The figure stands in the dark, a man of about six feet with a gun in one hand. He’s dressed head to toe in black, his hood pulled up, his face hidden in the shadows. He quickly raises the gun and aims it at me.
“You better kill me with one shot,” I snarl.
“Don’t move,” he says, his gaze flitting around as I begin to take slow steps forward.
“Because if you don’t,” I go on, ignoring him, “I’m going to send you straight to hell. Only a coward attacks a man from behind.”
“I said don’t move,” he whines, waving the gun around like an amateur like he only picked up a firearm for the first time this morning.
I keep stalking forward, my instincts primed.
But the usual calm that falls over me before battle doesn’t come.
Instead, a thought strikes me.
If he shoots me, he’ll be able to get to Kat. She lives here. What if he gets his hands on her? Who is he, the arsonist? What the fuck is going on?
Thoughts of Kat stop me from going full brute, from throwing my body at him and letting what’ll happen, happen, and the thought hits me that perhaps this is why I always stayed single in the SEALs.
So I didn’t have to care about my own life.
“Fuck,” he grunts, turning and sprinting toward an alleyway.
I duck my head and run after him, but he’s as quick as a rat, darting down the alleyway and then to the other end, where a car is waiting. I almost get my hand on his arm, but then he slides snakelike into the car and it screeches away, the sound of its tires seeming incredibly loud in the night.
Fuck.
I take out my cellphone immediately and call Jase, jogging back toward Kat’s apartment building.
“Boss?”
“I need men in Downtown right now,” I growl. “I was just jumped and I need a personal security detail to move an asset somewhere safe.”
It’s easier that way, calling Kat an asset.
Because explaining to my VP what she really means to me would take far more time than we have.
Her safety is all that matters now.
This motherfucker, whoever he is, he knows where she lives.
She’s at risk.
And I’d die before I let anything happen to her.
I press her apartment buzzer.Chapter EightKatI almost let out a scream when my apartment buzzer goes off, so rare is the sound. The only other time I recall it being pressed was the one time I had takeout food delivered. That was when I attained my dog-training certificate – a little solo celebration – and ever since then, it’s been silent.
I approach it slowly, the ever-present possibility that it could be Omar niggling at the edge of my consciousness. I press the intercom button and let out a shaky breath.
“Hello?” I say.
“It’s me.”
His voice is gruff and crackly and brimming with even more intensity over the intercom.
He doesn’t have to tell me who me is.
I’d recognize that voice anywhere.
Which is crazy considering we only met yesterday.
“Okay,” I mutter.
I can hear his smirk.
This fucking woman, I imagine him thinking. Is she slow as well as inexperienced?
“Let me up, Kat,” he says.
“Why?” I say, hiding behind a shield of sassiness. “Unless it’s something to do with training Scrappy, I think I might just leave you out—”
“Your life could be in danger,” he growls. “Let me up.”
Omar. It’s Omar. He’s finally caught up with me.
“Okay,” I whisper, the seriousness of his words barreling into me.
And – I have to be honest with myself – there’s a tickling of desire that swarms into a haze of phantom sensations when I think about being in the same room as Colton again. My body has been reliving the paroxysms of euphoria every second of every minute since I left his mansion, every rumble of the bus causing shivers to course crazily through me.
I press the button to let him up and then pace around my tiny apartment, the whole thing just one room with a bed on one side, a small dresser slash television unit, and then a kitchen off in the corner. The only separate room is the bathroom, and that is more like a closet, barely deserving the title.
I bundle a bunch of dirty clothes into the closet bathroom and then hear his knock at the door, a drumming that seems to cause everything to tremble.
Huff and puff and blow this shithole down.
“Coming,” I call.
I approach the door, realizing at the last moment that I’m still wearing the tank top and shorts from training earlier today, a little stinky from the bus and the anxiety. But it’s too late now. Plus my life is in danger, and Colton didn’t sound like he was joking when he said that. There are more important things to worry about than a nonstarter romance and the fact I led him on.