She broke the kiss. Laid her cheek against his chest. Unsure of what he should say, how he could tell her, his mind went blank. He blurted out the first thing that came to mind.
“Sorry I wasn’t here sooner.”
She tilted her face up. “Yeah, your timing could have been better.” She grinned at him.
He wiped her bloodied nose clean with his thumb. Pain flashed in her eyes.
“Claire, I’m so sorry. I should have—”
“Shh.” She dusted his bruised face with a flutter of small kisses. “We’re quite the pair.”
He grinned down at her. He’d talk to her later, find a way to get her to move to Denver. Now that he’d found her, he wasn’t leaving Dry Creek without her. He glanced down at the unconscious man at their feet.
“We’ve gotta call the cops.”
Claire grabbed the phone and flash drive from where the goon had dropped them. A deep crack split the cellphone’s screen and the buttons didn’t respond to her fingers. “It’s not working.”
“Come on, our phones are inside.”
She wavered a bit. He clasped her hand in his and they hurried to the restaurant. Energy coursed through his body as he planned how to talk Claire into leaving her hometown.
As they mounted the steps, a figure emerged from the shadows. “It seems your services are no longer required, Mr. Warrick.”
A sense of inevitability settled in Jake’s stomach. This case had so many twist and turns, this last one just seemed par for the course. Claire looked up at him. Shock and confusion etched on her pretty but bruised face.
“Claire, let me introduce you to Kendall’s father. This man pointing a Smith and Wesson at us is Charles Burlington.”
The synapses in Claire’s brain shuttered to a stop. She gaped at Charles Burlington. Why did Kendall’s father have a gun?
He wore a dark blue suit. Even in the dim light, she could tell the expensive fabric had been tailored to his lean frame. A red tie twisted into a Windsor knot sat snug against his throat. His crisp white shirt showed nary a wrinkle.
His conservative outfit stood in sharp contrast to the matte-black handgun he pointed at them. She couldn’t wrap her mind around it.
“Ms. Layton, I presume?” His tone had an Ivy League snobbish quality to it that spoke of boarding school and ski homes in Vail.
Her gaze traveled up to his face. Strands of gray streaked through his dark brown hair and hinted at his age, but his forehead remained suspiciously unlined. His lips compressed to form a hard line. Her heart stopped when she looked into his eyes. A determined finality shone out from them.
Her mouth went dry. She fought to make her tongue function. “Y…yes.”
“When Kendall informed her mother that she was giving that drug addict three million dollars of my money, we both knew it was only a matter of time. But Kendall was her father’s daughter. I assumed it would end badly for her.”
The world zoomed in and out of focus. She wanted to puke.
“You assumed your own daughter would get killed and did nothing to stop it?” Barely restrained outrage trembled in Jake’s voice.
“I most certainly did not.” Burlington’s face darkened. “She was adopted.”
Revulsion spread through Claire’s body like a heat wave. The cold-blooded bastard.
She wanted to tear him apart limb from limb but Jake tugged her closer to his strong bulk.
“Gun.” His hushed tone brought her attention back to the problem at hand.
Unable to claw out Burlington’s eyes, she seethed, “You’re a real piece of shit, Burlington.”
“Women should not use such vulgar language. It is unbecoming of your gender.”
“Want me to shut her up?”