Hot Pursuit (41 page)

“You know, I don’t know about you, but I think Ben was lying to you back in the hospital room as to who he was talking to on the phone.”

Wolf glanced over at Angel. “I know he was.”

*   *   *

Angel stared out her store window at the light drizzle and gray day. There had been four customers so far that day, all her diehards. But it would get slow from now until the holiday season began; then everyone would brave the cold rain to hurry out and buy presents. Already she had orders in for special stock to accommodate.

Her mind wasn’t focused on holiday customers or how dead it was today. She dwelt on Zoey, who had decided to take a nap, and her insistence that she was doing the right thing. Angel wasn’t making a mistake by having Zoey stay with her above the bookstore. Of course it meant no wild sex with Wolf, who was leaning next to her on the counter, close enough she swore she felt his arm against hers even though they weren’t touching. The sexual energy between them sizzled in the air. Angel would bet he was thinking the same thing she was. Where could they escape for a quickie? Although with Wolf, there was no quick sex. She enjoyed him way to much to rush sex with him.

“Penny for your thoughts,” he grumbled.

Angel turned her head, looked into his eyes, and knew without a doubt he had been thinking the same thing she was. His smile was slow and predatory as she continued staring at him.

Since sex in the store during business hours wasn’t an option, Angel came up with the next best thing to say. “Why would Ben have lied to you yesterday about who he was talking to on the phone?”

Wolf’s expression immediately changed. He suddenly looked dangerous, if not pissed, and pulled his attention from her, looking toward the street. “I think he knows where the assassin is.”

“What?” Angel gasped, but then shot a hurried look toward the staircase leading to her apartment before lowering her voice and returning her attention to Wolf. “Why the hell hasn’t he arrested him, or captured him, or done whatever it is bounty hunters do?” It dawned on her that she wasn’t completely sure what Wolf would do if he caught the assassin. That would be her next question.

Wolf pulled his gaze from the drizzly cold day outside and studied her for a moment. He didn’t answer her right away. Angel would be damned if he brushed off her question with some ambiguous answer. Apparently, her expression said as much.

He blew out a long breath. “It’s public knowledge that the assassin worked for KFA, the bounty hunters in L.A. where Ben worked, or still is employed to the best of my knowledge.”

“No shit?” Angel whispered. “Ben knows the assassin?”

“Yup.” Wolf’s look was intense when he stared at her. “When I headed north, he followed me at first. On our way up here we called a truce and agreed to look for the assassin together.”

Angel made a snorting sound. “And you bought that?”

He surprised her by placing a quick kiss on her lips. “What I like about you, kid. You’re quick.”

“Sharp as a tack,” she informed him, then batted her lashes. “And sexy, too.”

She’d never felt sexy before, but the way Wolf looked at her, as if he was ready to pounce, made her feel that way. This time she leaned into him and he kissed her again. It was a long, slow kiss, one that would send some of her customers running in shock if they were to enter her store. No one tried coming through the door, not that she was sure she would have heard the bell ring over the door if it had. When Wolf gripped her chin and impaled her mouth, everything around her faded away into an array of enticing shades of warm colors.

“I definitely want more,” he growled against her mouth when he ended the kiss.

“Umm … me, too.”

He grumbled under his breath, and Angel smiled, taking her time opening her eyes. It took time for the sexual fog to lift from her brain, and she didn’t rush it. When she looked up, Wolf was staring at her.

“I love that look on you.”

“What look is that?”

“Like you can’t wait to have some of this gorgeous body.”

Angel slapped his arm but couldn’t help laughing. “Cocky bastard,” she mumbled.

“Yup.”

She needed distance and left him at the counter to wander among her shelves, looking for any misshelved books. With so few customers in so far, there wasn’t much straightening to do. She made a show of doing so anyway.

“Ben said something about Zoey to whoever he was talking to,” she said when a bit of silence had passed between the two of them.

Wolf hadn’t moved and she had to return to the counter, remaining on the opposite side of it, to continue their interrupted conversation.

“Yeah, I noticed that.” He fiddled with pens she had in a ceramic cup next to her register, then straightened several short stacks of business cards customers had left for others to see and pick up.

“Why did he say Zoey wouldn’t say anything?” That had bugged Angel, but she hadn’t had a chance to ask Wolf about it until now.

His hand remained on the business cards, but he looked up at her, once again that intense look hardening his gaze. “My guess is she knows the assassin.”

“What?” Angel was instantly shaking her head. “Zoey doesn’t know anyone. Wait—” She pointed a finger at Wolf. “The assassin isn’t Cortez.”

“No.” Wolf laughed once, but it was almost a sad laugh as he shook his head. “For it to be that easy.”

“Then how does she know him?”

“Because I think she knows his wife.”

Angel stared at him. He stared back.

“Crap,” she whispered. “Do I know her?”

*   *   *

Ben parked his bike behind Angel’s bookstore later that evening. He had been texting Zoey most of the day. She was bored in Angel’s apartment but wasn’t going to go into the bookstore and scare customers. Ben doubted anyone who knew Zoey would be frightened by her appearance, more like pissed. The town needed to get pissed and quit being nice when it came to Cortez.

Zounds wasn’t Ben’s problem. All he cared about was Zoey. They needed to talk, which they hadn’t really done since she’d started speaking to him again. He understood that there was attraction, but she hadn’t explained to him why she’d been so mad at him. Ben hated feeling like the stupid man, clueless to the behavior of a woman or possibly to whatever he’d done or said. In past relationships if his girlfriend rolled her eyes and walked away from him in disgust, Ben shrugged and went on with his business. He accepted he didn’t want to go back to L.A., and he also accepted there was now only one reason. Zoey. Micah had been warned. If he wasn’t going to worry about Wolf being hot on his tail, well, he was a grown man.

Tapping on the storeroom door, Ben hunched in his coat against the cold. At least it wasn’t raining anymore. He wasn’t worried about Wolf giving him scathing looks or dropping crass remarks over what he thought he overheard when Ben had been on the phone. From the beginning, the man had suspected Ben knew more about Micah than he’d let on. Wolf still didn’t know where Micah was, and that was what mattered. Ben couldn’t babysit Micah any longer. It was time to get Zoey out of Zounds.

Wolf opened the storeroom door, looked at Ben, Ben’s bike parked behind him, then into the darkness past Ben. Slowly Wolf opened the door farther and let Ben in. Ben spotted the gun Wolf had hidden in his other hand when he stepped back to allow Ben entrance. Wolf sheathed the gun inside a sleeveless down coat he was wearing.

“What’s going on?” he grunted.

“Angel tell you I was coming to see Zoey?”

“Yeah.”

Okay, so Wolf was pissed at him. He saw the tension, as much as felt it coming off the man. Ben didn’t care. “Good,” he grunted, and started past the man.

“Mercy.”

“What?” Ben demanded, anxious to see Zoey. They had a lot to talk about, and the sooner he cleared the air with her the sooner he could convince her to leave town with him.

“You know where he is.”

“I don’t know shit.”

He stormed into the bookstore and forced himself to relax at Angel’s quizzical expression as she looked up from behind the counter. It looked like she was tallying receipts or something.

“Is it okay if I go upstairs and see her?” Ben had already spotted the stairs and had texted Zoey enough that day to have a good idea of the layout of Angel’s home above her store.

Angel nodded at the stairs. “Make yourself at home.”

Ben was grateful neither of them followed. He bounded up the stairs, took in the neat and cozy home, definitely influenced by a woman’s touch. Lacy curtains hung over kitchen windows. The home was impeccably clean and looked like one of those homes where everything had a place and everything was in its place. There were large matching pillows on either end of a couch, which was in the middle of a large room and made for a divider between kitchen and living area. Angel had a large flat screen secured to her wall, a fifty-two-inch. He also spotted a stereo in the corner with a couple tall, narrow speakers on pedestals. Wires had been stapled to the wall. Surround sound. Nice.

“Hi,” Zoey said.

Ben quit caring about Angel’s home as his attention darted to a doorway toward the front of the home, or the part of it facing the street. Zoey stood in the doorway. He bounded toward her, feeling like a gangly oversized dog whose master was no longer pissed at him. With a quick swoop Ben wrapped her into his arms and lifted her off the ground as he straightened. Just the smell of her made him feel better.

“Oh shit,” he said, immediately feeling selfish. He put her down carefully. “Did I hurt you?”

Zoey laughed. Her bruises weren’t as bad as they’d been when she’d left the hospital, and the swelling was down in her lip. “Not at all.”

She took him by the hand, her other hand with the cast held protectively to her chest. She wore flared black pants that hugged her beautifully shaped ass. An oversized red sweatshirt almost covered it but not quite. Her black hair tumbled down her back. She guided him to the couch and sat down, motioning for him to sit next to her. Ben slipped out of his coat and tucked it behind him on the couch, wanting to be as close to Zoey as possible.

“I don’t have a lot of dating experience.” She was still smiling and her large dark eyes glowed, showing her sincere happiness. “But I do have a lot of experience being controlled, manipulated through lies—”

“Zoey, I—”

“Please,” she stopped him. There was something so desperate in her eyes.

“Go ahead.” He brushed his fingers down the side of her face, right at the hairline, not wanting to hurt her. “Tell me,” he coaxed.

She smiled and he barely noticed the still slightly puffy indentation around the stitches at the edge of her lower lip and just below her mouth. Her entire face lit up. How could anyone lay a hand on this beautiful lady in anger?

“Oddly enough, it was Micah who helped me see.” She kept her tone low and glanced at the stairwell when she spoke. But only for a moment; then those captivating large, dark eyes of hers returned to Ben’s face. She searched it as she continued, as if needing to know his reaction without asking him to comment. “You lied to me. It pissed me off. I’ve had a lifetime of lies”—her hand fluttered to her face—“of abuse. But I see now that you didn’t lie out of a need to control me. You simply needed to protect someone who means a lot to you.”

“Yes.”

“I get that now.”

Ben wanted to yell at whoever came up the stairs to leave them alone but couldn’t. This wasn’t Zoey’s home. It wasn’t his, either. He turned, as did Zoey, when Wolf strolled up the stairs.

“Angel wants something to drink,” he muttered, pointing toward the refrigerator as he walked toward it. “Glad everyone’s decent.”

Ben waited for Wolf to dig through the refrigerator. He seemed to be taking way too long to grab whatever it was Angel wanted to drink. The refrigerator light silhouetted the man’s large frame. Otherwise, other than the lamps that were on either side of the couch the light was dim in the tidy home. Nonetheless, Ben saw Zoey watching him, instead of turning to see what Wolf was doing. She wanted this conversation as desperately as Ben did. As soon as Wolf was gone, Ben would ask Zoey to return to L.A. with him. There wasn’t anything for either of them in Zounds.

Lighter footsteps hurried up the stairs. Ben groaned and Zoey hid a smile. He grabbed her hand, wanting alone time with her so much it made his insides hurt.

“I’m looking for the diet soda,” Wolf said, straightening.

“There are cars outside,” Angel said, breathless. She was pointing down the stairs. “I saw them pull up in front of the store, and they are going down the service alley.” She looked, panicked, from Wolf to Ben. “I think it’s Cortez,” she whispered.

Ben flew over the top of the couch without thinking about how to do it. “Motherfucker is mine!” he yelled at all of them, pushing Angel out of the way and flying down the stairs.

He was through the bookstore and storage room without waiting for Wolf as backup or giving thought to the fact that his gun was in his coat, which he’d left upstairs. Ben shoved the storage room door open. Wolf grunted something behind him, but Ben didn’t hear him.

Several men were getting out of a long, sleek-looking dark car. Ben didn’t size them up. He didn’t give any of them any of his attention, except one. A short man, a few inches shorter than Ben, dressed in very expensive-looking clothing, with sleek black hair, darker skin than Zoey’s, similar dark eyes and shaped nose as hers, straightened his shirt as he sized up Ben.

“Ben Mercy, I assume,” he said, as if he owned the whole damn world and Ben were a bug he planned to extinguish.

Ben had news for the asshole. This bug planned on living. “Cortez,” he growled, then without a thought to any of the men closing in around him lunged forward and punched the lowlife waste of flesh square in the mouth.

“Kill him!” Cortez yelled as he fell backward—hard—against his open car door.

Ben had the incredible satisfaction of knowing his fist landed squarely in the man’s face as blood exploded around his nose. At the same time the loud cry of pain the weasel let out when his back hit squarely against the open car door fed Ben’s satisfaction immensely.