Hidden Impact (Safeguard #1)(4)
“Slow,” her caretaker admonished.
His choice of speeds was frustrating.
“Had to be a DUI.” The owner of the other voice had returned. “Driver ran up one curb and down the other all the rest of the way down the street. Got a couple of letters off the license plate. Lizzy and Victoria are securing the immediate area and calling it in to 911. Ambulance en route.”
She turned her head to peer up. Blond hair, tanned skin, suit. One of the private security guys, the one who’d been snitching fried shrimp all night. She remembered Charlie coming to her nervous about whether to tell the guy the food was for the guests, but she’d laughed it off and made sure they kept the supply of that dish hot and ready. Fried shrimp were always popular anyway. Then what the man had said caught up to her.
“No ambulance. Really. I’m not hurt.” And she didn’t need to spend all night in the emergency room for a couple of scrapes and bruises. She hated hospitals with a passion.
“They’re on their way.” Her rescuer didn’t leave room for argument. “They can look you over first, then you can decide.”
His now authoritative tone, colder and clipped, sounded much more familiar than she’d initially thought. She peeked up at him through the escaped strands of her probably insanely messed-up hair.
Of course. She always had a special kind of ironic luck. The very man who wouldn’t help her earlier was now kneeling beside her, shielding her from the night breeze with an arm around her shoulders.
“By the way, Cinderella, one of my teammates found your shoe. Victoria says shoes this expensive matter to a lady.” The other man held it out to her. “Sorry, but I think it was a casualty. My name’s Marc and this is Gabe, but I gather you two already met earlier. Lizzy and Victoria are sweeping the area to see if there’s any security cameras we can mention to the police for possible footage of the car.”
Fantastic. She reached to take her shoe, planning to mourn the heel hanging by a few stitches later, but Gabe took it instead.
“Hey, I could get that fixed.” She hoped.
Gabe raised an eyebrow and tucked the shoe, careful of the barely attached heel, into his suit pocket. Most guys like him left the freaking temporary stitches in the pockets so nothing could go into those. “Your purse isn’t big enough for it. I’ll hold on to it until the medics get here and look you over.”
What was she supposed to do, leave her other shoe on? Maybe he’d pocket that one too.
“No serious injuries. I’m sure. Just some scrapes and bruises, probably.” She tried to return his intense gaze with an assertive one of her own. “And my name is Maylin.”
He might have saved her—and she was thankful—but as knights in shining armor went, he lacked any sort of courtly charm. Not a big deal. No need for princesses or fairy tales here. Those had been An-mei’s favorite stories, not hers.
“Pretty sure your head hit the pavement when I took you down.” A pang of regret there, she was sure of it. “We should get you checked for a concussion.”
She thought about how they went to the ground and the strength it must have taken for him to roll both of them away from the street. Admittedly, his size probably helped him. He had a lot of height and weight on her. But he and his colleagues had been several yards behind her, even if they had been catching up to her on the way out of the alley. How fast was this man?
Sirens. The ambulance, most likely. And if she didn’t string her thoughts together more coherently, they might decide she really did need to go to the emergency room.
“I’m also not sure that was a DUI, so why don’t you tell me more about your missing person and why someone might not want you to find her?”
She stared at him wide-eyed and took in the grave expression, sharp eyes hidden in shadow, and the angle of his jaw. Tall, dark and seriously impressive as this man was, why did he believe her now?
His colleague crouched down on the other side of her. “What are you saying, Gabe?”
“I’m saying I’m f*cking sure as hell that car was idling on the street. It was waiting for her.”
Chapter Two
“You didn’t have to see me all the way home. Honestly. The only reason I drove my car tonight was because of all the extra catering stuff I wanted to bring with me. Otherwise, I could have walked.”
Gabe followed her with an armload of cooking gear in the early morning hours before dawn. None of it looked like anything he’d ever used in a kitchen, and he did know how to cook. If she’d brought all this in the first place, he wasn’t sure how she’d managed to carry it all and still see over it to walk. In hot stiletto heels no less. One of which was poking a hole in his side, still in his jacket pocket. Thing could’ve been a murder weapon.
“I figure it’s the least I could do since I did give you a bump to the head.” And didn’t he just feel like shit about that. Mostly because she hadn’t gotten mad at him in any way and it’d even been a scuffle getting her to let him carry the damned box. Not to mention how it’d taken him, his team and the paramedics combined to convince her to be seen by a doctor. She was a trooper, even after hours in the emergency room stressed and obviously not wanting to be there. “Besides, like you said earlier, I’m one of the best—personal security, private military contractor, pack mule.”