Under Fire

And he intended to make sure she lived a damn long time so she could take back her life.

“Uh, Rachel…” He glanced over his shoulder, more than a little uncomfortable with the way the older couple was openly staring at them on their way to their twenty-year-old Caddy. “Do you think we could feed the dog in the Jeep?”

Although how in the hell they were going to fit two dogs in with all the gear was a mystery to him. He needed a bigger car.

Or less baggage.

Rachel glanced up. “There’s still plenty of food left in the paper sack. We have supper, like you asked.”

“And I’m assuming we also have another dog.” Crouching on one knee, he glanced at the collar. “No name. So, it’s up to us to pick, and I choose to name him Fang.” He stood, knees groaning. “Come on, Fang. Be nice to Disco if you want some of the dog chow in back.”

Rachel pushed to her feet, the leash clutched in her fist. “Fang’s a girl, you know.”

“The name stays. Let’s get out of here.”

“Fair enough.”

She placed the bag on the seat then shoved at least fifty pounds of puppy into the back of the Jeep. The pup whimpered as she watched her crappy prior owner drive away.

Rachel cursed softly. “Jackass took better care of his surfboard than he did his dog.”

Liam watched her hand curve around the big puppy. Rachel was fierce. Protective. Strong and soft all at once.

To hell with less baggage.

She was everything he’d ever wanted in a woman. He may have fallen in love easily in the past, but damned if he could remember ever falling this hard.

***

On the road again, Rachel opened the food bag on her lap and pulled out a po’ boy for Liam. Disco curled up at her feet. The boxer—Fang—had wedged herself in the small floor space behind Liam, her wide brandy brown eyes never leaving Rachel.

She passed Liam the sandwich warily. “Aren’t you going to chew me out for making a scene?”

“Nope.” He took the paper-wrapped meal from her hand without looking over at her.

He’d gone strangely quiet right after they named the dog. Did he regret taking Fang? Was he pissed off at her? After all he’d done for her, she couldn’t bear it that she’d upset him. Bad enough that she’d turned herself into more of a liability—and added another dog to their pack.

“Come on, Liam. You’re obviously upset. I can see why you’d be mad at me. I was anything but low profile, except I couldn’t just turn away—”

“Hey, stop. Really. I mean it when I say I’m not pissed, so don’t go trying to read what I’m thinking. You needed to let off steam and he needed his ass kicked. A lot less conspicuous than if the guy at the register had called the cops.”

The police. The fishy scents from the bag made her nauseous. “God, what if the cops had shown up anyway? What if the wrong people figured out where we are? What if somebody asks that older couple about us?”

“The cops didn’t come and we’re way off the radar.” He reached for his drink to wash down a bite.

She nibbled a French fry halfheartedly, her appetite fading. “I should have placed an anonymous call to animal services.”

“With our untraceable phone? Maybe. But even if you had, the chances of them finding the guy, much less being able to pursue anything after the fact, are slim.” He glanced over, his eyes… guarded, but not angry. “You should already know that. Didn’t you tell me once that your mom worked for animal control?”

“That’s right. I’m touched that you remember.” She’d heard her married friends complain more than once about being tuned out by the men in their lives.

“Of course I remember. You told me how you mother died working that job. That had to have been awful for you and your father.”

Rachel scratched at a rusty spot on the door. “My father and mother split when I was about eight. He moved to another state. I didn’t see much of him. I still don’t. My mom and I were… everything to each other.”

Her mother had died investigating a dog-fighting ring. The owner hadn’t taken well to seeing so many of his “assets” seized. He’d gone after her mom with a baseball bat to the head. She’d never regained consciousness. The loss, her mother’s fierce bravery—it all welled up inside her until her throat closed.

Liam accelerated, the Jeep plowing deeper into the tunnel of Everglades foliage. “Seeing that guy go ballistic on his dog must have made you think of your mom and how she died.”

“I wasn’t thinking that at the time, but now that you put it that way… Sure. I guess a lot of what I do is ingrained from watching her. She was an amazing woman, strong, passionate about her work being a voice for homeless and abused animals.”

“She sounds a lot like you.”

Chuckling, she shook her head. “I wish. I certainly wanted to be like her. I even got to go to work with her sometimes.”

“To the shelter?”

“Sure. But sometimes I even got to ride along when she went out for a seizure. Not as often as I would have liked, though.”

An eyebrow shot up toward his hairline, the tips of his hair bleached blond from time in the sun. She couldn’t help but think how people paid serious bucks for a look like that, yet he was a hundred percent natural. She’d accepted that she wanted him, but the whole how of a relationship with him boggled her mind. Hell, what did they really even know about each other beyond sharing info about past relationships?

“Rachel?”

“Oh, right, my mom.” She popped another fry in her mouth, suddenly ravenously hungry. “This one time, Mom got called in for an emergency seizure on a weekend. The shelter was understaffed—aren’t they all?—so she couldn’t say no. There wasn’t a sitter to watch me, so Mom took me along. I was supposed to stay in the truck.”

A smile dug a dimple into one cheek. “But you didn’t.”

“Of course not.” She’d been so curious. So certain she would be just like her mother someday, a fearless defender of the helpless. And as much as thinking about the past hurt, she realized that Liam wanted to know more about her, which sent her digging around in that dark memory to share something of herself. “We drove to a crack house. There was a report of dog-fighting activity on the premises.”

“God—please tell me you weren’t there when your mother was attacked.”

“No…” She rested a hand on top of his on the gearshift. “I wasn’t. This was a different raid, much earlier than that horrible… I was twenty when she died.”

“How old were you that time you rode along?”

“Nine. Old enough to understand what I was seeing was very, very wrong. The suspects were already in handcuffs, so I wasn’t in any danger.” But she could still remember the feel, the stench, of evil that permeated the place. “I snuck out of the animal shelter’s van—it was getting dark by then. On my way over to the house, I saw all the standard dog-fighting paraphernalia—a rusted treadmill, blood-stained tarps.”

The puppy scooched a paw between the seats and she stroked Fang lightly, gently building a bond. “Once I made it to the house, I watched from the bushes, through the window. There were nine dogs inside and not much else. Just some crates, a few bedrolls, and garbage from food wrappers. There wasn’t even a television or refrigerator.”

Tears and rage burned her throat. She set the bag aside. “But there were rats in cages. The people—and I use that term loosely—would entertain themselves by starving the dogs, then letting rats run free.”

She tipped her head to the last rays of sun heating down on her, wishing she could fill herself, lose herself, in the lush nature scents around her, as Disco did.

“Out of the nine dogs confiscated that night, only one lived. Seven had been fought too aggressively to be rehabilitated, so their outcome was a forgone conclusion.” The puppy pawed at her hand and she resumed petting. “The bait dog… God, he broke my heart, he was so chewed up. I rode all the way back to the clinic sitting by his crate, talking to him, begging him to hold on just a little longer. But he didn’t make it.”

Silence stretched while she stroked under the pup’s neck rather than on top of the head, every touch chosen deliberately to help instill confidence in the cowed canine.

Liam cupped her neck, gently. To instill trust? “What about the one that lived?”

“The female breeder dog… Her name was Ruby.” She could still see the reddish brown gleam of her shiny coat. “She was so terrified, she didn’t even flinch from being touched. She just held herself completely still, and kept her eyes averted, locked on a faraway spot. The first time I looked into the eyes of a soldier suffering from PTSD, I saw Ruby’s eyes. I saw the pain underneath the disconnect.”

He looked across quickly, his eyes stunned, then shielded. “You and your mother kept Ruby.”

“We did adopt her. She lived for four more happy years. I miss her every day.” That sweet dog’s unbroken spirit inspired her, helped forge her determination not to let life bend her.

What had happened to make her lose sight of that direction for her life from her mom and Ruby? Her spine stiffened, straightening with some of the old starch. She refused to cave. She had to fight to get her life back.

She had to be strong enough to be Liam’s wingman.

“Rachel Flores…” He whistled softly. “You’re an amazing woman.”

The light in his eyes when he said those words had nothing to do with sex. But something deeper hummed across the air like a live wire snapping along the ground after it has been uprooted by a storm.

She was ready to acknowledge attraction, even some kind of kindred-spirit friendship. But what she saw in his eyes… she wasn’t ready for that.

“Please don’t tell me you’re in love with me.” She tried to make light of it. Rather than tell him outright she didn’t think she could handle that much emotion right now, even when she knew his kind of love was the temporary sort.

Maybe because his love was temporary.

He looked back at her, not a smile in sight. “Is that supposed to make me laugh?”

The depth in his green eyes, packed with flint and spark and emotion, sent a longing popping through her veins. “I’m not sure.”

Liam didn’t answer, just drove deeper into the wilds of the Everglades until scents and sounds hummed all around them. His words hung there between them, all but floating on the humidity-laden air. And as she watched Liam feed every last bite of the po’ boy to the puppy, her heart squeezed until she felt less and less like laughing too.

Chapter 11

Brandon knew when he was being watched.

He just hated that all the crap going on in his life made him question whether he was paranoid. But from the moment he’d woken up on Catriona’s couch, he’d been certain. Someone was lurking around her place. The only question? Was that individual after him or her? Either way, he needed to stake out her place until he got the answer.

Parked deep in the driveway of an empty house for sale, he could see Cat’s home, most of it anyway. Definitely the front access. His hand fell to rest on his Australian shepherd mutt, threading through the fur.

He kept the windows open on his truck so Harley stayed cool and he could listen for anything out of the ordinary at Cat’s. Reaching behind him, he tugged a gallon jug of water over and leaned down to fill the bowl on the floorboards for Harley.

If he could just get in touch with Rachel. He’d heard her cell phone messages asking where he was, warning him to be careful, then nothing more. He pulled out his phone and thought about turning it back on. But that paranoia set in again. If someone was tracking his cell, he didn’t want to draw attention to his locale. Especially this close to Cat’s.