Wait for Morning (Sniper 1 Security #1) (7 page)

Marissa was fighting a restless need to do
something by the time she and Trace returned to the Escalade after having
dinner. Thankfully, he’d decided that they’d get back on the road instead of
returning to the motel. According to him, it wasn’t a good idea to stay in one
place for too long. She figured since the guy in the Malibu hadn’t been
arrested or even taken into
custody, that
was probably
true.

Not to mention, the local police seemed to
be nosing around. She was alert enough to see the cop car still in the parking
lot, although it’d moved to a different spot since their arrival.

“Do you want me to drive?” she asked as
they approached the SUV, hoping Trace would give her the opportunity. She was
restless, as well as mentally exhausted, and she needed something to do.

Trace glanced at her and she wished she
could read his mind. She wasn’t sure whether or not he was angry, curious, or a
mixture of both. Regardless, she figured this leg of their trip wasn’t going to
be spent in silence the way the last one had.

“Sure,” Trace finally said, dangling the
keys for her to take.

Without wasting a second, Marissa snatched
them from his hand and then climbed into the driver’s seat. She immediately
started the engine, in desperate need of warm air to ward off the bitter cold,
and waited for Trace to join her.

“Are RT and Clay heading back tonight?”
she questioned, figuring the three of them had had plenty to talk about when
she’d managed to excuse herself to the restroom. It hadn’t been easy to
convince them that she’d be okay alone for three minutes, but somehow she’d
managed.

Trace shook his head. “They’re gonna stop
for a bit. They drove straight through after taking care of the shit back in
Connecticut.”

Then yeah, it was probably a good idea
that her brothers rested for a bit. Truth was, Marissa hoped to put a little
distance between her and her oldest brother specifically. Ryan was a bit testy
tonight, and she wasn’t used to seeing him like that. At least not with his
frustration aimed directly at her.

Then again, she’d never withheld the type
of pertinent information she’d been keeping to herself for the past year.

Pulling onto the highway, Marissa thought
back to the minutes before she and Trace had left the last motel room, heading
to the diner.

“Seriously,
Trace,” Marissa stated as calmly as she could, “y’all really don’t have any new
leads?”

Trace
paced in front of the cheap motel bed, both hands clasped together behind his
head as he peered down at the floor. He seemed unusually calm, but she could
sense the tension in him. Marissa had no idea whether that was because of what
had happened the night before or if it was simply the proximity that they found
themselves in. After all, he had taken a nap in the nude.

From the moment she’d awoken—having dozed off for less than
an hour—Marissa had wanted to nudge him away and riddle him with all the
questions she’d put on hold ever since he’d swept her out of her house. For
whatever reason, she’d allowed him to sleep while she twiddled her thumbs and
thought about Trace, seeing her parents again, finally getting to talk to her
best friend face-to-face. Anything except for the shit she had found herself
buried under.
It
was either that or she would’ve been tempted to find a way to distract herself
from everything entirely.

But
now that they had a few minutes to spare, and he was awake and, yes, dressed,
she wanted some damn answers. And there was only one way she could think to do
that:
ask
Trace directly. She figured
Trace would likely push her away, although he couldn’t push too far since they
were both confined to the same small room, but still, she hoped he wouldn’t.

“Don’t
know,” he finally said. His stern, matter-of-fact tone told her he wasn’t
interested in talking, but that was nothing new.

And
too bad. Marissa was tired of being left in the dark. “Okay, then how’d you
know to get me out?”

Trace
looked up, his eyes locking with hers, and Marissa found herself drawn into the
nearly colorless orbs, mesmerized by him once again.

Sometimes
she wondered if he did that on purpose. A distraction of sorts. Whatever it
took to get her to stop talking. He should know better.

“I
just did,” he told her with a heavy sigh. “I don’t want to talk about this.
Unless you’re gonna go back to sleep, I say we head for the diner to meet your
brothers.”

Marissa instantly looked over at the lone king-sized bed with
its hideous brown-and-green shabby comforter and two scrawny pillows, still
holding the indent from when they’d been in that bed earlier.
She wasn’t going to be
able to go back to sleep, but when she’d attempted to tell Trace that half an
hour ago, he hadn’t listened. Her preference would’ve been to head back to
Texas last night. Driving straight through would’ve been a much better plan,
but Trace had looked as though he were about to drop when he’d made the
suggestion to stop. Although, his suggestion hadn’t been a suggestion at all.
Not when he’d all but insisted that she take it easy and try to catch a few
hours of sleep while she had a chance.

Which
they’d done, and now they could be on their way.

“I
take it you’re ready to go then?” Trace questioned, his eyes locked on her
face.

Marissa
wasn’t sure what she was ready for, but she wasn’t about to tell him that. For
years,
she’d lusted after this man, but she’d
done her
best
not to let him—or anyone
else, for that matter—know.
If it weren’t for
the heated glances he’d shot her way on more than one occasion, she would’ve
given up long ago, but something—a strange connection, maybe—had always had her
hoping for more from him.

After
last night, when he’d held her in his arms while she slept, her hopes had
lifted even more.

Although
she knew better.

But
right now, her need for him to be close had nothing to do with lust and
everything to do with settling the unnerving feeling that was mutinying inside
her. Except that wasn’t going to get her home, where she desperately wanted to
be. She wanted to put this entire nightmare behind her, and locking herself
away with a man who wasn’t going to give her what she wanted was only wasting
precious time.

Trace
reached for her hand, causing a riot of nerves to flutter in her belly. Without
hesitation, Marissa flattened her fingers against his palm and allowed him to
help her to her feet. She shouldn’t have touched him, but she had. It was a
mistake, one she didn’t necessarily want to take back. When he
simply
turned her toward the door, grabbing the
duffel bag from the bed on the way, she knew he’d merely been taking control of
the situation.

Something
Trace did regardless of who was or wasn’t around.

“So tell me more about the Adorite
family,” Trace prompted, pulling her from her thoughts.

“What’s there to tell? You read the
article.” While the four of them had eaten their meals in silence after their
run-in with the police, Trace had gone over the article Ryan had provided him
with more than once. Although the three men hadn’t discussed anything further,
Marissa knew it was only because they’d had additional ears too close for
comfort.

“How’d you stumble upon the Adorites?”
Trace’s tone suggested he wasn’t playing games, nor was he asking her politely.

Sighing, Marissa gripped the steering
wheel harder as she peered out into the night, her eyes moving across the road
as she drove.

“I met Max Adorite at a party,” Marissa
began but was quickly interrupted.

“What were you doing at a party with Max
Adorite?”

Glaring over at Trace, Marissa frowned.
“Do you want me to tell this story, or not?”

Trace pinned her in place with his
hardened stare for a brief second but then turned his attention back to the
road, where her eyes should’ve been.

Taking a cue from him, Marissa stared out
the windshield and continued. “Doug, the journalist Ryan was referring to, had
called me up and invited me. Being that I’ve written several blogs about the
corrupt political goings-on in Texas, he’d been curious about me. Or so he’d
said. I agreed to go because he’d told me I’d get the opportunity to rub elbows
with some of Dallas’s elite.”

“The Adorites definitely qualify,” Trace
mumbled.

“Anyway, I didn’t talk to Max for long,
but his younger brother Brent was there, drunk and a little mouthy. I don’t
think he meant to give me a heads up to the feds keeping tabs on them, but I
figured I’d do a little digging of my own.”

“Brent Adorite isn’t one to run off at the
mouth without good intentions. Drunk or not.”

Yeah, well, Marissa hadn’t known that at
the time. In fact, she hadn’t known a lot of things by the time she’d found
herself knee deep in a shit hole of colossal proportions.

“It took me a couple of months, but I
managed to schmooze the right people and did a little detective work.”

“I thought you weren’t in the PI
business,” Trace asked, his tone hard.

He was right. Marissa had purposely not
ventured into the world of investigations and security the way her entire
family had, choosing to go the route of a journalist. However, in her defense,
being a journalist required a bit of investigative work, and that was a part of
her job that she found she enjoyed.

Adventure, a hint of danger.

“It comes with the job,” she told Trace.
“When I heard the term RICO, I got curious, so I mentioned it to Doug. Since I then
had an in with a few people who were close to the Adorites, Doug told me what
questions to ask so as not to draw too much attention to myself.”

“How’d that work out for ya?” Trace bit
out.

“Better than Doug,” Marissa snapped in
response.

“Your friend Doug was murdered, Marissa.
And in case you haven’t noticed, you’re on their shit list, too.”

“Whose?” she asked. “Do you think the
Adorites are really after me?”

“No,” Trace said, the honesty in the
single word drawing Marissa up short.

Glancing over at him quickly, Marissa
asked, “Then who?”

“That’s the question of the hour, Marissa.
But just like the last time you asked, I don’t fucking know.”

●«»●«»●«»●

 
“As
far as I can tell, they’re on their way back to Dallas,” Barry stated firmly
into the phone.

He noticed the nervous flutter of the other
guy’s voice. “Where are they now?”

“No clue.”

Squeezing the phone, Barry was tempted to
shatter the damn thing. His frustration level had reached an all-time high. The
only thing he wanted to do was grab the girl and take her to the Adorites, see
if they knew what was going on as he suspected they did.

Hell, he’d already called Max Adorite, the
underboss of the Southern Boy Mafia, informing him of what he knew. Screw the
annoying asshole who’d hired him. That shithead had already pissed him off. No
way was he dealing with him again.

And this guy, the head SOB, Max, he wasn’t
one to play around. He wanted answers, which was the only reason Barry had
called up his informant in the first place. He would’ve preferred to handle
shit without him, since the guy who’d hired him had put them in contact
initially, but he found he didn’t have much of a choice. He’d lost track of
Marissa Trexler, and he needed to find her ASAP.

“That’s not how this works,” Barry told
the informant now. “I’m paid to find this girl. In turn, because my boss is a
dick, I’m giving you a cut. And if you expect to earn your payment, you’re
responsible for giving me information. Hence the term
informant
.”

“I don’t know,” the guy growled. “They’re
becoming tight-lipped. Last I heard, they’d stopped in Virginia, but I don’t
think it was for long.”

“You’re not paid to think, goddammit.
You’re paid to tell me what I want to know.”

Barry was met with silence, which only
pissed him off more. Taking a deep breath and exhaling slowly, he peered
through the front windshield. He’d stopped at a rest stop to take a break.
That’d been three hours ago. The two-and-a-half-hour nap he’d managed hadn’t
done a damn thing for his mood, but at least he knew he’d be able to drive for
a few more hours without running the risk of driving into a ditch. More than
once, he wished he hadn’t shoved Jimmy out of the car. He could’ve used the
extra body to drive while he slept.

Since that was no longer an option, he’d
had no choice but to stop.

“The minute you find out where they are,
you better call me. And I don’t mean when they get back to Texas. I need to
find them before that. Once they’re ensconced with the family, my chances of
snatching her decrease exponentially.”