Glasses opened the door. “Si, Gian—uh… señor?”
“Chalo, get Dr. Carter whatever equipment he needs immediately.”
“Si, señor.”
I struggled to restrain my smile. Computer access, here we come. Riggs would be so impressed that I—
Gustavo pursed his lips. “And if he needs information from the internet, you will get it for him.”
Rodrigo-Chalo-Glasses nodded again.
Shit.
As Glasses led me down the carpeted hallway, my mind churned over all the possible outcomes of this situation, and for the first time ever, I found myself a little homesick for the Thicket, and for my grandfather and Kev too. Heck, I even missed—
“Hot butter on a biscuit!” someone yelled. “You can’t just keep a Nutter confined like this! Nutters need to be free!”
I stopped, right there in the middle of the hall.
Holy shit. I was hallucinating old Amos Nutter in the jungles of Venezuela.
This was the most troubling stress response yet.
But just before Glasses hurried me along, I caught sight of an open door just a little further down the hall. The guard on the door said something in angry Spanish that sounded like a warning, and inside the room… Holy shit. Inside the room was the motherlode of technology, including maybe a dozen monitors showing video game screens and a rack of computers with flashing lights. There was a single chair inside the room, and on it sat a middle-aged man with the world’s most epic blond mullet and a Hank Williams T-shirt.
I blinked my eyes, pretty sure that was a hallucination too, and sure enough, when I looked back, the door was closed.
Still, I made sure to count my steps as we went down the hall so I could tell Riggs where the computer room might possibly be. Four doorways, take a right, six more doorways.
Glasses paused outside a door on the left where Beardy stood guard, and at his nod, Beardy opened the door, tossed me inside, and locked it behind me.
“Hasta mañana,” one of the guards called in a nasty voice.
Riggs was already crossing the living room toward me when I got to my feet.
“Hurry up and let’s go to the bathroom!” I whispered. “I have so many things to tell you—mmpfh!”
Riggs hauled me against the vast continent of his chest, cradled my jaw in both of his big hands, and pressed his lips to mine, bruising, hard, and demanding.
I was so shocked that he’d initiated this contact, so entirely overwhelmed by the heat and scent and passion of him, that I floundered at first, my hands flailing in midair before finally coming to rest on his thick shoulders. Then I sank into it because I couldn’t not. Because it felt more like home than home did, even though it shouldn’t.
“You scared the shit out of me, Carter Rogers,” Riggs said hoarsely when he finally pulled back enough to let me breathe.
“Because I’m a principal,” I said breathlessly, my fingers stroking up and down his neck. “And your job and your reputation are on the line if you don’t protect me. I know.”
“Fuck the job, Carter,” he growled. Then he tugged on my hair, tilted my head back, and captured my mouth again.
9
Riggs
I couldn’t believe Carter Rogers could kiss me the way he did, make me hard the way he did, and still think he was simply a job to me.
He wasn’t. When they’d taken him to Santiago without me, I’d gone out of my mind with worry. Worry he’d say the wrong thing in his earnest effort to be a stand-up physician or that he’d say the wrong thing accidentally out of sheer terror.
There was every chance an unpredictable and dangerous man like Gustavo Santiago could get triggered by something minuscule and demand Carter suffer for some perceived slight. And if this wasn’t the same Gustavo Santiago related to the cartel, then why were there many armed guards? And who was the man in the bed?
I hadn’t told Carter of my suspicions. It was better for him to assume the worst. Fearing Santiago and his gunmen would keep Carter compliant, keep him safe. Hopefully long enough for me to figure out what the hell was going on here. Regardless of who was in that bed, he didn’t seem nearly as dangerous as I’d first feared. But the moment they’d taken Carter away without me, it hadn’t mattered. I’d felt every bit of danger as if the entire cartel had taken him away from me.
The wait for Carter’s return had been interminable, and the minute he’d returned intact and brimming with healthy energy, I’d been unable to keep my hands… and lips… off him.
He tasted so fucking good. And when I held him in my arms, I finally felt like I could maybe, just possibly, keep him safe.
“You’re making me dizzy,” he slurred against my lips. We’d been kissing for a long time, and it hadn’t been enough.