Page 5

“Is that how you justify your abuse?” I ask. “By pretending I like it?”

Katie snorts. “It’s your deep psychological way of dealing with a misguided sense of no self-worth.”

She means because I’m not as enhanced as the other GTECHs and I could really do without that being pointed out right about now.

On that note, I cross to the corner behind the table, bend down, and open the mini fridge I keep stocked with two of my favorite things; Dr. Pepper and ice-cold M&Ms. Obviously, I’ve spent way too much time in this shitty little room. This is just one of the places I hole up when I’m scoping out dealers and ICE suppliers. They’re human. I’m damn near human.

I’m the right guy for this job.

“I’m not the patient, Doc,” I grind out, grabbing a soda and popping the top. I’m done with this topic and I push us another direction and not discreetly. “Can we focus on Layla?”

“Ouch,” she says. “I guess I hit a nerve. Get me the blood. Maddox hacked the German cancer center’s records. I’m working on helping her and hoping she can help us.”

Cancer. I do not want to think about Layla having cancer. And as for Maddox, if I have to hear that name one more time, I’m going to punch something. I push to my feet and claim a chair, where the wobbly mockery of a table becomes home to the can of Dr. Pepper. For the ten minutes that follow, Katie gives me a tongue lashing over not drawing Layla’s blood before dosing her.

“She was dying.”

“We’re not going to let her die,” she argues.

“That’s the point,” I rebut.

When we finally agree we’re both trying to protect her, we end the call with the hope Layla will soon leave this shithole for true safety. I sit there, and stare at Layla, innocent in slumber—soft and feminine. She’s depending on me.

I pick up my phone and dial my pal Eddie at the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, who often helps me dig for needed information, in this case, I have him run checks on the two Clanners. Eddie doesn’t ask questions. He takes down the info I pulled from the Clanners’ pockets and gets to work. I slide my phone into my pocket, my eyes returning to the bed—to Layla.

Tension curls in my body, and I try to crush it, turning the now-empty soda can around and around, my mind spinning with it. My eyes follow the movement, focused on the can, not Layla. In bed. Making me think of Layla in bed with me, when the truth is, she might hate me when she wakes up. Worse, she might be the lifebond to another. I stop spinning the can. That makes no sense. A lifebond would be fully converted. ICE wouldn’t send her into withdrawal. Then I curse under my breath and lean back in my chair. Or would it? Can GTECHs dose on ICE for an extra boost?

Abruptly, I get up, stalking to the bed, a man on a mission. Layla lies on her side, and I approach her from behind. My knees go down on the mattress. My hand slides to her hair and pushes it aside. She moves, turning onto her stomach. Like the Renegade that I am, a man who knows what he wants, I pursue. I climb fully onto the bed, lean over her, and brush her hair away from her neck where the lifebond would have formed a tattoo—a circle within a circle if she belongs to another man, an unbreakable physical connection, bound in life and death. I stare at the creamy white perfection of the delicate skin and let out a silent breath of relief. No lifebond mark.

Unable to resist, I run my fingers over the bare spot at the base of her neck. I’m one step closer to being able to trust her. And I want to…more than I should.

“Mmmmm,” she murmurs. “That feels good.” The words purr out of her. Soft. Seductive. Like a woman talking to her lover.

My hand freezes there on her neck; the bittersweet rush of uncontrollable raging hormones and pure, hot lust shoots through me, thickening my cock. I inhale, telling myself to back away. She’s asleep, drugged for all practical purposes. I start to move, but she reaches for my hand and then turns over. She blinks me into focus.

“You came for me,” she whispers. “I knew you would come.”

There’s a hazy, blank expression on her face that says she’s home but not taking calls. She’s still dreaming, experiencing some effect from her near withdrawal perhaps. Maybe not even seeing me. Maybe seeing someone else. But as she stares up at me with hope and relief overflowing from her into me, I’m not about to take away the peace I sense in her. The woman has been through enough. She deserves some peace.

“I came,” I assure her and pull the blanket around her, the air in the room churning fast and hard. My knuckles slide over her cheek. “Rest…so you can heal.”

She reaches up and wraps her hand around mine, dragging it to her chest and lacing her fingers with mine. My heart freezes at the intimate act, and when she nuzzles her chin to my fingers, her lashes fluttering to a close, the message is clear. She has no intention of letting me go.

I’m not sure how to react or why my chest feels like a steel thousand-pound ball has been placed on top of it. I’m a wham-bam, see-you-some-other-time kind of guy, who doesn’t do the touchy-feely kind of stuff—a necessary evil of being Renegade. It’s not fair to be anything but a wham-bam guy when you wake up every day facing death. Inviting death. Laughing at death. Especially when the female could be put in jeopardy, on Julian’s radar, just knowing me. So I do what’s right, and I avoid intimacy—it’s not like relationships have been lucky for me. My mother is gone. My father too. My grandmother—well, she died, but she had ten years of sobriety and happiness after I left.

All that said—right here and now with Layla, I’m not sure I have it in me to pull away. There’s a connection between us, a silent, understood connection. Maybe because Layla, like myself, wakes up every day facing death, too. Only, unlike me, who’s been doing so by choice, Layla has no choice. A cancer diagnosis stole it from her, and now Julian has, too. She faced the cancer diagnosis alone. Her mother moved to Europe, remarried, and lives in a happy bubble, which I have a sneaking suspicion is why Layla decided not to burst it with news of her cancer.

Slowly, I ease onto the mattress, facing Layla, my legs parallel to hers. For several moments I study the dark half-moons of her long lashes resting on pale perfect skin, and with that image in my mind, I close my eyes. My senses flare into overdrive, the warmth of her nearness invading me, consuming me, rolling through me like the wind, only more like a soft summer breeze. Silently, I vow that Layla will not wake up her first day outside of captivity facing death alone. She will wake to face it with me. And it’s then that I allow myself the first peaceful sleep since Layla was taken from me.

Chapter four

Iceman

Only minutes after Tad finally finishes fucking Sabrina into a trackable liability, I stand in the security booth of the warehouse, waiting as my personal bodyguard, JC Miller, inserts the DVD in a master panel that feeds ten security monitors. Tall and athletic, JC is shrewd, calculating, a badass in all possible ways—a black belt in judo, a master with weapons, a lethal killer even before he became a Clanner. He’s also a necessary evil considering I don’t “ICE” myself. And he’s smart enough not to ask why I don’t juice. He knows and doesn’t mention it because I have him by the balls—I’m his ICE distributor, and I have records of every kill the man has made sealed in a safe, ready to deliver to the authorities. Knowledge assuring JC’s loyalty to me in a way I’ll never be loyal to Tad or Julian. Or anyone for that matter.

“Shall I dispose of Sabrina?” JC asks as nonchalantly as if he’s talking about a bag of trash.

“Not yet.” I stroke my clean-shaven chin and consider. “Perhaps there is a way we can use her against Tad.”