“Okay,” I conceded. “I’ll do as you say. But please, don’t do anything stupid. None of this forgotten army stuff. If you’re suffering from PTSD, and I’m pretty sure you are, from a lot of things I might add, this won’t be the time to sort it out.”
He turned his head and held my gaze. “I’m not going to shoot your brother. Or your sister-in-law. Or you. I just want to keep you safe. And I will, at any cost.”
I frowned, studying him further but not finding any other layers beneath his handsome features. “Why are you doing this for me?”
He smiled sadly. “Because I can.” He sighed and then started the car. “Let’s go find ourselves a hotel, drink some beer and see if we can fuck each other to sleep.”
Twenty minutes later we were staying in rustic but fairly clean motel. No one was drinking. No one was fucking. We were asleep the minute we hit the pillows.
***
The next morning I woke up feeling wooden. My tongue was swollen from where I kept chomping down on it during the motorcycle chase and every part of me hurt.
But I was alive when I shouldn’t be and I couldn’t complain. I cheated death more than once. Hell, I’d given it the finger.
Derrin was already up, shirtless with his back to me, staring out the slip of light on the drawn curtains and fiddling with something in his hands.
My god he was a fine man. Even now, or maybe even more so, he was everything I’d ever wanted. Each sculpted muscle on his back, from the dimples near his waistband to the ripples that planed off his spine, spoke of what a tireless, tough, well-oiled machine he was. He was so big, so strong, and my protector. But it never made the fear go completely away because when it came down to it, he was an ex-soldier. He wasn’t Rambo. He wasn’t even David Caruso. He was a Canadian with some muscles, training and I suppose a lot of luck. He had determination and he was much, much smarter than his appearance led you on to believe. But he wasn’t part of the cartels. He didn’t know this game or the way things worked, as much as he thought he did.
He was so confident he knew how things were going to go that I started to believe him too. But unless there was something about him that I didn’t know, I had to keep my guard up. I couldn’t rely on him for everything. I had to go on what I knew.
He didn’t know my brother at all, just from what he had heard on the news. And while drug lords usually couldn’t be trusted, it didn’t mean they were all bad people. Javier was bad – he didn’t get to where he was without being so – but he wasn’t as bad as people thought. He’d certainly never hurt me, let alone put me in jeopardy. Me and Marguerite were all he had left and though I hadn’t talked to him a lot lately – he seemed to be increasingly busy, which I understood, considering – we had a good relationship. I helped him out when he needed it and he helped me financially when I did.
And now, I had no doubt he would come through when my life was on the line.
I was thinking that and blinking the fuzzy sleep out of my eyes, while Derrin took what was in his hands, the Ace bandage, and began to wrap it around his stomach. Third pass around, he slipped a small handgun in there and then wrapped it again, securing it tight.
When he turned around he wasn’t surprised to see me staring at him. I was starting to think he had eyes at the back of his head.
“What’s the plan?” I asked, not wanting to mention the gun. That gun came in handy.
He slipped on a t-shirt, poured a cup of tar-like coffee in a styrofoam cup and handed it to me before sitting on the side of the bed. I drew my knees up to my chest and took a sip.
Disgusting. I loved coffee but I wasn’t about to drink motor oil. I handed it back to him, making a face.
He held in his hands but didn’t drink it and looked ahead at a spot on the wall, totally focused.
“We’ll check out of here and go up the road for a bit. Find a big public area, like a mall. Find a payphone there and tell him that you need to meet him right where you are at a certain time. Where does he live?”
“About three hours from here. It’s remote but he can get here faster than that. I think he has a helicopter now.”
He took in this information. “Okay. We’ll give him three hours. Then we find another hotel. Check in, under my name only again, and wait there. With two hours left, we split up. I’ll be watching you the whole time.”
I rubbed my lips together feeling so damn nervous. “Then what?”
“What?”
“What happens to me?”
“I don’t know. I guess that depends what you’re going to ask of him. Do you want to walk off with him, to his compound? Do you seriously believe you’ll be safe there?”