DONOVAN: A Standalone Romance (Gray Wolf Security) (8 page)

It was insane. But it was also deeply satisfying to feel his need in the quick hitch of his breath and the intensity of his kiss.

Then, like before, he suddenly pulled away.

He stepped back and tugged his cell phone from his back pocket. A look of something like embarrassment slipped over his face as he read whatever the phone was telling him, his gaze shifting to something I couldn’t see high on the wall.

“You should get dressed,” he said curtly before storming from the room.

Talk about hot and cold!

At the Compound

Ash was pulled out of a fairly intense dream by the insistent alarm on his phone. He didn’t even check the screen, just silenced the alarm and tugged on some pants, pulling on a shirt as he headed downstairs.

“Where is it?” he asked David as he marched toward his workstation.

“Miss Thompson’s house.”

“What is it?”

“Motion detectors went off outside the master bedroom. I’ve already dispatched a team to see what the deal is.”

Ash knew that David had everything under control. The man rarely ever slept, and when he did, it was usually here in the main house, on the cot they had in the back room for operatives who were unable or unwilling to leave the main house for one reason or another. David had his own house here on the property, one that had been extensively outfitted to accommodate his chair, but he didn’t seem to like his own company all that much. It was one of many changes in his personality that Ash had noticed since the accident that killed their parents.

Ash grabbed a chair and pulled it up beside David so that he could watch what was happening on his computer screens. David pulled up the feed from each of the cameras positioned in and around Kate Thompson’s house. After a minute or two, they began to catch sight of their operations team. They approached the house with caution, guns drawn, surrounding the outside before the leader looked directly into one of the cameras and held up two fingers. David immediately sent his phone a transmission that informed him that the cameras were not picking up any intruders. If there had been an intruder, David’s message would have told the team leader which camera or cameras had the intruder under surveillance so that the team would know how to proceed.

The team divided into two, a group of men taking up position outside and another going in through both the back and front doors. Ash and David watched closely as the men moved methodically from room to room. When it was pretty clear that the house was empty, David sent the order for the men to stand down. As they watched, the team leader gave instructions for another search, this one designed to find evidence of what, or who, had caused the motion detectors to go off.

“Could have been a raccoon,” David said, punching a few keys on his keyboard to make the camera views go back to their smaller dimensions and other camera feeds and screens of computer code to take their place.

“Could have been,” Ash said. “Warren says the detectives don’t think Miss Thompson is in any actual danger.”

“Even though she clearly witnessed a crime.”

“She doesn’t remember it.”

“The perp doesn’t know that.”

Ash had to agree with that. “Poor guy doesn’t know what he’s getting into though. That woman is quite a firecracker.”

David’s eyebrows rose, as he watched his brother head to the kitchen. “You never said how your discussion with her went.”

Ash padded into the kitchen and filled a mug with water, needing a little caffeine if he was going to be up all night dealing with this.

“Coffee?” he called to David.

“Not that instant crap you drink.”

Ash just shrugged, popping the mug in the microwave and pulling down the tall, thin canister of instant coffee crystals. It didn’t taste all that bad to him, but to each his own.

“So spill the beans. What is Donovan’s long lost love like?”

“Stubborn,” Ash said. “And beautiful. A dangerous combination if there ever was one.”

“How stubborn?”

“She refused to cancel some party she’s supposed to go to this weekend.”

“We’ve had marks do that before.”

“Yeah, well, they were usually doing it for important reasons. I think she was just doing it because she resented me telling her how much of her privacy and freedom we were going to steal from her.”

“You do bring out the best in women sometimes.”

Ash grunted. “Somehow I don’t think it was just me. You should have seen how she reacted to seeing Donovan for the first time after all these years.”

“Did he ever tell you why she blames him? I mean, it was just a schoolyard fight that went too far, right? How is that Donovan’s fault?”

Ash thought it was kind of funny that David would be the one to point that out. A strong argument could be made for the fact that the accident that killed their parents was only an accident. The car hit black ice. No one could have predicted that. No one could have prevented it. Yet, because he was driving, David carried around a lifetime of guilt.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I think it has something to do with why the boys targeted her brother. She seems to think it was because of something Donovan had done. And I think, to a certain degree, he agrees with her.”

“He shouldn’t. I looked up the case file.”

“David…”

“There was nothing illegal about it. The file falls under the public information act.” He typed something into his computer keyboard. “It says that the fight was initiated because one of the perps said something to the victim about his sister.”

“Where’d you get that?”

“Witness statement. I guess one of the party goers saw the initial confrontation that took place an hour or so before the actual attack.”

Curiosity peaked, Ash carried his coffee mug over to David’s workstation and read over his shoulder.

WITNESS: Joshua was sitting on a blanket on the beach, waiting for his girlfriend to get them some drinks. The boys approached—

DETECTIVE MORGAN: That would be John Kyle, Reese Connor, and Tony Smith?

WITNESS: Yes.

DETECTIVE MORGAN: Continue.

WITNESS: One of the boys asked where Donovan Pritchard was. Joshua said he was supposed to join them later in the evening. But he didn’t want there to be any trouble. John said he’d take care of Donovan later. That he had a plan to get back at him. Joshua told him to let it go. At least they would all get their diplomas. Reese agreed with Joshua, telling John that maybe it would be better to let it go. Then Tony said something I couldn’t quite hear. Joshua got up and asked him what he’d said. John laughed and said he just called your sister a slut. Joshua pushed John and told him to watch his mouth. John said that Kate was probably off…I guess I shouldn’t say what he said.

DETECTIVE MORGAN: It’s fine. Use any language you feel comfortable with.

WITNESS: Well, he said she was probably off screwing some boy. Not that word, but you know…and then he told Joshua how they saw her slipping out from under the bleachers in the gym a week before school got out. Joshua told him he was a filthy liar and shoved him again. John got mad and shoved Joshua. Then Amanda, Joshua’s girlfriend, walked up and told them to stop. John laughed again, accusing Joshua of hiding behind his girl. Joshua spit on him. I thought John would kill him right there and then, but Reese pulled him back, whispering something in his ear. Then John nodded and walked away without saying anything else.

“Sounds like it had nothing to do with the prank Donovan pulled.”

“Prank?” David asked, looking over his shoulder at his brother.

“Yeah. That’s what Donovan told me started the whole thing. He broke into the football coach’s online dating profile and changed it to make it appear that he was a man looking for other men. Then he posted a link to it on the school website. Didn’t go over well.”

David laughed. “Sounds like something I might have done. Kudos to Donovan.”

“Yeah, well, he made it look like these boys did it in the computer lab at the school. They couldn’t be suspended since there were only a few days of school left, so they were banned from walking the stage at the graduation ceremony.”

“Sucks.”

“More for the family than the boys, I’m sure. But they were pretty pissed from what Donovan told me. But they’d never done anything like what happened to Joshua, so he had no idea they would go that far.”

“Spitting in someone’s face in front of his friends is pretty big. Maybe that was the game changer.”

“Either way, it wasn’t Donovan’s fault. But the guy’s carried the weight of it for a long time.”

David nodded. “Maybe this case is a blessing. Maybe if she forgives him, he can forgive himself.”

“You never know. How are they getting along, anyway?”

David punched a few key strokes into the computer and one screen was filled with an image of Donovan in a pretty intense clutch with his target.

“See for yourself,” David said.

“Is that live?”

“Yeah.”

Ash pulled out his phone and punched a few curt words into his text app. A second later, Donovan pulled back from the girl and studied his phone, quickly leaving the room and her alone.

“What’d you say?”

Ash didn’t answer. He simply headed for the stairs.

“I’m going to the safe house.”

“Well, then you can tell Donovan that the threat was real.”

Ash paused on the bottom steps of the stairs. “How so?”

“The team found tool marks on the outside of one of the master bedroom windows. Someone was trying to force it open from the outside.”

Donovan

Why did I kiss her? I knew better than that.

I slammed my hands against the closed door of another bedroom, cursing under my breath before opening the door and stepping inside, grabbing a shirt at random from the selection hanging in the closet. It was a simple button-down shirt, dark blue and unadorned. Then I turned back to leave, my eyes moving over the bed. My thoughts automatically jumped to a place they shouldn’t have gone. I could still feel her smooth skin against my hand; I could still taste her lips on mine. But allowing my thoughts to move on from there was irresponsible.

It was fucking stupid to kiss her in the first place. Knowing that Ash had seen it…I could lose my job over this.

Without my job I had nothing.

What the hell had I been thinking?

It was because it was Kate. Any other target and it wouldn’t have happened. But this was Kate and when I looked at her, when I found myself staring into those perfect eyes, I couldn’t keep the memories at bay. And that was my undoing.

I was never shy with women. I never had trouble getting what I wanted. I didn’t need to prey on the frightened CEOs and doctors and lawyers that we protected. I could have any woman I wanted.

But Kate was the first.

High school was a pit of juvenile hormones gone wild. I probably could have chosen better the girl who’d be my first. But Kate and I had a connection. I think I loved her since we were seven. And when she came around, when we shared that first kiss…

“I didn’t know you were here,” she said when she caught me in her family’s kitchen at two o’clock in the morning.

“Parents were fighting again. It was just easier to come over here than listen to them argue over which one of them had the responsibility of paying for my college tuition.”

“Why do they do that? Don’t they know a family is supposed to do everything together?”

“Yeah, well, I’m just the experiment that went bad. They couldn’t get rid of me, so they fight over which one is more responsible for my ongoing existence.”

“Remind me to never marry a research scientist.”

“I’ll do that.”

She came up behind me to grab a bottle of soda out of the fridge. I shifted, thinking I was giving her more room. Instead, I moved in such a way that she was practically in my arms. And just like the little wrestling match we’d had in the rec room the other day, there was something about the way she looked at me that made my heart stutter to a near stop.

She touched me first, reaching up and brushing her fingertips against my jaw. Yet, I hesitated. It was a moment that could change everything. And I didn’t want to destroy a lifelong friendship if I was misreading her signals. But then she drew that bottom lip between her teeth, and it was like an invitation that I couldn’t ignore.

I took hold of her jaw, cupping it in my hand, and tugged her lip out of her mouth so that I could kiss it. She sighed as she climbed up on her tiptoes, moving almost nose-to-nose with me as she returned my kiss. It was sweet and soul touching, the way she kissed me with an innocence I never doubted she possessed. And then the blush that burned her cheeks when she stepped away and offered me a soft goodnight. I watched her go, my heart ready to burst with the realization that she was mine now. That we had a secret that was only ours and would remain just ours for the rest of our lives.

I had to get my head out of the past.

I retraced my steps, returned to the living room and dialed David on my phone.

“Have they found anything?”

“Ash is on his way to talk to you.”

“Why?” I asked, hairs rising on the back of my neck.

“He wanted to speak to you in person.”

“About the alarm? Or about Kate?”

David was quiet for a moment and that told me what I needed to know.

“Tell him I’ll be waiting.”

“Listen, Donovan, Kirkland’s been caught in more than one compromising position. I wouldn’t worry about it.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not Kirkland.”

I disconnected the call and thought about texting Joss. If she had her case nearly wrapped up, maybe we could work something out. She would be the perfect companion for Kate. If she didn’t speak, she wouldn’t have to worry about Kate provoking her into an argument. And maybe Kate would have a great sounding board to get out all her frustrations and pent up anger.

But I didn’t.

I paced the living room, waiting. Kate came out of the bedroom, dressed in a pair of jeans that were a size too big and an oversized sweater that looked more like a blanket draped over her body than an article of clothing. She didn’t say anything; she didn’t even look at me, just took a seat on the low couch.

“Ash is on the way to let us know what’s going on.”

I watched her face for a reaction to Ash’s name. But she just shrugged.

“What happens then?”

“We stay here for a while.”

“Then I guess work is out of the question for tomorrow.”

I glanced at her, but she wasn’t looking at me. She was staring at the floor. With a heavy sigh, I went to her, sitting on the edge of the coffee table in front of her and taking her hands in mine.

“I know this is all disconcerting, but we’re trying to keep you safe.”

“And if there was someone outside my house? What does that mean?”

“I don’t know. Have you remembered anything?”

She shook her head. “I’ve tried. But that whole day is just a big blank.”

I nodded. “Okay.”

“What if I never remember?”

“It doesn’t matter. The cops are working on it. They’ll find whoever did this to that security guard—”

“Joe.”

I nodded, a little surprised by the forceful way in which she said it. But I knew why. I’d known plenty of soldiers who’d lost friends and were forced to listen to people refer to them by almost any term other than their name. It was dehumanizing and that was painful to people who still felt that person’s presence as acutely as they had when they were alive and well.

I knew how that felt.

“Joe,” I said. “They’ll find who killed Joe and you can go back to your life.”

She turned her hands, laced her fingers with mine. I thought she was going to say something, but the door opened and Ash was there, watching us silently from the across the room.

I pulled away and stood, watching as Ash approached Kate.

“How are you, Miss Thompson?”

She sat back and glanced at him, but then her eyes went down to where her hands were clutched in her lap. “How would anyone be after being yanked out of their bed in the middle of the night?”

“I understand that this process can be frustrating, but your father hired us to keep you safe and that’s exactly what we’re trying to do.”

“I understand that.”

Ash glanced at me and I offered him all I could: a little shrug.

“If you’ll excuse us, I need to speak to Donovan for a second.”

“Whatever,” Kate said as she drew her legs up underneath her, busy working on a torn cuticle now.

Ash gestured for me to follow him into the kitchen.

“I want to apologize for what you saw on the monitors,” I began the moment we were out of earshot. “I realize it’s hardly professional—”

“We can talk about that when this is over,” Ash said. He looked me over for a long second as though checking for wounds. “Did you hear or see anything when you were getting her out of the house?”

I shook my head. “Not a sound.”

“The advance team found tool marks on her bedroom window. They think someone was trying to jimmy the window open.”

My heart sank. I was really hoping the alarm had been a false alarm, that a neighborhood cat or a raccoon had set it off. But now…there
was
a real threat against Kate.

“Do you have anything else? Fingerprints?”

“Not yet. I’ve called Emily and she’s on her way here.”

“Good.”

I turned and glanced into the living room, making sure Kate was still sitting where we left her. She was, her attention caught quite soundly by that pesky cuticle.

“Do I need to arrange for someone else to take over here?”

I turned back to Ash. “No, sir. Like I said, what happened before—”

Ash laid his hand on my shoulder. “I’m not worried about the appropriateness of it. I’m concerned about you. With your history with Kate, I just—”

“It won’t happen again.”

“Can I ask a private question?”

I was a little surprised that he would ask such a question. Ash was the closest thing I had to family, Ash and David and the others back at Gray Wolf. My parents were never really parents. I went to see them once a year out of a sense of obligation, but my true family was at Gray Wolf.

“You know you don’t have to ask.”

Ash glanced toward the living room, then focused hard on me. “Why do you let her blame you for what happened to her brother? I don’t know if you’ve seen it, but David showed me the police reports on the attack and there’s nothing—”

“I’ve seen them.”

Ash nodded. “It wasn’t anything you did. It was Joshua’s attempt to defend his sister’s honor that set the whole thing in motion.”

“Yes, well, it is partially my fault if you look at that way. I was, after all, the guy she was sneaking around with in the weeks leading up to graduation.”

Curiosity danced in Ash’s eyes, but he didn’t ask.

“Why not tell her the truth?” he asked instead.

“Because it would crush her if she thought that it was in
any
way her fault. Because I can’t put that burden on her.”

Ash shook his head. “So much damage from one kid’s stupid actions.”

I knew he was talking about John Kyle, the teenager whom police determined was the instigator of the fight and the perp who wielded the rock that took Joshua’s life after two days in a coma. But it felt like a comment aimed at Joshua—and that made my spine stiffen a little.

“He was supposed to be a doctor. Can you imagine how many lives he might have saved if he hadn’t died?”

Ash focused on me, his eyes filled with a sort of compassion that wasn’t quite pity, but wasn’t quite
not
pity either. Coming from anyone else, I would have resented it. But this was Ash, the guy I’d been to hell and back with. This was a man who deserved as much pity as anyone, what with the disappearance of Alexi. So I didn’t resent it.

“Things change. He might have changed his mind.”

“No. We were both planning on leaving for Stanford a week after graduation. We had a fellowship his dad had arranged for us through a friend. We had our whole future outlined for ourselves. Premed, medical school. Hopefully we’d match at the same hospital for our residency and fellowship.”

“You were going into medicine, too?”

I shrugged. “Ironic that I chose explosives instead, isn’t it?”

Ash again patted my shoulder. He was about to say something when Kate called out, fear in her voice.

“Someone’s here!”