The Protected

She could breathe easier, though. Gus was no longer trying to drill the nose of that Sig Sauer into her ribs. That helped a little.

* * *

HE’S too young for the burden he’s bearing . . .

Did she think he didn’t know that already?

He shoved a hand through his hair, knocking his ball cap off in the process. He hurled it to the floorboard and turned his head, staring outside as the landscape zipped by.

The view is nice . . .

Innocuous words.

But what she’d pushed inside his mind . . .

He did not need that inside him just then. The knowledge that she felt the same heat he’d felt. No. He didn’t need that at all, yet at the same time, part of him . . .

Part of him wanted to grab her, haul her into his lap, and just . . . feel. Give in to what he had inside him, what she obviously had inside her. Skim his hands up that long, slender back and tangle them in her hair as he feasted on her mouth.

That greedy, selfish part wanted to strip her naked and ride her until they were too drained to even move. That part of him knew just how long it had been since he’d had a woman, touched a woman, kissed a woman . . . wanted a woman. How long it had been since his life revolved around anything beyond watching over Alex, nights spent pacing the house as he worried. Worried about whether they’d get through another night without having to run. Worried about whether they’d both survive when the time came, would they be caught . . .

That part that wasn’t focused on the fear and everything else, that part of him wanted to touch her. That part of him wanted to glide his hand through her hair and draw her mouth to his, see if she’d taste as wild as he’d imagined. She wouldn’t be a sweet and gentle woman in bed, he didn’t think. He’d had sweet and gentle lovers. She’d be heat and power and passion, and he’d lose himself inside her.

If he could have given in to it.

But it wouldn’t happen.

Alex . . . his focus was, and would always be, Alex.

“How long have you been running?” she asked quietly.

He slanted a look her way and then looked back out the window. “Too long.”

Four years. Six months. Twelve days. He flicked a glance at the clock, calculated the time change. Thirteen hours and nine minutes.

Since Alex was eight . . . the day the boy’s youth and innocence and life were shattered, right in front of him.

The night his mother . . .

He closed his eyes and tried to stem the flow of those memories.

Please . . . you must promise . . .

He was trying. Carajo, he was trying. But he was so useless at this. Caring for somebody, protecting somebody. A direct opposite of the life he’d been living. And what a life that had been. Pointed in a direction and told to fight, he fought. Told to kill?

He did that, too.

Told to fuck this woman and learn more about her drug lord lover? Absolutely. And more than once, the women he’d been with had probably suffered for it once it was all said and done. But he’d kept it up, because that was what he did.

Now he was expected to care for another. Protect another. When life had never been anything but a race, a gamble, a challenge before this.

It was still a gamble, he supposed. One he’d lost. One his sister had lost.

His job now was to make sure his nephew didn’t lose as well.

“Who is after him?”

Gus closed his eyes.

Vaughnne sighed. “Gus, I can’t help unless you talk to me.”

“You can’t help.” He rested his head against the back of the seat. FBI. He didn’t know how they’d caught the attention of the FBI. He’d been careful. He’d broken laws, he knew, but he’d done his damnedest to fly under their radar, and that was one thing he knew how to do . . . very well.

Nobody had reported the boy as missing, because they couldn’t afford the attention.

So it wasn’t that.

How, though?

Not that it mattered.

As soon as Alex was well, they would run. They’d disappeared before. Gus was becoming remarkably good at . . . disappearing. Perhaps his nephew could do tricks that would make David Copperfield look like an amateur and maybe he could do things that might turn a person’s mind to mush if he wasn’t careful, but Gus knew how to disappear and get lost in the world.

They’d done it several times over.

They’d just keep doing it.

And keep doing it . . .

Unconsciously, his hand clenched into a fist.

“You’ll never stop running if you don’t make a stand,” Vaughnne said quietly.

“Do not read my mind,” he bit off. He swung his head around to glare at her, but she was focused on the road, like nothing mattered except the stretch of pavement. “Ever. Do you understand me?”

“Oh, completely.” A smirk twitched her lips and damn if that wasn’t appealing, he thought. Appealing as hell. “I couldn’t, Gus, even if I tried. I can talk inside your head as much as I want. As loud as I want. And I can do it from pretty damn far off, once I have your . . . channel, so to speak. But I couldn’t read your mind to save my life. That’s not my gift.”

“Do not lie to me,” he said.

She rolled her eyes. “I’m not.”

“Then how do you . . .” He stopped.

Vaughnne shook her head. “I know what somebody looks like when they are running, Gus. And people don’t usually run like you do just because it’s fun. They don’t drag around a kid they love just for kicks and giggles. You only live like you’ve been living because you feel like you have no choice.”

“There isn’t one.”

“Because you haven’t looked at all the options,” she said, a sad smile curving her lips. “Or maybe the other options hadn’t been there until now. But I’m giving you another option now . . . trust me.”

“I don’t know you.” Gus couldn’t see Alex, but he didn’t need to see the boy to remind himself of the fact that the child had been the driving force in his life for so long now. Everything revolved around him. Everything would continue to revolve around him.

“No.” Vaughnne nodded in agreement. “You don’t. But you’re going to. I’ll help you take care of him, Gus.”

“I don’t need help.” He couldn’t need it.

“If you’ve got the kind of trouble coming that I think you’ve got, you need all the help you can get.”

NINE

LYING to the cops came easy to him.

Maybe it was a sign of how screwed up Tucker Collins was, but he could sit there on Vaughnne’s porch, sucking on a beer he’d swiped from her fridge, and lie to the cops without blinking an eye.

And that was exactly what he did, all while keeping his hold on the two assholes across the street.