The El Monaco Motel turned out to be twenty rooms of stop-and-screw about a mile off the highway. After doing a drive-by to give himself a mental map of his surroundings, Devon parked his year-old Dodge Challenger around the back of the place, sinking low in his leather jacket as he walked the perimeter like a ghost. The motel was a good thirty minutes closer to Jackson than Coyote Flats, but then again, distance was different all the way out here. The open stretches of land, the way the remote plains and uninhabited landscape unfurled on an endless loop, reminded Devon of a less dusty version of Afghanistan.
If you move, I will kill your friend.
“Knock it off,” he muttered, shaking himself back to the here and now. Stepping so his shit-kickers remained silent on the cracked pavement, he scanned the space in front of him from left to right. Two-story motel, ten rooms up top, ten ground level. Points of entry open to either an outdoor walkway or the front parking lot itself. Six vehicles in the lot beneath the blue neon sign boasting rooms for the night or by the hour. Three pickup trucks, a newer-looking SUV, a rust-encrusted Toyota…
And hey, what do you know? A red Mustang with California plates.
“Hmmm.” Devon moved toward the vehicle, his eyes taking a quick tour of the empty interior. He flattened his palm on the hood, swinging his gaze up to the door marked 202 in cheap, reflective numbers.
The car was still warm. Kylie was here, but she hadn’t been for long.
“Don’t fucking move.”
The purposely roughed-up voice came from behind, accompanied by a steely nudge that told Devon he had his work cut out for him. God damn it, now he was going to have to break someone’s kneecaps before the sun even came up.
Bright side was, at least he’d get a workout.
“Alright,” Devon said, lifting his hands to feign submission. “Take it easy. I’m just looking for a friend.”
“A friend.” The voice dripped with sarcasm, but there was something weird about the disguised tone, something Devon couldn’t quite place. The figure came into view in the reflection of the windshield for just a split second, but it was all he needed to gain the advantage. Spinning around, he wound his arm over the guy’s above the elbow, capturing both his arm and his weapon in one decisive move as he pulled the guy forward?—
And realized he wasn’t a guy at all.
“Ow! Oh, my God, get off of me.” The woman’s chest, which was now all sorts of up close and personal with Devon’s, expanded with a brewing scream, and he reached out to clap his free palm over her mouth before she woke the dead.
“Kylie?”
Her wild stare widened, unnaturally blue beneath the neon and moonlight, but she didn’t stop struggling.
Jesus Christ. “Kylie, hey, take it easy. Your brother sent me. He?—”
Searing pain shot through his middle finger, and he whipped his hand back from her mouth as a low oath launched past his own. “Did you just bite me?”
The venomous look on her face answered his question, lickety split. “My brother didn’t tell me he was sending anybody.”
Damn it, Kellan must not have been able to reach her after he and Devon had gotten off the phone. “Cell service is for shit out here. Most of my texts don’t go through, either. He called me forty minutes ago, right after he got off the phone with you. I guess he couldn’t get you again.”
“And you just happened to be in the area? I don’t buy it,” she snapped. “Who sent you?”
Devon’s brows shot upward. “You do realize that I’m holding you, right?” He squeezed the arm he still had on lockdown, not hard enough to hurt her, of course, but with enough pressure to punctuate the message.
“I can still scream,” Kylie said, her breasts lifting against the stupid-low neckline of her T-shirt.
His hand—which was bleeding, for fuck’s sake—clapped back over her mouth in an instant. “If I wanted to hurt you, I’d have done it six times by now. So, do you want to do me a favor and let me help you like I promised Kellan I would? He said he sent me to deliver the jelly donuts.”
At the sound of her brother’s name and the code word he’d clearly given her, she stilled, her dark brows drawing in tight. “How do you know my brother?” she asked as soon as he lifted his fingers again.
“We were in the Army together. Afghanistan. Uruzgan Province. He’s a hell of a sniper.” It was an understatement, but the details worked to keep her from screaming her head off. “I actually met you five years ago in San Diego.”
Half their team had done that R and R together, and they’d only spent one night of that around Kylie, throwing back beers at the local bar where she’d worked. It was a last-ditch to expect she’d remember him.
Even though Devon sure as hell remembered her.
“Wait…” Kylie’s eyes took a tour of his face, narrowing to near slits before springing wide. “Devon? Holy shit, is that you?”
He eased his hold on her at the same time her muscles loosened beneath his grasp. “Yeah. It’s me.”
“Oh, my God, I didn’t even recognize you. You look…” She straightened, clapping her mouth shut instead of finishing her sentence. Not that Devon couldn’t fill in the blanks.
