TheFugitivesSexyBrother (18 page)

“What are you saying?” Delicious fear trembled on her lips.
He’d changed her mind completely about her by that point. She was exquisite. He
could see why Bonavita would do anything for her.

He smiled at her gently but couldn’t keep the menace off his
face. She shrank before it. “If he thinks I’m going to kill you, he’ll come
back for you, no matter what he’s risking.”

“Are you going to kill me?” Still so brave. She asked as if
it were a point of curiosity.

“Not if I don’t have to, sweetheart. I think it would be a
waste.”

Pounding on the door seeped into Emily’s consciousness one
beat at a time. Slowly, she lifted her head, trying to focus on the noise
despite the sight of Javier’s handsome face on the pillow beside her. She
nudged him. “Do you hear that?”

He grunted in reply.

“I’m going to go see what it is.” Instinct woke her quickly.
Emily slipped out from under the covers and collected the baseball bat she kept
under the bed. She lived in a bad neighborhood. She’d never been attacked here
before, but she wouldn’t rule out the possibility.

“Emily, wait.” Javier sat up all the way, rubbing his eyes
with the back of his hand. “You’re naked. And you should let me go, in case
it’s a robber or something.”

“The robber won’t care that I’m naked when I bash his skull
in.”

“Your brother’s right. You’re scary.”

The pounding continued, escalating. Emily flashed Javier a
smile, relaxing a little. An attacker would have broken the door in by now.
Whoever this was, the person felt obligated to operate within some type of
polite protocol. As long as Emily stayed on guard, she should be able to handle
whatever would come of this.

Javier settled a blanket over her shoulders and stood at her
side in his boxers. “I know you’re tough, but I’m at least coming with you.”

“Fair enough,” Emily said. She finger-combed thick strands
of hair out of her eyes and stalked toward the door. She peered through the
peephole. The familiarity of the face on the other side unnerved her. She
jumped back as if burned.

Javier supported her body immediately, his hands warm and
firm on her arms. “What is it?”

Emily swallowed. “It’s your brother.”

His face paled. “What? Here?”

“I don’t understand it either.”

“Let him in.”

She nodded and unlatched the door. Fernando Bonavita stood
before her, looking even more like his brother than normal in jeans, a
tight-fitting T-shirt and a hoodie. Emily blinked at the mysterious man whose
body bore so much resemblance to the one that had recently become intimately
familiar to her. Fernando Bonavita blinked in turn, his eyes traveling from
Emily to his brother and back again.

Javier collected himself first. “Come inside, Fernando. We
can stare at each other in the living room just as well as we can in the hall.”

Fernando nodded and walked in past Emily. She tightened the
blanket around her body and shut the door. Javier touched her arm. “Why don’t
you put some clothes on? He came here on his own. I don’t think you have to
worry about him getting away.” She thought she detected a hint of jealousy from
Javier and wondered again about the relationship between the two men.

Emily nodded and went into the bedroom.

“She’s prettier than Terri,” she heard Fernando say as she
left.

“No comparison,” Javier responded. She gave a small smile.
She’d never had time for pretty. It pleased and amused her that Javier thought
of her that way.

Emily dressed efficiently. When she returned to the living
room a few minutes later in her workout clothes, the two brothers sat silently
across from each other, arms folded. Emily hesitated in the doorway.
“Everything all right?”

Javier shrugged. “I told Fernando we had to wait for you.
Neither of us is really in the mood for small talk.”

“Understandable.” Emily sat cross-legged on the floor
between them. Despite the serious nature of their situation, the position
reminded her of Javier’s challenge in the car. She glanced at him and shivered
before retrieving her wandering thoughts and focusing on Fernando. “Are you
turning yourself in?”

Javier’s brother scowled at Emily. “I need your help.”

“So you came to a person who’s been hired to hunt you down.”

Fernando glanced at Javier. “I came to the only person I
know I can trust.”

Emily raised an eyebrow. “You’re worth fifty grand to me.
Why don’t I call my boss, let him know you’re here and I’ll help you
after
I get paid?”

Fernando leaned forward and gripped Emily’s wrist. The
desperation in his eyes stopped her from pulling away. “If you help me, I’ll go
with you afterward like a lamb to the slaughter.” He addressed Javier. “Someone
took Carolina.”

Emily and Javier gasped in unison. Fernando released Emily’s
wrist with an expression of disgust. “My brother apparently doesn’t understand
the dangers of pillow talk.”

Javier glared at Fernando. He played with a threadbare spot
of carpet with one toe. “I haven’t let anything spill inadvertently, Fernando.
I told her about Carolina in case you were stupid enough to contact her.”

“So she could protect her?”

“So she could look for you.”

“Someone used Carolina to look for me, all right.” Fernando
jumped off the couch and turned his back. “That woman is innocent. She never
deserved to be dragged into any of this. If your loose lips are the reason
she’s in danger, Javier, I swear I’ll…”

Javier stood slowly from the seat he had taken. His presence
chilled enough to make Emily shiver. “You’ll what, Fernando? Kill me? Your
brother?”

“I thought I could trust you,” Fernando snapped, turning
back to his brother with the precision of a military officer.

The tension between the two men felt unbearable. Emily
jumped to her feet and stood between them. “No one’s killing anyone. This is my
home, and I’m going to make the decisions about what happens here. Both of you,
sit down.” Both men obeyed. “Fernando, tell us what’s going on straight out. We
can argue about it later.”

Fernando pursed his lips and nodded at Javier. “Impressive.”

“You can congratulate him later too. Why were you pounding
on my door in the middle of the night?”

Fernando sighed and changed his posture. He straightened,
then lowered his head to examine a fleck on his jeans. He picked it off and met
Emily’s eyes again, and seemed to become a new man in the process. Despite the
fear he’d shown initially, within a few seconds he’d transformed himself to
appear all business, with no sign that he had any emotional investment in the
stakes of their conversation.

“My brother made an encrypted dropbox for me years ago,”
Fernando began, his tone appropriate to a military briefing. “The idea was to
give us a way to communicate in the event we were ever separated. We both know
the login procedure and details by heart. It’s never been written down.” He
sighed. “Until recently, when I sent that information to Carolina.”

Javier’s eyes snapped open as wide as they could go. “In a
plain-text email?” he burst out. “To a person with no training in security?
Hell, she probably wrote that information on a post-it and stuck it to her
computer screen.”

Fernando winced. “Something like that, certainly. Because
about, oh, six hours ago, I received a message in the dropbox from a person who
says he’s got her. He included some pictures of her…” Fernando’s voice cracked,
his composure obviously strained. “I know they’re real. He gave me a place to
meet him if I want to save her life.”

“How did you know it wasn’t me?” Emily said.

“What?” Javier got riled up again but Fernando stopped him
with a raised hand and nodded with approval.

“She’s good. You’re paranoid about computers, but she
obviously understands how this works old-school.” He leaned forward to address
Emily. “Javier had already contacted me with details about you and your
location. He told me that you were holding him. If you were the type to
threaten to kill my loved ones, you would have done it already. In fact, you
were probably the only person I could be sure
wasn’t
responsible.”

“I didn’t have any way of contacting you. Javier wasn’t
going to talk.”

“If you’d been willing to kill, you would have found a way
to let me know you were looking for me, even if I had to learn about it on the
evening news.” Fernando’s voice held a gruesome certainty that chilled Emily’s
blood. She recalled the story of Javier’s scar and shivered. Fernando’s
measured tone made the experience seem that much more real.

Emily took a deep breath and sat back. She raised an eyebrow
at Javier. “You led me to believe you
hadn’t
contacted your brother.”

Fernando stroked the air with both hands, as if the room were
a beast he could calm with a gesture. “We can argue later, remember? I’m
supposed to be at this meeting place tomorrow evening, but I have no idea
what’s waiting for me. Machine-gun fire. Police. Gang members. Pieces of
Carolina. This guy could have any motivation. He could be working for anyone.”

Again, Fernando’s grim tone shook Emily to the core. He
listed the possible horrifying outcomes as if reciting a grocery list.

Javier put a hand on Emily’s shoulder. He seemed to pick up
on the discomfort she felt. She shook her head and forced herself to toughen.
She still didn’t like it when she seemed vulnerable in front of him. She pulled
herself upright. “What do you want us to do?”

“Javier, I’m hoping you can get a little more information
about this guy. Can you figure anything out from what he posted to the
dropbox?”

Javier sighed and shook his head. “Only if he doesn’t know
how to obscure his IP address,” he said hopelessly.

“What’s an IP address?” Emily said.

Fernando cocked his head at Javier. “It’s worth a shot.”

Emily nodded. “Believe it or not, I’ve seen plenty of people
who are even worse with the computer than me.”

Javier grinned. “I’ll get on it. It shouldn’t take long,
since this is a bit of a binary.”

“English, please,” Fernando said. “Or Spanish, at least.”

“He either covered his tracks or he didn’t. I’ll know pretty
quickly if this is worth pursuing.”

Emily cleared her throat loudly.

Javier frowned. “What’s the matter?”

“What about me? I still haven’t agreed to let the warrant
slide.”

Javier knelt at her side and leaned in close. “Don’t play
games, Emily. Not after what we said to each other in the car. He said that if
we help him, you can take him in afterward. He’s good for his word.”

“Like he was for Guy?”

“Please don’t do this.”

She couldn’t hold out in the face of the genuine anguish
that wrinkled his forehead. Emily sighed. “All right. But I’d better not be
expected to drive the getaway car or something stupid like that.”

Fernando nodded appraisingly. “What can you do?”

Emily lifted her chin. “I’m not going to use a weapon, but I
can take a person down if I have to.”

“Good. If we’re dealing with guns, that’s going to change
everything anyway. We’ll have to assess the situation from the outside as best
we can. Assuming we’re not facing guns, Emily can deal with the kidnapper and
I’ll see to Carolina.”

Emily leaned back and stared at Fernando, surprised and
pleased. “You just trust that I can?”

“Can’t you? You just told me you can take a person down.”

“Well, sure, but a lot of people don’t believe that.”

“You’re not bragging. You don’t look like the swaggering
type. And my brother obviously respects you. I’m trusting you to give me an
accurate assessment of your abilities.”

It was Emily’s turn to look impressed and nod at Javier. Her
lover rolled his eyes. “Oh my God, will you two stop flirting? I’m glad you
like each other, but I don’t need you both smirking at me all the time.”

Emily and Fernando both laughed. They met each other’s eyes,
and for a second Emily felt a sense of family togetherness she hadn’t
experienced since well before she’d told her father about her career plans.
Then she shook herself free of it. Fernando Bonavita was a criminal and her
quarry. Agreeing to help him rescue an innocent woman was one thing. Treating
him like a family member was another. She couldn’t let herself forget what he
was accused of doing.

Javier clicked the computer mouse a few times, then let out
a loud cry. “Really? Are you kidding me?”

“What?” Emily said, instant adrenaline coursing through her
veins. She jumped up, alarmed.

“Fernando, this is disgusting. You need help, man.”

“You found the kidnapper’s note?”

“No, I found your two hundred obsessive messages before it.
If I were a woman I’d file a restraining order after seeing this.”

“It’s not that bad,” Fernando said. He lowered his voice and
spoke quickly to Emily. “It’s really not.”

“Dearest Carolina, I fall asleep each night remembering the
smell of your shampoo and the shape of your body cradled next to mine.”

“I was sort of using the dropbox as a diary,” Fernando
protested. “I didn’t expect her to actually read it.”

“We’re going to need some sort of intervention when this is
all over. You can’t write like this. You have to leave something to the
imagination.”

“It sounds romantic to me,” Emily put in. Both men stopped
their rapid-fire discussion to stare at her. “What? I mean, I guess it is
creepy that there are two hundred—”

“There are
not
two hundred!”

“But one or two letters like that would be romantic.”

“Emily, I am not writing you a letter like this.”

She gave Javier a serene smile. “Did I ask you to?”

“You suggested—”

She sweetened her expression to sarcastic perfection. “We
can argue about it later.” Despite the bickering, she could not hold back the
joy that came to her face at the sight of Javier.

Fernando noticed with an indulgent smile. “He seems happy
with you.”

“Well, it’s only been a couple weeks. Give him time to
figure out why I’m irritating.”

Fernando shook his head firmly. “You have a similar sense of
humor. That’s good. And he has something you need.”

“Do I ever,” Javier said lewdly from the computer, where he
typed rapidly.

Emily rolled her eyes and mimed throwing a baseball at him.

“I meant, he has skills that you don’t,” Fernando continued,
without acknowledging the interruption. “Men and women are supposed to
complement each other. You two look well together.”