Deep Trouble: A MacKenzie Family Novella (The MacKenzie Family) (9 page)

His shoulders tightened just a fraction beneath the black cotton of his T-shirt, but the look on his face betrayed nothing. “Of course. I’ll do whatever’s necessary to keep you safe.”

“I know,” Kylie said, her answer both automatic and truthful. “That’s not what I mean, though. I want to make sure we’re good. Me and you.”

For a minute, then two, Devon stood completely quiet in front of her. But then he surprised the hell out of her with, “I owe your brother a lot, Kylie. I wanted this”—he broke off to meet her stare, gesturing between them with one hand—“I want it still. But there’s more to it than me and you.”

“There isn’t.” Kylie’s heart squeezed, but she closed the space between them with certainty. “Right now, this is
only
me and you.”

He opened his mouth—to argue if his hard-edged expression was any indication—but she cupped her hands around his face, cutting him off before he could start.

“Look, I don’t have a crystal ball. I don’t know what will happen between us, and I get that you and Kellan are close. But that doesn’t mean I don’t want this in the here and now. So what do you say we just keep moving across the country and take things as they come without feeling guilty?”

After a beat, one corner of Devon’s mouth lifted into a half-smile. “You get what you want a lot, don’t you?”

“Yes,” Kylie answered without a trace of apology.

“Guess arguing with you would be kind of pointless, then,” Devon said, pressing his forehead against hers for a brief second before lowering his lips for an equally quick kiss.

“Mmm hmm.” Her belly squeezed with warmth and goodness and about forty other things as she kissed him back. But they had enough to worry about with Fagan just waiting for his chance to pounce. Complicating things between them? Yeah, that just seemed stupid.

“Now why don’t you finish getting your stuff packed up while I grab a couple of waters from the vending machine?” Kylie asked. “Then we can get back on the road and take a dent out of some of this trip.”

“We’ll hit the vending machine together on the way out,” Devon challenged, but Kylie had already grabbed a couple of dollar bills from her purse.

“It’s literally ten feet from our front door. Plus, faster is better, remember?”

“Fast might be good, but safe is better.” Devon took a nasty-looking knife out of the nightstand drawer, tucking it into the side pocket of his duffel as easily as if the thing were a butter knife going into a drawer. “I don’t want you out of my sight.”

A soft laugh pushed past Kylie’s lips. “Everything worked out just fine when we did divide and conquer at the convenience store earlier.”

“That was a mistake.” His knuckles turned white over the nylon strap in his grasp, his spine unfolding into a rigid line. “I should never have let it happen. I won’t fuck up like that again.”

Kylie had closed the space between them before she even registered her brain’s command to move. “Hey. We were barely separated in that mini-mart, and technically, you could see me the whole time. Plus, the whole thing went without a hitch. You’re being a little hard on yourself, don’t you think?”

“I think I’m not hard on myself nearly enough.”

“What happened to you on your last tour in Afghanistan, Devon?”

Her cheeks burned at the brash question that had flown from her mouth, but there was no sense trying to take it back. What’s more, she didn’t want to. He hadn’t exactly been a chatty guy when she’d met him five years ago, sure, but the titanium intensity and all of these scalpel-sharp edges were definitely new acquisitions.

Whatever had gone down out there in the desert had changed him. Not a little.

Devon opened his mouth, and for a second, Kylie thought he’d actually answer. But then the flash of emotion disappeared from his amber stare, and all at once, he was as unreadable as ancient Greek.

“Nothing. Look”—he shifted back to run a hand over his crew cut—“Fagan’s dangerous as hell, and the thought of him trying to hurt you makes me want to kick the shit out of something. So until his ass is in a maximum security lockup where it belongs, you’re going to have to get used to being stuck with me, okay?”

“Okay.”

“What?” Devon’s brows climbed in undisguised shock, but Kylie was done fighting the reality of her situation.

Xavier Fagan wanted her dead, and despite Devon’s fierce demeanor and arm’s length attitude, she trusted him one hundred percent to keep that from happening.

“If going together is the safest plan, then that’s what we’ll do,” she said. Taking a step back, she gave him enough space to finish getting his things into the duffel bag, not even flinching as he slid his gun into the holster beneath his arm. Devon opened the curtains, scanning the mostly-empty parking lot with care before moving to open the door.

“Come on,” he said, his voice as soft as the rest of him was tough. “Let’s get you closer to that spaghetti dinner.”

“Now that sounds like a plan.” Kylie pressed her smile between her lips, squaring her shoulders beneath her white cotton tank top. Popping her aviator sunglasses over her face, she followed Devon’s lead to the vending machine, relieved to see that her sly glances around the parking lot revealed nothing suspicious. She took the two bottles of water he passed in her direction, turning to make her way to the car so they could get the hell out of Dodge…

And ran smack into the motel manager.

“Oh!” Kylie exclaimed, her pulse going from zero to six thousand as she dropped one of the water bottles to the dingy pavement in surprise. The guy was stealthy as hell for someone who stank so badly, and she let out an involuntary cough at the lungful of smoke he’d just exhaled into her air space.

“Sorry about that. I was just getting a drink on my smoke break. Didn’t mean to sneak up on you.”

He offered up a crooked, yellow-tinged smile, and God, could she be any jumpier?

“Oh, no. It was my fault.” She retrieved the bottle at her feet, tucking it into her purse along with the one she’d managed to hold on to.

“Aw, you’re not in a hurry to leave us, are you?” the manager asked, his glance taking an obvious slide over the duffel on Devon’s shoulder along with the keys in his hand. “You just got here a coupl’a hours ago. It’s not even dinnertime yet.”

“We’re passing through,” Devon said, clipping his tone close enough to the quick that the manager held up both hands in concession.

“Okay, no need to get uppity. Just thought maybe you and Kylie might want to stay and relax a little while longer.”

Every last hair on the back of Kylie’s neck stood at attention all at once. “How do you know my name?”

“Oh.” The manager’s smile slipped. “Uh, your boyfriend here must have said it when you two were checking in.”

In less than a blink, Devon swung the man around, pinning him to the vending machine with a graceless
thunk
.

“No. I didn’t. Try again.”

The manager sputtered, his bloodshot eyes bulging. “Guess she just looks like a Kylie. Must be that pretty face.”

“Don’t insult me, or I’ll get pissed off.” Devon pressed a thick forearm over the man’s windpipe, and oh God, oh God, oh God, Kylie wanted to get out of here, like yesterday.

“Okay. Okay!” the manager choked, his wild-eyed stare flattening on her over the hard angle of Devon’s shoulder. “Fagan’s coming for her, and he wants blood. There’s nothing you can do. His network is huge, and he’s got everyone within five hundred miles looking—”

“When?” Devon leaned harder, his body language an unspoken embodiment of
don’t fuck with me
.

The manager’s lips peeled back in a thin grimace. “Now.”

Devon dropped the man into a heap on the sidewalk. “Kylie, get in the car. Go.”

He didn’t have to tell her twice. She ran to the Challenger, flinging the passenger door open hard enough to make the hinges protest. Throwing herself inside, she slammed the door in her wake, her breath coming in such rapid bursts that she was certain she’d either pass out or throw up.

Devon shoved his duffel in the back seat and punched the key into the ignition, sweeping the parking lot with a cold, glittering stare. “Get down as far as you can,” he said, the words barely reaching Kylie’s ears past the roar of the engine as he pulled out of the parking lot.

“Do you see anything?” she asked, unable to just sit there, quiet and helpless.

“Not yet, but that doesn’t mean nothing’s there.” He maneuvered the car through a turn, although toward what, Kylie had no clue.

Oh, screw this. “Let me help,” she said, sitting up in her seat to take in their sun-drenched surroundings. “I can keep watch out the back window while you get us out of here.”

“No. You need to stay safe.” Devon split his attention between the road and the rearview, but managing both views had to be the mother of all balancing acts.

Kylie refused to budge. “I get that this road is pretty empty, but we’re not going to be very safe if you wreck the car, Devon. Believe me, if bullets start flying, I’ll be the first person to hit the damned deck. But for now, I’m helping.”

Whether it was for her attitude or her argument, she didn’t know, but Devon gave in with a swear. “Fine. We’re going to backtrack for a few miles, then try to pick up an alternate route to South Dakota. If you see anyone—
anyone
—behind us, you need to say so. Got it?”

“Got it.” Kylie did a one-eighty against the passenger seat, trying to recalibrate her pulse to something that vaguely resembled normal as she stared through the back windshield. Small houses dotted either side of the dusty, two-lane back highway, the road bisected here and there by a handful of narrow cross streets and hidden driveways.

A minute passed, then two. Devon fired up the GPS device he’d hauled from the trunk earlier this morning, bringing up their location and mapping out an eastward route as he drove.

“Okay. According to this, we can take this road in a straight shot until we get to—”

Oh. God
. “Devon.” Fear slipped down Kylie’s spine with cold, clammy fingers. “A red pickup truck just pulled out from that cross street, and it’s catching up to us, fast.”

She turned toward him at the same time his gaze arrowed in on the rearview mirror, and he ditched the GPS in favor of pulling his gun from its holster.

“Hold on, and be ready to take the wheel if I tell you to.”

Devon slammed his boot over the accelerator, the car rocketing down the empty back road fast enough to make Kylie’s stomach drop all the way to her hips. With her heart lodged somewhere in the vicinity of her voice box, she reached behind her, pulling her seat belt over her chest while still keeping her eyes trained on the pickup truck behind them.

How the hell had it gotten
closer
?

“Devon.” She’d barely gotten the word past her lips when a figure leaned out of the truck’s passenger window, aiming a trio of rapid-fire shots in the direction of the Challenger.

“Holy shit!” Kylie cried, ducking behind her seat. Although the shots seemed to have missed the car completely, the urge to panic still flared to life in her veins.

But then Devon pinned her with a sure, cool stare, jerking his chin at the steering wheel. “I need you to take the wheel, Kylie. Just stay as low as you can and keep us on the road. You with me?”

Her nod was a default even though she was fifty-fifty at backing it up. “Just steer and watch the road? What are you going to do?”

Devon’s answer was the click of his gun’s safety and the whoosh of the driver’s side window disappearing into the doorframe. Kylie bit down on her lip, forcing herself to stare out the windshield in front of them. The road was pretty straight as far as she could see, and she leaned in to grip the leather-wrapped steering wheel from the passenger seat.

“Got it,” she called over the whipping wind. Devon shifted his body so his left boot replaced his right on the accelerator, twisting around to lean the right side of his body out the open window while his left foot still mashed down on the gas.

Spaghetti, meatballs, wine, and a double freaking helping of tiramisu
. Kylie screamed the words in her head, commanding both hands to stay locked on the Challenger’s wheel. Devon squeezed off two shots with a loud
pop-pop
, and she sent up a prayer that one of them would hit something vital in the pickup truck.

Nope.

“Keep steering,” Devon yelled, readjusting in a blur. Three more shots blasted from his gun, the unmistakable screech of rubber against pavement telling Kylie he must’ve bull’s-eyed one of the pickup’s tires. A jumble of loud, indecipherable sounds flew in through the window, but only after Devon had slid back into the driver’s seat a minute later did she allow herself to turn and look.

“Holy mother of...” The pickup truck had banked hard and spun off the pavement. Although the hulking vehicle was upright, it stood at an unnatural angle on the deeply pitched shoulder of the road, clearly out of commission.

“Are you okay?” Devon asked, his knuckles flashing white against the steering wheel as he darted a quick glance at her face. “Dammit, Kylie. You’re bleeding.”

“What? No I’m not, I’m—ow.” The sting of her bottom lip didn’t register until he reached out to skim it with a gentle touch, but jeez, that hurt.

“You must’ve bit your lip.”

Kylie resisted the weird compulsion to laugh. “If that’s the worst thing that happens to me, I’ll take it and run. Do you think they’ll be able to follow us?”

“Not in that truck.” Devon threw a hard look at the rearview. “But this changes things. We’ll need to keep moving until Kellan can get some help our way.”

“Okay,” she said, sitting on her hands to keep them from shaking.
You’ve got this. Devon’s got this.
“So what’s our next step?”

Devon reached out to swipe a fast-food napkin from the glove box, pressing it into her hand while eagle-eyeing the road both in front of them and behind. “Thankfully, we have enough gas that we won’t need to stop for another two hundred miles, maybe more. We’re going to have to drive in shifts, but we should be able to make decent time to South Dakota.”