Matt echoed her sentiment. “Lauren’s right. If the three of us work together, we can do it. Lauren and I alone … well, it’ll be tougher.”
“He’ll still come after me. It won’t matter if he’s in prison.”
Walker spoke up. “He won’tdarecome after you. Nor will he send anyone else. He knows we’ll be watching his every step. I’ve seen how these men work, Susan. Revenge may eat them alive, but in the end they opt for survival. Prinz will be signing his own death warrant if he comes near you again. He’ll know that. Believe me, he’ll know it.”
Susan swallowed and looked from the detective to Matt and Lauren. “I want to believe. Really I do.”
“Trust him,” Matt urged. “Trustus.But then, you already do, don’t you?”
“What makes you think that?” she returned, but there was a softness in her tone.
Matt smiled, then winced when his bruised lip protested. He soothed the spot with his finger. “You really do know karate, but you don’t try it on me. One kick, and you’d have escaped. The fact that you didn’t try it had to mean something.” He ventured a second smile, this one more carefully. “Howdidyou learn it so quickly?”
Susan shrugged and gave a tentative grin of her own. “Like I told Leo, I’m a quick study.”
Matt chuckled softly. Reaching out, he drew Susan to his side at the same time that his arm tightened around Lauren. “You’ll work with us, Susan, won’t you?”
Susan moistened her lips, but it was Lauren she was looking at. “After all you’ve gone through for me, I guess I’ll have to.” She jerked her head toward Matt. “Where did you even find this big lummox, Lauren? Do you think maybe he has an identical twin stashed away somewhere?”
Lauren grinned up at Matt. “I don’t think there’s another man like him on the face of the earth. He’s pretty special, isn’t he?”
Purpled cheek, bruised lip, battered ribs and all, Matt sucked in a deep breath and threw back his head. “Ahhhh. Paradise. One pretty lady on the left, one pretty lady on the right … if only my buddies at the beer hall could see me now!”
“The beer hall? You never talked about a beer hall. For that matter,” Lauren said, scowling, “you never said you were an avid hunter.” They were back in the hotel room after spending the afternoon at the police station. Lauren had insisted that Matt take a long, hot bath to soothe his aching body, but now she had him in bed, exactly where she wanted him.
Matt looked up at her through one half-lidded eye. “Where did you think construction workers went for fun?” He steeled himself against an attack that never came.
“Did you get drunk?” Lauren asked.
“On occasion.”
“What were you like … drunk?”
He shrugged the shoulder she wasn’t leaning against. “I don’t know. I was too far out of it to tell.”
She grinned. “And the hunting?”
“Wooden ducks at an amusement park. We should go sometime. I’ll win you a huge stuffed teddy bear.”
Lauren settled onto him, gently and with a sigh. “Thanks, but I’ve already got one.” She rubbed her ear against the tawny hair on his chest and stilled only when he began to stroke her back.
“You’re pretty special yourself,” he murmured. “The way you thought to go for that gun, and then the way you held it … I thought for a minute that you were the one with experience.”
“All a bluff. I’ve never held a gun in my life.”
“Not even a water gun?”
“Nope. My parents were pacifists. Dead set against weapons of any kind. That’s one of the things that drove them crazy about Brad. He used to make guns out of whatever toys he had handy. Some of them were pretty creative.”
“Lauren?”
She took a deep breath, inhaling the clean, male scent of his skin. “Mmm?”
“What will your parents say about me?”
“That depends,” she said softly and raised her head. “It depends on what I tell them first.”
“How about you tell them that I love you and want to marry you?”
