Page 10 of Stolen

“Is that pecker still alive?”

“Affirmative. I’ll send you the query. See what you can do, okay? Usual fee, plus a rush bonus. It’s time-sensitive.”

“Ten-four. You can skip the rush bonus, since it’s for Hawk. But tell him I haven’t forgotten about the fifty bucks he owes me. He better not die until he pays me.”

Gunn laughed. “I’ll tell him. Thanks.”

He hung up the phone and sent Switch the query details. Then he went back to Michelangela, wondering how he was going to explain to her that after their mission, he might have to take off for an unknown location for an unspecified length of time, and he couldn’t take her with him.

She was standing by the window when he came back in the room, looking out. “Sorry, babe,” he said, tossing the phone on the bed. “Work emergency.”

Mikey turned around, leaning against the windowsill, and looked at him with raised eyebrows. “Anything to do with us?”

She was dressed, he realized. And she was wearing her own clothes, not one of his shirts—which she often did, and he sometimes bitched about, but secretly loved. He loved getting his clothes back with their scents mingled on them, like she was constantly wrapped around him.

Something he’d never said to her. There were a lot of things he’d never said to her.

But her wearing her own clothes seemed like a bad sign, like she was deliberately putting distance between them.

He wasn’t sure what to do with that, so answered her words and sidestepped everything else. “Not about our mission,” he said. “That’s still a go.”

“That doesn’t entirely answer my question. Because there’s also an ‘us’ that doesn’t have to do with the mission.”

Yes, there was. And no, it didn’t answer her question. She wasn’t letting him off the hook—as if he’d ever really thought she would. Not Mikey.

Gunn spoke carefully, like he was making his way through a minefield. “There’s a chance that after we finish up here, I may have to go take care of something.”

“Well, that’s charmingly vague.”

Nope, not off the hook at all. Gunn blew out a sigh. “Look, Mikey, I know we talked about what would happen after this—about me leaving my job. But it’s not as simple as I’d like it to be.”

“You do know that’s not any less vague? But it does imply that after this is over, you’re just going back to whatever it is that you do, despite what we talked about.”

Her voice was even and controlled, but there was a hint of brittleness he’d never heard in it before. He said, “It’s not like that. A former team member—a friend—might need backup for something that’s coming down. I can’t leave him hanging.”

“Of course you can’t.” There was no sarcasm there; she said it like it was a given. “But if it’s a crisis, he could probably use another pair of hands. I’ll go with you.”

Oh, hell. She couldn’t come. Not to Rockhaven, and definitely not to Outlaw Ridge. He couldn’t bring an Enforcer there.

Mikey had been watching his face, as if trying to look inside him and read his thoughts. Now she gave a little snort and turned back to the window.

But before she did, he caught a glimpse of something in her eyes. Just one little flash—fading hope turning to disappointment.

Something opened up inside him, and he suddenly knew what she was feeling.

She thought he was going to leave her for good.

Mikey was so tough, so badass, so full of confidence and bravado that he was still just learning about the warm, soft heart she concealed inside.

He was just learning how easily that hidden part of her could be hurt.

Suddenly this didn’t seem hard, or complicated. He walked up behind her and gathered up her long, curling blond hair, letting it slide through his fingers. Then he put his hands on her shoulders and brushed the side of her neck with his lips.

“I know you’d go,” he said. “And there’s nothing I’d like better than to have you at my back. But where I’m going—”

“You can’t take me. You don’t trust me.”

“It’s not that.” He moved around to the side, leaning his hip against the windowsill so he could face her. “I do trust you. But where I’m going—the people involved in this—I can’t make decisions for them, about who should know their secrets. Hell, no one can know their secrets.”