Wild Dirty Secret(14)

I panted against the headboard, unable to walk away but unwilling to beg. Luke remained carved in stone where I’d left him sitting on the edge of the bed. The air pulsed with doubt and longing—with sex.

“I want it to be real between us.” He spoke low and hoarse.

A quiet sound escaped me. Every caress, every pinch. Every slur ever spoken. “It’s always real. That’s the problem, Luke. It’s always too damn real.”

He hung his head, and I thought for a moment I heard him say “I know,” but the moment slipped away; the sweet intimacy sailed away like clouds on the horizon—never really mine.

Without turning he asked, “Why not take her to your shelter?”

My heart stuttered in shock, distracted at least from its injuries. “Wh-what on earth are you talking about?”

“Yeah, I know about that.” He turned to me, his eyes dark emerald—fathomless. “You told me about it when you were in the hospital.”

For days after I was shot, I had lain in the hospital bed. He had been by my bedside every time I woke. What else had I said?

He continued. “You told me that girls don’t like outsiders to interfere. What did you call me? ‘An interfering bastard who doesn’t know when to quit.’”

“Well, you are a bastard,” I mumbled. “And I’m not an outsider. Besides, she can’t go there. Even the security there won’t hold up against Henri, and I can’t put all the other girls at risk—”

He swore. “Henri? As in Henri Denikin, who owns two whole streets in the Fifth Ward? How the fuck did you get mixed up with him?”

I blinked with feigned innocence. “I work for him—from the beginning. Didn’t I mention that?”

Of course I hadn’t. Even when I’d reluctantly agreed to leak information about Philip, I had never let on that I knew Henri. I was conflicted, not suicidal.

“You know you didn’t.” Luke stalked away only to come right back. “He’s one crazy SOB. If I had known… Damn it, you should have told me.”

“So you see.” Relief swept through me. He understood what kind of danger she was in. “You’ll help her?”

“Child Protective Services will help her,” he corrected. “I’m betting she’s under eighteen, if barely. They’ll give her a place to live.”

I gaped. “You mean a place to die, because no broken-down group home is going to be safe from Henri.”

“No place is safe from him. That’s what makes him terrifying.” But he didn’t sound terrified; he sounded angry.

“You can protect her. Someplace better than that, somewhere safe.” Something illegal.

“I can’t,” he said, but it sounded like I won’t. “I can’t legally keep an underage girl when she has parents somewhere worried about her. You want me to break the law for her.”

For me. He had off-the-books connections, he could pull strings, but only if he wanted to. Disappointment churned like bile. He didn’t, but I was desperate enough to keep trying. “What about changing her name? Witness protection?”

“Sure, if she’s a witness. If she can nail an actual case against him.” His look was pure disbelief. “Can she?”

Doubtful. She was brand-new here, whereas I’d worked with Henri for years. I scrolled through everything I knew about Henri, every illegal thing I’d ever seen him do. All of it incriminating, but none of it would stick. A working girl, I’d never been in his inner circle. I never knew much. And now that I’d been out of the life for months…not anything.

“I’m sorry,” he said, softer now. His eyes pleading like the guy at the goddamned bookstore, the backside of betrayal. “If I helped every one of Henri’s girls—”

“I’m not asking you to help all of them, just one. Just me.” I swallowed. “Do it for me.”

“Would you go away too—disappear?”

Change my name, fine. And there’d be no love lost for this harsh city. But never to see Allie or Bailey again? There’d be no point to any of it. No chance of seeing Luke again? Something inside me ached at the thought.

Could I give them up to save the girl?

“Please,” I said, not sure what I was asking.

Light flickered through his eyes like the moonlight on water. He lived and breathed his work. His crusade against the pimps of Chicago was his mission, the rules and regulations of the Chicago Police Department his scripture. How could I ask a man to sacrifice his religion?

How could I not?

I thought of Ella and the potent fear-hope mixture in her stormy eyes. I needed this. Maybe it would be enough. Maybe, for once, I’d beat fate.