Under Fire (Love Over Duty #1)(63)

It was nearly three in the morning by the time he crept back into his own home and grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge. He looked over to Lou's room, where she was still sleeping. As tempting as it was to lose his clothes and crawl in bed next to that warm body of hers, he didn't. He didn't trust his feelings around her. When she'd looked at him in the bathroom like he was a giant ice cream sundae and she was the five-year-old allowed to eat it before breakfast, it had made his week. But by the time she'd left the bathroom, she'd looked like she felt as bad as he did. For a moment, he could've sworn that she wasn't going to take his no for an answer, and he wondered how he would have reacted if she'd acted on that flicker of confidence. Yet she hadn't.

Footsteps on the wooden floor behind him made his heart race a little with excitement, something he hadn't felt about a woman in a really long time. He closed the fridge door and turned to look at Louisa. Dark circles ringed her eyes, and her lips were pursed.

"Are you okay?" she said, quietly, as she looked down at the floor.

Back to hiding again. Look at me, Lou.

Damn. She'd put her wall back up while he was gone, and while it was the best thing for the two of them, he hated it.

"I'm fine. You?" he said, placing his hand on her shoulder. He did so to comfort her, but he was the one who suddenly felt better. At least he did until she shrugged slightly and moved out of his reach and walked over to the window.

"I'm fine," she said in a voice that told him she was many things but fine certainly wasn't one of them. "What happened last night?"

"We found a guy, followed him to what we think was some kind of safe house, and got some leads on who might be involved," he answered honestly. Technically, she was his client, so he owed her answers, but, shit  …  What if she couldn't deal with the reality about how he came by them? He couldn't bear it if she hated him for what he'd had to do to get them.

Louisa gripped the back of the stool, finally looking at him. "Just like that? You knocked on the door and said, ‘Hey, who hired you?' and he told you?" She raised one eyebrow suspiciously.

"Well, it wasn't quite that straightforward," he said. He followed her gaze to the bruised knuckles that he flexed subconsciously. There was no keeping anything from her. "No," he answered because he could tell from the look on her face, all squinting eyes and pursed highly kissable lips, that she was going to demand answers even if his natural instinct wanted to protect her from them. "It wasn't that easy. It took some very physical persuasion. But we found out that he'd been hired by a Russian who lives in LA. A Victor Lemtov."

"Ivan and Vasilii are Russian. Are they connected? I mean, it's kind of obvious, really."

"We'd be foolish not to assume so. And if they are, they're probably smart enough to realize that you will come to that conclusion. Somebody wants the drug you created, which means someone had to tell them it existed."

"That's reassuring," she said before shuffling around the take-out menus he kept on the counter until they were in size order.

Though the confidence with which she spoke was undermined by the nervous actions, he was impressed by how she was keeping everything together.



       
         
       
        

"You didn't kill the man you spoke to yesterday, did you?"

It had been difficult not to, but he shook his head. "He was still alive and in the back of a police car when we left," Six said, deliberately being light on details. "We got the information that we needed and we now have the means to keep an eye on him too."

"So, what happens now?" she asked.

"Mac and Lite are working the LA angle, just grabbing some intel about the guy before we go up there and see what we can find out. Lite is covering feeds from Ivan's house and the phone belonging to Kovalenko, the guy who attempted to abduct you. Buddha, Gaz, and I are technically off rotation today. Sherlock is tracking the other vehicles to see if we can find out more from them."

"I thought the whole call-sign thing was a myth," Louisa said, tucking the menus back behind the phone.

"They're just nicknames. Mac is actually short for his real name, Malachi, which he hates. Buddha's real name is Joel Budd. Gaz is Gareth. Lite's first name is actually Miller. Miller Lite, right? Sherlock's real name is Jensen Holmes. I get Six from Sixton, but I get Viking too, sometimes. My dad's family descended from them."

"Hmm," she said. "I want a nickname too. Can I pick one?"