Page 3 of Chasing Paradise

CHAPTER THREE

Violet

I downloaded an offline editing app before I climbed on the plane to Ecuador, then spent an hour or so fiddling with his image to give him a beard that looked at least somewhat like the one he was currently sporting.

Done with that, I slept the rest of the flight, landing at the Cuenca airport feeling achy, hungry, and half tempted to just turn around and go back home.

I don’t know why, but I’d been expecting the weather to be similar to Florida—hot, and worse yet, humid. But Cuenca was pleasantly moderate as I stepped outside of the airport.

I glanced side to side, even though I knew the chances of my skip still hanging around were next to none.

Then, relying on my tentative grasp on my four years of Spanish in high school, I managed to figure out where the next town was, and how to get to it.

I crossed my fingers that Warwick would want somewhere to rest and recharge after his flight.

He likely had no idea he was being followed. There was no reason to assume he would be in a hurry to get out of the general vicinity. He would probably be hitting up the local haunts, spending some of that ill-begotten money, having the time of his life. Free as a bird.

For the time being.

Though I still hadn’t worked out how I would essentially kidnap a full-grown man without the local authorities coming for me.

I’d always been more of a brute force kind of bounty hunter. But my mother had regaled me with many stories of her glory days when a tight dress was her best method to bring a man in.

The thought of putting on a dress made me feel itchy. But I had to admit that the only way I could probably get this job done was to rely on the whole feminine wiles thing. And a shit-ton of that local “firewater” that sounded particularly capable of putting a large man on his ass for a few precious hours.

Long enough, I hoped, to get him gagged and bound, then smuggled out to some airport or boat that could get me back to the States without getting me arrested in the process.

“Oh, thank God ,” I groaned as two magical words caught my eye.

Espresso Bar.

I made my way in, flashing the picture of Warwick around to a few customers and the barista behind the counter as I waited for my drink.

“You’ve gotta be kidding me,” I grumbled under my breath as I saw someone passing outside the windows.

Someone in a familiar white tee and cargo pant combo, only he’d added a new white Panama hat to the ensemble.

I cast a longing look at the coffee I’d already paid for before turning and booking it out of the café. I couldn’t lose sight of him. It would only make more work for myself in the long run if I lost him now.

I immediately broke off my run, though, as I spotted him a few yards ahead, paused to look in the window of a shop.

“Play it cool,” I reminded myself, smoothing my sweaty palms on my pants as I started to casually stroll up the street.

So for the next half an hour, I played the part of a tourist who was just checking out local shops, sometimes hanging behind Warwick, sometimes moving ahead of him to throw him off my track if he was getting suspicious about me being around.

“Shit.” I turned in a circle, gaze scanning the streets, looking for that white straw hat, the frame that towered over everyone else.

“Shit shit shit.” I rushed forward, cursing myself for getting distracted by a street vendor selling sunglasses.

He couldn’t be far.

Maybe he just dipped into a shop, a restaurant, or somewhere to use the restroom.

I just needed to calm down, slow down, keep an eye—

The hand came out of nowhere, dragging me down a small alley between buildings.

My arm was dragged up and over my head, then pinned back to the wall before I could even draw a breath.

Then there he was.

Warwick Hughs.

Three inches away, towering over me, those bright green eyes pinning me as surely as his arm was, making the wall behind bite into my forearm and the back of my hand.

“Who sent you?”

Okay.

Well.

I hadn’t been anticipating that deep, whiskey-smooth voice.

I’d maybe been a bit ungenerous, imagining him with one of those nasal, pitchy voices that always kind of came across like nails on a chalkboard.

I also could not have known the way that same voice—and the fierce way he spoke to me—would create a fire of need inside of me.

My mother was right; he was super hot. It was even more apparent up close. Even with the hat shading his pretty eyes and casting part of his face in shadow, it was painfully clear how much I’d lied when I’d said he wasn’t that hot.

“Who sent you?” he demanded again, more steel slipping into his voice, making my back straighten.

Who sent me?

That was a weird reaction.

I could understand demanding who I was, why I was following him, what I thought I was doing.

But who sent me?

That made no sense at all.

Unless he had some reason to believe someone would be coming after him.

Other than, of course, for skipping out on his court date.

“What do you mean, who sent me?”

“Cut the shit. Who sent you? The company?”

“What company?”

“My company.” His voice was getting a bit of a growl as his agitation grew.

His company?

Why would his company want to send someone after him? Let alone all the way to Ecuador? Wouldn’t they want to completely wash their hands of him? Distance themselves from his crimes? No one likes a white-collar criminal. It was bad business to still be associated with him.

Unless they wanted him back to pay for his crimes, to clear the company of any wrongdoing in the public’s eye?

Could there be another bounty hunter out looking for him? Or, worse yet, someone who didn’t operate under the laws of the United States?

I mean, I wasn’t one to talk, but most bounty hunters did follow the rules. Or, at least, most of them.

Had he been followed or threatened before?

But if he suspected his company was after him, why dawdle in the shops? Why drag his feet instead of getting the hell out of Dodge as fast as possible?

It wouldn’t be hard to disappear.

I think when I’d heard he was going to Ecuador, I’d immediately assumed that he was going to just…. fade away into the jungle or something. I hadn’t anticipated it to be as populated and busy as it was. There were buses and trains and cabs leaving the town all the time. It would be easy to get in one, away from a trail, and never be seen again.

“No one sent me,” I insisted.

“Bullshit.”

Okay.

He was just a little too jazzed up for my liking.

I mean, true, in my line of work, a man who was in any way agitated had to be seen and treated like a direct threat. It was too easy for things to get bad very fast.

I ducked down, bringing my arm up over his, then rotated while driving my shoulder forward and twisting my wrist out of his hold.

It went exactly as it was meant to.

What I hadn’t anticipated, though, was that my skip might be similarly as trained as I was, effortlessly grabbing me again, wrapping my arms around the front of me like a hug as he anchored me against his chest. Then he applied enough pressure to make it impossible for me to break my arms free without using my legs or heels.

Legs would likely end up with both of us on the ground in the alley, wrestling around in what could either be a perfectly normal puddle of water… or some sort of pee.

Head would mean I would have an even more aching head than I already did from caffeine withdrawal.

“Let’s try this again, darlin’,” he said, his breath warm on the shell of my ear. And it totally didn’t make a shiver course down my spine. Because I was absolutely not that hard-up for the closeness of a man.

I also totally didn’t notice the way he smelled, either. All bright and fresh, maybe slightly citrusy. Which was refreshing. Most guys wore spicy or clean scents that always made me wrinkle my nose.

“Try what again?” I asked, pitching my tone just a little more innocent.

“Bullshit. You’ve been following me since Miami. Who are you and what do you want?”

“Maybe I just want the pleasure of your company. Hey! Hands!” I snapped as he pinned me harder with just one of his strong arms, and his other hand started to drift, patting over me.

“You’re not armed.”

“How would I get on a plane with a weapon?”

“You’ve passed half a dozen following me the past few hours.”

“Maybe I don’t want to kill you. Though the possibility is increasing with each passing second.”

He was so damn fast.

One second, he was hugging my arms to my chest and my body to his chest.

The next, he was releasing me and stepping away while simultaneously whipping my crossbody bag up and off of me.

“Hey!” I whipped back to face him, ready to get my bag back—even if I had to strangle him with the strap to do it.

But it was too late.

He had it unzipped and had pulled out my wallet.

“Violet,” he read off my ID.

I saw it the second he came across my bounty hunter identification card.

One of his brows inched up and he shot me a look from under his lashes.

“You’re a bounty hunter?”

Was that disbelief in his voice? Mocking?

I’d busted my ass to get that damn license. Lord knew the state of New Jersey didn’t exactly make it easy.

Not liking his tone, I simply crossed my arms and glared at him.

“Where’s your badge then?”

“Those are ornamental, worn only by the guys who think they’re bigger badasses than they are. Besides, that’s another thing I couldn’t have brought into the country.”

“Because bounty hunters are illegal here.”

“It figures that you would know that.”

“I skipped bail. Of course I know,” he said, slipping my IDs back into their slots. He put my wallet back in my bag, zipped it, then held it out toward me. “What, exactly, was your plan here? To ask me nicely to return to the States so you could collect?”

“No.”

I couldn’t exactly tell him my actual plan. Or that I was still kind of hoping I could accomplish it.

“Knock me over the head and smuggle me back?” he asked, lips curving up ever so slightly at the edge.

“That’s always an option. That becomes more likely with each moment spent in your… pleasant company.”

“Can’t imagine I’m obligated to be friendly to someone who wants to bring me to jail.”

“For crimes you committed.”

“So, that whole ‘innocent until proven guilty’ thing…”

“Makes a nice soundbite. But you’ve already been convicted in the court of public opinion.”

“And if I didn’t do it?”

“That’s your lawyer’s problem, not mine.”

“You don’t even care if I did it or not?”

“I care that you did skip out on your bail.”

“And if you haul me back to be locked up for a crime I didn’t commit?”

“I’d say that if I had a dime for every time a skip told me they were innocent, I’d be a wealthy woman. Little secret,” I said, leaning in for dramatic effect, “they’re all guilty.”

He considered that, biting the inside of his cheek. “Statistics say that roughly five percent of everyone incarcerated is innocent. That’s, what, one in every twenty? How many skips have you handed over to a system that was hellbent on convicting them, regardless of if they did it or not? More than twenty?”

A hell of a lot more.

“That’s on the lawyers and the jury. I’m doing my job.”

“Well, you can’t do your job here. So maybe you should turn around and head back to the States.”

“Yeah, that’s not happening.”

“Suit yourself,” he said, turning to walk away.

“Warwick,” I called.

“Wick,” he said. Turning his head over his shoulder, he gave me a raised brow look.

“I’m going to bring you in.”

“Yeah?” he asked, lips curving up in a way I totally didn’t find annoyingly attractive. “I’d like to see you try, duchess.”