Hot Winter Nights (Heartbreaker Bay #6)(17)



By kidnapping Molly.

Initially, she’d misunderstood the severity of her situation. They’d snatched her right off the street on her way home from school, Darius among them. She could still feel the terror, taste the blood from where she’d bitten her lip, refusing to cry or show her fear. They’d shoved her into a van and brought her to an abandoned house, ordering her to sit the hell down and keep her trap shut.

Something she hadn’t been capable of doing.

She just hadn’t been coded for passive. She’d been a sassy teen who literally hadn’t been able to shut up to save her own life. She’d had to fight back.

Which hadn’t worked out so well for her; all memories she shoved deep. But here it was nearly fifteen years later and she was still pushing back.

Half an hour later she was at the Pacific Pier Building, letting herself into the offices of Hunt Investigations to open up for the day.

Not three minutes later, the door opened and testosterone personified entered in the form of Archer and his entire alpha pack, all dressed in SWAT black and loaded with enough weapons to protect a developing nation.

They’d been investigating another insurance scam, this one a complex fraud scheme regarding the manufacture and distribution of compounded medications. The fraud had involved material misrepresentations to health insurance providers, and illegal payments to coconspirators and medical professionals—generating in excess of five million dollars in criminal proceeds.

Molly took a moment to take in the impressive sight of a bunch of really hot, really fit guys wearing their gear like they’d been born to it, every one of them dangerous and dangerously sexy in their own right.

Even if only one stuck out to her.

“Solid intel,” Archer told her when she looked at him. “Good job.”

Wow. Two compliments in one week, and Molly felt the pride fill her. “You have a problem finding your way around in Hunters Point?”

Hunters Point was San Francisco’s radioactive basement. The decommissioned Hunter’s Point Naval Shipyard and the surrounding area was not exactly the sort of place you wanted to go in without knowing every nook and cranny and dark spot.

Something that both Joe and Molly knew all too well, having grown up there. The warehouse they’d been looking for had been in a literal maze of warehouses, each on a more dangerous corner than the next.

“No real problems,” Archer said.

Which wasn’t much of an answer but whatever had happened out there, they’d apparently gotten past it. Still, she knew she’d have been valuable on the ground. “If you’d let me come along, you’d have had an extra set of eyes other than Joe who knows that place like the back of his hand.”

“Maybe next time,” he said.

“Liar.”

This got her another rare smile. “We’ll find you the right case.”

She returned the smile. She’d already found the right case . . . She slapped a stack of mail against his chest as he walked by.

Behind him was Lucas and he slowed at her desk to look her over.

She looked right back. Black knit cap, black long-sleeved T-shirt snugged over his broad chest, black cargoes on his long legs, kickass boots. Body loose, not tense, his dark eyes sharp and maybe slightly wary. He looked tall, dark and edgy, and just about the opposite of everything she might want in a man—if she’d wanted one—which didn’t stop her heart from skipping a beat or two.

Or three . . .

The corner of his sexy mouth curved and she felt heat flicker through her veins.

Joe was behind Lucas, and on his phone. Without looking up, he gave his partner a shove. Lucas didn’t budge, holding his ground for another beat, most likely being a male through and through and therefore making it clear that he wouldn’t move until he was good and ready. When his point was apparently made, he shifted out of Joe’s way.

Molly had to draw in a careful breath, telling herself she was at work and shouldn’t be ogling Lucas.

“Hey,” Joe said with a frown. “You’re all flushed.”

She put her hands to her cheeks. “I was . . . exercising.”

From behind Joe, Lucas arched a brow. She looked away.

Archer poked his head back in from his office and narrowed his eyes at her. “You’re sick?”

Joe reached out to touch her forehead and she smacked his hand away. “I’m not sick!” she said, maybe yelled.

“She’s hot,” Joe said.

Lucas coughed and she knew it was to hide a damn laugh. She was hot alright; she was hot for him and dammit, he knew it. She went hands on hips and gave her boss and brother each a hard glare. “Listen carefully, you Neanderthals. I’m not sick. I was working out before work and I’m still”—she refused to meet Lucas’s gaze—“overheated.”

“You work out?” Joe asked doubtfully.

She tossed up her hands. “You know what? If I died and went straight to hell, it would still take me a damn week to realize I wasn’t at work anymore! Now go away and leave me to my work. All of you.”

Archer and Joe shifted away with some various muttering. But not Lucas.

She stared at him.

He stared right back. “Are you working out?”

She sighed. “Yes. I’m not exactly the faint of heart, delicate little snowflake you all seem to think I am.”

Jill Shalvis's Books