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  “I’ll be back,” he repeated, and left.

  So here he was, at nearly midnight, with a pocketful of hundreds that any number of guys likely within ten yards of him at this moment would slit his throat for without a second thought, working his way through foreign turf to what had once been his own. He’d been an ES 13 once, and that alone would have gotten him killed on Cholo turf even then; now that he was long out of the life, he had no armor at all except his own skill and training, and the instincts that were on high alert at the moment.

  And the Glock 21 he’d pulled out of the hidden compartment in the panel of the driver’s door of his car. It was nestled at the small of his back, a comforting presence.

  He pondered, not for the first time, if this was a trap. Rico had no real loyalty to him, not since he’d left the gang, and only respect for his former membership had kept him alive before. But right now he was a cash cow for Rico, and that wasn’t something the man would give up on easily.

  Then again, the wad in his pocket might be thought of as a last bit of milk from that cow, after which you might as well slaughter it for the meat.

  Rico had suggested an out-of-the-way building for the meet. Tony had insisted on a more public place, but still on ES 13 turf.

  “You don’t trust me, vato?” Rico had asked in indignant tones.

  “As much as you trust me, vato,” he’d replied, earning a laugh.

  He made the turn and spotted Rico, pacing rather nervously just out of the halo of light from the one unbroken streetlamp on the block.

  Otherwise the street seemed deserted, but he knew better than to assume. He drove slowly but saw nothing. Rico spotted him, gestured sharply, as if urging him to hurry.

  He pulled over, checked the Glock, settled it again and got out of the car, every sense tuned to his surroundings.

  “Hurry up, man!”

  Rico was very nervous, and the possibility of a setup went through Tony’s mind again.

  “You do something stupid, Rico?” he asked softly as he neared the man.

  “Christ, man,” Rico retorted. “You want what I got or not?”

  “Talk to me.”

  “That friend of mine. He says that Chilton dude, he buddied up in the city jail before he got transferred to that country club place. Gave me the other guy’s name. I checked him out on Google.”

  Tony blinked.

  “What?” Rico sneered, “you think we don’t got our own kind of network? Think we’re stuck in the old days? You been gone too long, pendejo.”

  Tony ignored the slur on his ancestry. He had been gone a long time, but it would never be long enough, not in his mind. “And?” he prompted.

  “A guy Chilton was buddied up with was the same guy they sent up for buying what Chilton was selling.”

  “Santerelli?”

  “That’s what—”

  The scream of car tires on asphalt split the night. That meant only one thing in this neighborhood, and no matter how long he was away, Tony knew he’d never forget that.

  Yanking out the Glock, he dove for the cover of his parked car, while Rico took off running back into the darkness. He heard the yelling from the racing car.

  When the shots came, as he’d known they would, it was as if he’d never left.

  Chapter 21

  Lilith found herself holding her breath as Taylor closed her cell phone, breaking the connection. She made herself take in air. She already knew it had been Tony, from the side of the conversation she’d heard, but Taylor confirmed it with her first words.

  “He’s on his way back.”

  Lilith nodded, but something about the way Taylor wasn’t meeting her eyes set off an alarm in her mind. That and the fact that he’d left hours ago, and that now it was nearly two in the morning. Taylor had told her to go to bed, but she hadn’t even tried, knowing she wouldn’t sleep.

  And what that said about the state of her feelings for this man was something she wasn’t sure she wanted to face.

  “What is it, Taylor?”

  “Nothing.”

  “He’s a better liar than you are, and I still know,” she said.

  Taylor sighed. “There was…an incident.”

  “An ‘incident’?” When Taylor didn’t respond, Lilith asked, “Did he tell you not to tell me?”

  “No.”

  “Then tell me.”

  Another sigh. “It was a drive-by shooting.”

  Again Lilith forgot to breathe. And she realized in that instant, the instant before she asked the question that could change everything, that she was face-to-face with those feelings whether she was ready or not. “Is he all right?”

  Taylor blinked, as if the very idea that Tony Alvera could be hurt had never occurred to her. Was the woman naive, or did she just see him as invincible? Many thought of Redstone Security that way, she knew, and she supposed to some extent they had to think of themselves that way, to do the jobs they did.

  “I…assume so,” Taylor finally said. “He didn’t say otherwise.”

  As if he would, Lilith thought. And then, belatedly, it occurred to her to ask, “Was someone else hurt?”

  “Yes,” Taylor said, reluctantly.

  …they killed my little sister in a drive-by.

  Tony’s words rang in her head, and her throat tightened as she imagined how he must be feeling, no matter who it was who’d been hurt tonight.

  Taylor got up off the couch where they’d been sitting, trying to watch a movie that had captured neither of them. She gathered cups and dishes—Lilith had discovered to her chagrin that Taylor shared her weakness for all things butterscotch—and carried them back to the kitchen.

  Taylor would leave when Tony arrived, Lilith supposed. And then she would be facing another night with the man who so unsettled her, she didn’t know whether to wish the guest bedroom had a lock on the door or be thankful it didn’t.

  Now she knew.

  The very realization that something could have happened to him, that he could have been hurt, or worse, had brought slamming home into her mind the simple fact that she would be devastated. And no amount of telling herself she was a silly female falling for the big, strong man protecting her could change that.

  Besides, she knew perfectly well that it wasn’t that. She wasn’t afraid, she’d never been afraid during this time, only angry. The only person who had ever been a threat to her was in prison, and she refused to live her life in fear. Doing that would mean Daniel had won, and she absolutely would not give him that satisfaction.

  So where did that leave her? Besides lusting after—she couldn’t kid herself about that any longer—a man twelve years her junior?

  …you don’t have to tell me you’re out of my league, I know that.

  His words came back to her, along with her sense of the absurdity of it. Her “league,” as he called it, consisted of a man who hid behind the facade of refinement and upper-crust gentility, denying he would ever hurt so much as a flea, while his wife lay in the hospital bed he’d put her in. Tony Alvera had more honesty and honor in his little finger than Daniel could muster in a lifetime.

  “He’s pretty…intense.”

  Lilith snapped out of her reverie to find Taylor standing a few feet away, watching her, assessing.

  “Yes,” she agreed; there didn’t seem any point in denying it.

  Taylor seemed to hesitate, then shrugged. “You do know this was never just a job for him, right?”

  Lilith frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “I was in Mr. Draven’s office when he burst in, demanding this assignment.”

  “He…what?”

  “I think the boss was about to assign me, thinking you’d be more comfortable with a woman. Then Tony arrived, saying the job was his.” Taylor gave her a faint smile. “I never would have thought anyone would have the nerve to talk to Mr. Draven like that.”

  “He’s mellowed a bit,” Lilith said, barely aware of her own response. The vision of Tony charging into Drave
n’s office demanding to be the one to protect her broke down the last bit of that crumbling wall she’d tried to keep around her response to his overpowering, larger-than-life presence.

  She made herself focus on the woman watching her. “Why did you tell me that?”

  The shrug again. “Seems to me you’re a little…conflicted about him. I thought it might help.”

  Lilith laughed despite herself. “Conflicted. Yes, that’s a good word for it.”

  Or it had been, she thought. Because she wasn’t sure she was in the least conflicted anymore.

  When a few minutes later she heard strong, quick steps on her stairway, she let out a compressed breath. Whether it was an ebbing of worry—he was obviously well enough to move in his normal manner—or an increase in anxiety at his return, she wasn’t sure.

  She seemed unable to move and just stood there as Taylor and Tony held a quiet exchange in the doorway. Then the woman left, with a backward glance at her and a smile that Lilith would have sworn said “Good luck.”

  Lord, was it that obvious?

  When Tony turned to face her, her breath shot out of her yet again; he was spattered with blood. His hands looked as if he’d been swimming in it. Instinctively she reached out to touch him.

  “Are you hurt?” she asked urgently, suddenly disbelieving Taylor’s earlier assurance.

  He gave her an oddly assessing look before he said quietly, “It’s not mine.”

  She stared up at him. “The man you went to see?”

  He nodded.

  “Is he…?”

  “Dead. Yes. There was nothing I could do for him.”

  And he would have tried. Lilith knew that as surely as she knew he was standing here. No matter what manner of man it had been, even had he been the worst that ran those streets, Tony would have tried.

  “I’m sorry. Was he…a friend?”

  Tony’s mouth twisted. “Once, he would have been a brother to me, simply because we both belonged to the same gang. But no, he wasn’t really a friend. Didn’t make it much easier to watch him die.”

  Lilith shook her head, slowly. “I can’t imagine. It must have made you think of—”

  “Yes. It did.”

  The edge that had come into his voice warned her to veer away from that subject. She stared at him, still unable to look away from the stains on his shirt, his hands. Finally she lifted her gaze to his face. “You’re really all right?”

  She didn’t know what had changed in her voice to make his expression shift. But it did, and he looked down at her with a sudden ferocity that left her no doubt what he was referring to when he bit out, “No.”

  He reached for her, then stopped abruptly, and she saw his gaze flick from her to his bloodied hands, then back. And slowly he lowered them, but his eyes, those dark, hot eyes, told her this was only a temporary respite.

  A sudden panic filled her, and she wanted nothing more than to retreat. “I’ll…get you some towels, a washcloth, so you can…wash that off.”

  It was inane, it was so far from what she was feeling she almost laughed at herself. And half expected him to laugh out loud at her. But he let her retreat, although she again had the feeling she was only buying herself a few minutes. Something had changed about him tonight, something was there that hadn’t been before, something that warned her the wolf was about to slip the leash.

  She heard him in the guest bathroom, wondered what it must feel like to have to clean another human being’s blood off your skin. What it must have felt like to be back on those streets where he’d grown up, once more hearing shots fired like the one that had killed his little sister.

  “There’s something I need to tell you.”

  She gave a little start; she hadn’t heard him come out of the bathroom. For a big man, he moved like a cat. When she looked at his face, it was set in such grim lines her stomach knotted. He’d seen so much, done so much, she didn’t want to think about what could make him look like that.

  “What?” she asked, even though she was positive she didn’t want to hear whatever it was.

  “There was…someone, once. Nine years ago. Lisa Marquette. She was someone I’d met in college, but we ran into each other again and…hit it off.”

  Lilith found herself holding her breath, and had the inane thought that no one had ever interfered with her normal breathing the way this man had.

  “I was working a case then. One of my first, and a nasty one. One of Redstone’s marketing guys was being extorted with threats to his little boy. I knew him, he was my old boss in fact, so I was…seriously invested.”

  “Of course,” she said when he paused.

  He was silent so long she wondered if he was going to stop altogether. Wondered why he was telling her in the first place, it was so obviously painful for him. He couldn’t even look at her anymore; he was staring down at the floor as if the diagonal pattern of the slate tiles was the most fascinating thing in the world.

  “It got ugly,” he said at last. “Very. And I couldn’t seem to get a handle on it, couldn’t track the suspects even though I had a decent idea who they were. Then just before it all came to a head, it became clear they knew who I was. Things got dicey, and I got…pretty wound up.”

  Lilith listened silently now, but with a growing curiosity as to what the two seemingly divergent stories had to do with each other.

  And then he told her.

  “I got wound so tight I blew up at Lisa. I couldn’t talk about the case with her, but I was worried she might be in danger if they knew enough about me to follow me. So I ordered her to stay locked inside. Because I couldn’t explain, she got angry in turn.”

  Lilith took in a shallow breath. She couldn’t help thinking of her own reaction to his imperious orders. Was that what this was about, was this some convoluted apology for how he’d acted, for his high-handed manner and arrogant insistence?

  “It…escalated.”

  His voice had dropped. Odd, she thought, that he had started this here, standing in her hallway. Odder still that he was now leaning against the wall where they stood, as if he needed the prop.

  “And I didn’t have time to fix it, not then. I thought I would later. I had to go out because there had been another extortion call. The call was a setup. To lure me out. She was angry enough that when I left…so did she.”

  He fell silent again for a long moment. His expression didn’t change, nor did his own breathing, but she knew the punch line was coming.

  And that it was going to be ugly.

  “I don’t think they meant for her to die. They just wanted to scare me off. They kidnapped her, restrained her and covered her mouth with duct tape, tossed her in the trunk of a car. The medical examiner said she…suffocated. She had gotten so scared she vomited.”

  Lilith shuddered, understanding what he wasn’t saying. And he still wasn’t looking at her. She was grateful for that, at least for a moment. She was trying to wrap her mind around the scope of the tragedy this one man had had in his life. As if living the way he’d had to as a child hadn’t been enough, then the senseless death of his sister, and then…this? She couldn’t imagine what it must be like to live with such memories. In her mind, they made her own painful ones seem almost clean.

  Finally, slowly, he lifted his gaze to her face. “She died, horribly, because of me. Because I slipped back into the old days, the old ways, the old machismo my father lives by.”

  A protest rose to her lips, but she stopped it, making herself wait until she could speak calmly, gently. “It wasn’t your fault, Tony.”

  “So they say.”

  “She made the decision.”

  “But I pushed her to it.” He eyed her steadily. “Would you have stayed, if it had been your ex ordering you around?”

  “No,” she admitted. “But there’s a big difference. Daniel would have imposed his orders with brute force. You would never do that. You would never…hurt me.”

  “You were angry enough, last night, to walk out.
If this hadn’t been your home, you might have.”

  She couldn’t deny that, either. Didn’t want to deny it. Somehow she knew honesty was imperative now; this man wouldn’t want or accept any banal, insincere platitudes. This was Tony Alvera stripped down to the bone, and she didn’t dare trifle with that.

  “I might have. More likely I would have just thrown your sorry…backside out.”

  He looked startled, but the tiny beginnings of a grin tugged at the corners of his mouth.

  “So next time,” she said, “just ask. Don’t try to bully me.”

  His expression shifted again, turned slightly sardonic. “Just ask?”

  “If you’d just said ‘Lilith, I need you to do this,’ I wouldn’t have fought you. And one little ‘please’ goes a very long way.”

  She studied him for a long moment before asking what she’d wanted to know since he’d first started his grim story. “Why did you tell me this? About Lisa? Was it to explain why you acted like that the other night?”

  “Partly.”

  “And the other part?”

  “Because you should know the worst thing about me.”

  Her throat tightened almost unbearably. “Why?”

  “Because I’m going to ask you again.”

  She stared up at him, knowing what he meant, knowing this was the moment she’d known was coming, the moment some part of her had been thinking about even as she tried to force it out of her conscious mind.

  “Only this time,” he said, with a quiet acknowledgment and admission that was as much apology as anything else, “it has nothing to do with my job.”

  “I…see.”

  “I hope so. So once more…your bed, or that silly bunk bed?”

  She’d wondered how it would feel, to make this decision. Now she knew she wouldn’t find out, because on some level, some part of her mind, the decision had already been made.

  “You can say it better than that, Mr. Alvera.”

  She thought she heard him suck in a breath. And then a slow grin curved his mouth, making that unexpected dimple flash. There was nothing of the practiced charm in this, only the genuine, unexpected sweetness she’d seen sparks of before. And when he spoke, it was with a voice so full of gentle teasing and boyish dutifulness that she nearly grinned back at him.