Midnight Man (Midnight #1)(48)

Every signal John’s body could send was in overdrive. The hairs on his forearms were standing straight up. Bud was right. This was bad.

Bud’s lover, Suzanne’s girlfriend—what was her name?…Claire. That was it. “You’d better watch out for Claire, then,” John said. “It looks like everyone around Suzanne is getting wasted.”

“Done. I’ve got people watching Claire 24/7 and she’s not a happy camper.”

“Tough.” Like Bud, John had no trouble at all prioritizing. Bud’s girlfriend might not be thrilled at the prospect of being restricted in her movements, but her safety came first. Second and third, too. Bud knew that and had taken steps to make sure she’d live. Anything else was bullshit. “What about Suzanne’s parents?”

“I’m on it. They live in Baja California. I’ve contacted the Mexican police and they’ve posted discreet guards.”

“Okay.” John grappled with the size of the threat against Suzanne. If Bud had called in the Mexican police, he was scared. “What have we got to go on here?”

“Damn all.” Bud’s voice was ripe with frustration. “Everything’s a dead end. We’ve got the name of both shooters, but there must have been a cutout, because there’s no paper trail. No unusual payments in their bank account, no unusual prints in their apartment, no phone records, nothing. Nada. Zip.”

“The money’s in the Caymans. Or in Andorra,” John said. “And long gone. You’re playing with your own dick.”

“Yeah, well if I am, I’m not having any fun. Goddamn it, we need to know what’s going on. Pump Suzanne, Midnight. Find out what it is that she knows, or what it is that she’s got, which is dangerous enough to kill for. And do it fast. Claire’s involved and I’m not having her exposed to danger. So find out what she knows, or I’ll have your ass in a sling.”

John could hear the ripe fear for Claire behind Bud’s hard words, otherwise he would have handed Bud his head on a stick. It wasn’t something he’d have understood a week ago, but now he did. Anything that threatened his woman was guaranteed to drive him crazy.

“Okay. I’ll be in touch.” John thumbed the off button on his cell and sat back, thinking.

This was a mission. He could do missions—he’d done them all his life. So why was this creating a problem for him?

Because it was Suzanne.

Because he couldn’t think straight around her. It wasn’t just a question of thinking with his dick, though of course there was that. He couldn’t keep his hands off the woman but it was more than that.

Fear for her skewed his thinking processes, threw him completely off-kilter. Worse, off-mission. How could he think straight when the thought of anything happening to her had his heart pounding and provoked that swooping feeling of a mortar round exploding ten feet away?

He called Jacko and pulled his men off all current cases. From this moment on, his team had to be as concentrated as a laser on Suzanne Barron. By nightfall, John knew they’d have everything that could be known about her, including her high school grades, spending patterns and menstrual cycle.

Today he needed to grill her. He’d avoided it, putting it off, distracted by the sex. He couldn’t afford that now, he thought as he headed upstairs.

But first, he needed to feed her. She hadn’t eaten in twenty-four hours. Though he was a lousy cook, he did keep some supplies on hand. Coffee, eggs, vacuum-packed bacon, bread. Once she’d eaten, they’d talk.

As always, it felt good to have a plan, even a half-assed one. He had bread in the toaster, eggs in a bowl and the coffee maker on when he placed the bacon in the pan. It spat, little pinpricks of fire on his chest and arms.

“Son of a bitch!” He scrambled for something to cover the pan with.

“That’s why women wear aprons,” a soft, amused voice said from behind him. “I wouldn’t advise cooking bacon bare-chested.”

He spun around, ignoring the flying grease. She was standing in the doorway. In a blue nightgown this time, a twin to the one he’d ripped. She’d showered. He could smell her across the room, over the bacon and the toast…the charred toast—shit! He burned his fingers digging the slices out of the toaster.

All the while he watched her carefully. He’d used her pretty hard last night. He hadn’t been able to control himself at the end. He had no idea what her reaction this morning would be.

But she was smiling at him, crossing the room bare-footed, brushing by him and making every hormone in his body stand up and clamor for more of what he’d had all night.

“I guess that’s not a gun and that you’re really glad to see me.”

He didn’t have to guess at what she meant. His dick did what it usually did when it saw her. Or smelled her. Or thought of her. He swelled as he watched her.

She reached across and turned down the heat. The bacon stopped spitting and settled down to cooking. She turned, humming softly, to his cabinets.

Some feminine magic led her unerringly to where he kept the plates. It was amazing. She’d never been here before and yet she moved around the little kitchenette as if she lived here. A few minutes later the table was set.

Actually set. As properly as his equipment would allow.

He usually ate over the sink. But she tore off paper towels to make mats, put the silverware on either side of the plates and placed two mugs carefully on the right hand side of each plate. She even put platters out for the bacon and the toast and the eggs. Amazing.