A Harmless Little Ruse (Harmless #2)(2)

He’s really asking whether she’ll shoot anyone on our security detail.

“No. She has a specific target.”

“More than one?”

Damn, he’s smarter than he looks.

“I suspect she’s going after her attackers from four years ago.”

“I sure would.”

That’s the first hint of unprofessionalism out of him.

“What you would or would not do if you were in the client’s shoes has no bearing on what you’re going to do right now, Gentian.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Expand the perimeter search. Disable all vehicles on the grounds. Check for hitchhikers. Call gun stores and alert them to anyone buying bullets that match my weapon.”

Someone speaks into his headset. Gentian murmurs back, then tells me, “All vehicles accounted for.”

Cold steel shoots through my gut. Good news.

“Then she’s on foot. Get as many guys in the field as you can.” I ignore the shoreline below. No way she got her hands on a boat. She knows how to jet ski and that’s it. Lindsay wouldn’t --

Wait.

The Lindsay I knew four years ago wouldn’t.

The woman I’m dealing with now?

Who the hell knows.

“Done.” Gentian speaks into his earpiece, then turns to me and asks, “Do we inform Senator Bosworth and Mrs. Bosworth?”

That cold steel in my gut turns into hot metal.

I rake my hand through my hair. My fingers smell like her. Smell like sex and fun and smiles and groans. Like freedom.

Like reclaiming.

And she f*cking threw it away for revenge.

“Sir?”

I shake it off. “No. Not yet. Containment on all levels. Get her roped in, get this situation under control, and we’ll reassess if we can’t locate her quickly. Timeline silence.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And I want tails on all three of the targets.”

“Already done.”

“Add one more each.”

“Yes, sir.” Gentian’s mouth sets in a firm line. He knows how bad this is.

How bad this is for Lindsay.

How bad this is for me.

“And check her phone records.”

He nods. He leaves.

I breathe. At least, I try.

And then I let a tiny bit of emotional pressure out. Just a few seconds’ worth. If I don’t, I’ll explode, and you can’t be strategic and emotional at the same time.

You fail all around.

“What are you doing, Lindsay?” I mutter to myself, pacing the room like a caged animal. The room is stripped clean, devoid of any real personality. What personal effects she has are from four years ago. Adele posters on the walls, an old iPhone from 2012, and concert tickets littering a bulletin board, stopping nearly four years ago at the month of the attack.

Lindsay’s used me to get her hands on a gun, so she can kill John, Stellan and Blaine. She’s a loose cannon.

And loose cannons never hit their targets.





Chapter 2





I run through last night over and over. No part of the intimacy stands out as fake. She wasn’t faking those moans, her sighs, her beautiful orgasms, her crying at the end, her acceptance of my comfort and my love.

“That was not an act,” I hiss under my breath, grabbing a bed pillow and throwing it at the window. It sails through, the thin sheer curtain billowing through the opening. I punch a second pillow so hard it flies across the bed and lands on top of her alarm clock, knocking it off the nightstand.

“You think you’re fooling me,” I say to no one, arms tense, shoulders tight as rocks, my mind racing. “But you’re not this Lindsay. You’re not. No way you changed that much.”

The emotional impact of what she’s done feels like the wind’s been knocked out of me. She did this. She really did this. She opened up to me last night and we connected. We more than connected. We reveled and we healed and we --

“FUCK!” I scream, remembering how much I needed to please her last night, how she healed in my arms. I felt it. I didn’t imagine it.

We cracked open the door to the future. We pried the nails from that closed-off door. One by one, we did it.

And she just dumped an entire cement mixer’s load of concrete on top of it.

Protectiveness pumps through my veins like adrenaline mixed with caffeine and uppers. My pulse is in my cock, my tongue, my throat. She’s out there, alone, thinking she’s smarter than my entire team of guys who were hired to make sure no one ever hurts her again.

I push aside the question of who she hurts. Let’s not go there.

Not now.

“Jesus, Lindsay, are you out of your mind?” I’m talking to myself again.

Sheer speculation makes my mind fill with worst-case scenarios. The world is dangerous enough. Add three well-connected psychopaths with a penchant for playing Cat and Mouse, and danger seems like a preschool playground.

Lindsay’s put herself in mortal peril.

Whether she likes it or not, I have to get her out.

Those crazy *s are out for blood.

And more.

I peer out the open window and look at the pillow, caught in the tree branches right outside her window. A cat meows. Again. Again.