Born Wild (12 page)

“I think that’s Delilah’s!” Mac’s voice sliced into his thoughts.

He realized in that moment, as he twisted his wrist and blazed through the red light and cross traffic—heedless of the sound of squealing tires on either side of him and the fact that the silver bumper on a Chevy half-ton pickup truck came within an inch of his biker boot—what it meant when people said their hearts froze. Because his stopped beating, turned to a hard fist of dry ice in his chest, and proceeded to burn a hole straight through his soul.

Eve…

He wasn’t thinking when he blasted into the little parking lot in front of Red Delilah’s, Phoenix’s fat rear tire bouncing over the curb until his teeth clacked together with brain-jostling force. He wasn’t thinking when he toed out the kickstand and jumped from the bike, switching off the growling engine. He wasn’t thinking when he ran toward the waiting ambulance and the body-bag-laden stretcher being loaded inside.

“Eve!” He frantically tossed off the restraining hands of the police officers who leapt toward him, instinctively shoving an elbow into someone’s nose. “Eve! Eve!” His wailing, breathless cries howled from him like the wind blowing over the dunes in the desert. His lungs worked like bellows, but no oxygen got to his brain.

“Stand down, asshole!” one of the officers shouted in his ear, snaking an arm around his throat as two, then three more uniformed CPD boys tried to wrestle him to the ground. He fought them like he was fighting for his life, hissing and biting, punching and kicking. He was a mindless beast, bent on only one thing: getting inside that ambulance and—

“Billy!”

When he heard his name, when he heard her sweet voice, all the fight seeped out of him like air from a torn balloon. He choked on a hard, wet sob that lodged in the center of his chest. Then, the next thing he knew, he was kissing concrete, there were an unknown number of very pointy knees digging into his back, and his wrists were being secured by a cold, hard set of handcuffs.

He didn’t care. Because she was alive! The CPD could take out their billy clubs and pound the living shit out of him for the rest of the evening if they wanted to, and he’d still be smiling.

“Get off him! Get off him!” From the corner of his eye—the one not being ground into the parking lot’s hot pavement—he could see Eve pushing officers aside. “He’s with me!”

Slowly, the restraining hands disappeared, as did the pointy knees. And after a ringing command from Eve that someone should help him up, two policemen grabbed his elbows and hauled him to his feet. The very next instant, Eve was pressed against him. Her arms were around his neck, her head was on his shoulder—the smell of her fruity shampoo obscured the more pungent aroma of car exhaust—and she was sobbing and squeezing him so tightly he could barely breathe.

Who
cares? Oxygen is overrated anyway.

“Jesus, Eve…” Her name was a benediction and a prayer all rolled into one. He wasn’t a religious man, but he whispered a quick thanks skyward to anyone who might be listening and went to wrap his arms around her, to hold her close to his pounding heart. But the handcuffs stopped him with the bite of unyielding steel.

“Get these fucking things off me,” he growled at the officer closest to him.

The man wiped a hand under his bleeding nose—apparently this was the one Bill’d clocked with his elbow—and glowered. Then the policeman took a deep breath, obviously deciding he might’ve done the same thing had he thought the body of someone he cared about was being loaded into a waiting ambulance, and moved to oblige Bill’s request.

Bill had just enough time to wonder uneasily at the direction of his thoughts—
Someone
he
cared
about
?—when the handcuffs disappeared and his mind blanked because…
heaven.
She was safe in his arms, warm and alive and breathing his name into the space where his T-shirt ended and his chest began.

“What happened here, Eve?” He dipped his chin to whisper against her ear, the delicate shell felt baby-soft against his lips, and the subtle smell of her lotion elicited an ill-timed response from the imbecile housed behind his zipper.

For
the
love
of
God, nuclear bombs could be exploding around me and being this close to Eve would still have me springing a chubby.

She pulled back, and he recognized the look on her tear-soaked face. He’d seen it plenty of times in the killing fields of this war or that conflict. It was a combination of shock and horror…and guilt. And it was enough to take the edge off his unrepentant libido.

“Th-that was s-s-supposed to be me.” She nodded toward the ambulance, her expression caving in on itself, her slender form quaking like a rickety telephone pole on the edge of an immense fault line. “They c-came here for m-me.”

Supposed
to
be
her?
What?

“What do you mean?” he demanded, instinctively thumbing away a glistening tear from her smooth cheek, growling when he noticed the circle of angry bruises darkening up around her neck making the white of her pearl pendant stand out in harsh contrast. He’d seen that before, too. Some sorry sonofabitch had tried to strangle Eve. Some sorry,
dead
sonofabitch should Bill ever find him and get his hands on him…

“Th-the men who killed Buzzard,” she choked. Buzzard? He glanced toward the ambulance, then closed his eyes as a wedge of remorse briefly invaded his mounting rage. The rascally biker had been an annoying, charming, and licentious old fart by turns. But he’d been a decent fellow, all things considered. And he’d certainly deserved a shitload better than whatever violent end he’d obviously met. “He caught a stray bullet,” she went on, and once again his heart stopped cold because…
bullet.
There’d been fucking bullets involved?
Jesus
Christ.
“But it was a bullet meant for…for
me.
”

Her voice rose with each syllable, and he knew the sounds of hysteria and shock when he heard them. Soon, she was very likely to either completely lose it or go catatonic. He’d seen both, experienced both, and he wasn’t sure which was better. One allowed the horror to spill out in a vile, endless stream. The other allowed it to slowly simmer until the terror coagulated and hardened into something awful that you carried around inside yourself for life.

Sweet Jesus, how he wished he could take it all away. Just pluck the experience from her psyche and take it into his own, lock it in the box where he kept all
his
unspeakable memories…

“H-he…he said,” Eve stammered, and he could tell she was becoming more and more unstrung with each passing second. “He said,
there
she
is
and pointed his gun at me. I dove for him. We…we struggled. So…so—” She couldn’t go on, and he did the only thing he could think to do. He pulled her against him again, holding her as tight as he could.

So, whoever wanted to kill her had found her here at Delilah’s? But how?

Confusion and rage warred inside him for supremacy. But he knew neither of those emotions was what Eve needed from him now. So tamping down his desire to ask more questions or just begin to arbitrarily kill everybody she knew for good measure, he cupped the back of her warm head in his palm and tried his best to hold her together because she felt like she was about to blow apart.

Then, she did something so shocking he could only stand there like a friggin’ idiot.

She kissed him.

One second the woman’s nose was buried in the crook of his shoulder, and the next second she grabbed his ears and slammed her mouth—her
open
mouth—over the top of his.

And unlike that girl he’d known years ago, this one didn’t hesitate. There was no slow, tentative tasting, or gentle foray of her tongue into his mouth. Hell, no. This was the kiss equivalent of zero to sixty in less than a second, and all he could do was blink at her blurry face in cross-eyed confusion for a long moment during which time she kissed him so passionately he was surprised he didn’t just melt into a puddle of lust around his biker boots.

Eventually, however, instinct and bone-deep hunger took over, and he reached up to palm her tear-wet cheeks, angling her head so he could join in on the two-tongued fun fair they had going.

And, it was confession time again. Because, he didn’t give a rat’s ass that this was undoubtedly one of those instances when a person had mistaken grief for lust. He didn’t give a rat’s ass that she’d likely regret this in about two seconds flat…that he’d likely regret it, too. Because for one blessedly passionate moment, the past was forgotten. For one brilliant instant, it was just the two of them, locked together, giving in to the flame of desire that’d burned in them since the moment they first locked eyes on each other.

She moved against him, her whole body sinuously sliding, and she was sultry and hot when he pushed his thigh between her legs. And then sanity returned. For her, not for him. He’d have probably laid her down right there in the parking lot if she hadn’t suddenly pulled back, blinking up at him with over-bright eyes and an expression of…

What was that? Confusion? Regret? Horror?

He didn’t have time to figure it out, or to contemplate the ramifications of what it meant to have lost his control around her
yet
again
, because movement out of the corner of his eye snagged his attention. He looked over to find Delilah standing in the doorway of the bar, dried blood streaked down her T-shirt.

She looked like an extra in a slasher film. Scratch that, she looked that the
slasher
in a slasher film, because her expression was straight-up, undiluted I’m-shithouse-crazy-enough-to-kill-someone-right-now. Nostrils flaring, jaw grinding, fists clenching and unclenching, she stepped into the parking lot and started marching stiffly toward Mac.

Oh, damn.

Bill knew what was coming before the loud
smack
of Delilah’s open palm meeting Mac’s hard jaw echoed around the block. The former FBI agent’s head snapped back and to the side, emphasizing the strength of the blow. But no sooner had he shaken off the harsh strike than Delilah was grabbing the collar of his light-weight motorcycle jacket and screaming into his face, “How
dare
you bring whatever bullshit you’re involved in to my doorstep, you bastard!”

Eve pushed away from Billy’s warm, reassuring, oh-so-deliciously-solid chest—she could not
believe
she’d just kissed him or, considering their talk this morning, that he’d actually kissed her back—when she heard Delilah’s words explode into the noisy city air. All the blood that’d been sizzling through her veins because of Billy’s scorching kiss instantly froze into solid red rivers of ice.

No. Oh, no!
Delilah couldn’t blame this on Mac. She just
couldn’t
. This wasn’t Mac’s fault. It was
her
fault. All her fault…

Without a second thought, she turned and raced toward the tussling couple. Through her tears—was she crying?—she could see Mac dragging Delilah around the corner and into the alley where he wrapped her in a reverse bear hug, seizing her from behind by securing her wrists low across her waist as he bodily lifted her from the ground until all she could do was kick ineffectually as she screamed profanities hot enough to blister the ears off a sailor.

“Delilah,” she breathed. Was that her voice? Why did it sound like that? Like it was being pushed through water. “It’s n-not Mac’s f-fault.”

But her words were too hoarse and too quiet for Delilah to hear, and before she could swallow and try again, Billy stopped a group of police officers from moving in to investigate the commotion. “Gentlemen, my friend back there doesn’t need any help. He’s man enough to handle what she’s dishing; don’t you worry.”

One of the officers eyed him skeptically, and Billy made a face. “She’s hurt and grieving,” he explained, and Eve knew all about that, didn’t she? “And she needs to take it out on someone. She’s decided to take it out on him.” He pointed his chin toward the alley where Mac and Delilah had moved out of sight. “And like I said, he’s man enough to handle it.”

The policeman nodded once before motioning for the rest of the officers to follow him to the ambulance.

The ambulance…

Eve winced when the loud
thunk
of its door slamming shut ricocheted around the parking lot. Holy moly, if there was ever a sound of absolute finality, then that was definitely it. Instantly, her blood thawed, rushing through her system and pooling in her head until she was dizzy.

Don’t look. Don’t look.

But she couldn’t help herself. Turning, she saw a medic hop into the passenger seat of the ambulance. A heartbeat later, the vehicle’s lights began flashing accompanied by…silence. Deafening, head-splitting, soul-shattering silence. There was no blaring siren or honking horn, just the sad rumble of a big engine turning over and the quiet crackling of tires rolling over rock-strewn pavement.

Which,
dear
God
, was so much worse.

It emphasized the fact that this was no emergency. That the life this ambulance had raced in to rescue was beyond salvation. That the life had been cut short because somehow, in some way,
she
had done something to someone that was so horrible they were determined to see her dead.

This
is
all
my
fault…

Again, the sentence circled through her overwrought brain, and the shaking she thought she’d finally gotten under control returned with brutal, teeth-clacking force. The urge to scream her frustration and regret and guilt overwhelmed her. It built in her chest, burning like a jellyfish sting as it seared its way up her throat, singeing the tissue in its path until she wondered if she’d ever speak or swallow correctly again. But just before she opened her mouth to let loose with all the dark emotions bubbling and seething inside her, Billy was there, wrapping a steadying arm around her shoulders and bending to whisper in her ear.

“This isn’t your fault, sweetheart,” he crooned in his deep, smooth baritone. “The men who did this are the ones to blame. No one but them, you understand me? No one killed Buzzard but
them
.”

And more than his words, it was the feel of his warm breath against the side of her jaw, the smell of him, all buttery leather and strong soap, that gave her enough strength to swallow down the scream burning at the back of her throat.

Keep
it
together, Eve,
she coached herself as she rolled in her lips, the world around her nothing but a hazy kaleidoscope of colors through her tears. She wanted to believe Billy. Oh, how she wanted to believe him.
Keep
it
together
for
Delilah’s sake…

And suddenly she remembered where she’d been heading before the police and the ambulance’s departure distracted her. “We have to go help Mac,” she said.

“Like I told the police, Mac can—”

“No,” she shook her head vehemently. “Delilah thinks this is Mac’s fault.” And there was no way she could allow Mac to take the fall for something she’d done. Once upon a time she might have taken that coward’s way out. But not anymore. And if she had any say in it, never again. Eve Edens was
done
being a coward.

Grabbing Billy’s big hand, she stumbled across the lot and around the corner of the building to the shaded alley where a set of metal stairs led to a back door on the second story of the bar. The air smelled dank and musty, likely due to the four green trash bins pushed up against the building on the opposite side of the narrow space. Mac was standing in front of the nearest one, still holding Delilah in a reverse bear hug, and the poor bartender was still whipping around like a sea snake caught by the tail.

“And
you!
” she shrieked the instant she saw Billy. “You’re as much to blame! Buzzard’s dead because—”

Billy dropped Eve’s hand in order to step up to Delilah. Gently, he placed a palm on each of her red, splotchy, tear-soaked cheeks.

“No,” he told her quietly. Just that one word.

But it was that one word, spoken with absolute conviction, that had the fight abandoning Delilah. The kicking and the thrashing stopped, and she hung limp as a rag doll in Mac’s big arms, quietly sobbing.

“Delilah, I’m so sorry,” Eve whispered quietly, stepping up to the woman, nodding at Mac to lower the poor creature to the ground. And though the words were heartfelt, they sounded hollow, even to her own ears. Because nothing she could say would ever accurately convey the depth of her remorse.

A man was dead from a bullet intended for her. It was that simple. And that horrible. She knew she’d always carry the guilt of it with her.

When Mac lowered Delilah to the ground, the grief-stricken woman crumpled into Eve’s arms, and Eve choked on the sobs she could no longer hold at bay. It didn’t matter. They were women, so they clung to each other and cried together, taking strength and lending it in the way only the females of the species could do.

Then, after a time, their tears slowed, and Eve blubbered out the truth, “It’s my fault. D-don’t blame Mac and…and Billy. It has nothing to do with them. I brought this to your doorstep. Th-those men came to your bar to k-kill
me
.”

Delilah pushed out of her embrace, rubbing a forearm under her runny nose to blink at her blearily. “I know they did,” she nodded, wiping away her tears with a perfunctory swipe of her hand. “I h-heard what that one said when he saw you.”

There
she
is…
The words were etched on the back of Eve’s brain with a carving knife.

“But after Bill told me he was leaving you in my care, I just…” Delilah shrugged miserably. “I just figured it must have something t-to do with whatever shady dealings they’re involved in out on Goose Island and—”

“We’re not involved in any shady dealings,” Mac muttered, brow furrowed in a deep scowl.

Eve wiped away her own tears as she slid the man a look of utter disbelief. How could he say that with such conviction when their business was the
definition
of shady? Then again, he probably thought Delilah meant
shady
as in
illegal
, so maybe that’s how he could pull off that whole hook-me-up-to-a-lie-detector-right-now-and-see-I’m-telling-God’s-honest-truth expression.

Delilah narrowed her eyes, the very picture of skepticism. “You’re involved in
something
out there,” she maintained, and even through the riot of her emotions, Eve had to give it to the woman. Delilah’s instincts were spot-on. Unlike hers. Because
she
hadn’t believed Becky about the true nature of the men of Black Knights Inc. until the moment she saw Billy, dressed from head to toe in black, sneaking up behind a Somali pirate in order to point a rather terrifying machine gun at the man’s head.
Then
she’d believed. Boy, oh boy, had she ever. Kind of hard not to when the truth was wearing black and green face paint and staring you smack-dab between the eyes. “It’s in the way you carry yourselves, always on alert,” Delilah continued, underscoring her astuteness. “So, what is it? Drugs? Guns? Forgeries? Money laundering?”

Holy
smokes, honey, you’re
way
off.

“We carry ourselves like a group of guys who’ve seen the darkest side of life and who’ve learned not to trust their fellow man,” Mac insisted.

Delilah didn’t try to disguise her look of disbelief. “Fine,” she spat. “So whatever
side
business you have going,” Mac growled like a grizzly bear, but Delilah ignored him, “may not be a contributing factor to what happened in my bar tonight.” And saying the words must’ve reminded the woman of the one she’d lost, because her chin trembled, and Eve’s immediately threatened to follow suit—
the
stupid sympathetic thing!
But Delilah kept it together, which helped Eve to do the same. And after dragging in a steadying breath, Delilah continued, “But the questions remain,” now she turned to pin a pointed look on Eve, “
why
did they come here to kill you and
who
were they?”

“Those
are
the questions, now aren’t they?”

Eve spun when she heard her cousin’s voice. He was marching down the alley with his badge clipped to the waistband of his jeans and murder written all over his handsome face. She’d never been so happy to see him in her entire life. “Jeremy!” she choked, running to him.

He caught her in a fierce embrace. “Jesus Christ, Eve! I came the minute I heard it over the radio. Are you okay?”

“It w-was awful,” she sobbed, pressing her nose into his light blue button-down shirt and dragging in the familiar smell of his cologne.

“Yeah,” he nodded, gently pushing her back so he could run his eyes over her from head to toe. “I heard that, too.” And if she thought he’d had murder written all over his face before, then
mass
murder was written all over his face now that he saw the bruises on her throat. He hooked a thumb under her chin to tilt her head back, but she batted his hand away.

“It’s nothing,” she assured him. “I’m fine.” His lips twisted, his eyes calling her bluff. “O-okay,” she admitted. “I’m not fine. But I’m alive. And that’s more than I can say for s-some.”

Dang it! Her lower lip started to wobble again, which caused Jeremy’s jaw to saw from side to side.

“This isn’t your fault, Cuz,” he assured her. And, yep, everybody kept telling her that, but somehow she just couldn’t bring herself to believe it. “Nod your head so I know you heard me,” he commanded. She nodded just so he’d hush up about it. Her guilt and culpability weren’t anything she wanted to talk about. At least not right now. “Good.” He threw an arm around her shoulders, leading her back to the group where his attention immediately turned to Bill and Mac. “So, the CPD knows
why
they came here. To off Eve.” The way he said it had tears once more pricking behind her eyes. She must’ve shaken or something, because he squeezed her closer to his side, his fingers firm on her shoulder, offering her the comfort of his strength. “But the jury is still out as to
who
they were.”

And now they’d come full circle, hadn’t they? Because that was the question Delilah had posed before Jeremy arrived on the scene. She met Delilah’s red-rimmed gaze head-on. “I swear to you, I have no idea.”

Delilah searched for the truth in her face, and she must’ve found it, because she nodded. And then her expression sharpened. “All those things I’ve been reading about you in the paper…Those weren’t accidents, were they?”

Yep, and talk about astute. Maybe Delilah should join the gang at Black Knights Inc. The woman was certainly proving she had the instincts for it. Without hesitation, Eve laid it all on the line—she figured Delilah deserved that—and told her about the fire, the mugging, the cut brake lines, and the police closing the cases. “And when nobody would believe me,” she finished, “I went to Black Knights Inc., hoping they could help me figure out who’s doing this.”

Delilah’s green eyes narrowed, and she blinked rapidly as if she were physically trying to take it all in—and having trouble in the endeavor. Eve had to admit, it was quite a tale. “Because Mac is a former FBI agent,” Delilah finally murmured, “you thought he’d be able to succeed where the CPD failed?”

“Yes,” she said, hoping Jeremy didn’t feel her stiffen at the question. “Th-that’s what I figured.”

Delilah fell into a long silence as she glanced off into the distance. The thousand-yard stare…Eve remembered Becky referring to such a thing, but until this moment she wasn’t sure she’d actually ever seen it. Then again, she’d never taken part in an all-out gun battle either, so,
yippee! Lots of firsts today!

Mac was the one to finally break into the quiet pall that’d momentarily fallen over the group. He lifted a hand toward Jeremy. “Mac McMillan.” His deep Texas twang was softer than usual. “Sorry to be meetin’ you for the first time under these circumstances.”

“Likewise.” Jeremy shook his hand.

“They were hired guns,” Billy blurted, and everyone in the group turned to stare at him.

“What?” Jeremy was the first to recover. “How do you figure that?” Eve seconded that question.