“When I’m speaking of you,” Jeremy raised his voice, although it was apparent there was no need, “I most certainly am. And if you so much as look sideways at my cousin, I promise you I’ll—”
“Yeah, yeah,” Billy’s tone was bored. “You’ll beat me longer and harder than you beat that gherkin-sized dick of yours. I get it.”
Jeremy took a step in Billy’s direction, but Eve stopped him with a hand on his arm. “Remember you insulted him first,” she whispered.
“He’s a dickwad,” Jeremy hissed.
“More technical terminology, I’m assuming,” Billy mused, brow raised, sardonic grin on his lips.
Eve decided it was time to get the heck out of Dodge. Which brought her around to the second reason why she’d stopped by Jeremy’s condo. “I, uh…” She hesitated. Because her dear, sweet cousin was already upset by her decision to leave his protection in favor of the Knights’ and she didn’t want to prick his ego further with her next request—he was big and cocky and all about playing the hero, which made it sort of funny that he and Billy didn’t get along because they were so very much alike—but she didn’t see any way around it. Jeremy had done everything he could to prove she wasn’t just being paranoid about her growing list of “accidents.” Now it was time to let someone else take a stab at it. “I need my case files,” she finally blurted.
Jeremy’s chin jerked back. “What? Why?”
“Because we’ve got an ex-FBI agent working for us,” Billy answered, still staring out the balcony door in narrow-eyed concentration. “And he might be able to see something in her files that you and your fellow CPD boys couldn’t.”
“Yeah, and I might be onboard with that except the part where this guy is an ex,” he stressed the word, frowning, “FBI agent.”
Eve stepped in before the two of them could start slinging insults again. Grabbing her cousin’s arm, she looked up at him imploringly, “Please, Jeremy. You’ve done everything you know to do and—”
“I could try to talk to my captain again,” he interrupted. “I could—”
“Get yourself fired,” Eve said, shaking her head. “Your captain has had enough. He agrees with the fire department and the investigator on the case. There’s no evidence. You can’t keep harping on him. You can’t keep questioning his judgment. He’s the only true friend you’ve got down at that station. Believe me, you don’t want to mess with that.”
The fact that Jeremy had chosen to become a police officer when he’d inherited enough money to keep him footloose and fancy free for life had caused more than a few problems for him at work. Most cops, who struggled to get by from paycheck to paycheck, couldn’t understand why Jeremy chose to risk his life on the force every day instead of whiling away his hours on a beach. But Eve understood. A person needed a purpose, something worth waking up for every morning. And Jeremy’s purpose was to be a hero…
She watched his cheeks hollow and his chin twitch from side to side as he considered her words. Then he cursed, and she knew she’d won.
“Fine,” he grumbled. “I’ll go get them.”
“Thank you,” she whispered, going up on tiptoe to kiss his cheek, his expensive cologne tickling her nose. “And I’ll call you tomorrow to let you know how things are going.”
“You sure you want to do this?” he pressed, searching her face.
Um, no? She didn’t want to do any of it. What she wanted was a char-free condo and a Vespa that had brakes, but those two things were no longer options.
“I’ll be fine,” she assured him, avoiding his question. “I trust the Black Knights to keep me safe. Plus,” and she was going to go straight to hell for this lie, but she knew it would go a long way in easing her cousin’s misgivings, “Becky will there.”
A hint of relief flashed behind his eyes. “Okay,” he nodded. “But if things change, or if you catch too much flak from that one,” again he jerked his chin toward Billy, “then you call me.”
“I will.” She smiled, squeezing his arm and taking a deep breath before shouldering her purse and overnight bag.
A warm breeze wafted into the condo when Billy opened the balcony door, bringing with it the hot smell of summer, of fresh-cut grass, heavily blooming flowers, and steaming pavement. It ruffled Billy’s thick, dark hair like playful fingers. But somehow he still managed to pull off that whole mean and menacing thing. Which was good, she supposed. Because mean and menacing was exactly the kind of man she needed right now. And, perhaps, if she was honest with herself, it was the kind of man she’d needed all along. Or more specifically, he was the kind of man she’d needed all along. It crushed her to think about all she’d lost that night during her freshman year in college when she finally caved to her father’s wishes and agreed to go out with Robert Parish’s son, Blake.
One night out with the big-time land-developer’s pride-and-joy had changed her life. Forever…
“When we reach the street, I want you to stay behind me,” Billy murmured once she’d crossed the room to him, wrenching her from her unpleasant thoughts.
“Why?” When she glanced up into his hard, handsome face, she didn’t like what she saw there. She figured this was probably the expression he wore during those times he was knee-deep inside the wiry innards of an IED.
And, yes, it still blew her mind to know that Billy’d spent nearly a decade either making things go kaboom or disarming things that went kaboom.
Talk about having a set of brass balls. Geez Louise.
“There’s a car parked on the street out front,” he said, his voice disconcertingly calm, especially when compared to his I-eat-metal-shavings-for-lunch expression. “There’s someone in the front seat…watching this condo.” A chill snaked up her spine despite the heat of the day. “I can’t make out who it is. Jeremy,” he raised his voice when Jeremy reentered the room with a manila file folder tucked up under his arm, “you carrying?”
“Of course.” Her cousin jogged over to them, instantly on alert. See, they were so much alike. “What’s up?”
“See that black SUV parked across the street?”
“Yeah,” Jeremy nodded after craning his head through the open door. “What’s the score?”
The atmosphere was vibrating with masculine tension, and Eve fancied she could actually taste the testosterone hanging in the air like a mist.
“The score is someone’s real interested in this place, and I want to make sure whoever it is doesn’t get a shot at Eve,” Billy said. The last part of his sentence made her dizzy.
A shot at her…
He was afraid someone was out there ready to take a shot at her!
Holy crap, this was just too surreal. She’d never done anything to anyone. At least not something that would warrant an extra hole in her head. In fact, the only instance where she could recall being purposefully mean to someone was that time in kindergarten when she ripped up Curtis Forsythe’s Thanksgiving craft project—the turkey made from his handprint and construction paper—because he kept pulling her pigtails.
But, surely that wasn’t enough to deserve a bullet in the brain…
“Once we’re downstairs, we’re going to edge out the front door, keeping Eve behind us until we make the Hummer,” Billy instructed. “When we’re on our way, if that Chevy takes off after us, which I’m pretty sure it will, I want you to use your connections with the CPD to run the plates.”