In The Trenches: An OPS Protector Romance, page 24
I ran around the back of the vehicle, staying low as I approached the passenger side. As I lifted my head, the passenger fired out his window, shattering the glass. I quickly ducked, then threw my elbow inside, hitting him in the head and knocking him out slightly. Grabbing him by the jacket, I hauled him through the window, tossing him to the ground before I put a bullet in his head.
A scream tore through the night and I raced around the SUV, aiming at the man who had Beth by the neck, pulling her out of the truck. “Let her go!” I shouted.
“Put your gun down,” he shouted, his gun aimed right at her head. He was dragging her toward the edge of the cliff. He had no intention of letting her go, but my alternative was for him to shoot her in the head right in front of me. I raised my hands, slowly lowering my gun to the ground. He was close to the edge now.
“Don’t do it,” I warned him. “You can walk away right now. You have no backup.”
“I have a job to do.”
I didn’t look at Beth as I tried to calm him the fuck down. Still bent over, I slowly stood. “Aren’t you wondering why they’re after her? She’s a nobody. She knows nothing.”
“Doesn’t fucking matter,” he growled, still dragging her closer to the edge.
I could hear Beth whimpering. I knew she was terrified, but I couldn’t think about that right now. As soon as he took his eyes off me to look over the edge, I grabbed my backup from the small of my back and fired two shots, one in his shoulder and one in his head. He dropped the gun and fell backward, but as he did, his feet tangled with Beth’s and she started to fall.
I raced forward, as she held out her hand. It all happened in slow motion as she slipped off the edge of the mountain and disappeared right in front of me.
“Beth!” I called off, laying on my belly to search for her.
“I’m here!” she called out, dangling ten feet below me, barely hanging onto the rock ledge. Luckily, the mountain was sloped, not a straight drop-off, so she was almost laying across the mountainside.
“Hang on! Don’t move!”
I studied the terrain of the side of the mountain. There were some good places for footholds, but I needed to get down there fast. With her arm still in the sling, she was barely holding on. There was no time to run back to my truck for supplies.
“I’m coming down. Don’t move unless I tell you to.”
I half-expected a witty retort out of her, but instead, she kept her mouth shut and squeezed her eyes closed.
“Beth, keep watching me,” I commanded, waiting for her to open her eyes. “You keep your eyes on me. Focus on what you’re doing.”
She gave a curt nod and tightened her grip on the rock. I started climbing down, aware that if I made even one wrong move, we were both dead. When I was right beside her, I slowly turned and faced the vast hole in front of us. Sweat dripped from me as I released my handhold and undid my belt ever so slowly.
Leaning over, I very carefully wrapped the belt around her good wrist, tying it in a knot that I knew wouldn’t hold up, but might buy me a few seconds if she slipped. Then I wrapped the belt in my hand and nodded to her.
“Okay, we’re going to do this together, one step at a time. You put your hand where I tell you. I’m going to shift behind you so I can help you climb up.”
She nodded shakily, tears shimmering in her eyes.
“You can do this, Beth.”
She swallowed hard. “I’m ready.”
I turned back to face the mountainside and slowly worked my way down and behind her. “Okay, I’m right behind you. I won’t let you fall. When you’re ready to release your grip, press your body into the rocks.”
“Okay,” she said breathlessly.
Step by step, we climbed back up the mountain. “You’re doing great. Now your right foot.”
She moved her foot, but missed the foot hold, slipping slightly. Gripping the wall tightly with my left hand, I pressed my hand to her ass, trying to hold her up.
“Get your foot in place,” I grunted, feeling my hand slipping. She quickly found a foot hold again and pressed her body to the rock wall, breathing hard. I took the opportunity to reposition myself.
“We need to keep going. One step at a time, okay?”
“Yeah,” she answered, then started moving again. When she finally reached the top, I pushed her from behind as she dragged herself up to safety. Moments later, I pulled myself up and laid down on my back beside her. Both of us laid there, breathing hard as we stared up at the night sky.
“See? I told you we’d probably live.”
She smacked me in the chest with her fist.
34
BETH
I didn’t want to move. The thought of getting up from where I lay on the ground was terrifying. If I got up, that meant we had to get back in the truck and drive on the mountain road again. I closed my eyes and breathed through the panic. I thought getting kidnapped and racing through the woods was bad, but this…I was pretty sure I nearly shit my pants.
“We need to leave,” Cash said, getting to his feet as if nothing happened. He held out his hand for me, watching me closely to see what I would do. I could lay here and pretend the world didn’t exist, or I could haul my ass up and move on.
I gripped his hand with my one good one and struggled to my feet. We were still too close to the edge for comfort, and Cash seemed to understand that because he wrapped his arm around me and walked with me back to the truck, being extra gentle with me.
“Where are we going now?” I asked after he got back in the truck.
“Yeah, where are you going now, boss?” Dash said over the phone.
Cash snatched it off the seat with a laugh. “Are you still on?”
“Well, yeah. There was a lot of tense arguing, and then some shots fired. I figured I’d hang on until you were both safely on the road and not hanging off the side of a mountain. Nice save, by the way.”
“How the fuck do you know what just happened?”
“Oh, I hacked into a satellite. Yeah, I just got lucky that one was flying up in space over you. I saw the whole thing, man. It was pretty intense to watch. Way better than any movie. However, I would request next time that you fill me in on what you’re planning. I could have made some popcorn.”
Cash rolled his eyes. “How the hell did they find us? Did you manage to figure that out while you were watching the movie?”
“I still don’t know. There aren’t any breaches in the system, but I would assume someone has to know where our safe houses are. After all, this is a tech research company. Who knows what gadgets they’re testing. Oh, and I recorded everything that happened so you can watch it when you get back.”
“I don’t want to see it,” I chimed in. “Living it was enough for me.”
“So, what you’re saying is we shouldn’t go anywhere related to the business.”
“I wouldn’t,” he said nonchalantly, as if he was kicked back in his office, just chillin’.
“We just keep running?” I asked Cash.
He frowned. “Let me think for a minute.”
“While you’re thinking, you might want to start driving. The wreckage in the area is bound to alert the authorities, and you don’t want to be there when they show up.”
“Good plan,” Cash said, shifting into drive. After checking his mirrors, he turned back around and continued through the mountains.
“We’re not going back?”
“It’s best not to return the way we came. Dash,” he spoke into the phone. “We need someplace to lay low for a while. Until we know that the other safe houses haven’t been compromised, or how these fuckers found us, we have to go off the grid.”
“Righty-o, boss. Do you want me to find someplace for you?”
I chewed my lip as I considered what I was thinking. It was a risk, but very possibly the last place anyone would look for me at this point. “I might have someplace we can go.”
Cash glanced over at me with a frown. “Where?”
“They don’t know who I am, right?”
“Well, yeah, they do.”
“But not…not the real me.”
Cash shook his head slightly. “Let me guess, Beth isn’t your real name.”
I shook my head. I knew he probably figured it out a long time ago, but he was letting me have my privacy for whatever reason. “If they don’t know who they’re looking for, they won’t find us.”
“Not a bad idea, boss. Care to share with the rest of us who you really are?” Dash asked.
“Not right now,” I answered, still watching Cash. “I’ll tell you everything, but I can’t risk anyone other than you knowing.”
His hands tightened on the steering wheel. I knew he didn’t like excluding his team, but these were my stipulations. “Fine. Dash, I’ll call you when we have a plan. And see if you can get ahold of Rafe. He and I are about to have a come to Jesus moment.”
He laughed hysterically over the phone. “Oh, man! Shit, I can’t believe I’m going to miss that. I’ll call you when I have something.”
Cash hung up the phone and continued driving. “So, where are we headed?”
“Kansas,” I said quietly, turning to look out the window.
“And what’s in Kansas?”
“My aunt. She’s the only family I have left.”
He nodded, his eyes watching the road, which I was grateful for. After the joyride we just took, I wasn’t interested in repeating any of that. But mostly, I didn’t want him watching me. It was hard enough to talk about without his watchful gaze on me.
“You mentioned something about escaping your step-father. What’s the story there?”
I couldn’t believe I had blurted all that out, but I was terrified and out of my mind. Of course he would remember that and bring it up again. I could tell him it was none of his business, but at this point, I wasn’t sure there was any reason to keep secrets from him. He’d proven time and again that not only would he protect me, but he was perfectly capable of deciding what he wanted to do.
“My dad died when I was three. My mom couldn’t take care of me on her own, or maybe she didn’t want to. I don’t think she liked the idea of having a kid around that depended on her. She started hanging around with all these bad guys, and when she brought them around, I would hide out in my room for hours, just so I didn’t have to be around all the drugs and alcohol. One day, she brought home this man, and I knew instantly that he was a creep. But if I misbehaved in my mom’s eyes, she took it out on me later.”
“Did he touch you?” he asked tersely.
“He certainly tried,” I snorted. “When I was sixteen, he came into my room one night. I woke up to him trying to get into bed with me. I kicked him in the balls and ran. When he explained that he was just checking on me, my mom started hitting me. According to her, I was trying to tempt my step-dad into…Anyway, I ran and ended up getting caught by the police sleeping under a bridge. They wanted to take me home, but when I explained that I could never go back there, they helped me get to safety.”
“And your mom and step-dad? Did the police do anything about them?”
“He was killed in a car accident—drunk driving. I never saw him again. And I knew my mom wouldn’t want to see me, so I never tried to contact her again.”
It was quiet for a while as he digested that. I didn’t really want to talk about it anymore. I was tired and sore from our escape, and all I wanted to do was sleep. I rested my head against the window until well after the sun came up. Luckily, by the time I woke up, we were out of the mountains and driving across the desert.
“Where are we?” I asked, stretching as best I could.
“Nevada,” he grumbled, rubbing at his eyes. “We need to stop and get some sleep, and I need to get rid of the truck.”
“Why?”
“Because if the men that were chasing us called anyone, they have the make and model of the truck, along with the plates.” He pulled into a used car dealership and put the truck in park. “Why don’t you go to that motel,” he nodded across the street. “Get us a room while I take care of the truck.”
He pulled out some bills and handed them to me. “What should I give for a name?”
“Make one up. They don’t care. That’s not the type of motel that worries about things like that.”
I was all too familiar with those motels. “Do you want me to carry anything over?”
“Just your bag. After you get the room, get cleaned up.”
I grabbed the bag of spare clothes and walked over to the motel, worried that they’d take one look at me and call the cops. Thankfully, the man behind the counter didn’t even spare me a glance. Taking the key, I went to the room and stepped inside with a sigh. It had those old bedspreads that were from the nineties, the kind that made me think bedbugs were burrowing in deep. But it was a bed and I was exhausted.
It was pointless to bring the clothes along. They were filthy, as were the ones I was wearing. There was no way I could wear these again after taking a shower, not after nearly falling off a mountain last night. I stripped out of my clothes and headed for the bathroom, turning on the shower to the hottest setting. The generic shampoo and conditioner weren’t much, but at least I didn’t feel like I had bugs crawling along my scalp by the time I was done.
I wrapped a towel around myself and peeked into the bedroom, glad that it was still empty. Since I had no clothes, I slipped under the covers, still wrapped in a towel, and promptly fell asleep.
* * *
The ache in my shoulder returned full force as I woke up and found myself laying in an uncomfortable position. With a groan, I rolled over and stared at the wall, wondering what time it was. The clearing of a throat had me sitting up in bed. The sheet was no longer covering me, and as I sat there staring at Cash staring at me, I realized my towel was no longer on me either.
Across the room, Cash lounged with his legs spread wide as he rested one elbow on the arm of the chair and his head resting against his fingertips. His eyes darkened as they roamed over my naked body. I could feel my nipples pebbling under the weight of his stare, but still I couldn’t move. I couldn’t remember the last time I had been excited to be around a man, wondering what it would be like to touch him and have his hands on me.
He shifted in the chair, his hand moving to his crotch to adjust his growing hard-on. Embarrassment washed over me and I tugged at my towel, trying desperately to pull it up and cover myself, but the way I was laying on it left little fabric to actually cover up with. I tugged harder, only to twerk my shoulder. I gasped in pain, using my right hand to shift my arm into a better position.
“You should be wearing the sling,” Cash grumbled, his voice low and gravelly.
He stood and walked over to where I had dropped the sling on the floor. After grabbing it, he stood and stalked toward me, every step more predatory than the last. I couldn’t stop staring at his cock, and with every step he took, the more I realized he was lined up directly with my face. A deep blush rose in my cheeks as I imagined him unzipping his pants and pulling his cock out for me to taste.
Instead, he sat on the bed behind me, pulling my arm gently into position as he wrapped the sling around my arm. I could feel his hot breath on my neck as he leaned in closer, looking over my shoulder at the strap. His fingers brushed against my already hard nipple as he adjusted my arm.
I closed my eyes as his fingers trailed up my bicep, then gently brushed my hair aside as he finished getting the strap in place. His lips skimmed my shoulder, heating my body. For a moment, I allowed myself to imagine turning into his arms and giving myself to him. My head dropped back against his shoulder as his lips continued to explore my heated skin.
They suddenly stilled and his whole body went rigid. My eyes flew open as he stood and pressed a swift kiss to my forehead, then patted me like a dog.
“All better,” he said, then walked away, as if he hadn’t just kissed me…well, my shoulder. But it still counted, and it was rude to walk away from something like that. And since when did men pat women on the head?
But then it hit me. I had just told him about my step-father last night. He probably thought he was taking advantage, or maybe he just didn’t want me knowing what happened. Anger surged inside me that he didn’t even bother to talk to me. I stood in all my naked glory and grabbed the towel, walking into the bathroom without another word. I slammed the door behind me, making it clear just how pissed I was. When I came out, he would know he fucked up, and he would be sorry.
35
CASH
Yeah, she was pissed. She stood, not even bothering to try and hide her nudity as she glared at me and stormed into the other room, slamming the bathroom door behind her. I ran my hand over my face, cursing myself for being such a goddamn idiot. What was I thinking? I fucking kissed her, and I knew better than to involve myself with a client. They got a sort of hero worship thing after you rescued them, which was what I had just done.
That’s all this was. I kissed her because we both nearly died multiple times. Well, I was pretty good. I never really thought we wouldn’t make it out of that, but she was different, fragile. She’d been through so much already, and here I was acting like a fucking fool, kissing her shoulder, ready to throw her down on the bed and shove my cock in her. All because…because of what?
Because she was fucking gorgeous. Because every time I saw that strawberry blonde hair fall over her shoulders, it felt like she was hiding secrets from me. Dirty secrets. Hell, I doubted her hair was even that color. I knew her name wasn’t Beth. For some reason, that hadn’t been the first thing I wanted to ask her. There were so many mysteries around this woman, and I found myself wanting to unlock them all.
But touching her was just fucking stupid. And then to make matters worse, I patted her on the head like a fucking dog. I cursed myself as I paced around the room. I had to figure a way out of this, one in which I could pretend that none of this ever happened.
