Deep Trouble: A MacKenzie Family Novella (The MacKenzie Family) (6 page)

Although she looked way less than thrilled about it, Kylie did as he asked. She stood close enough for him to feel her flinch at both shots he fired into her iPhone, but he had to hand it to her. Rather than get uppity about the ruined tech or complain about lost contacts the way some people did, she simply waited for him to make sure the GPS had been effectively disabled.

Two seconds later, the deed was done, and twenty more had them back in the Challenger, driving away from the blasted bits that used to be Kylie’s cell phone. Devon refocused on the road, figuring he had another hour, maybe two before they’d have to stop for gas, food, and a little shuteye.

“So private security. That must keep you pretty busy,” Kylie said, and he steeled himself against the curiosity glinting in her eyes. The last thing he needed was to get personal with her, despite the stupid what’s-your-favorite-dinner crap he’d pulled earlier.

“Uh huh.”

She waited out the silence for a minute, then two. “Have you been out of the Army for three years like Kellan?”

“Mmm hmm.”

Another pause, but still, she didn’t let up. “And you’ve been doing security the whole time?”

“Yup.”

Kylie arched a dark brow, turning to peg him with a high-level, no-bullshit stare. “Are you going to be this chatty the whole time we’re stuck together? Because really, all these details are wearing me right out.”

Whether it was her sassy mouth or his adrenaline finally letting down after being shot at a handful of hours ago, Devon couldn’t be sure. But his words launched out before he could tamp down the urge to give them air time.

“I’m thirty-one years old, and I’ve lived pretty much all over the map. I went into the Army right after high school, because it was either that or follow in my old man’s footsteps as a career criminal. Became a Ranger three years later, took a few strolls through Iraq and Afghanistan, and now I’m back here stateside, freelancing security gigs, most of them with a private company run by my brother-in-law’s family. Were there any other details you wanted, or did I hit the highlights for you?”

Her wide-eyed expression combined with her stunned silence to punch holes in Devon’s gut, and Jesus Christ, he was an
ass
.

And he hadn’t even let loose the part where he’d foolishly let himself get taken hostage on an ambush, not to mention how her brother had risked his life to save Devon’s about three nanoseconds before some scumbag insurgent buried a bullet in both of their gray matter.

Devon opened his mouth for a sloppy retraction, but Kylie beat him to the one-two. “No, that’s pretty good, actually.”

“What about you?” he asked, even as his better judgment howled at him to stand down and shut up. But at least talking about her would be better than opening his yap about the not-so-good old days.

“Me? I’m pretty much an open book, I guess. Kellan and I don’t have much by way of family, but he’s six years older than me, so he does the protective thing a lot.”

Devon’s brows climbed upward. “You’re only twenty-five?”

Kellan had never mentioned the age gap between him and Kylie, and she was tenacious enough that Devon never would’ve guessed it was more than a year or two.

“Yeah, but I’ve been pretty much on my own since Kellan went into the Army. After high school, I did a semester at community college, took some cooking classes.” She shrugged, although the rise and fall of her shoulders was just a little too stiff to carry genuine nonchalance. “I like to cook, but jobs in the front of the house are easier to get, so I just bounced around waiting tables and tending bar. That kind of thing.”

“Why stick to waiting tables if what you really want is to be in the kitchen?” It was a flyer, but Kylie’s chin lifted ever so slightly, and bingo. Devon hit pay dirt.

“Money, mostly. I never had enough to go to culinary school,” she murmured, although her tone said that whatever made up the rest of the reason was responsible for the tension suddenly triple-knotting her muscles against the passenger seat. “Anyway, that’s why I left California last year. I had a bad breakup, lost my job. I wasn’t going to find another one if I stuck around, not to mention having nothing to stick around for. So I headed as far east as I could until I ran out of cash, and that’s how I ended up in Montana.”

Devon’s head buzzed with so many questions that choosing one to put to words was a tall order. “California’s huge. Losing your job sucks, but how is it that you couldn’t find another one nearby?” There had to be hundreds of restaurant gigs, even in Cali’s smaller cities and towns.

Kylie laughed, although there was zero humor in the soft huff of her breath. “Let’s just say when you’re a better cook than your ‘chef’ boyfriend”—she paused to pin the word with an air quote/eye roll combo—“and your interview for the open kitchen position at the café where you both work puts that fact on display? Egos get bruised like summer fruit.”

“That explains the breakup.” Well, that and the fact that her ex sounded like a gold star member of the Dickhead of the Month club. “But if you were a better cook, how come you didn’t get the job?” Devon asked.

“Because my ex was better in the bedroom than the kitchen. He seduced the restaurant manager and convinced her I was power hungry and that I’d be a tyrant in the kitchen. She fired me, and restaurant circles are more like rumor mills. My resume was pretty much Swiss cheese at that point anyway, so…”

“You took off.” Something else she’d said tugged at the back of Devon’s mind, and before he could haul the question back, he asked, “You said you got as far as Montana. Where were you headed?”

Kylie paused, although her expression remained tough. “I haven’t been to the East Coast in a while. I thought it might be cool to go see Kellan.”

“See him? Or live in NC?”

“Whichever,” she said, but the word came out with way less indifference than he’d bet she intended to stick to it.

“Why didn’t you tell your brother you wanted to move to North Carolina?” Hell, he’d bet Kellan would’ve moved a mountain range to bring Kylie closer to him if he’d known that was what she wanted. Devon would do the same for his own sister Cat in a nanosecond.

“Because I’m a big girl,” she said, just as matter-of-factly as if she were telling him she had blue eyes or that the earth was round and not flat as a two-by-four. “I was stuck in California of my own doing, and that’s exactly how I was going to get out. I might move around a bunch, and sometimes I fly by the seat of my pants, but I can still take care of myself.” Her gaze shot out the window as she tacked on, “Most of the time, anyway.”

Devon opened his mouth to tell her she didn’t have to be so tough. The last thing either of them needed was for her to pull another stunt like the Maglite stickup she’d tried last night in the motel parking lot, and just because Kylie was fierce didn’t mean she was bulletproof. But then she turned to grab her sunglasses out of her purse, and the look on her face slapped him right in the solar plexus.

She might rather stick a pin in her eye than admit it, but she was barely hanging on. Which meant they needed to stop and get some supplies and shuteye ASAP.

Because not only had Devon been in those exact same shoes four years ago, but if he didn’t regroup and get his shit together, he was liable to do something galacticly stupid.

Like tell Kylie he knew just how she felt.

Chapter Five

Kylie split her gaze between the navy blue baseball hat in her lap and the mom-and-pop drugstore to her right, unsure which one she liked less. The hat Devon had pulled out of his glove box was sure to be an obvious cover-up, and that was
if
she could actually cram all her hair under the thing. Then again, the store was a fixed place, an unknown place, and despite the cheerily painted sign and the trio of wide, sparkling windows gracing the front, Kylie knew all too well that the worst sort of bad might still be lurking inside.

“We’re going to be fine,” Devon said, sliding his gun into the holster beneath his rib cage before covering it seamlessly with his leather jacket. “Just keep your eyes open and try to relax, okay?”

She bit back the joyless laugh welling in her throat. “Tropical beaches are relaxing, Devon. This”—she paused to flick her wrist at the storefront—“is my own monogrammed version of hell.”

“I get it,” he said, and funny, he actually looked like he did. “I know the whole situation is intense. But the more at ease you look, the less likely we are to attract attention. From anyone.”

Kylie twisted her hair behind her nape, awkwardly wrangling the baseball hat over the thick knot and adjusting the brim. “Then how come we didn’t go to the Walmart a couple exits back?” It had been the first and only sign of major civilization since they’d hit the road. “Wouldn’t blending in there have been easier?”

“Maybe. But a more crowded place has a lot of moving parts that are hard to control, not to mention security feeds we’d be sure to show up on. Getting in and out of a place like this will take us ten minutes, tops, with a whole lot less visibility to boot.”

She followed his lead and got out of the car, sending covert glances around the nearly empty parking lot. Despite Devon’s powerful presence barely two feet from her dance space and the fact that he probably had enough weaponry on him to protect a small nation, Kylie’s heart still took up residence in her windpipe. Sweat beaded beneath the ill-fitting baseball hat, her palms growing clammy enough to slip off the handle of the drugstore’s front door.

“Everything’s fine,” Devon murmured, so close to her ear that his breath tickled her neck. “Just remember your spaghetti dinner, okay?”

She nodded, forcing herself to try on a shaky smile. “With wine.”

“Now we’re talkin’.”

He opened the door just as easy as you please to usher her inside, and okay. Okay, yeah, this wasn’t so bad. At least as far as running for your life went, anyway.

Kylie picked up a plastic basket, looping the handles over her arm. Scanning the store’s aisles, she was relieved to see the place sparsely populated at best, and definitely not with anyone who looked remotely frightening.

She released the breath that had been spackled to her lungs. “I only need a few things.”

“Okay,” Devon said. Although his stare traveled over every inch of the store, he kept to the whole white-on-rice routine as she walked down the first aisle, her skin prickling with awareness at how closely he shadowed her every move.

“Don’t you need to get some things too?” she asked, sliding a toothbrush and a travel-sized tube of toothpaste from the shelf.

“One or two.”

Kylie waited out the dozen or so heartbeats of silence between them before finally sending a pointed look down the aisle. “Did you want to go do that while I finish up?”

“I’ll wait.”

He rocked back on the heels of his boots to look at her like nothing doing, and something inside her chest snapped. Kylie wasn’t stupid—she got how dangerous her situation was right now, and how much worse it could be. But the aisles were low enough to make the entire store visible, and the whole place was four, maybe five rows, max. She didn’t want to run free, but she did want to get the hell out of there as fast as humanly possible. Other than a young woman with a baby on her hip and the store clerk, who was eighty if he was a day, the store was empty; plus, she wasn’t completely soft. Was a handful of paces to choose her deodorant really too much to ask when the place was obviously safe and sound?

Kylie dropped her voice to a whisper, tucking back a strand of hair that had escaped the lopsided perch of her hat. “You said you need to keep eyes on me, right?”

“Kylie—”

“It’s fifteen feet, Devon. And it’ll cut our time in half.”

He swiveled a gaze around the store, a muscle tightening over the smooth angle of his jawline. “We’re leaving in two minutes. Don’t dawdle.”

His footsteps sounded off against the faded linoleum as he moved to the next aisle. Even though he was still in Kylie’s direct line of sight, the space let her breathe. She grabbed some toiletries, pausing for only a second in the hair care section before aiming herself at the rack of clothing by the far wall. The selection was pretty sparse—just a handful of touristy T-shirts and some basic supplies, but she managed to score a package of utilitarian cotton panties and some men’s tank top undershirts, along with a hoodie.

On her way back to Devon, Kylie plucked a king-sized Snickers bar from the end cap display, tossing it on top of the supplies in her basket. After witnessing a murder, being chased by a vicious criminal, and watching her cell phone get blown into a billion sky-high pieces, really, she deserved a little slice of indulgence. Especially since Xavier Fagan was still out there, and Kylie had no doubt he’d do whatever was necessary to hunt her down and put a bullet in her skull for what she’d seen.

On second thought, she’d earned a hell of a lot more than a candy bar, even if Snickers
was
her favorite. Like a nice long bubble bath, with an hour-long massage on top.

Add a couple of sheet-ripping orgasms to the list, and you’ve got yourself a party, sweetheart
.

“Did you find everything you needed?” Devon asked, appearing from the other side of the brightly colored candy display, and Kylie nearly blushed herself into spontaneous combustion.

“Uh huh,” she managed to choke out, holding up the basket and following him to the register. One blond brow went up as he caught sight of the Snickers bar, but Devon remained thankfully quiet as they paid for their items and headed back to the car.

“There’s a motel around the corner. Looks like a good place to get some rest.”

“Okay.” Kylie pulled off the baseball hat, what little hair that had remained in place spilling sloppily over her shoulders. She might feel too wired to close her eyes, and the shot of sexy impulse that had just unexpectedly popped her in the sternum hadn’t helped to calm her, but still. A nice, hot shower and a place to stay hidden sounded like heaven right now.

Except that she had to go into yet another public place in order to get them, and God, would this stupid panic ever ease up?