Page 48 of Bought By Sin

Determined to get out of here with me, she showed me how she was more like a partner—one I hadn’t ever considered needing.

We burst out of the rear door, and the race to safety didn’t stop there. Together, we sped toward where I’d parked. I covered for her, watching for anyone chasing us. She checked on me, glancing at me to make sure I was sticking with her.

When we reached my car, we both got in and locked the doors immediately. In here, in the security of the car with the unbreakable tinted windows and bullet-proof panels on the doors, we caught our breath. In and out, we breathed laboriously from the run. But I didn’t wait long. I started the engine and backed up, just before the cops swarmed in.

“Fuck this,” I muttered, the tires pealing as I swerved us into a sharp one-eighty in the narrow space. I just barely missed smacking the fender on the brick wall of the nearest building, but miss it, I did.

Once I was facing away from the three cruisers that had shown up, probably tipped off to my car sitting here in this lawless and shitty part of town, I stepped on the gas and sped away.

She clutched the armrest, watching the mirrors and not panicking.

“On your left. Go.” She acted like a lookout while I focused on losing the cops. Once I got out of this clogged area near the warehouses that made up the dock’s portion of the oceanfront, it’d be easier to speed up and lose them for good.

It wouldn’t matter much to me if they pulled me over. No one in any local or state law enforcement would arrest me for something as simple as speeding or being caught near a crime-riddled area.

I didn’t want to mess with the chaos of what could happen if they saw Mila.

If they’d pounce on separating us because she could blurt that she had been sold as a child and was still not free. If they’d try to capture her so she wouldn’t be in the way of their getting me out of the way.

It wasn’t happening. I willed it. I swore on my life that she wouldn’t be taken from me due to some nosy-ass cops.

“Hard right. Up there… Now.”

She shouted the orders to me, her voice clear of the rev of the engine and the sirens of the cruisers. I took her word for it, counting on her to see something I had missed.

And it paid off. Turning sharply onto a narrow street with just enough time to drive out of their immediate sight, I got the advantage that I needed to lose them.

I didn’t slow, zipping further from the docks. She tapped in the highway on my navigation, and I had a clear cruise toward the bigger, busier highway.

Long miles of the desert terrain waited before us before we could get back to my house.

“I got footage of all who were there,” she said. “I don’t know who they are, but before I noticed that scope lens opposite our building, I captured all that I could.”

I nodded as I drove. It was a show of thanks. Of relief. An acknowledgement that she was so fucking good at thinking on her feet.

“You might have an image of them,” I told her.

“Maybe?” She shrugged, almost as though she was discounting her bravery and quick thinking.

“You didn’t panic.”

She shook her head. “No, of course not.”

“Of course not?”

She glanced at me. “Yes, because that was far from the most dangerous setups I’ve gotten into.”

I laughed once, wryly, and gave her a side eye.

As I drove us into the dark landscape of the desert, leaving the city behind, I couldn’t get over how well this had turned out with her. Because of her. We still might be empty-handed if her shots didn’t turn out. We were expected to report directly to Adrik about what we did and didn’t see.

But I couldn’t manage another minute like this. Full of appreciation and awe for this woman. Overwhelmed with this need to have her and remind her that she was mine.

I just had to have her.

Now.

If I didn’t act on this impulsive and persistent desire for her, I’d spend the rest of this long drive dwelling on what it could mean that I didn’t see Gregori tonight. That I didn’t have to face the one person from my past who could never be dead enough.