“Is it public yet?” Cam asked.
“I haven’t seen anything on the news wires yet, but Orton is high profile. It won’t take long.”
“Fuck me.” He rubbed the back of his head, his go-to move when frustrated was beginning to become as familiar to her as her own tics and quirks.
“What do you need?” Carlos asked.
“A fully equipped safe house.” Not an ounce of hesitation, not a bit of deliberation and not a sliver of doubt colored his tone. “We can’t stay here and have the judge get hit with an accessory after the fact charge.”
That he could be so confident helped Drea get her pulse back on an even keel. If he could still believe they’d make it out of this, so could she. The alternative was too fucking scary.
“I’ll find something ASAP,” Carlos said. “In the meantime, stay low.”
Cam laughed as he looked around the room from their vantage point on the floor. “‘Los, if we got any lower, we’d be underground.” He hung up and flung the phone onto the bed.
Drea stared at the black phone sitting in the middle of the four-poster bed’s pale yellow comforter. The sight cut between her ribs like a prison shiv. Only a few minutes ago, all she’d wanted was to get Cam naked and between those sheets. “So what now?”
He stood, then turned and helped her up. “You sleep. I’m getting to work.”
“Running away?” she joked.
His lips touched hers in a kiss that curled her toes. “It only looks that way.”
Chapter Ten
“Fashion is the armor to survive the reality of everyday life.” - Bill Cunningham
Cam downed the last dregs of coffee in his mug and watched through half-hooded eyes while the Mr. Coffee hissed and spurted out a skinny stream of black gold. In the dawn’s pink light, the idea of yanking out the pot and sticking his mouth under the spout for a direct caffeine hit didn’t sound completely stupid—which was exactly why he was brewing a second pot. Maybe then he could get the case to make sense, because it sure as hell wasn’t now, not with every piece of evidence the police had pointing to Drea as the murderer.
“Morning.” Drea strutted into the kitchen wearing a tomato red dress that stopped high on her long, dark brown legs and was held up on her shoulders by thin straps, the kind made of barely-there material that made him want to slide them down just to see if the dress would stay up.
He forgot about the case and could only think about the woman. The totally sexy, completely hot Drea who made him forget every promise he’d ever made to himself about women. She did that to him without even trying. The case he wasn’t worried about—he’d faced worse odds and come out on top. But Drea? He’d never faced down anyt
hing or anyone like her. Fuck, he really was screwed.
“You’re up early.” He grabbed an empty mug out of the cupboard. “Coffee?”
She nodded, her droopy eyes giving away just how much she needed a caffeine jolt. “God, yes.”
He pulled out the now half-filled pot, pausing the brewing process, and poured them both a cup. Their fingers brushed as he handed her the heavy stoneware mug, sending a surge of electricity up his arm and straight down to his dick. She lifted the mug to her bright red lips and Cam had never been so jealous of an inanimate object in his entire life.
“So what’s the plan?”
Thankful for the granite island separating them, he dumped enough sugar in his joe to terrify a dentist, took a sip, and recited Baseball Hall of Fame pitcher statistics in his head until he got the blood to start flowing north again.
“Reviewing security videos from businesses around your building between when we left and when the police served their search warrant. Figured we might get lucky and see who planted fish guts in your apartment.”
Her spine snapped straight and she lost her just-out-of-bed slouchy gaze. “Find anything?”
“Getting ready to start.” He carried his mug over to the small kitchen table where he’d spent the night doing background checks on what seemed like every person in the Western Hemisphere—trying and failing to find red flags. “Want to join the fun?”
As she crossed the room, her skirt swished around her thighs, then snuck up high on her legs when she sat down beside him. He managed to keep his eyes on the keyboard while he logged into the Maltese Security portal, but his gaze wandered to her shapely legs while the encrypted website loaded onto his screen. The ten second window of time was a blessing and a curse.
The profile of a black falcon appeared on his screen, which dissolved into the words MALTESE SECURITY. He clicked on the first folder and accessed the videos he’d uploaded earlier. “This first one is from the ATM across the street from your building.”
“How did you get this?”
Hacking, subterfuge, and general computer badassery that could probably land him in the federal pen. “I learned a while ago not to answer that question.”