I only answered the phone at the gym for one person; Bennet, my boss and best friend. Well, I’d answer two people officially, but the other never called me if she could help it.
“It’s Emily. She needs a hand tracing a skip,” Bennet said, trying his best not to sound worried. We were in the bail bonds business, and my job was to track down those who failed to appear at their court dates and drag them back.
Bennet Archer and I went back to high school when we’d met on the football team. We couldn’t have been more different. He was a senator’s son, and I was a kid from the poorest part of town who’d lived on handouts, and one drunk parent’s part-time jobs. The Archers had become my family since that first day, and it had never changed. Bennet and his sister, Emily, were the only people in the world who’d care if I lived or died.
Life had been good, until about a month ago when Emily had become a bounty hunter like me. Now, I barely slept at night. The worry was a constant pressure, and I found my patience growing thinner and thinner every day. Emily was smart as hell, but she was reckless and impulsive. She didn’t have the tactical training that the rest of us had, having started the business fresh out of the Marine core.
“Where is she?” I asked, ducking out the ring.
“Downtown, near Ross’s diner. She called Laura and reported in.”
“Is she staking someone out? She’d not trained yet, Bennet. She’s going to get hurt,” I huffed as I hustled toward my locker.
“Damn it, I know, but try telling her that. Laura thinks Emily needs a chance to prove herself.”
“A chance to prove herself is a chance to get hurt,” I said plainly, grabbing my bag and keys from my locker.
“You’re worked up, and you don’t even know where she is right now,” Bennet said, his voice amused.
I stopped by my bike. “Where is she?”
“Tied up in the trunk of a car,” he said, sending my heart into my mouth and annoyance lashing through my veins.
“Goddamn it, Emily. This has to end,” I snapped to Bennet as I shoved my helmet on my head. “I’m on my way. I’ll get her.”
CHAPTER3
Emily
So, sure, I wasn’t having the best week, but then, it really hadn’t been that bad until before this second. Being tied up and left in an abandoned car really put the rest of a bad day in perspective. Luckily, I was able to call Laura on my watch. Seems that Donnie Smith, the idiotic but sneaky skip I’d been following, wasn’t up on current technology. He’d dropped my phone outside the car, close enough for my watch to connect to it.
I wriggled around, trying to get my hands under my feet, so maybe I could bite the rope off.
A noise sounded in the distance, audible even through the trunk.
A growling motorcycle. Hell no. I dragged my feet through the rope on my hands, gasping as the rough material bit into my skin. Damn it. I got my hands up in front of me, just as the sound of the bike grew closer and roared to a hard stop.
“No, no, no,” I muttered, twisting my hands back and forth, ignoring the burn on my skin as well as I could. The only thing that would make this total embarrassment utterly unbearable was being found by him.
There was the sound of a knife scraping the trunk, jimmying the lock, and I felt nearly frantic with the need not to be lying here like a gaping, helpless fish.
The trunk popped open before I could make much headway with the rope, and the late afternoon light blinded me, but not too much to miss the familiar broad set of shoulders that belonged to the worst person in the world.
Diesel Williams. Still a pain in my ass, all these years later.
“Jesus Christ, Emily,” Diesel muttered, and I fixed a nonchalant look on my face.
“What? Interrupted your staring in the mirror at the gym time?”
I lifted my hands up to Diesel, expecting him to haul me out by them. I yelped as he stuck his entire head into the trunk and grabbed me around the waist and pulled me into his arms. My face pressed against the crook of his neck, and I got a lungful of that spicy male smell that was uniquely his. He had a talent when it came to smelling fucking great, even when sweating.
“You stink,” I lied.
“You smell pretty ripe yourself. Been in there long?”
“No, but I think a racoon might have died in there somewhere,” I muttered. “You can put me down now.”
He was standing by the trunk, holding me against his hard chest, and it felt far too good. I wriggled, and he set me down, dragging my entire front down him and making my breath catch in my throat.