Chapter 12
K ane shook the officer’s hand. “Thanks for your help. We’ll be in touch if we think of anything you should know.”
The officer inclined his head to his squad car parked haphazardly behind Kane’s truck. “Give me a minute and I’ll get out of your way.”
Kane nodded as he shot a glance at Beth in his passenger seat. She seemed to be surveying the crowd, no doubt wondering if Chavez or her stalker, if they weren’t one and the same, were out there.
“Degenerates,” he muttered under his breath.
Last night after Nic and Linc had left Beth’s house, he’d lain on her couch and read through the history of the stalker’s communications. The things the fucker said had been so disturbing he’d gone up to her bedroom to check on her.
It wasn’t the first time he’d watched her sleep, and it wouldn’t be the last. He wouldn’t stop watching, protecting Beth with his life until whoever scared her was behind bars or in the ground. He’d been trained to defend and built to kill. He didn’t have a problem with the latter if it was justified.
Edgar had instructed him to only use his weaponry if it was life or death. Well, a gun pointed at Beth didn’t get any more dire than that. If he’d been alone, he could have taken down both assailants without stunning them with a V-Strike, but he wasn’t taking any chances with Beth nearby. He’d hit them with an intensity so low no hint of the powerful laser would show on their skin or in any medical test. It had been enough to get the job done though.
As soon as he’d sensed trouble, he’d thought his passphrase. In an instant, he’d catapulted into phase two. The passphrase not only activated his weaponry but also engaged his communications system. The team at headquarters saw and heard the whole incident go down via the cameras embedded in the comms unit secured to his wrist. As he’d talked with the cops afterward, his arm chimed like a Christmas carol with requests from headquarters to check in.
Keeping one eye on Beth and the other on the now thinning crowd, he spoke over the mind comms. The cybernetic enhancement translated thoughts into electrical impulses. It was damn cool how he and his brothers could communicate with each other and the team back at headquarters without speaking a word or needing an earpiece to hear.
“Just finished with the cops. Getting Beth to a safe place and will check in soon. ”
“Roger that,” Ryan said.
The police officer nodded as he moved his vehicle from behind Kane’s truck.
“About damn time,” Kane muttered. The feeling that the robbery was some sort of sick taunt sat like a steaming heap of horse shit in his gut. He didn’t like the taste, the smell, or the idea.
As he yanked open the door, he caught sight of Beth’s pale face and froze.
The chilling text message Beth received moments ago blurred her vision as she held up her phone for Kane to see.
Welcome home, querida. Excellent choice of wine, although you should be sharing it with me.
Kane read the message and swore. “Did you give this number to anyone? Or make any calls?”
“No. I haven’t even given it to my parents yet. Who did you share it with?”
“Just Scarlett and the team.” His jaw tightened as he threw the truck in reverse. “Fuck.”
“I thought you said this phone was secure.”
“No technology is impenetrable, but whoever sent that message is a damn good hacker.”
The gravity of his words, and gravity itself, jerked Beth sideways. She grabbed the handle above the door and held on as Kane sped out of the parking lot. As soon as she let go, a beep sounded from the roof. She jumped and grabbed the handle again. “What the hell is that?”
Kane held up his arm with a black device strapped to it. “My comms unit is networked with my truck.”
“Status.” Edgar’s voice cracked through the air.
“Secure.” Kane glanced in the rearview mirror but didn’t slow down.
Edgar cleared his throat. “I’m here with Nic, Linc, and Ryan.”
Beth shot a look at Kane. “Tell them not to call Scarlett and Chris.”
“We can hear you,” Nic said. “And we won’t call the lovebirds. ”
She didn’t like the unspoken “Not yet” in his voice.
“Beth got another text from the stalker.” Kane read the message aloud. “Anything on the two liquor store robbers?”
“A couple of addicts. Based on the live feed, they were not professionals.”
“My guess is the stalker watched the show from the sidelines,” Edgar said.
Beth studied the text message as if rereading two sentences would glean new information. “Do we think Chavez fits into any of this?”
“Not sure. We’ll continue to operate under the assumption that the stalker and Chavez are separate threats until we learn more.”
“Agreed. Call me when you have more information.” Kane reached over and took the phone from her hand. “The message isn’t going to change, so stop looking at it.”
She glanced around the car. “Are we still online with headquarters?”
“No.”
“I didn’t see you end the call or even initiate it.” She ran her fingers over the computer screen in the dashboard he hadn’t touched. “How did you do that?”
He winked. Just like that, he flipped the switch from warrior to cowboy.
“VIPER gave me superpowers, remember?”
She waved her finger in a circle. “Scarlett is going to have a lot of explaining to do about these superpowers when she gets home.”
“You could torture the secrets out of me if you don’t want to wait.” He eyed the neckline of her sweater. “I’m sure you could find creative ways to make me crack.”
Beth’s body tingled from the hint of cleavage he stared at down to her toes. If he was trying to distract her from the frightening message with his inappropriate charm, it was working. “If you tell me, you’ll have to kill me, right?”
His playful expression sobered. “I’d die before I let anyone hurt you.”
His statement fanned the irrational fears her mind wouldn’t release.
Nobody is going to die because of me ever again.
Kane made a right turn. As if her life was a movie script, the North Benson Memorial Cemetery came into sight. One by one, she counted the graves she needed to visit before she left town. With her heart as heavy as the gray clouds above, she turned from her lethal past and faced Kane. “I don’t think my stalker is Chavez.”
“I don’t think he is either, but what makes you say that?”
“Chavez is a professional. My stalker didn’t seem very professional at times. Yeah, he had mad technical skills, but if he was a trained killer, he wouldn’t have left me behind when he attacked Danny.”
Kane slowed to maneuver the truck around a patch of ice by the cemetery gates. She stared out the window. Thick, sorrow-laden cobwebs filled her chest.
Kane touched her knee. “Is that where Danny is buried?”
She pointed to the gate. “Over there.”
Kane turned the corner onto North Benson’s main street. “Tell me. Dr. Parker, what do you do in your spare time when you’re not raising money for hospitals or working to cure cancer or opioid addiction?”
She looked away from his profile and those infernal dimples that made her want to kiss him for somehow knowing when she needed to be saved from her thoughts. “Well, I haven’t been involved in the cancer aspect for a while. A cure is a long way off, even though my colleagues are making inroads, but we really could cure opioid addiction. I mean, if the data from this round of trials is any indication…”
As she explained the promising trial data, Kane studied her from the corner of his eye. He not only listened with rapt attention as she buzzed with information and excitement, but asked thoughtful questions, nodded his approval, and said, “holy shit,” and “that’s incredible,” several times. She didn’t pause until he stopped at a traffic light a block from her parents’ house. “What’s so funny? Did I ramble? Scarlett does that when she’s nervous. I do it when I’m excited.”
He shook his head. His grin lit up her heart like the nativity scene in the center of town.
“Then what, do I have something on my face?” She pulled the sun visor down and flipped open the mirror.
He caught her wrist. “You’re perfect.”
She bit her tongue before she responded like a lovestruck teenager parked at the lake with her boyfriend. “Then why are you staring at me?”
He dropped his eyes to his lap and shook his head. When he raised his gaze, admiration shone in their big sky-blue depths.
“I thought Scarlett was the smartest, hardest working woman I’ve ever met, but I was wrong.”
She stared at him for a long heartbeat, then another, suspended in a compliment that shouldn’t feel so intimate. Finally, she looked away, afraid to let his high praise and the sincerity in his words sink too deep into her heart. “Thanks. The good Triple X will do for this world is immeasurable.”
Reaching over, he gently nudged her chin with his fingers and tipped her head up. “Triple X will save many lives, but it’s not the drug I find fascinating.”
The heartfelt, sexy words stalled her heart.
He nudged her chin with his knuckle and dropped his hand. “You still haven’t told me what you do in your spare time. Spill the details.”
His statement, delivered in that sexy twang with a good dose of gritty bossiness, amplified everything she shouldn’t feel for Kane and spiked a desire to give him what he demanded.
“I like to teach my science class to the kids at church because science is exciting, and the kids are fun. I like to go shooting with Scarlett. I like to visit the museums and monuments in DC even though I’ve seen them dozens of times. I like to organize things because it helps me feel like I’m in control, and I love Christmas.”
He smacked his hand over his heart. “Really? I would have never guessed.”
She swatted his arm. “Shut up. Your house had plenty of decorations too.”
“That’s mostly Gran. Tell me more about what you enjoy doing.”
“There’s not much more to tell except I like to go dancing and take martial arts classes.”
He quirked an eyebrow. “Lucky me. I’ll be the only guy at the party with a woman lethal in a fight and on the dance floor.”
“Yeah, you will.” She prayed he didn’t think she was lethal after she told him about her cursed past.