And it fucking killed me that after everything she’d already been through, she still had to deal with this shit. It was never going to end for her.

With a muffled curse, I braced my hands on the counter and hung my head. Evie’s footsteps sounded behind me, then her fingers were on my back, lightly tracing, and I wanted more. I always wanted more with her.

“What happened? Are they here?” Her voice was low, resigned, and I hated that she’d already accepted this as her future.

I would do everything in my power to keep it from being so. Everything.

I turned around, leaning back against the counter and tugging her between my spread legs. With one finger hooked through a belt loop on her jeans, I kept her close to me. I raised my other hand and brushed her hair back from her face, pushing it behind her shoulder. She was in that oversized sweater again, the one she’d been wearing the night I’d seen her for the first time in five years. And just like that time, her shoulder was bare and so fucking taunting. All that creamy skin, so silky and smooth. I hadn’t had my lips on enough of her yet.

I didn’t take my eyes off the freckles that decorated her pale skin as I said, “Not Max. Some guy low in the ranks was poking around, trying to get a read on Gage. Gage thinks it was to see if he knew anything about your whereabouts.”

She shivered as I brushed my thumb over her skin, ran it up the column of her neck, rested it against her pulse point which, despite the circumstances, was steady. “But Gage is still worried,” she said.

“I wouldn’t say worried.” My brother didn’t do worried. He did prepared. “He’s cautious. Thinks there’s a reason Max is moving so swiftly with everything and wants to make sure we have our shit together if anything goes down. How long will it take you to find something, assuming you can?”

“I … I don’t know. It all depends on how well he’s covered his tracks. If he’s pulled in others to help him, or if he’s still running it by himself. Maybe a couple of days?”

I stared at her, my eyes speaking everything that I wasn’t prepared to say aloud yet, but the way she inclined her head to me, the softness around her eyes, told me she heard me anyway and knew as well as I did.

We might not have a couple of days.

Needing that reminder that she was here, she was safe, I wrapped my fingers around her neck and pulled her toward me. Lowering my face, I swept my mouth across hers, and I went from half hard to hard enough to pound nails when she melted right into me. She rested her hands against my chest, and a breathy little sound left her lips when she connected them with mine, her tongue licking along my bottom lip.

I dropped my hands to her ass, cupping it and hauling her up against me, letting her feel exactly what she did to me. With a moan, she tilted her head and opened her mouth to me, sliding her tongue against mine, and I wanted her. Right then.

While it had always been good between us, it’d never felt like this. I was a junkie needing a fix when it came to her now. I didn’t know if the change was simply the time that had passed, how we’d both changed as people, and what that meant for the chemistry between us …

Or if it was something else, something more. If the fire between us sparked so brightly because we both knew how it was without the other.

We knew exactly how much we both had to lose.

*   *   *

It was a couple hours later when the intercom buzzed and crackled, the sound breaking over the speaker by the apartment door. Evie was on the couch, her back straight as a board as she looked to me. After the phone call earlier from Gage, after our brief but intense make-out session, she hadn’t said much of anything in the hours we waited, too lost in her head.

Glancing out the window, I saw it was Gage standing at the back door, and I walked over to buzz him in. His boots thudded up the stairs, then he knocked twice before I opened the door.

“Hey.” He entered the loft, a bag slung over his shoulder, and I shut the door behind him, locking up before following him into the room. He tipped his chin in greeting at Evie.

“Anyone follow you?” I asked.

Gage turned around and leveled me with a stare, his eyes hard and his jaw set. “I might’ve been out of this shit for months, but I’m not a fucking idiot, Ry. Jesus.” He shook his head, running his thumb along his jaw.

I gave a nod of acknowledgment. I knew he wasn’t an idiot, but I couldn’t take chances with Evie. Gesturing to the bag he had with him, I asked, “You bring the laptop?”

“Yeah.” He shrugged it off his shoulder and placed it on the floor by Evie’s feet. “I had no idea what kind of specs to get, but hopefully you can do what you need to with it.”

“Thanks,” she said as she unzipped the bag and unloaded the laptop, powering it up a second later.

Gage turned to face her fully, his arms crossed. “I know you kept everyone in the dark because it’d be safer, but that time’s passed, Evie. We need to know what we’re going up against here. I need to see exactly what kind of dirt you have on Max so we can try to figure out our endgame.”

“Well, that’s just it. If—when—I find this other evidence, what then? What are we going to do with it? Knock on his door and hand it over in exchange for freedom?” She shook her head. “I don’t trust him to do that, so it doesn’t leave us with a whole lot of choices.”

Gage glanced over at me, and I could see every unspoken word reflected back at me in his eyes. We’d do whatever it took to make sure Max couldn’t threaten any of us. “Don’t worry about that now. All you need to worry about is finding whatever you need, and finding it as quickly as fucking possible, because the clock’s ticking faster every day. And Max isn’t going to stop until he gets what he wants.”

Chapter Twenty

EVIE

I’d only been running jobs for Max for a couple of months when I’d run into my first problem. By then, Riley had been going with me to every single job, making sure I had cover. At first, I’d dragged him along because I’d liked him. It’d been as simple as that. I’d wanted him around. Wanted to flirt and laugh and talk, pretend for a minute that I was a normal fifteen-year-old girl. Of course, I hadn’t been a normal fifteen-year-old girl. I’d been one who made bad choices and got myself into shit situations all because I hadn’t wanted to go home. But Riley had been with me nonetheless, and on that particular night, I’d been thankful for it.

It had been my hardest job to date—a dirty cop who was sliding drugs under the table to Max. The only problem was that Max found out the cop wasn’t being entirely honest. Max had it on good authority that the cop was pocketing almost half of everything he got off the dealers and turning around to sell it and keep the profit for himself.

The job had looked simple enough on paper. Slip into the cop’s apartment, retrieve whatever drugs I could find, and bring them back to Max. Get in, get out, don’t get caught.

And it had almost worked. Riley and I had nearly made it out in the clear, but the cop had come home early. There’d been a moment where Riley had looked at me, both of us knowing it was up to us to get out of there, because all we were to Max was two disposable kids. He’d be more upset about the lost drugs than he would about some dead low-life teenagers.

Even to this day, I wasn’t under the illusion that we got out by anything other than pure luck. The cop hadn’t had time to draw his weapon, and we leapt. Riley had fought dirty, had done everything he could to make sure that if we both couldn’t get out, that at least I would be able to.

And that had been the first night I’d jumped into the fray, wanting to save him as much as he wanted to save me.

With the drugs stashed in my coat pockets, I’d grabbed the only weapon I could—a heavy lamp base—and swung widely, hitting the cop square in the nose. It’d been a messy blur of panting breaths, grunts, and blood—so much blood—and more of a struggle, but then Riley and I were running with everything we had, our hands clutched tightly together as we disappeared into the night, getting lost in the dark streets of the city.