Defy (Brothers of Ink and Steel Book 3) (11 page)

If I had any shred of doubt left about Ryder, it dissipates and dissolves in this moment.

I hastily dial, barely waiting for an answer before I exclaim, “Mom!”

“RACHEL?”

I can’t hold back the sobs that rip through my chest at the sound of her voice. “I’m safe! I’m okay! I’m not hurt. MOM!” Like mother like daughter, she’s in hysterics.

She can barely get out the words. “Where are you?”

“I’m so sorry, Mom. I love you so much!” This—talking to my mother—was the greatest gift Ryder could have given me. “I can’t talk or tell you where I am. But rest assured, I am safe and in good hands. I’m being brought to a safe house.”

“That’s not good enough!” she yelps. “You were supposed to have been safe before. I need to see you!”

“I know, Mom, soon. I’ll call you back as soon as I get there,” I tell her. “Tell Lemy I miss her and love her.”

She cries, “I’m so relieved. I thought—” her words cut off and her voice breaks.

“I know. I know.”

“I love you, Rachel.”

“I love you, Mom.”

I hang up quickly but reluctantly. Gripping the phone in my hand, not wanting to let go, as if the hunk of plastic parts were actually my mother, I wipe my eyes with my fingers and blot the tears on my cheeks with the back of my hands.

“I’m a fuck-up,” Ryder declares. “I never thought of buying tissues.”

For some reason, that simple statement makes me burst at the seams. I let out a gale of laughter through the mess of tears. “Fucking Rambo forgot Kleenex . . . I think you’re excused.”

But I am a hot mess, so I open the glovebox, hoping the owner has a few I could steal. I mean hell, we did have his car, right? What are a few tissues among friends?

There are none.

Next thing I know, Ryder is pulling off his shirt and throwing it at me. “Use this. Never had much use for the Longhorns anyway.”

“Are you sure?”

He shakes his head like he can’t believe I asked him and looks out the window.

I wipe my eyes and blow my nose several times in different clean parts of the t-shirt. When I’m relatively confident I’m finished I hold the shirt back towards him.

He laughs. “You keep it, Farrington.”

I grimace.
What is wrong with me?

“You and your mom close?”

“The closest,” I confirm.

“Brothers and sisters?”

“A younger sister.” I smile with the thought of her face.

“Where’s your dad?”

“He died of cancer when I was younger. It’s been just me, my mom and my sister for over a decade,” I say. “Thank you for thinking of that, letting me call home.”

“Of course.” He takes back the burner, punches in some digits and sets it up to his ear.

“Hey, Briggs,” he says. “Yeah, well, I’m not dead and neither is she . . . Yup . . . Fuck, why? Snake piss!” He listens to the voice on the other end of the phone, albeit impatiently. “Okay, shut up already. We need a rendezvous safe point. I’m thinking Shreveport. Send in some suits, we’ll be there in a couple hours.”

With his attention taken between the phone and the road—and his right arm and side exposed—I can’t resist gazing back over his body. He’s shirtless, with only a pistol and holster snaked around his shoulder and torso.

He notices. I can tell because he leans back a little and flexes, taut.

I roll my eyes as my tongue slides to the inside of my cheek.

Gorgeous, cocky, tough, strong—yeah, he’s the real deal and the entire package.

A second later, he chucks the burner phone out the window.

“Who’s Briggs?”

“My partner. He runs mission control from the inside,” Ryder explains. “Superb hacker too.”

“I have an uncle in Shrevesport,” I inform him. Maybe it could help.

“You won’t have time to see him. The feds will put you on immediate lockdown.”

I quip, “From one prison to another.”

“That’s what the protection program is all about,” he says in a confusing, almost sour tone.

I decide to change the subject. “What is the river on your arm? The one through the gods?”

He doesn’t look away from the road. “Styx. The Greeks believed when you died, to pass through to the otherworld, you had to cross the River Styx.”

“Why do you have a tattoo of it?”

“Because we all have to cross it someday,” he says matter-of-factly. “Metaphorically anyway,” he adds.

I think about that. “Are you afraid to die?”

“No.”

“Are the gods like a talisman?” I try.

“Something like that.” The way the muscles of his arm tense and his hand grips the steering wheel harder makes me think I shouldn’t pursue this line of questioning.

“You don’t think the witness protection program is a good thing?”

“Doesn’t matter what I think.”

“Why don’t you like witness protection?” It does matter to me all of a sudden what he thinks.

“I didn’t say I didn’t like it.”

“But you’re giving every indication that you don’t.”

“It works incredibly well—as long as the witness follows the rules to the letter—but sometimes that proves to be difficult. Especially for someone like you.”

“Someone like me?”

“You’re close to your family, you’re almost finished with your educational track and ready to embark on the career you’ve worked so hard to achieve . . . not to mention the line of work you’re going for—Jesus, working with special needs individuals. You have passion and dedication—with that kind of outward, forward, progressive thinking and idealism, you’ll want out of the ambiguity of the WPP within the first week.”

All of a sudden his deduction feels more like a judgement. Or maybe it’s because I’ve just realized that earlier he wasn’t simply trying to get to know me. His motive was completely just to read me.

What is wrong with you, Rachel?
“So all of those questions you asked me before, you were you just sizing up my situation?”

“That’s what I do, Farrington.”

Something about his blunt admission stings. I won’t waste my breath telling him to call me Rachel. “They’ll capture Miguel, and once they do I can go home.”

“It’ll be better for you if someone kills him.”

“I thought you said he’d receive the death penalty.”

“I believe a judge and jury will convict him. If they can catch him,” he says. “Question is,
can
they catch him?”

Chapter Eight

Ryder

Farrington stares out the window while she chews on the inside of her lip.

Both our heads turn to follow the sign that reads, “Shreveport 86 Miles.” Then we look at each other at the same time.

I wonder what she’s thinking, then she asks, “What happens to you . . . once you deliver me safely into FBI custody?”

“I go home.”

She nods and puts her eyes back onto the passing scenery. “Where’s home?”

“Minnesota.” All of a sudden home doesn’t sound appealing.

The fuck? I don’t want to leave her?
I think about that and can’t decide if it’s my instincts telling me she’s not safe or if it’s my dick remembering what she looked like in that towel. I shake my head to clear it.
I have a job to do and I’m here to get it done.

“Were you born and raised there?”

“No.” I decide that’s enough said.

Back at the hotel I was all badass. I’d played the hero, and it felt fucking great, especially when she smacked the alligator with the oar. She was trying to help me; it was the first step in our fragile trust process.

Then she came out of the bathroom in nothing but that little towel. It was the gold movie scenes are made of.
Fucking outstanding!

I adjust myself in my seat as my dick remembers what she looked like too. And how she acted. Her eyes weren’t scared any longer. In fact, they’d been almost hungry.

My flirting was casual enough. But the truth is, I hadn’t really wanted to leave that hotel room so soon. At least not before taking something that wasn’t mine.

And she isn’t mine,
I tell myself.
Developing an attraction for someone you’ve just rescued is very bad business practice. 

“Ryder?” She’s impatient. Like maybe she’d said my name a couple times and I’d been zoned out.

“Yeah?”

“Come on, we have a long way to go, and I haven’t had a conversation in days. Where did you come from, then?”

Friendly, light conversation is good. “All over the place.” I think of my parents and then Chief and Betty. “I’ve lived in almost every state, at one time or another.”

“Was it difficult, not being settled or having roots?”

“Who says I wasn’t settled? I had roots,” I answer more defensively than I mean to. “Deep ones.”

She goes quiet again.

Fuck me.
Had
. That one little word that, even after all these years, still comes out with an extra dose of bitterness.

“Did you serve in the Navy?” She’s looking at the Navy trident I have inked on my lower right rib.

I can’t do this with her. This isn’t light conversation. She’s hitting on intimate subjects.

She waits for an answer.

I flick on the radio. “Do you have a preference?”

It happens to be tuned to a pop station. “Cecilia and the Satellite” just started.

“WAIT!” She throws up her hand. “I love this song.”

Farrington closes her eyes and takes a deep breath in. “I thought I’d never hear it again, you know? Music.” As the song plays, a smile lights her face.

From this angle—with the wind blowing through her long brown hair, leaving a scented trail of berries and pomegranates in the car, the fitted Longhorns t-shirt . . .

Don’t look at the fucking t-shirt!
She had to go braless, and the view is—literally—achingly perfect.

. . . shorts and flip flops—she resembles a regular girl; carefree, talkative, her fear of Miguel and his men left back in Port Arthur.

That is dangerous for her on so many levels—it made her an unaware target for Miguel’s men—and maybe worse, she no longer comes across as an in-peril witness to me but as a healthy, vibrant university student for the mutually pleasurable taking.

And it would be pleasurable on so many levels.

“I couldn’t believe, every day that went by, that they hadn’t killed me.”

And that snaps me back to the fucked up reality that she’s just been rescued, I’m going to drop her with feds and I’m never going to see her again.

I focus on the hum of the tires as they speed over the blacktop, but the thought of never seeing her again doesn’t settle well. And I wish it was as easy a solution as having what I’m sure would be one hell of a phenomenal fuck to get her out of my system before walking away—though that thought does conjure up some very pleasant images. No, it’s admittedly becoming more than that. Farrington, with her pointed questions and this open look on her face, like she really wants to know my pain—is that something she learned in psych school?—has somehow managed to get into my head, and is working her way beneath more than just my skin.

I almost can’t deny her. I get the urge to open up and tell her what I was going to hide—what I’ve been keeping in the dark for all these years. I could do it, right? Just answer her fucked up intimate questions as if we were a man and a woman on a serious date, or as if we were two regular people on a road trip. Like it didn’t affect me.

How long has it been since I talked about it? My parents, Chief and Betty? My ridiculously fucked up life and, maybe more importantly, my non-death.

Why does her presence—which has only been amicable for the last few hours—cause so many bipolar, whiplashing inconsistencies in my own thoughts?

Christ!
She keeps singing that goddamn song, and she really is quite terrible. Every other note is off-key and I come to the conclusion she’s probably tone deaf.

But she’s so fucking adorable.

And alive.

Her entire presence radiates with a shining, vibrant life-force. I find myself craving her resilience, her passion, her joy.

There is something about her that makes me want to allow myself to be sucked deep into her soul and stay awhile.

I can’t help but take my eyes off the road to lay them on her.

Something happens in that moment, like the flip of a switch. I don’t know what it means, except that all I want in the world right now is to keep her safe, return her home to her mom and sister ASAP, and murder Eduardo Miguel before he can cause her any more harm.

We’re less than forty miles out of Shreveport, when an unmarked comes up on my ass.

“Farrington, I need you to get down on the floor of the vehicle.”

She unlatches her seatbelt and slides down. “What is it?”

“Trouble.” Two other vehicles slip in behind and in front of us. Blue and red lights turn on and wash through the vehicle and over the surrounding buildings. We’re in a downtown community—restaurants, people walking to work, cars everywhere.

We’re surrounded and being herded by local law enforcement. Which is exactly what I didn’t want to have happen.

I keep my speed, and it’s not long before I spot the barricade in the center of the road.

“Ryder?”

“We’re getting pulled over by what looks like police.”

“Oh my God! We’re safe!” she cackles and starts to get back to her seat.

“Stay down!” I order gruffly.

“Why? We’re far enough away from Port—”

“Farrington, shut up and stay down. We have no idea who these men are,” I bark.

This is not some routine checkpoint.

Carefully, I pull the car over and stop. They wedge in behind me. I put in a fast call to Briggs. “Have D’Angelo make some calls, I have a gut feeling this isn’t going to go nice,” I say. I leave him our coordinates and hang up.

“You’re being paranoid,” she accuses.

“Unfortunately, we’re about to find out.”

In moments they descend like a swarm around the car, guns drawn.

“COME OUT OF THE CAR WITH YOUR HANDS IN THE AIR!” one of them bellows through a megaphone.

I look down at Farrington and realize there are too many things I need to tell her. That I should have told her.

That I
want
to tell her.

Before I can get out one word, the metal barrel of the officer’s pistol taps the glass by my head.

“Stay—” Before I can finish my instructions, she opens her car door and spills out onto the blacktop. “. . . where you are.”

If only she’d stayed in the car, she would have given me a few more seconds to think.

Fuck it. I unlock my door and put my hands on my head. The car door is yanked open, and I’m ripped out of the vehicle and forced over the hood.

“What do we have here?” The officer confiscates my firearm.

“I’m a United States recovery agent. Badge is in my right pocket.”

He laughs at me and pats me down roughly with about twenty other cronies standing watch, pistols drawn.

“You can see I’m wearing nothing but a pair of shorts, do you really think you’re going to find something else?”

His hand slides over my shorts, into the crack of my ass and under my balls.

“I hate to disappoint you, but I’m not your type.”

“I’d shut the fuck up if I were you.”

“And I thank the good Lord I’m not you.”

“Funny, asshole,” he says condescendingly. “Do you know who that woman is right there?”

“Do you?”

He gives me a scornful glare. “You think you’re a fucking big man recovery agent.”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing.” I laugh.

My arms are yanked behind me roughly, and I grit my teeth through the pain in my arm. I’m cuffed as I watch the same thing happen to Farrington.

“Chief wants a word,” Ballsy-boy, who searched me earlier, exclaims as he slides open the door to the holding cell that I’ve been incarcerated in for the last hour. He leads me down the hall to the police chief’s office.

The Mansfield chief of police greets me from behind his polished, ostentatious desk as Ballsy-boy wheels in my equipment bag on a delivery caddy.

“You’re free to go, Mr. Axton,” the chief tells me.

After taking a quick inventory of my belongings and detecting only the new burner phone I hadn’t used gone, I say, “I’m not going anywhere without Miss. Farrington.”

“She’s no longer your concern,” he informs me coolly. “We’ll take care of her from here.”

Ballsy-boy and Officer Douchebag, the guy who unofficially interrogated me, are standing behind their chief with smug grins plastered to their ugly faces.

“I need to verify the safety of—”

“You’re in no position to be making demands,” he interrupts me while he leans slowly back in his leather chair and crosses his arms over his chest.

“You’re tampering with a federal witness and obstructing justice—” I begin.

“We’ve already made arrangements with federal agents. Sergeants Oliver and Guthrie are highly qualified and will officially escort Ms. Farrington the rest of the way to Shreveport safely. So you see, your services are no longer required,” the chief of police—Warner is the name on his desk plate—states.

“These two aren’t competent enough to get laid in their own wet dreams,” I say.

Douchebag lunges a little at me, while Ballsy-boy puts an arm out to stop him.

“That’s enough from you, Mr. Axton,” their chief tells me in a threatening tone.

I press the knuckles of my clenched fists onto his desk and lean closer, putting myself right into his personal space and giving him an intimidating glare. “I haven’t even started.”

He stands to make his position known. “We don’t think very much of bounty hunters in this part of the country. All we see is another thug criminal with a gun.”

“Excellent.” I smile.
I love threats.
“But I’m not about to pin Farrington’s life on your word. I require proof.”

“I owe you nothing, Mr. Axton. Not even a phone call,” he drawls. “And I don’t ever want to see your face here again in DeSoto Parish.”

“I’m real glad you said that.” I nod. “Now I know how to proceed.”

“Officer Guthrie, escort our guest out.”