Page 10 of K-9 Guardians (New Mexico Guard Dogs #4)

It shouldn’t have been possible. An entire operation gone within a few hours? With his injury, Munoz couldn’t even walk. How the hell could he have coordinated cleaning out that warehouse? And where did he run to?

The logistics didn’t really matter. King’s son did. They’d been so close to bringing him home, but now Julien seemed farther away than ever.

Scarlett flipped through another series of photos put together by Agents Dunkeld and Roday for the thousandth time. It hadn’t taken much to create copies of the off-the-books investigation file and make it look like the original. The DEA could have the collection they left in Dunkeld’s home. She’d piece this together with the raw notes she and King had uncovered in Dunkeld’s office vent.

Only they were looking at the same information that’d brought them to that warehouse in the first place.

Sangre por Sangre was no longer accepting their position on the bottom rung of the ladder with their cocaine deals to high school students and underage recruiting parties. They were moving up in the world. Into fentanyl. And if history taught Scarlett and her team anything, it was the cartel didn’t have the means or the resources to get the warehouse up and running on their own. Not like that. But who in their right mind would partner with a cartel?

Her head nodded forward without her permission, the photograph in front of her blurring for a moment. Any second now, her head would collide with the stir-fry she’d pulled from the fridge, uneaten. The pain in her face seemed to shift with gravity, and Scarlett leaned back in the chair. She couldn’t stop now. Not while Julien and Gruber were still out there. She’d made a mistake, and she had to be the one to fix it. Before that little boy’s body was the next to show up on her doorstep.

“When was the last time you slept?” King looked as beaten as she felt. He shuffled into the too-small galley kitchen of Socorro’s headquarters, a crutch shoved under his arm. His facial hair had grown in over the past couple of days, revealing a single patch of lighter hair on one side. He’d changed out of the tight hospital gown that revealed more than she’d expected at the back and into what looked like a thrift store T-shirt with a popular cartoon cat and a pair of jeans that didn’t quite fit around his waist. But damn it all to hell, being his center of attention still got her heart pumping.

She readjusted in her seat, leaning her elbows against the table to give her more stability. With a shake of her head, Scarlett put herself back in the game. It was the only thing she could do. They both knew who he blamed for losing Julien last night. “Shouldn’t you still be in the hospital? How did you get here?”

His laugh shouldn’t have had any effect on her while she was this tired, but Scarlett couldn’t help but feel the tension seep out of her spine. “You’d think breaking out and calling a ride-share would be more difficult under the circumstances.”

“You just signed the discharge papers against your doctor’s orders, didn’t you?” She didn’t have the strength or the resolve to banter with him right now. Not with part of her brain focused on the file, another wishing she was asleep in her room down the hall and the last wondering when Ivy Bardot would descend from her throne on high to cut her from the team.

Scarlett had acted irresponsibly going to that warehouse without backup, without a strategy in place and without clearing it through Socorro first. And King’s little boy had paid the price for her mistake. That in and of itself was unacceptable. She’d endangered lives. All to neutralize her own guilty past. Scarlett rubbed the sleep from her eyes. “You called a rideshare?”

“You wouldn’t believe the going rate to get out here. Does Socorro expense travel for its operatives?” King dragged himself through the kitchen and pulled a chair from the end of the table that didn’t get much communal use. He lowered himself down with the help of the crutch, his injured leg stretched out in front of him, and she couldn’t help but imagine him here between assignments, as part of the team. A knife to his thigh had sliced through muscle and tendon, but the prognosis was better than they’d expected. He’d fully recover given enough time and physical therapy. “Scarlett, what are you doing?”

“I took photos of all of Agent Dunkeld’s notes from his office. I’m going back through them. There are references here I haven’t been able to make sense of yet. Random letters. Almost like it’s some sort of code, but one I haven’t seen before.”

The letters seemed to jump off the page every time she looked away, as if they were calling her. Or maybe she was just hallucinating. She scrolled through another set, these written in more feminine handwriting. Eva Roday’s, if she had to guess.

“My gut says if we manage to find the key to decode them,” she said, “I think we’ll have a better idea of where we stand. Maybe even who is partnering with the cartel and where they might be located.”

“You need to go to sleep.”

His voice intensified that exact need, like her body had been waiting for his permission. But she couldn’t stop. Not yet. Not until she had something to bring back his hope. Because she’d been the one to kill it. The second she’d gone back for King in that warehouse, she’d broken her promise to get Julien out safely. And she couldn’t live with that for the rest of her life. She could barely live with herself as it was now. “I’m fine. I just need... I just need some coffee.”

“Coffee can fix a lot of things, but it can’t fix this.” King’s breathing picked up as he got back to his feet. He wedged the crutch beneath his arm with one hand and offered the other to her. “Come with me.”

His voice had been so clear a few minutes ago but refused to register in her brain now. He was right. Coffee wouldn’t fix this. Neither would changing out her contacts or taking a cold shower. She’d given everything she had to recovering Julien, and she’d failed. Throwing herself back into the investigation wasn’t going to change that.

Her attention latched on to the pattern of lines in his palm. Just before she slid her hand into his.

King didn’t do much in the way of helping her up—couldn’t in his condition—but the intention was still there. After everything they’d been through together, he wanted to help her. As a unit, they shuffled back through the kitchen and into the corridor before King pulled up short. “I’ll be honest. I have no idea where I’m going. Every hallway looks the same to me.”

“I’ve got you covered.” Scarlett led him to the right, then took a left and shoved through a door at the end of the hallway. A deep heaviness clung to her legs as she caught sight of her bed. King-size suddenly had all new meaning as she considered whether or not to invite him inside. But her boundaries had been broken the moment she went back in to save him from Munoz and the rest of the cartel.

Only this time King made the choice for her.

Maneuvering inside the room, he surveyed the space with its floor-to-ceiling windows making up two walls, the bed jutting out from the wall to their right and the simple layout with the bathroom and closet tucked out of sight. “This is...a lot of pink.”

He was right. The upholstered headboard had been custom-made. The faux fur rug had been on sale in one of those huge home decor stores that were popping up all over. Pinks, whites and navy colors created a palette that made her happy every time she walked into this room. It was hers. Every inch. Hers. “Don’t you have a favorite color?”

“Black shows the least amount of blood. Does it count if it’s just good logic?” King was still taking it all in. The roses on the nightstand with a stack of books she’d read a thousand times. The built-in wardrobe where her gun safe was installed. He studied it all as though he was trying to understand the pieces of this room that made her...her.

And she liked it. Him being here. Trying to figure her out. Not in the way so many others had—how she could be of use, how she could benefit an operation—but pure curiosity.

“Sure.” Suddenly blood seemed to drain from her upper body, pooling in her legs.

“Hey. I’ve got you.” And then he was there, his hands anchoring around her waist. She wasn’t sure how he’d moved so fast with that leg barely out of surgery, but it didn’t really matter. “You’ve still got blood on you. I’ll grab you a change of clothes.”

Every cell in her body wanted to collapse as he led her to the edge of the bed and set her down.

Bending at the waist, he leveled his gaze with hers. “Don’t move.”

She wasn’t sure she could even if she’d wanted to. Her body had hit a wall, and there was nothing that was going to get her to the other side until she gave in. Her pulse pinged a steady rhythm underneath the butterfly bandage across her nose as her partner pried the built-in doors wide.

King returned to face her with a set of her favorite pajamas in hand. Silk shorts and an oversize T-shirt. Ridiculous, really. That someone like her—someone who thrived in knowing and exploiting the enemy’s weakness and who’d become comfortable with the violence that ensued—needed her pajamas to be soft. That she relied on that small bit of comfort every night.

He tossed the crutch on the bed, his weight on his good leg as he took a seat beside her. Hints of soap tickled the back of her throat. He’d showered—most likely at the hospital—and she couldn’t help but wonder if she smelled anything close to clean. “Lie back and give me your foot.”

She didn’t have it in her to argue as the mattress came to meet her, and she dragged one foot away from the floor.

He grasped it between both hands, and a flurry of nervous energy spiked through her. There was a lot he could do with that one foot given the chance. But King wouldn’t hurt her. That was how it worked when you went to war together. When you saw past the mask a person wore for the world, you got to witness the truth of them. And she knew King Elsher.

He tugged at the laces of her boot and slipped the heavy gear free, and Scarlett couldn’t help but let her anxiety win. This was...slow. Uncomfortable. Out of her range of experience. No one had taken this kind of care with her since before her discharge from the army, and she wasn’t sure what to do with it.

“Now the other one,” he said.

She followed his orders as relief spread through her socked foot and nearly sighed as he dropped her other boot to the floor. He reached for the elastic of her socks and started pulling them free, one by one, but Scarlett bolted upright to stop him from going farther.

King waited. Held perfectly still until she made the decision. “I’ve got you. No matter what happens.”

The words slid through her defenses as easily as the blade had gone through his leg, and she lay back down. Cool air added relief between her toes...just before King started massaging away the tension in her heel and the ball of her foot.

And she drifted to sleep.

K ING COULD SPEND the rest of his life in this bed. He could even ignore the pink pillows underneath him, as long as he didn’t have to give up this view.

Of Scarlett. Of her hair trailing around her shoulders and into her face. The clock on her nightstand warned him he was wasting time, but he couldn’t seem to stop memorizing the way she’d lost that defensive edge while asleep.

She was beautiful. Definitely stronger than him, and more than he’d initially judged when they collided in the morgue—hell, when was that? Two days ago? The bruising fanning out from around her nose had darkened to shades of blue and purple but didn’t take away from the spread of freckles peppered across her cheeks. He’d counted them. Over and over while she slept. One hundred and thirty-eight of them, each distinctive in its own right. Each one perfect.

“If you’re going to keep staring at me like a serial killer stares at his prey, I’ll require breakfast.” Scarlett’s voice cracked, but she gave him a half smile. Bright green eyes locked on him, and everything outside of these four walls didn’t seem so important. “I like bacon.”

“If that means I have to find my way through this maze back to the kitchen, you’re out of luck.” King’s laugh rolled through him easier than it should have.

He’d been suspended from the DEA for running an off-the-books investigation into a cartel. The last woman he’d partnered with had been murdered in her own home. Adam had been tortured and slaughtered, and his son had been kidnapped. There shouldn’t have been room for the lightness flooding through him. But Scarlett somehow made that possible.

She reached out, her fingertips brushing against the stubble across his chin. Heat cut through him, blistering and driven by something he hadn’t experienced in a long time. Desire. “I believe in you.”

The second laugh hurt more than it should have. His pain medication had worn off sometime during the night, but exhaustion had won out. Until now. He felt every blow as clearly as when they’d landed. In his ribs, his hands, his leg. They both knew getting lost in these halls wasn’t going to end well for him.

Scarlett lowered her palm to his chest, directly above his heart. “I don’t remember changing into my pajamas. Last night, did we...”

The question hung between them, and King didn’t really have an answer. On the surface, it was easy. They hadn’t slept together, but there was a part of him that was convinced they had. Mentally, emotionally. She’d trusted him to touch her, to take care of her, and while he didn’t know her past as well as his own, King got the feeling that didn’t happen often. If rarely. “No.”

Her mouth formed an O for a split second. Surprised? Disappointed? Grateful? He couldn’t tell. Scarlett pushed upright, angling long, lean legs over the edge of the bed. “Thank you. For getting me here.”

“Figured you’d probably pass out at the dining table with your tablet stuck to your head.” While that may have been true, he also knew that keeping her from falling asleep in the communal dining room had little to do with it. “Wanted to save you the embarrassment.”

She laid her head back on the pillow. Silk. Another element of this personal space he hadn’t expected. Everything he’d known about Scarlett Beam up until this point had given him ideas of a dusty room with little to no personalization. A waystation between here and wherever she ended up next. But this...

This single room felt like a piece of home. Cared for. Lived in. Hell, he and Julien had been living together for nearly two months, and their place looked nothing like this. Didn’t feel like it, either. As much as he wanted to credit the decor, King understood that all this warmth came from Scarlett. She was the one who added life to every room she walked into. Including the one where he’d been bound, interrogated and stabbed.

Scarlett tucked her hands beneath her chin, studying him. “Is this what you really look like in the morning?”

“Disappointed?” he asked.

“Not at all. I can finally see your face without all those tight lines in it.” Her smile stretched from one side of her face to the other. The effect released her own set of tight lines from around her eyes and hitched his heart rate into overdrive. There was something about that smile. About that smile in this place, in this bed.

“I’m not sure if I’m supposed to take that as a compliment or an insult.” He itched to close the small space between them, to feel her without a Kevlar vest getting in the way. To experience that heat she generated not just in his hand the few times they’d touched but over his entire body.

The truth was, he hadn’t felt anything for a long time. And painkillers had nothing to do with it.

King reached out, sweeping long red hair behind her shoulder. His finger brushed against the underside of her chin, and Scarlett closed her eyes as if she’d been waiting for that physical contact as long as he had. Hell, she was so damn beautiful like this. Raw. Without any threats driving her from minute to minute. Right here, right now, she looked...at peace.

And despite the danger and the violence and the worry outside of this room, King felt the echo of that peace for the first time in... Damn, he couldn’t remember how long. When his life hadn’t become his job. When he hadn’t been blindsided by a ten-year-old who’d been kept from him for the past ten years. When he hadn’t lost the closest thing to a best friend he’d had. How long ago was that?

Seconds blurred together as they lay there. King wasn’t sure how many. Didn’t matter. Because he finally had the chance to breathe. To slow down. To just...be. In this bed he wasn’t a DEA agent, the cartel didn’t exist, he wasn’t a father, and he wasn’t grieving the loss of the loss of his job or everyone he cared about. He was King. A guy who’d dreamed of being a hero all his life, who’d fallen in love for the first time as a junior in college and had his heart broken, whose bucket list included things like visiting the Grand Canyon and seeing a real-life volcano and running a marathon. Someone who didn’t feel the need to protect everyone and everything all the time, his own happiness be damned. Here, he was that man. Because of her.

King swiped his thumb beneath her chin, memorizing the feel of her skin, of a thin scar he hadn’t noticed until now. He ran the pad of his finger over it a second time. She’d told him not to ask about the scar across her stomach, and he’d do as she asked. “What about this one? Will you tell me about that?”

“You’re going to laugh at me.” Sliding her hand over his, Scarlett pressed her face into his palm. “My nana used to make my cousins and me take naps when we were growing up. My mom and my aunt were working single moms at the time, and the four of us cousins would get dropped off at my nana’s house. At the time I didn’t understand why we had to take naps, but looking back I can see she just wanted a break. She was the one who needed the nap, and she didn’t trust us to let her sleep without getting into trouble.”

“You were one of the kids that got into trouble, weren’t you?” He could see it now. Her curiosity, her determination to challenge and learn and figure the world out for herself. Nothing had changed in that sense.

“You’re not wrong.” Her laugh shook through his hand, real and bright. “We’d all pile in her king-size waterbed, but I never actually went to sleep. Instead, I would keep my brother and my cousins from going to sleep by poking them in their faces. Turned out, they didn’t like that so much. My brother scratched me, leaving this scar, and I never poked him in the face again.”

“Here I thought you were going to tell me you’d sneaked out of bed and gone to do something against the rules. Like climb the pantry for cookies. Seems more your style.” He’d meant it as a joke, but the smile disappeared from her face.

Scarlett drew his hand along her neck, down over her collarbone. His fingers trailed between her breasts and over her stomach, lifting the hem of her shirt to expose the angry jagged pink line underneath. “The last time I broke the rules, my unit turned on me.”

He didn’t know what to say to that, what to think. “Your unit?”

Her gaze dipped to the raised scar tissue. “We were stationed in the Middle East. Security. Our job was to keep everyone safe, escort any high-value property on and off the base, investigate criminal activity, the works, but it turns out, the best people to break the rules are the ones who are there to enforce them.”

Her skin warmed against his, her breathing coming faster, and King couldn’t keep his distance any longer. Shifting, he closed the space between them and speared his fingers into her hair. “Hey. You don’t have to do this. You don’t have to trust me with this.”

“But I do.” She brought her gaze to his. Clear and soft and brilliant. The kind of eyes that could see right through him. And, damn it, King wanted her to see him. To be someone she could know and rely on in a world where she gave so much of herself to everyone else. “Which seems like a very dumb idea on my part, but here we are.”

“Here we are,” he said.

“I noticed things. Whispered conversations between a couple members of my team while we were on shift. I didn’t think anything of it at first. Our unit wasn’t exactly tight. More of a bunch of misfits thrown together, and I figured they had a closer relationship. They were friends, and I was the rookie. We got along. Drank together, told war stories and played Monopoly off duty, so I figured it was just a matter of time.” Her next laugh wasn’t as real as the last and died almost as quickly as it escaped. “But then I noticed a routine whenever the rangers brought in confiscated goods from their missions.”

“What kind of goods?” He hadn’t meant to ask, but it seemed important.

“Weapons, money.” Scarlett tightened her hold on his hand. “Drugs. It didn’t take me long to put it together. They had a protocol they followed whenever one of those shipments came in to be processed, and we were the ones in charge of processing.”

“They were helping themselves.” King pressed his thumb into end of her scar, where the tissue had built up more than the others. “What did you do?”

“Threatened to rat them out to our commanding officer and have them all court-martialed. Problem was, he was in on the operation, too.” Her voice softened as she studied the line across her stomach. “And then one night, he decided he couldn’t risk me telling anyone.”