Laura Kaye - Hard As You Can

Retracing her way through the apartment, Crystal stepped out onto the cement landing the four units shared and eased the door closed behind her. The steps to the upper floor blocked her view of the street, which meant anyone watching from below shouldn’t be able to see her either.

Taking a deep breath, she turned the phone on. One missed call. A few button presses revealed the call had come from the same number programmed into the phone. Shane.

He called me?

Why?

Curiosity mixed in with her determination. She pressed the call button and put the phone to her ear. Her gut told her she was safe standing there, but as the phone rang, her skin crawled as if a thousand eyes were watching. On the third ring, her stomach slowly descended. It figured that she’d worked up the nerve to do this and he wasn’t going to—

“Hello?” Shane answered, his voice familiar, warm, and a little breathless, like maybe he’d run to pick up the call.

“Shane,” she said quietly.

“Are you okay?”

Her heart squeezed at the fact that his first question was about her well-being, but then a car started up in the lot below and she nearly jumped out of her skin. Be quick, be quick, be quick! “Yeah. I, um, have information,” she rushed out.

“Not over the phone,” Shane said.

“What? Oh. Then how—”

“I’ll come over.”

And Crystal thought her heart had been racing a moment before. “You can’t. Not to the apartment,” she said. Not after last night.

“Okay. Where?” he asked.

Crystal’s mind raced. “Out back of my apartment building. There’s a trail that leads into the woods.”

“That’ll work. What time?”

“Um. Around two thirty?” That would ensure that Jenna had left for her three o’clock class at Loyola and that Crystal and Shane would have enough time to talk before she returned.

“I’ll be there.”

That’s all she needed to hear. “Okay, then I should go.”

“Yeah. And, Crystal? Thank you.”

Heart in a full-out gallop, she hung up, nerves making her jittery.

Back in her bedroom, she turned off the phone, placed it deep inside the vent, and righted everything again, double-checking that the dresser settled precisely into the depressions in the old beige carpet. Using her fingers, she erased the marks in the rug’s nap that revealed the dresser had ever sat away from the wall.

Her gaze cut to her alarm clock on the nightstand across the room. Two hours until he would be here.

A ripple of fear and anticipation shot through her stomach—along with an excitement she couldn’t deny.

Standing in the quiet of his bedroom, Shane stared at his phone, a sense of triumph heating his blood.

Crystal had called.

Just the thought that Crystal had apparently decided to help him flooded restless energy through his veins. Because it meant she was reliable. Even more importantly, it meant she was taking a chance on trusting him. Shane didn’t know everything there was to know about this woman. Not by a long shot. But he was pretty damn sure she didn’t trust easily.

Now he just needed to make certain he didn’t do anything to damage that trust.

The listening devices in her apartment came to mind. The ones that had allowed him to overhear her conversation with Bruno and made it possible for the team to spend the morning researching the marine terminal and getting Marz’s fingers to work looking for any other clues and connections that might help them.

No question the devices violated Crystal’s privacy and her trust. And he felt twice as shitty about that given the trust she evidently planned to put in him. Already had, just by making the call.

But then his mind put those facts up against some others—namely, her scumbag’s penchant for getting violent. And Shane’s brain landed on the side of thinking the devices a necessary evil. Didn’t mean they sat well in his stomach, though.

Deciding to allow himself five minutes to bask in the victory of Crystal’s having called, Shane made his way out of his room and down the hall to the wide-open space of the Rixeys’ combined kitchen and living room. Everyone had been hanging here after lunch when he’d slipped away to take the call, but they’d all made like ghosts and disappeared. He searched the gym and found more of the same.

He jogged down the cement-and-metal steps, his footsteps echoing in the industrial hallway, to the doorway of Hard Ink, the tattoo shop Jeremy and Nick co-owned. Whereas Nick only did some occasional work in the shop around his job as a process server—talk about your odd mash-ups—Jeremy was apparently well-known among tattoo enthusiasts, and the shop had an excellent reputation.

The back door to Hard Ink led into a large rectangular lounge with high windows and three brick walls. The longest wall held a kick-ass mural that read, “Bleed with me and you will forever be my brother.” Shane’s gaze traced over the red, black, and gray of the graffiti-like design and identified with the sentiment to his core. The team stood congregated around the center of the room, some standing, some half sitting on the round tables that filled the space.

“This is Nick, Derek, Beckett, and Easy,” Jeremy said, pausing long enough between the introductions to allow each of them to shake hands with someone Shane couldn’t see.

He joined the group and laid eyes on the man Jeremy was introducing.

“Oh, and this is Shane,” Jeremy said. “Shane, Ike Young, the man with the magic hands.”

With his shaved head, skull tats, full sleeves, and cutoff denim jacket, Jeremy’s tattooist looked like he belonged in a tattoo shop. Shane and Ike shook. Guy seemed friendly enough.

“Pfft. He’s not all that,” Jessica Jakes said, walking in from the front reception area and elbowing Ike with a wicked smile.

“It’s a good thing I like you, squirt,” he said, putting his arm around Jess’s neck and yanking her in tight. He absolutely dwarfed her in size—a combination of how petite she was and how huge Ike was.

“Of course you do. I’m totally adorable,” she said, glaring at Jeremy as he rolled his eyes. What Jess lacked in height, she made up for in the size of her personality and the bite of her sarcastic tongue. Shane’s gaze glanced over her, from the black braid that curved around the side of her neck and laid over her shoulder to the low vee of her tight, black shirt to the killer heeled boots she wore over a pair of curve-hugging jeans. When they’d met, Jess hadn’t done a damn thing to hide her attraction to Shane, and he’d had half a mind to have a little fun with her when this mission was over.

Now . . . ?

Crystal.

His mind conjured up the softness of all that red hair, the heat of her curves in his hands, the press of her body against his.

Aw, hell.

Shane gave Jess another look and . . . nope. His interest wasn’t there. Not anymore.

“And this is Becca,” Jeremy said. She smiled as she shook Ike’s hand, but worry and exhaustion shone in her eyes. This situation would’ve been a helluva lot of stress for anyone, but in the past few days, Becca had been injured, nearly abducted—twice, and now she was pulling all-nighters to stand watch over her brother. Thank God she’d managed to take a couple weeks’ leave time from her nursing job. No way she could’ve juggled all that right now.

“So, Ike and Jess, just wanted you to meet the guys since they’ll be coming and going from the building while they get their new security-consulting business up and running.” The team had strategized this morning what to tell Jeremy’s staff. They needed some plausible cover for why they were hanging around so much, and the consulting business well fit their military backgrounds and explained why they were buttoning up the security around here.

Jess pulled out of Ike’s hold and crossed her arms. “Security consulting. What exactly does that mean?” she asked.

“Private investigation, computer and physical-security analysis and installation. That kind of thing,” Nick said casually.

“Jess’s dad was a cop,” Jeremy said, neither his stance nor his voice as relaxed and convincing as Nick’s.

She pressed her lips into a tight line and nodded. “Yeah,” she said. “Well, good luck with it. I’ve got a client coming in ten, so I better get ready.” She gave a small wave and left the group. It was maybe the most reserved Shane had ever seen her. The mention of her dad had almost seemed to take the wind from her sails. Jess’s dad was a cop. Why had Jeremy used the past tense? And, Christ, did they need to worry about Jess or her father being in any way connected to the police on Church’s payroll?

As if hearing Shane’s thoughts, Nick said in a low voice. “Her father died a number of years ago. She doesn’t talk about him much.” He turned to Jeremy. “We’re heading out for a while. See ya later.”

“Yeah, sure,” Jeremy said.

Becca walked up to him. “Can I ask you a favor?”

Jeremy’s smile was immediate and full of affection for Becca. “Name it.”

“Can you keep an eye on Charlie for me? It’s just that I don’t know how long we’ll be gone, and—”

“I’d be happy to. My next client isn’t until four anyway. I can do the prep work I need upstairs.”

“Thank you.” She hugged him. “That makes me feel a lot better.”

Nick gave Jeremy a nod that communicated his thanks, too.

“We better get going,” Shane said. In addition to their humanitarian concerns about Charlie’s condition, Marz was worried he wouldn’t figure out the meaning of the binary codes without Charlie’s help, so it hadn’t taken anything for Becca to convince Nick and the team that Charlie needed treatment beyond what she and Shane could provide. Even leery as they were about bringing in an outsider. A veteran emergency medical technician nearly through with medical school, her friend seemed about as qualified as they could hope for. Better yet, he’d agreed to meet with Becca after lunch. But Shane didn’t want to be late to Crystal’s and risk her getting spooked.

The group of them made their way to the parking lot out back, and Shane updated the guys about his call. The whole team agreed Shane had to cultivate Crystal. Who knew what else she might share? Like a more specific location for Wednesday’s meeting—Derek had explained just how ginormous the marine terminal actually was. Turned out what they knew of the meeting’s location so far amounted to jack squat.

Despite their relative certainty that their presence at Hard Ink hadn’t been compromised, Nick had asked all the guys to go to the meet to provide cover. Church had clearly infiltrated UMC, so Shane understood Nick’s desire to err on the side of caution.

“Hey, whose bike?” Shane asked, nodding to the big black-and-steel beauty parked between his truck and Nick’s black Challenger. Hadn’t seen it back here before.

“Ike’s,” Nick said. “He belongs to a motorcycle club.”

Beckett came to a halt as his gaze narrowed on the motorcycle. “An actual social club or an MC?” he said.

“What’s the diff?” Marz asked.

“MCs often engage in organized crime to support their members. They’re big businesses,” Beckett said, his blue eyes going frosty. Shane turned a hard stare at Nick. Beckett owned a private security firm in D.C. and was never easily ruffled, so the big guy’s concern was enough to fuel Shane’s own.

“Oh goody. The Church gang on wheels,” Marz said, echoing Shane’s thoughts.

“Yeah,” Nick said, nodding. “There are several here in the city. I encounter them every once in a while serving papers. Ike’s group is an MC, but he keeps his club business separate from his work at Hard Ink.”

Beckett braced his hands on his hips and glared at Nick. “And you didn’t think to mention this? Is Ike something we need to worry about? Because we need problems from another direction like Noah needed more rain.”

Nick shook his head, his expression and stance relaxed. “No. Ike’s a good guy. Loyal to Jeremy. I’ve known him for a while, and I’m telling you it’s not a problem—”

“All the same,” Marz said. “I’d like to run some checks on Ike and this club when we get back.” Beckett crossed his arms and nodded. Shane couldn’t have agreed more.

“Fair enough,” Nick said, opening the rear passenger door of Beckett’s SUV for Becca. Then he, Marz, Beckett, and Easy piled into the big beast, too. Shane was riding solo so he could make Crystal’s in time. As he backed out of his space, he gave the motorcycle a last look. Nick had better be right about Ike. Last thing they needed was a threat from within.