How long would it be before Mika paid for his sins? He couldn’t do that to her. The best way to protect her was to walk away now before he couldn’t force himself to take a single step.
He snagged a pair of sewing scissors from the desk and snipped the zip ties from around Mika’s wrists. Holding her hands in his, he couldn’t look away from the ugly red lines left behind by the zip ties that marred her delicate skin. Fighter that she was, Mika had tried to pull free of her restraints because he hadn’t been able to protect her.
“Don’t worry.” She raised herself up on her tiptoes and brushed her lips across his. “We’ll get him before the drugs get put out on the street.”
He’d failed to keep the drugs off the street. He’d failed to keep Mika safe. He ran his thumb lightly across the marks on her wrists. Guilt punched its way through his ribcage and closed its viselike grip around his lungs. This couldn’t go on. He couldn’t take Mika down with him.
“There’s no we here.” There couldn’t be. He released her hands and grabbed his jeans from the floor.
“Of course there is.” She cut the zip tie joining her ankles. “We’re in this together.”
He couldn’t see her face, but there was no mistaking the stubborn determination underlying her words. Mi cielo wouldn’t give up on him—on them—unless he forced her. It was a good thing at least one lesson he’d learned over the past year had stuck. He knew how to napalm any tie he had to his past with efficiency and extreme prejudice.
“You’re joking, right?” He turned his back, unable to watch the effect of his words. He snorted disgustedly at himself. In addition to everything else, he was a fucking coward.
“No, I’m not joking,” she said. “There is an us. Last night wasn’t just fucking off an adrenaline high. I know you feel it, too. It hit you just as hard as it did me. We both knew it that first night.” She grabbed his arm and tried to force him around. When he didn’t move, she circled to stand in front of him. “We can fix this—together.”
He kept his gaze locked on the red splotch on the wall that used to be Roger’s head and refused to look at Mika as he dragged his shirt over his head.
“God damn it,” she yelled, her words cracking him across the face. “You need me.”
The truth was he did—and that was more dangerous for her welfare than being on the shit list of every drug dealer in Harbor City.
“Carlos, I think I’m falling in love—”
“No.” He leveled a hard look at her, forcing himself not to look away when she flinched. He couldn’t let her say it. He’d never be able to do what he needed to do next if he did. “You’re the last person I need. I need someone who is going to realize that the importer she worked under for years is a front for drug dealers. I need someone who’s going to see there are high-end security cameras and upscale security features at every entry point—all things that a normal fabric importer doesn’t need. There’s no way you’re qualified to track down a drug dealer. Stay on the sidelines. It’s where you belong.”
He’d kept his voice low and steady, never growing in volume or heat, but each word had found its mark. His harsh words had forced Mika to lose some of the inner glow that carried her through everything. Time to extinguish it completely—otherwise she’d fight to try to protect him. It was what she did, her greatest strength and her greatest weakness.
“Did you not learn anything after what happened with your sister?” He curled his lip in contempt. “Once again, you led the wolf right to the hen house and opened the fucking door. It’s your inattentiveness that caused your friends to get hurt. It’s amazing no one ended up dead. Again.”
“That’s low, Carlos,” she said, her voice cracking. “Really fucking low.”
“No.” He steeled himself to deliver the final blow. “It’s accurate. You say you want to protect people, but all you do is get them hurt.”
Her brave facade crumpled and she gasped. “You bastard.”
He plucked his phone from her grasp. “I’m going to call Reggie. You probably want to put some pants on before the cops get here.”
He walked out into the hall, each step away from Mika like slogging through waist-high snowdrifts, then closed the door behind him. The metal barrier did little to block the sound of Mika’s gut-twisting cry or the thunk of something hard hitting the door from the inside. He deserved her anger. An icy numbness settled over him. He deserved much worse.
Chapter Thirteen
“Q: Is there anything you envy about women? A: Their hold over men.”
—Alexander McQueen
The cops were finishing up after removing Roger’s body. Mika was holed up at the opposite end of the hallway outside her design studio with Reggie and another cop who was furiously scribbling down everything she said. Carlos had popped the sound out of his knuckles, and it hadn’t helped him think of any way to track down the mystery man behind the drug scheme.
Maltese Security’s owner, Tony Falcon, peeled away from a hushed huddle with a handful of Harbor City Police Department top brass and headed toward Carlos. The grim set to his boss’s face just added to the weight on Carlos’s shoulders.
Tony stopped in front of Carlos. “The cops believe her.”
“About fucking time.” The idea of Mika as a drug mule hadn’t gotten any less ridiculous the longer it had been floated out there.
“You have about a million years’ worth of vacation time,” Tony said. “Take it.”
Carlos stiffened and fisted his hands. “No.”