One more slow slide of her fingers around the top of the beer bottle, then down the neck, a caress, almost a pump.
He gulped. Jesus.
She handed him the beer, and her fingers pressed against his chest. “I’m the woman who’s going to give you a night you’ll never forget.”
Adam smiled at that, then he drained his beer. “Promises, promises…”
Near hit and run. Almost took Max out. New game?
Luke shook his head as he read Sam’s text. “Kim, we’ve got a problem” A big problem. A hit and run wasn’t part of the MO.
“Hey!” Her voice came, high and tense, from right beside him. She had her phone pressed to her ear. “Ramirez is on the line. He says a BMW nearly clipped Sam and Ridgeway at the bank on Pines!”
Ramirez. Their shadow guy on this case. He was watching Sam and Ridgeway, and he’d make sure no one saw him. “Yeah, I know.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Did you know that Ramirez got the guy’s license plate?” Her fingers tapped on the nearest keyboard.
Luke stared over her shoulder as she pulled up the DMV access and typed in the numbers. It took less than five seconds for the results to pop up. “I’ll be damned…” He muttered. The tag number matched the BMW registered to one Jeremy Briar. A car that had been reported missing by his mother right before she’d been booked for killing her husband.
Jeremy’s car. A car that his killers had just tried to use to run down another man.
But… why? Sure wasn’t good business sense. Dead men couldn’t pay ransoms.
“We need to talk about this,” Sam said when it became obvious that Max was just going to ignore the near hit-and-run. Ignore it. Was the guy crazy? He’d almost been killed, and he hadn’t said a word.
They’d gone to his place and picked up fresh clothes and an overnight bag. They were nearly back at his stepfather’s, and they were going to discuss the attack.
Sam saw his jaw clench. She swallowed back her own fear and fury and tried to sound calm. “Max… someone aimed at you.” Okay, not so calm. Forget calm.
“Why the hell would they want to hit me?” he demanded. The Jeep accelerated with a growl of sound.
That’s what she wanted to know. She didn’t like this situation. Not at all. The kidnappers had never made an attack like this. Breaking the MO would mean trouble.
“You shouldn’t have pushed me out of the way,” he told her, his deep voice rumbling.
She fiddled with the seatbelt. “Well, if you moved faster, I wouldn’t have needed to push.”
His fingers curled around the steering wheel. “You made yourself a target out there. You should have hauled ass and gotten out of the way, not worried about me.”
“Worrying about you is my job.” For now.
“That all it is?”
Sam blinked. “Wh-what?”
But he was turning the wheel and pulling into the long, winding drive that led up to the Malone house. A guard stood at the gate, and when he saw Max he waved them through with a roll of his hand.
“I don’t get you,” Max said, easing the Jeep toward the house. “The FBI? Hell, no, I never would have pegged that for you.”
Why? Because she was weak? “It’s all I’ve ever done.” All she’d ever wanted to do.
He braked the vehicle and turned to face her. “And what? You get off on it? On tracking the killers? On seeing the bodies?”
Her breath sucked in. “No.”
“Why do it?”
“Because I know that some monsters are real.” God, how she knew that was true. When she closed her eyes, she saw her own monster. “And they belong in cages, far away from innocent people.” Or they belonged in the ground. But she wasn’t supposed to say that. Think it, yes, but the badge wouldn’t let her say it.
Max’s hand reached out, and his fingers caught a lock of her hair. “You think every killer belongs in a cage.” A darker tone hardened his voice.
“My job is to stop killers. That’s what I do.” Sam unclipped the seatbelt but didn’t pull away from him. The sad truth was that she liked the touch of his hand against her cheek.
But his hand fell away and his mouth tightened. “Everything’s black and white for you. You don’t have room for gray in your world, huh?”
“Do you?” She fired back. “I saw your face when you found out I was with the FBI. You were pissed, Max.” No masking that look of fury.
“I am pissed. You shouldn’t be here. You should be so damn far away from here…”
Way to make a girl feel wanted. “I’m not going anywhere.” The SSD wouldn’t let her, and besides, she wasn’t leaving him.
This was her time to be strong. I can do this. Hyde would be monitoring her every move. If she screwed up…
Well, Quinlan would be dead. Max would hate her. And she’d find her ass on the street.
No pressure.
“They’ll call tonight,” she said. The kidnappers always made contact again twenty-four hours after they took the vic. “They’ll give you instructions for making the drop.”
“And you’ll tell your agents.” He killed the engine.
“Trust me, okay?” Yes, there was desperation creeping into her words. “The SSD won’t blow this. The agents will be far enough away that no one will see them, but they’ll see everything. They’ll be able to track the kidnappers after the drop. They’ll stop this. No one else will get hurt.”
“I want to believe you, baby.” His fingers closed around the keys, forming a strong fist. A fist with bruised knuckles courtesy of that punch into the wall earlier. “But the thing is, I seem to have trouble trusting you.”
Sam kept her chin up. “Then don’t trust me, but listen to me. This isn’t my first case. This isn’t the SSD’s first case. We bring down killers, and we bring victims back alive.” They’d brought her back.
His head cocked, and his eyes glittered. “Now why do I think you’re not being all that truthful with me? Some of the victims, they don’t come back, do they?”
She turned away from him and shoved open the door. Cold air hit her like a slap, but it was what she needed. Sam hurried forward, determined to get inside the house.
“Samantha.”
She froze at Max’s voice. Gravel crunched beneath his feet as he followed behind her. Then he was there, catching her fingers, and curling his own around them. “You never know who’s watching, baby.” A sensual reminder, one with an edge of steel.