Raw Redemption (Crossing the Line #4)(41)

“I don’t understand.”

Henrik flexed his fingers on the steering wheel, then gripped the leather tighter. “Your father knew what he was doing, telling those *s not to speak with you. Anyone with an ounce of decency would hear a few words from your mouth and—”

Her perplexity reached him across the seat. “And what?”

He shook his head. “Forget I said that. There was nothing right about what your father did. Not a goddamn thing.” Calm down, man. Reel it in. “Yeah, we went camping once. It wasn’t really our thing, though. He liked to drive me to spots around Chicago where he’d made arrests and walk me through them. Step by step. The decisions he made and why.”

Damn if she hadn’t moved closer again. Close enough for him to cover her hand with his own? “He must have been proud when you followed in his footsteps.”

“At the time, yes. Now?” Henrik tried to focus on the road, the distance they needed to travel before stopping. Anything but the shame in his father’s eyes the last time Henrik had gone to visit. “Let’s just say I’ll be lucky to get a Christmas card this year.”

“Because you’re…not a cop anymore?” She sighed when Henrik didn’t answer. “My father had no use for me until my standardized math test results came back. We had dinner together that night in the backyard. I thought it was so crazy. We were eating outside.” Her tone grew so light he had to strain to make out her words over the truck engine. “He gave me two sets of statistics. Two baseball teams and their numbers for the season so far. And then he asked for a probable outcome. I didn’t realize until I saw the teams playing on television what his reasoning had been. But I…that was when he stopped sending me to school. I just worked after that.”

Henrik wished the man were standing in the truck’s path. To use Ailish such a way…he could never let it happen again. Never. And if he didn’t focus on something besides the broken way she relayed her memory, he’d rip the steering wheel off and wreck the vehicle. Calm. Down. The wooded landscape on either side of the truck was unfamiliar, making him long for the smog and concrete of Chicago. At least he knew how to hide someone there. Knew how to navigate every inch of those streets.

When Ailish’s fingers drifted over his knuckles, Henrik’s abdomen shuddered, need sinking low and filling the flesh between his legs. “It’s only a matter of time before they start to miss you,” Ailish said, rubbing her cheek on his shoulder. “You were only gone one night when I started missing you.”

His eyelids drooped, the organ in his chest going insane. Poundpoundpound. “What are you trying to do here, Ailish?”

“Don’t take me back to Chicago,” she whispered against his ear, one hand settling on his thigh, drifting higher…higher. “Please. I know that’s where we’re driving and—”

“Enough,” Henrik snapped out. “You think you can seduce me into turning this truck around? Is that really your plan?”

“Yes.”

He waited. “Yes? That’s it?”

Ailish nodded, the top of her head bumping his jaw. “Whenever we touch each other…we start over. Everything that we said or did before stops mattering. There’s just us and what’s next.” Her head lifted and she scrutinized him. “Right?”

The truth behind her words weighed heavily on his shoulders. They’d been in a state of feeling each other out for days, him doling out snippets of information when it was convenient. She’d had reason to run—doubt. Doubt in him that disappeared when they touched, if he understood her correctly. Shit, that was something, wasn’t it? She trusted him when their bodies were working toward pleasure. Now he needed to work on the rest.

“Ailish, Chicago is where you’ll be safest. You left before I had a chance to explain—”

Sirens.

His pulse dropping to an adrenaline-laced beat, Henrik transferred his attention to the rearview mirror. Perhaps he should have been nervous, being chased instead of chasing. But there was nothing but calm focus, sending a flicker of wonder winding through his mind. Maybe he’d never been meant for the inside of a police car. Had his path always ended at the undercover squad he so resented? “Hold on, Ailish.”

There were no visible flashing lights yet, only sound. At the next narrow break in the tree line, Henrik veered off the road and onto bumpy earth. He wound around thick trees, not giving a damn about his suspension, as they would be ditching the truck at first opportunity. After they’d gotten about four hundred yards into the forest, Henrik slowed in degrees, winding his way into a thick fall of branches before hitting the brakes and cutting the truck’s engine.

Henrik unfastened his seat belt and removed his gun from the waistband of his jeans, ejecting the spent clip onto the seat. He reached across Ailish and removed a fresh clip from the glove compartment and clicked it into his weapon. “Be ready to move.”

Not bothering to unlock her own seat belt, Ailish sucked in a deep, audible breath and held it, her eyes wide, like two hazel moons.

“They won’t hear you breathing from the road, baby.”

Ailish laughed, releasing a rush of oxygen at the same time. And goddammit if he didn’t almost reach for her, fully prepared to lay her out on the front seat, to position her for the f*cking of a lifetime. His cock was granite inside the leg of his pants, a product of adrenaline and Ailish being in the same place. There was alarm mixed in, too. Alarm that he could load a gun in preparation for protecting his girl, by fair means or foul, without a single hesitation. Not a single one. This went beyond destroying evidence. These were men’s lives he was willing to sacrifice.