline in the door, wide shoulders, his body tense.
And the feeling of him tackling her, protecting her with his body, just swooped in and rushed over her. Held her.
You just can’t help being a hero, can you?
Her throat tightened and she got up. “I probably need to let Destiny and Roger out of the bathroom.”
He looked at her. “Maybe leave them there for a minute.”
He smiled, but maybe he wasn’t kidding, because he let out a long breath. “I should go talk to the cops.”
She nodded, but still stood there, unmoving.
“It wasn’t an attack, Daphne,” he said. “Not the syndicate. Not Draven Frost sending a message.”
Yeah. Just a storm and bad timing and a neighbor in the wrong place.
But if it was an attack—if Draven had found them—why Mark’s car and not theirs? Why a neighbor’s vehicle instead of the witnesses they were protecting?
“Should we move?” she asked.
“Not yet.”
“Not yet?” She stared at him. At his gray-green eyes, the calm in them despite the burns and the smoke and the explosion. “Asher, if Draven knows where we are—”
“He doesn’t.” Asher’s voice stayed level. Certain. Absolutely sure.
A beat fell between them. She frowned.
“Trust me. If Draven knew, it wouldn’t be a car bomb in the middle of the night. It would be clean. Professional. And he’d get the job done.”
Right.
“We stay,” Asher said from the doorway. “For now. We’re still safe here.”
Daphne wanted to argue. Wanted to demand that they pack up immediately and disappear into the night.
But looking at Asher—at his burned hands and his steady gaze and his absolute certainty—she found herself nodding.
His presence did that. Made her feel safer than she should. Made her trust decisions she wouldn’t normally trust. Made her believe that as long as he was standing there, everything would be okay.
“Okay,” she heard herself say.
He opened the door. Paused. Looked back at her with something softer in his expression. “We’re a good team,” he said.
She blinked at that, weirdly waiting for a “honey dumpling” at the end of his sentence.
Instead, he left her with a wink and headed outside.
And what was she supposed to do with that?
Daphne drew in a deep breath, then headed into the master and knocked on the reinforced door. “It’s me. You can come out.”
The deadbolt slid back with a metallic click.
Destiny emerged first. “What happened?”
“The storm brought down a tree on the neighbor’s car. It caused a fire.”
“Was anyone hurt?”
“Mark Sullivan. He’s going to the hospital. He’ll be okay.”
Destiny’s hand went to her chest, diamonds on her wedding ring catching the light. “That poor man. And Renee—she must be terrified.”
“She’s with him. He’ll be fine.”
Roger stepped out, dark eyes still wide. “Are we safe?”
“Yes.”
“You’re sure? Because if Draven—”
“Draven doesn’t know where you are. This was an accident. Bad luck. Wrong place. That’s all.”
Please let her not be wrong.
“Go to bed. Both of you. I’ll be watching the monitors all night. Nothing’s getting past me.”
Destiny nodded slowly. Touched Daphne’s arm briefly. “Thank you.”
Daphne and Roger walked out of the master, and Destiny closed the door behind them.
Roger hesitated in the doorway of his room. “Thank you. For—” He gestured vaguely toward the bathroom. Toward safety. Toward protection. “For keeping us safe.”
“That’s the job.”
He disappeared into his room.
She headed upstairs, her clothing soaked through. Found a warm sweatshirt, dry clothes, and changed in the upstairs bathroom.
She grabbed her tablet and headed back downstairs.
Nearly palmed her gun again when she found Patterson standing in the living room. He stood, hands in the pockets of his dark suit, his face pinched.
“What are you—”
“Sorry, Daphne. We let ourselves in.” This from Michael Martinelli, who came down the hall. He wore a pair of jeans, a jacket still wet with rain.
Dani Kim came in from the garage just then, hanging up her phone. “No answer.” She wore her black tactical jacket zipped halfway, gun visible at her hip.
“Where’s Asher?”
“You tell us,” Patterson said.
She stared at him. “He’s outside, talking to the cops.”
“Yeah, no,” Dani said. “I called his phone—went to voicemail.”
“Are you sure?” Outside, the storm still raged. “Maybe he’s checking the perimeter. Securing the house.”
“The perimeter’s secure,” Michael said. “I just did a full sweep with the fire department. Didn’t see him anywhere.”
She had…nothing. “That doesn’t make sense.” And yeah, deep in her gut, two ideas flashed.
Reporting in to Draven.
Naw…but her chest tightened because the other option was…
He’d been taken.
She looked at Patterson. “What if he was grabbed by Draven?”
Patterson raised an eyebrow.