Right now, in this moment, she was safe with him.
They walked the dozen or so steps to the motel’s front entrance, Kylie’s nerves growing looser with each step. Devon brushed a hand over the small of her back as he ushered her over the threshold, and even though the motel’s lobby was as dated and dingy as she’d expected, she managed to squeak in another semi-deep breath.
“Help you?” asked the man behind the counter, although he’d barely looked up from his phone.
“We need a room.”
Devon’s voice carried enough gravel to grab the man’s attention, his bleary eyes going wide at the sight of Devon’s imposing stance less than two feet away.
“Oh! Uh, right. So, I just need your ID and a credit card,” the man said, the stink of stale cigarettes and fresh gin punching her in the nose from across the counter as he stood.
“I’ll pay cash.”
“I’m not supposed to…” The man trailed off, his gaze narrowing first on Devon, then on Kylie, lingering on her skimpy T-shirt for two seconds too long. “Oh, I get it.” His greasy grin grew into a leer. “Don’t want the wife to catch you, huh?”
A muscle flexed in Devon’s jaw. “Something like that,” he said through his teeth.
“Whatever you say, boss. I don’t judge. But for that kind of upgrade, there are service fees.”
Kylie put a stranglehold on her urge to knock the guy’s block off, mostly because she and Devon got what they wanted. Devon slipped the manager some extra incentive to work both quickly and quietly to turn over the keycard to a room on the ground floor, and ten minutes later, they shut (and locked and chained) the door behind them.
Devon closed the drapes, doing a quick sweep of the dated but surprisingly clean room before slinging his duffel bag over the bed closest to the window. “Go ahead and lie down if you want to,” he said, shouldering out of first his jacket, then his holster. “I’m sure you’re beat.”
“I’m fine,” came her auto-reply, but the words were as close to a lie as they’d ever been. Kylie blinked, the surreal memory of the last day and the steady presence of his gun making her pulse beat harder in her veins. “Actually, I’m going to take a shower. I kind of really want to get out of these clothes.”
“Oh.” His throat worked over a swallow, his gaze dropping to his duffel bag. “Right. I have an extra pair of sweats if you want them while we crash. Not ideal, but?—”
“Sounds great. Thank you.”
Her voice hitched even though she fought to keep it steady, the ensuing silence making her weakness sound that much more obvious in her ears. Mashing down on the mix of emotions suddenly churning through her belly, she grabbed the sweatpants Devon had pulled from his duffel and the two plastic bags from the drugstore, hightailing it into the bathroom before he could ask if she was okay.
Right now, she was a lot of things. Shaky. Mad. Scared. Amped up.
But at the moment, “okay” was definitely not on the list.
She upended the bag with the toiletries into the bathroom sink, forcing herself to get everything in order. The task calmed her, and she started the shower, turning back to open the oblong box she’d chosen from the hair care aisle. Kylie pulled off the horrible skimpy bar T-shirt she never wanted to see again, then her boots and jeans, every movement methodical, each motion a tiny success.
She was tough. She could do this.
She could survive.
Lather, rinse, repeat had never been so ironic. Kylie stuck to the tasks in her head—scrub your hair, shave your legs, rinse your skin—until finally, she stepped out of the shower. One last unopened package gleamed up at her from the sink, but even though her chest ached at the sight of it, she took a deep breath and looked at her reflection in the steam-misted mirror.
“Fuck it.”
6
Devon set up his weapons just as he did in every motel room he stayed in, with his SIG within arm’s reach and his KABAR in the nightstand, and a variety of other mean-and-nasties strategically placed throughout the small space. His phone had been silent since he’d activated it a handful of hours ago, and he reached out to palm the thing, tapping in Kellan’s number from memory.
“Tell me you two are holed up someplace safe,” his buddy said by way of greeting, and oooookay, so much for pleasantries.
Which was cool, because Devon wasn’t exactly a tea and crumpets kind of guy. “Copy. You got anything on this douche bag yet?”
Kellan’s pause spoke of nothing even remotely good. “Xavier Fagan, also known as the X Man, is on no less than a dozen wanted lists from Wyoming to Mississippi. Priors for possession with the intent to distribute, weapons charges, assault, and he’s been ID’ed as the main player in a Wyoming-based heroin ring the size of Yankee Stadium.”
“And he’s still on the street how?” No way a guy who was in it that deep wasn’t at the top of the FBI’s dance card.
“Because he’s not blowing smoke about being well connected,” Kellan said. “Fagan seems to have a gift for sniffing out bad police, the higher up the food chain, the better, and he’s old school. Does all his business face to face, and all his dirty work himself. Word on the street is that he even murdered his own brother because he thought the guy was ratting him out to the cops.”
