Rev It Up (Black Knights Inc. #3)(91)
Shit.
He wrenched open his door and bounded after her, his left leg screaming in agony, not to mention the goddamned broken ribs that threatened to punch a hole right through his lung. Blam! Wheeze. That quick and he’d be spending another day or two in the hospital. Fan-friggin’-tastic. Just what he didn’t need right now.
“Ali!” he bellowed, grinding his teeth against the pain, running with an uneven, awkward limp made even more so by the shifting sand beneath his boots.
She turned on him then in grief and frustration, slamming a tiny balled-up fist into the center of his chest. Sweet Christ…
Agony exploded like a frag grenade. He took a knee. It was either that or just keel over dead.
“Nate?” Her anger turned to shock as she knelt beside him in the sand. “What—” Before he knew what she was about, she lifted the hem of his T-shirt, gaping at the ragged appearance of his torso. His ribs were taped, but the rest of him looked like it’d gone ten rounds with a meat grinder and lost.
“Holy shit, Nate!” He almost smiled despite the blistering pain that held him in its teeth, savage and unyielding as a junkyard dog. Ali never cursed. Either it was written somewhere in her DNA or in that contract she’d signed after becoming a kindergarten teacher. “What happened to you?”
He shook his head because, honestly, it was all he could manage. If he so much as opened his mouth, he was afraid he’d scream like a girl.
“Nate!” She threw her arms around his neck. God, that felt right…and so, so wrong. “Tell me! Tell me what happened to you. Tell me what really happened to Grigg.” The last was breathed in his ear. A request. A heartrending plea.
“Y’know I can’t, Ali.” He could feel the salty hotness of her tears where she’d tucked her face into his neck. Smell, in the sweet humidity of her breath, the lemon tea she’d been drinking before he knocked on her parents’ door and told her the news that instantly blew her safe, sheltered world apart.
This was his greatest fantasy and worst nightmare all rolled into one. Ali, sweet, lovely Ali. She was here. Now. Pressed against his heart.
He reluctantly raised arms gone heavy with fatigue and sorrow. If Grigg could see him now, he’d take his favorite 1911-A1 and drill a .45 straight in his sorry ass. But the whole point of this Charlie Foxtrot was that Grigg wasn’t here. No one was here to offer Ali comfort but him. So he gathered her close—geez, her hair smelled good—and soothed her when the grief shuddered through her in violent, endless waves like the tide crashing to shore behind them.
And then she kissed him…
Chapter One
Three months later…
She had that feeling again.
That creepy, crawly sensation prickling along the back of her neck. The one that made her shoulder blades instinctively hitch together in defense.
She was being watched.
Ali Morgan hastened her steps. Her black, patent leather, ballet flats slapped against the hot pavement as she darted a quick glance across the street.
Nothing.
Not that that was unusual. She rarely saw him, the man she’d begun to think of as her elusive shadow. But somehow she sensed he was there…somewhere…
Snapping a fast look over her shoulder, she rapidly scanned the faces of the pedestrians behind her. Nope. He wasn’t back there, either. Not that she’d ever seen him full-on, but she’d caught enough glimpses of him to know her elusive shadow wasn’t the middle-aged man caring the brown-bagged loaf of French bread, nor was he the black-and-yellow-rugby-jersey-wearing guy who—
Yikes, who let him out of the house this morning? He looked like a giant bumblebee, and the fact that he was gazing through the front window of the flower shop momentarily overcame her mounting fear. She snorted a giggle. Then the baby-fine hairs on the back of her neck twanged a loud warning, freezing the laughter in her throat like it’d been hit with a harsh blast of dry ice.
Crapola. Maybe she really was going crazy.
She’d had that thought more than a time or two in the past three months, because it wasn’t like Jacksonville was a huge place. It wasn’t necessarily abnormal to see the same faces over and over again.
“But that’s the whole problem now, isn’t it?” she muttered to herself.
She’d never actually seen her elusive shadow’s face. Maybe if she had, maybe if she’d gotten the chance to look into the guy’s eyes, she wouldn’t be feeling this alarming sense of…pursuit.
A sudden chill snaked down her rigid spine as her palms began to sweat. Her tight grip on the handles of the plastic grocery bags started slipping, and she adjusted her hold, hoisting her purse higher on her shoulder in process.
Two more blocks…
“Just two more blocks and then I’m home free,” she murmured, realizing by the quizzical look of the couple passing on her right that she was talking to herself again. That was another little eccentricity she’d picked up since Grigg’s death. The whole going-crazy thing was starting to look more and more likely.
She trained her eyes on the bright pink flowers of the potted begonia bushes positioned in front of her condo building—the ones the amiable Mrs. Alexander from 3C had planted just last week.
Just one more block. Just one more block and then she could throw on her front door’s chain lock, twist the dead bolt and finally take a normal breath.