Claiming Honor (Bad Boys of River City Book 3) (9 page)

Looks like I'm making up for lost time. Or meals. "I need food," I mumble, as I wriggle out of his arms.

"How about a steak and salad?" he asks.

"Sounds perfect."

Chapter Eleven

Honor

The week passes in a blur. The police haven’t got anywhere in the investigation into Cox's murder or my stalker, or maybe they're just not talking about it if they have. I haven’t heard anything new on Neil either, though no one seems to have seen him.

I haven’t been out of the house in a week. Well, aside from the back patio. Stir crazy set in days ago. Thank god, it's Saturday and fight night and I get to actually
go
somewhere. Hunter had wanted to cancel but I managed to talk him out of it. It wasn’t that hard. He's feeling cooped up too. Besides, I'll be surrounded by all our friends, perfectly safe.

I'm practically bouncing with the anticipation of leaving the house when Hunter finally jogs down the stairs to join me. His gaze sweeps me from head to toe and though I see appreciation, there's a little disappointment in his voice when he speaks.

"What happened to the skirt?"

I'd forgone the indecently short skirt in favor of jeans. The warehouse would be crowded and not exactly clean. Jeans seemed the better choice, though I hadn’t been able to resist jeweled strappy sandals with a short heel and a shimmery turquoise tank top.

"I thought this would be more appropriate."

His hands settle on my hips and he slows draws me closer. "And here I was hoping you'd dress up for me."

I grip his shoulders and brush my lips over his. "I'll dress up for you later."

I ordered a few things earlier in the week since I had to replace all my lingerie and most of it arrived today. There's a sexy little red number I'm dying to show him. I feel my face heating and he cocks an eyebrow.

"I can't wait for later," he murmurs and kisses.

We're interrupted by the doorbell and I reluctantly back away so he can answer. I'm not surprised to see Lake and Ryder waiting for us. We all pile in the SUV and twenty minutes later reach the warehouse.

Hunter is climbing in the cage when I sense someone behind me. He grips my elbow and something hard pokes my lower back.

"Scream and you're dead, Honor," Neil hisses in my ear. Well, guess we know what happened to the son of a bitch. "I need you to get me into Mark's house then I'll let you go."

I don’t believe that for a minute, but he's already tugging me backwards through the crowd. Away from Hunter. Away from help. There's no way anyone will hear me scream over the crowd. He drags me out the rear entrance before I can react. I start to struggle. Wrenching free of his hold, I spin around and aim my knee for his balls. He twists just in time so I connect with his thigh and he throws a punch. The blow dazes me. I feel blood trickling from a cut over my eyebrow and the whole side of my face hurts. Before I know it he's pushing me into the front seat of an SUV. He zip ties my hands together and then to the door bar.

He gets in the driver's seat and starts rifling through my purse until he finds my phone. After tossing it out the window, he cranks the engine, and squeals out of the parking lot. My heart races and my stomach turns to heavy stone. Hunter could have tracked me with the phone. Without it? If I'm lucky someone will notice I'm missing and alert him. He knows I wouldn’t leave without him. Not willingly at least. All I can do is wait and hope I'll be able to do something when we get to Mark's. I'm attached to the door so it's not like I can jump out at the next stop light.

It's a horrifying ride. This asshole wouldn’t know a traffic law if it hit him in the face. He drives way too fast for the curvy roads leading to Mark's house and barely stops soon enough to keep from crashing in the gate. He pivots and points the gun against my temple.

"What's the code?"

I hesitate too long and his finger twitches on the trigger. "Five eight zero three five," I manage to get out, terrified he'll slip and blow my brains all over the side of the car.

He enters the code and drives through the gate. His speed is reasonable this time, but it only takes seconds before we round the corner and pull up in front of the house. The downstairs lights are on so I know Mark's home. Neil finds my keys in my bag, reaches over me to cut the tie holding me to the door, and drags me across the center console and to the ground. He yanks me to my feet using the ties holding my wrists together. They're so tight my fingers have gone numb.

I stumble on the stairs. He lets go of my wrists, wraps a hand in my hair, and yanks so hard my eyes water. Where the fuck is Hunter? Someone has to have noticed I'm missing by now.

"Which key?" he asks, shoving them at me.

Before I'm forced to choose and betray Mark's trust in me, the door opens. I expect him to look scared but instead he's cold. Furious. He steps aside. Neil shoves me forward and follows us inside.

"Let Honor go, Neil. You got what you wanted from her."

He laughs. "But not from you. She stays until you give me the project you stole."

He grinds the gun against my temple again. The opposite side of my face is a painful throb, blood still trickling a little. Neil doesn’t say a word but he doesn’t seem like the easy going guy I've known for years. He's more like Hunter or Ryder now. He's always been close lipped about his past and despite the situation I'm damned curious. He doesn’t look like a stranger to violence.

"I'll take you to it. This way," Neil says and leads the way to the basement door.

It's not only password protected but requires his thumbprint for access. I've never been down here. All I know is it's where his computer lab is. I've always thought he's paranoid about security but clearly the paranoia isn’t misplaced. When he finishes ending a long string of numbers he presses his thumb to the screen and the metal door swings open to reveal the stairs. Neil pushes me forward so I lead. The gun stays firmly against my head.

There are two walls of computers and monitors mounted on the walls. The other two appear to be all for storage, some with open shelves, some filing cabinets. Neil's expression is downright gleeful as he looks around and he finally loosens his grip in my hair. I look at Mark and he gives me a slight shake of his head.

Finally, Neil releases me, shoves me to the floor against the filing cabinets and turns the gun on Mark. He doesn’t even flinch. Instead he heads to one of the keyboards. I think I hear a noise from upstairs and notice Mark has left the door open as he scrapes a chair across the floor. Hunter must here. Thank God.

Hunter

I'm in the cage, fighting my first opponent, a local kid from my gym who is way out of his league. My blood's pumping and I'm feeling good until I realize I don’t see Honor. She should be right up front with Ryder, Lake, and the others. I dodge a meaty fist coming at my face as I search the crowd and my unease morphs into out and out panic. She isn’t here. Fucking hell. I can't believe she waited until now to sneak out on me. But no, I don’t believe it. We've come too far. She wouldn’t just disappear. I catch Ryder's eye and yell, "Where's Honor?"

He probably can't really hear me over the crowd but he can read my lips. He looks around then shoves his way to the back of the crowd. Fuck. I look at the kid, Billy I think his name is, and mutter an apology before I punch him low in the gut. He doubles over as I catch him under the chin. I'd planned on giving him a decent workout, but I don’t have time now. I climb out of the cage and run outside. Ryder and Lake are waiting for me. Ryder hands me a phone.

"It's Honor's," he says grimly.

Fucking wonderful. So we have no way to trace her. "Call Liam," I say as a text beeps on my phone. Ryder was holding it in the fight and pulls it from his pocket, handing it to me. It's from Mark.

"Neil got her. They're at Mark's," I say. "Let's go."

Lake's already got the SUV and Ryder and I climb in. It takes us half the time to get there than it should, and I read off the gate code in the text. Mark must have seen them coming and texted me as they pulled up the gates. The guy's got cameras everywhere. I'm gonna have to get him out to our place--hell the whole street--to set us up. Maybe I'll wall the whole damned thing in, too, like this place. Hell after this, I'm gonna have a hard time ever letting Honor more than arm's length away again, so we might as well have our own little private compound.

The lights are on and the front door is open. I jump out before Lake even gets the car in park. I hear sirens in the distance but I'm not waiting. I rush up the stairs but slow to a walk when I enter the front door. The lights are on but it's quiet. I hurry through rooms until I come to an open door with stairs leading down.

"Hey," Ryder whispers, stopping me to hand me a pistol. I nod my thanks and start down.

There's a small room at the bottom and a door left cracked open. I hear voices and edge inside, careful the door doesn’t squeak as I widen it. There's a short hall and I stick to the shadows as I walk down it. It opens onto a large room full of computers and file cabinets. I see Neil at a computer. He has Mark and Honor in separate corners on the opposite wall. She has blood on her face and flexi-cuffs on her wrists. Her eyes are wide, wild, when she looks at me and then after a second I see relief.

I start moving to her, putting myself between her and Neil. He doesn’t seem to notice. He's busy at the keyboard. Mark seems to be signaling about something but I have no idea what and frankly, all I care about is getting Honor out. This shit is between Mark and Neil and my girl got dragged into the middle of it. I'm getting her out. Unfortunately, whatever the asshole is doing on the computer ain't going his way. He curses, screams, stands up and whirls around with a gun in his hand. It's pointed at Honor. No fucking way. I lunge at the asshole. I hear Mark and Honor scream but it's too late. The bullet tears into my arm. I hit my knees and Honor bends over me while Mark turns into some ninja super secret agent man. Somehow he crosses the room in a couple of feet, grabs the gun, and turns it on Neil. I see the man's finger tense on the trigger. I'm fucking sure he'd pull it if the police weren't pounding down the stairs. Mark and I are gonna have to have a very long chat later if he expects Honor to keep working for him.

"Hunter," Liam says. "We need to get y'all to the hospital."

I nod. Yeah, of course he's right. Hell, I've got a bullet in my shoulder. I struggle to my feet, Honor helping me. We go upstairs and they pull me in an ambulance. I'm feeling it now, the fight and the shooting, and I don’t really notice when they start shooting me up. The only thing that matters is she stays with me, gripping my hand like a lifeline.

Honor

It's only been a few hours since the worst night of my life. The bullet took a chunk of flesh from Hunter's arm. The ER sewed it up and sent him home a couple of hours later. It took some cajoling, but between me and Mercy, we bullied him into bed. And now I have no idea what to do with myself. I should go to bed, but while I'm worn out, my mind won't shut down.

The bullet hit him in the upper arm. It isn’t life threatening but it scares the hell out of me, how close that could have been. Funny that I've been worried about losing him because of his life and it was mine that got him shot. I've come to one conclusion, though. No matter how scared I was or might be in the future, I'm taking every second I can get with Hunter.

I go upstairs to our bedroom and try to enter quietly. They only kept him in the ER a few hours but the pain killer he took when he got home should have knocked him out by now. He's lying on his back, eyes closed and I ease the door closed behind me. Stopping by the side of the bed, I strip my clothes off and crawl under the blanket on his uninjured side. He cracks one eye open and lifts his arm.

"Come here, baby," he murmurs.

When I do he snuggles me close to his side and presses his lips to my neck. His free hand moves to my stomach and slides up to cup my breast. My heart races and my breath catches in my throat a second. His touch always effects me this way. Then he suddenly stops. He rolls over, ignoring the bandage on his arm, and opens his nightstand drawer. When he turns back to me he's holding up a ring and I think I might start to hyperventilate. He'd talked about marriage just a couple days ago, but I hadn’t really taken it seriously. Definitely not this soon. He takes my left hand before I can even think to dodge him and slips it on. It's gorgeous, a round dark green emerald surrounded by diamonds in a platinum band.

"Are you going to fight me on this, too, Honor?" he asks, voice low and serious. Then he gives me his cockiest smile. "Let me convince you."

Unable to stop myself, I laugh. "You're hurt, remember? You'll have to wait to do your convincing."

This time his smile is sweet and lazy. "So that was a yes?"

"I didn’t hear a question," I counter.

Holding my gaze, he takes my hand and presses my palm over his heart. It's pounding hard and fast. "You feel that?"

I nod.

"It's done that since I met you. Does every time I see or touch you. I hope you'll keep doing it for the rest of our lives. Marry me, Honor."

Damn. As marriage proposals go, this one ain't half bad. It's sure as hell better than the beach conversation.

"I know I'm not the kind of man you expected or wanted, but no one could love you as much as I do."

Okay, he's going to make cry now. Two weeks ago I never would have believed I'd be hearing that declaration. "You love me?"