Protecting Dallas Read online

  When you’re a blackjack dealer, nothing really appeals to you about the strip anymore. It becomes work. It becomes standard. The only times I ever really enjoyed going out in Las Vegas was when Connor was home. Because when we got bored of reminiscing — or chasing the ghosts of our past around the house — the two of us would go out and paint the town red together. Or however the hell that expression goes.

  But now…

  Now Connor was dead. Gone forever, like everyone else in my life. It was something I would never recover from, nor did I want to, nor was I even trying. But somehow, I still woke up every day. I still dragged myself to work, dealt cards for nine hours, and put up with varying degrees of pit-boss bullshit only to come home and crash out in my bed.

  And now my bed was gone too…

  I forgot all about my hands. The tears started streaming, regardless of whether I wanted them to, and the next thing I knew I was sobbing into my blood-covered palms.

  “Hey…”

  A big hand fell to my shoulder. I shoved it off.

  “A—Are you alright?”

  No, I wasn’t alright. I was pretty fucking far from alright. My parents were gone, my brother was dead, and now everything I owned was a pile of smoldering ashes. I could see it now; the flashing lights, the sirens, the EMTs and firefighters and police… all standing around, scratching their heads. Trying to figure out whether I’d been in there or not.

  Shit, I may as well have been.

  “We’re here,” the driver said, his voice reaching my ears for the first time. He turned to glance back at me, all rugged and masculine… but the look on his face was gentle and kind.

  “I’ll put on some coffee.”

  Four

  MADDOX

  She sat in the center of our kitchen, but not like some frightened puppy or helpless kitten. No, Dallas Winters dominated her space. The same way her brother would’ve, had he been here.

  “You call this coffee?”

  She spat back into the mug we’d given her and pushed it away. The black liquid sat at the edge of the table, sloshing back and forth with the momentum.

  “It’s fresh,” Austin protested.

  “It’s freeze dried,” she practically sneered. “It’s a bunch of crap you dissolve in boiling water.”

  “So?”

  She laughed, but I could tell it was one of those laughs to keep from displaying something else. A cover up. A plug, keeping the rest of her emotions in check.

  “Never mind,” she said, more to herself than us. “Three grown men. Military men. And not a coffee maker in sight.”

  I sat across from her, taking it all in. Dallas Winters. In the flesh. In our kitchen. Holy shit.

  On the other side of the room, Kane leaned against the counter, arms folded. His gaze was fixated on her. Staring at her just as intently as he had a thousand times before, only never in person. Never this close…

  “So out with it,” said Dallas. “How’d you know?”

  “Know what?” asked Austin.

  “Know when those guys were gonna break into my house at two in the fucking morning.”

  We looked at each other, one by one. No one said anything. We hadn’t prepared for this moment.

  “You knew, obviously,” said Dallas. “That they were coming?”

  More silence.

  “You didn’t just happen to be rolling down the street, all three of you? Pointing at houses?” she asked smugly. “Wondering if maybe that house needed help from armed intruders who could see in the dark? Men dressed in black, wearing… what did you call it? ‘Tactical nightgear’?”

  “Okay, okay,” I said. “So we knew.”

  “Yes, but how’d you know?”

  “Because we were watching you.”

  The words came from Kane. He said them slowly, evenly. Without the hint of apology.

  “Watching me?”

  “Yes,” replied Austin. “And it’s a damned good thing we were, because—”

  “And just how were you watching me?” asked Dallas. “No wait…” she sat up in her chair. “Could we start with why were you watching me?”

  Austin was standing, but now he pulled up a chair. He flipped it around and sat down on it backwards, resting his arms on the back.

  “We were watching you because your brother told us to,” he said.

  Dallas flinched visibly at the mention of Connor. Her face twisted into a scowl.

  “My brother is dead.”

  “Yes,” said Austin, trying to be patient. “But he told us before he died. His last message to us…”

  He glanced at me and I shook my head just the tiniest little degree. I did it almost imperceptibly, hoping Dallas wouldn’t notice.

  “Anyway,” Austin went on, “he told us to look after you. To make sure you were alright, because he might…” He fumbled. “Because he might…”

  “He might be killed,” said Dallas sullenly.

  Austin nodded. “Yes.”

  The kitchen fell silent for a long moment. Then, almost as if a light bulb went off, Dallas’s whole demeanor changed.

  “So then you know what happened to him,” she said hopefully. “You can tell me what… when he…”

  I could see her struggle. The search for answers, the undying curiosity… pitted against the little voice in the back of her mind, screaming that she didn’t want to know. Not really. Not truly.

  Because once she crossed that threshold, she could never, ever go back.

  “Wait,” Dallas said. “When did he tell you this? He’s been gone a year.”

  Austin stopped talking. Kane cleared his throat.

  “Are you saying you’ve been watching me for more than a year?”

  I folded my arms across my chest. At this point, honesty was the only real option.

  “Yes.”

  “You’ve been watching my house for a year? Driving by in the middle of the night? Looking for signs of trouble, waiting for someone to roll up in my bedroom while I was sleeping, only to—”

  “It’s not like that,” said Austin. “We don’t drive past your house because we don’t need to drive past your house.”

  She looked confused. Entirely uncertain. But I could sense an anger too, building inside her. Welling up, just beneath the surface.

  Uh oh.

  “There are cameras,” said Kane, nonchalantly, “set up in your home.”

  He didn’t even seem phased when Dallas’s head whipped in his direction. Her jaw dropped to the floor.

  “We’ve been watching you remotely.”

  Five

  DALLAS

  “You’ve been WATCHING me?” I shouted, leaping out of my chair. “In my HOUSE?”

  “Easy,” said Maddox. “It’s not like—”

  “For a whole YEAR?”

  I was shocked. Stunned. Absolutely livid. But also…

  Also I was confused.

  “I can’t believe you put cameras in my house!” I cried. “I can’t believe—”

  “Not your whole house,” Austin said, his hands out defensively. “Not in your bedroom of course. Bathroom either.”

  “That makes it okay?” I asked incredulously. “Are you serious? That’s your rationalization: not in my bedroom, not in my bathroom… just everywhere else?”

  “And we didn’t place the cameras there,” he continued. “Your brother did. They were already installed — a security measure, put there by Connor.”

  I searched my memory. It came up blank.

  “Connor never told me about any cameras,” I said.

  “He didn’t get the chance,” said Maddox. He leaned forward too fast, and a flop of blond hair fell over one crystal blue eye. “Your brother put them there shortly before… well…”

  I looked down, into my lap. Thankfully he didn’t continue.

  “That still doesn’t give you the right to tap into them,” I finally sneered. “Just because they were there, just because—”

  “Dallas, stop.”

&nbs
p; We all turned at once. The guy they were calling Kane was still leaning against the counter. He still had his arms crossed. But now, he was staring back at us.

  “Hear them out,” Kane said in his deep, gravelly voice. “Your brother was our brother too. Much more than you know.”

  He caught my gaze, and for some odd reason it calmed me. There was truth in his eyes. And also something else…

  Something like sorrow.

  “Your brother wanted this from us,” Kane went on. “Looking after you was his last request.”

  The words came out slow and even. They were almost haunting. Mechanically, I sat back down.

  His last request…

  “But I—”

  “We haven’t just been looking out for you,” said Maddox. “We’ve been monitoring the outside of your property for signs of them.”

  I cocked my head. “The guys in black?”

  “Yes.”

  Now were getting somewhere. “Who are they?”

  “We’re not entirely sure. But we know they had something to do with Connor’s disappearance. Something to do with what ultimately happened to him.”

  I pointed at the door. “So why the hell are we even here? If they have the answers, why’d we run in the first place?”

  “Because we were outnumbered,” said Maddox. “And probably outgunned. We jumped out of bed and flew out to your place as fast we could,” he explained. “The very second Kane noticed them on the monitors, gathering outside your house.”

  “Still…”

  “We fled also because of you,” said Austin. “We had to get you out. Make sure you were safe. That was top priority.”

  The rest of the group nodded together.

  “We owed Connor that much.”

  Suddenly I wanted to go back — to face the men who’d broken in and burned down my home. I wanted to shake them violently. Make them tell me who they were, and what they wanted.

  Most of all, I needed to know what happened to Connor…

  “We’ll deal with them,” said Austin, shifting in his chair. “Trust in us. But for now…”

  “For now you need to lay low,” said Maddox. “We weren’t followed here, and that’s a good thing. But these people are persistent. They’re well-funded. And they’ve got access to resources we don’t.”

  My eyes narrowed. “So you do know who they are?”

  “Not entirely. But we know some things. And we’re piecing together others.”

  “Just as your brother was,” said Kane, ominously. “When they took him.”

  I swallowed hard. Suddenly I was very aware of myself and my surroundings. The house was big and old, inside and out. I was sitting in its run-down kitchen, wearing a pair of blood-smeared sweats and a T-shirt. Other than the little diamond-shaped pendant I always wore around my neck — given to me by Connor — it was the sum total of all my worldly possessions.

  Thank God I’d stopped sleeping naked.

  “How long have you lived here?” I asked.

  The question must’ve seemed random. The guys didn’t answer it right away.

  “Just over a year.”

  “Since Connor died…”

  Slowly they nodded. “Yes,” said Maddox.

  “So you’ve been doing this…” I gestured around, “just for me?”

  “We’re doing it for Connor,” said Austin. “Each one of us owes your brother a grave debt. But yes, you also. Protecting you is a huge part of paying him back.”

  The guys stared at me for another half minute, as if getting used to me being there. I realized it must be strange for them, seeing me in the flesh. Having me here among them, after having watched me on monitors for so damned long.

  “Think you can sleep?” asked Maddox.

  “Fuck no.”

  He glanced around the room. The others shook their heads as well.

  Maddox shrugged helplessly and smiled. “Breakfast it is then.”

  Six

  DALLAS

  The guys had shit coffee and shit accommodations. The kitchen even had shit lighting.

  But when it came to breakfast…

  The first meal of the day had been my brother’s specialty, and the only one he could really cook without burning it. The spread placed before me now reminded me exactly of that: piles of scrambled eggs, links of brown sausage, fresh waffles, crispy hash-browns, and a tall frosty glass of orange juice to wash it all down.

  It made me wonder how many times they’d eaten this way with Connor, just as I had.

  I didn’t think I could eat, but it turned out I was wrong. I ate everything. I cleaned my plate and helped myself immediately to seconds, and when the seconds were finished I started looking around for bacon.

  “You were hungry.”

  I nodded. There wasn’t much else to say. Filling my belly was a welcome distraction from my predicament, and I used the relative silence (knives and forks scraping against ceramic plates notwithstanding) to take stock of my would-be rescuers.

  Maddox seemed to be the ‘leader’ of the three, if you could call it that. He was tall and extremely well-built, with sexy amounts of stubble and thick blond hair much longer than enlistment allowed. That meant he was ex-SEAL, if anything. Or maybe he was so high up the Navy’s chain of command, they stopped bothering him about his haircut.

  As for Austin, his whole demeanor seemed a little more uptight and by the book. He was the one cleaning things up and putting stuff away, even washing and storing the pans the very moment Maddox finished with them. His dark hair and olive skin made him incredibly attractive, and the military precision with which he groomed his impeccably-kept goatee told me everything I needed to know about his daily habits.

  That left Kane, who was a lot harder to figure out. He was absolutely massive, with a broad, powerful chest and Atlas-like shoulders you could rest the world on. His big arms barely fit through his drab green shirt, stretching the fabric to the absolute limits as he shoveled eggs and sausage into his ruggedly handsome face.

  But unlike the others, Kane was silent. He didn’t talk the entire meal, content only to eat and listen and observe. At one point he caught me staring at him, and I expected some kind of quick look away. Instead he held my gaze with swagger-like confidence, his mouth widening into the same gentle smile as before.

  Somehow, despite everything that happened to me, I found myself smiling back at him.

  The sun finally cracked the sky, and one by one the guys disappeared for a bit. They came back fully dressed and cleanly-shaven. Ready for whatever they were about to do next.

  “Kane and I have some things to check out,” said Maddox. “We’ll be out near the city, but we’ll be back before sundown.”

  I rubbed at my eyes. I could only imagine how I looked.

  “If you make a list, Austin will pick up whatever you need. Clothes first, of course. Shampoo, toothbrush… whatever other toiletries, just write them down and—”

  “I’m not writing shit down.”

  Maddox stared back at me like I’d just spoken to him in Latin. He scratched his head. “Uhh… what?”

  “Why in the world would I write anything down?” I asked. “I’ll just go with him.”

  The guys all looked at each other uncomfortably. “You are not going with him.”

  “Oh no?” I laughed. “Everything I ever owned is a glowing pile of ashes now. I have things I need. Lots of things. I’ll need a new phone, for one. I have to call my boss, see if he can get me a few new uniforms before tonight…”

  “Your boss?”

  “Yeah. At the casino.” I folded my arms across my chest. “You’ve been watching me long enough to know I’m a blackjack dealer, right?”

  “Of course,” said Austin. “But—”

  “You’re not going to work,” interjected Maddox.

  My hands went to my hips now, fingers spread. “The hell I’m not.”

  “Dallas, you can’t go back to work. These people will find you. Hell, they’re probably
already at the casino, waiting for you to show up. Just as they’re probably sitting at either edge of your block, waiting for you to come by and sift through the ashes... I mean the remnants of…”

  His voice trailed off. Austin elbowed him in the ribs.

  “Look, tell me everything you need and I’ll grab it for you,” he said. “I’ll do some shopping too. I’ll pick up food, groceries, that sort of stuff. Anything you like, just tell me and I’ll get it.”

  “We’ll get it,” I corrected him. “When we go.”

  He sighed heavily. “Dallas, it’s not safe.”

  “Nothing is safe,” I said. “Look at my house.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “But nothing. I’m not going to sit around here while the three of you figure this out.” I waved my arm around the white-washed, bare-bones kitchen. “How long did you say you’ve been here again?”

  Kane answered this time. “Thirteen months.”

  After a short span of silence, I laughed. “You’re out of your mind if you think—”

  “Dallas please,” Maddox pleaded. “At least for now, let Austin pick up—”

  “I need girl things too you know,” I smirked, throwing an intentional wrench in the works. “Stuff I have to pick out for myself. I’ll need different sizes for different shirts, different style pants… oh, and I’ll need bras… underwear…”

  Austin’s shoulders slumped. He looked uncomfortable. Maddox looked worried.

  Kane however, had the slightest hint of a grin.

  “Feminine products,” I went on. “Lots of those. And also—”

  “But—”

  “Look,” I said loudly, with a sigh. “I’ll put my hair up. I’ll wear a hat. I’ll wear sunglasses and a phony fucking mustache if you want me to, but I’m absolutely not sitting here alone all day.”

  Before they could answer I pushed past them, into what looked like the living area. It was big and empty, just as sparse as the kitchen with the walls and floor almost entirely bare. At least they had couches.

  “Anyone gonna tell me where the shower is?” I asked over my shoulder. I reached the staircase in silence, and stared climbing. “Or should I just keep opening doors until I find it?”