The Rogue
Chapter 9

Myles stared at the image of the official police report that had appeared in his inbox a few days ago and threw his headset down on his desk hard enough to produce a satisfying crack. F*****g cops! Normally, they were either dumb enough to swallow everything he said or so overworked that they simply didn’t have the time, energy, or resources to follow a trail that he always made sure led to a dead end.

But after some digging of his own, he’d discovered that Chloe’s brother had some sort of in with Remington’s Intelligence Unit, which was how those two detectives had landed on his doorstep and he had landed under their microscope instead of going through the motions of a simple patrol interview no one would look twice at.

And Chloe had told them he’d harassed her. Stalked her. So now he had to keep his distance. No breakfast dates where she’d smile at him and hand over his “regular”. No glimpses of her on her way to class, or out with friends, laughing. She’d even blocked him from her Instagram page—not that he hadn’t regained undetected access twenty minutes later, but still. His fixer, Jimmy, had earned his asking price on that one, as well as for the illicit copy of the police report. Myles didn’t like needing the guy, although Jimmy was even more cautious than Myles himself, in addition to being excellent at what he did.

The guy had put so many safeguards in place, not even the most polished computer experts could trace their contact, let alone connect the two of them as associates. Black-hat hackers who sold everything from new identities to the bank account information of little old ladies and much, much worse tended to stay on the down low. Their relationship was transactional and untraceable, not to mention, mutually beneficial. Myles provided Jimmy with a ridiculous amount of cryptocurrency, and Jimmy gave Myles what he needed. What he craved. What he couldn’t live without.

In this case, Chloe.

Myles cursed, pushing himself out of his desk chair to pace the floor around his desk. Because of this mess with the cops, Myles hadn’t been able to see Chloe in person at all, which had made him antsy and anxious. But as desperate as he was to see her, he had to stick to the plan. He had to stay safe in the shadows for a little while longer, until they could be together for real.

A pulse of frustration burst through him, trashing all reason. He’d have had much more time to get to know Chloe before the next step if her stupid brother hadn’t interfered, filling her head with lies. Calling the police and making her file that report. Making her say Myles was harassing her, when all he wanted was to protect her. Now, those a*sshole detectives were putting their noses in his relationship, where they didn’t belong.

Myles had taken a long look at both of them, Detectives Maxwell and Hale—the Internet was a truly glorious tool if you knew how to use it properly. Of course, he’d had to resort to some pretty underhanded methods to replace out anything beyond the basics. But all Myles cared about was their track record (excellent) and their weaknesses (few). Detective Maxwell had a daughter and a fiancée, both of whom could be used against him if the occasion called for it. Detective Hale had been a harder nut to crack. No living family. No significant other. Nothing other than her job.

You’re plotting against police detectives, came that tiny voice, rising up from somewhere deep in his brain. But Myles had done worse, and he and Chloe were meant to be together. He was smart enough to have her without getting caught. He would have her.

He just had to be patient. Watching her in person might be off the table, at least for now, but he had other options. He’d have to involve Jimmy again, but it would be worth it.

Myles had to make those detectives think he’d left Chloe alone, put them at ease until the time was right. Then, he could take all the time in the world to make her understand how much he loved her.

Pacing back to his desk, he tugged open the top drawer and unearthed the burner cell he kept there. There was only one number programmed into the thing, and Myles hit the call button without hesitation.

“Jimmy’s Used Car Lot,” came the familiar voice, and Myles played along.

“Hi, I’m calling about the 2015 Chevy Equinox listed online.”

“Sure. Just a minute.” Silence stretched out as Jimmy secured the line. The fact that they used burner phones made no never-mind to him, just as Jimmy’s paranoia made no difference to Myles. “Good to go,” Jimmy said a few seconds later. “What can I do for you, man?”

“I need some specialized equipment for undetectable surveillance,” Myles said, his heart racing faster as he clicked to a full-screen image of Chloe from her Instagram page. “As quickly as possible.”

Ryan had watchedenough movies to have a very solid idea of what a police stakeout looked like.

What he and Addison had been doing for the past week had blown his preconceived notion to smithereens. While she had shown him a driver’s license photo of Bishop and given him a full description of the guy’s height, weight, and build, there had been no binoculars (“hello, too obvious,” Hale had said), no greasy takeout (“you might as well hang a cheeseburger-scented air freshener in my car”), and no deep conversations to kill the time (“we’re both going to lose focus”). There had been an astronomical amount of sitting around, staring at the spots on her windshield, the shadows in every corner, and a thousand other things that qualified as no big deal, and while Ryan was glad that Bishop hadn’t shown his face anywhere near Chloe’s apartment, he couldn’t deny a fair amount of disappointment that Addison had gone back to keeping him at arm’s length.

She’d admitted that she liked him. That she’d felt comfortable waking up in his arms. No, check that—comfortable and happy and warm. Clearly, the concept spooked her, which, Ryan knew, was the likely culprit for why she’d been so business-as-usual this week. But he couldn’t deny that for as good as she’d said she felt in his arms, he’d felt three times as good holding her there.

And, as impulsive and ill-advised as it was, he wanted her there again.

“You’ve got that look on your face again,” Addison said, her eyes trained firmly out the driver’s side window.

“I don’t have a look on my face.” Ryan rolled his eyes, mostly because he knew she was right. He probably looked bored as hell.

“Mmm-hmm,” she murmured, still not looking at him. “Now, you’re rolling your eyes and you still have that look on your face.”

F**k. “Has anyone ever told you that you have a very freaky skillset?” For Chrissake, how could she even see his face from there?

She turned to flash him a smile. “It’s part of my charm. But, really, if you’re that bored, I can handle this on my own.”

Ryan made a noise Carleen would call impolite. “Nice try, Kojak.”

“What are you, seventy?” Addison said past a laugh.

“Nah,” he said, laughing, too. “Carleen is addicted to 1970’s TV. Charlie’s Angels, The Rockford Files, Happy Days. You name it, she puts it in her eyeballs. But Kojak is her favorite. Lou jokes that Telly Savalas is her real first love.”

“I’ve always been kind of partial to Bruce Willis as far as bald actors go. I am, however, totally down with the lollipop thing Telly Savalas had going on. Very cool.”

“With your sweet tooth, that’s not shocking,” Ryan said.

Addison lifted her hands in concession. “There are worse vices.”

“True.” Not wanting the conversation to fade back to silence, he added, “Sorry for looking bored. This whole stakeout thing isn’t exactly what I pictured.”

“Let me guess,” Addison said, one brow arched. “You thought it would be just like it is on TV.”

“No. Maybe.” Ryan backtracked as she laughed, wanting more of the sound. “I was hoping for some good snacks, at least.”

Turning toward the center console, she clicked open the storage compartment dividing the space between them and pulled out a bag of Sour Patch Kids, handing it over. “Go with God.”

“I said good snacks. These are…” He gave up an exaggerated shudder.

“Beggars can’t be choosers,” she said, plucking the bag from his grasp and tearing it open, making a hilariously cute pucker-face as she popped a few pieces of candy into her mouth. “Plus”—she chewed thoughtfully for a minute—“it’s not like I can keep a bratwurst in there.”

Ryan snorted. “I’d settle for some beef jerky.”

“Salt-water taffy,” she countered. “No! Pixie Sticks.”

“Argh!” he said. “Who hurt you in your past to make you this way?”

Addison snapped to attention, her shoulders turning stiff against the driver’s seat. “I should probably do a sweep of the block.”

He blinked, his stomach dropping at how quickly her smile had evaporated. “Oh. You just did one, like, twenty minutes ago.” She usually only took a stroll up and down the block once or twice in the four or five hours they’d hang out to keep an eye on Chloe’s building. “Are you sure you need to do another one so soon?”

Slowly, she shook her head. “I guess you’re right. I must have forgotten.”

Uh, no. Ryan wasn’t buying that for a freaking second. He opened his mouth to ask her what was up, but she surprised him with, “So, Lou and Carleen are your parents, right?”

“Oh. Uh, yeah.” He did a mental recalibration, swinging back to their earlier conversation. “They adopted me when I was a baby. I’m technically the first Dempsey kid, even though Gracie is the oldest.”

Although Addison’s eyes sparked with obvious curiosity, she bit down on her l!p, and Ryan shook his head to reassure her.

“It’s fine to ask. I know some people aren’t really open about their experience being adopted, but I’m not one of them.”

“So, you were adopted as a baby,” she said after a beat, leading him back to the topic.

Here, he had to grin. “There’s not a small amount of irony in this, but my birth mother actually left me on the steps of a fire house when I was six days old.”

“No way,” Addison gasped. “Really?”

“Hand to God. It’s not why I became a firefighter, but it adds flavor to the story, right?”

Addison smiled, and all Ryan wanted in that moment was to make her do it again. “It does. Show off.”

“I resemble that remark,” he said, his own smile settling a little. “I guess I shouldn’t say my birth mother is the one who left me, because the truth is, no one’s sure. This was back before we had cameras on every street corner. It might have been her, it might have been my father. It could have been both of them together. But, as weird as this is going to sound, whoever it was, I’m glad they left me there.”

“That does sound a little weird,” Addison agreed.

“Well, they clearly didn’t want me. Not an invitation to a pity party”—he shrugged—“and no judgment. Plenty of people are in situations they can’t control. Whoever left me at that fire house could’ve done a lot worse than abandon me in a place where they knew I’d be found.”

Addison sent her gaze out the driver’s side window, scanning the street beyond. “That’s very true.” A minute later, she looked back, her expression as calm as ever. “So, Lou and Carleen adopted you after that?”

“They’d been foster parents for a while when I was born, caring for a couple of kids for a few months at a time until permanent placement became available. But the plan had always been for them to adopt a child of their own.”

“And when you came along, they got lucky.”

Ryan shook his head. “More like, I did. Lou and Carleen aren’t just great parents. They’re great people. I mean, I didn’t love that they were strict sometimes, and I definitely stretched their patience pretty thin during my teenage years.”

“Guess that answers the question of whether or not you’ve always been a risk-taker,” Addison said, and there was no helping his laugh.

“Solid yes. But even though Lou and Carleen grounded me when I broke the rules and fed me broccoli and made me study until I thought my brains would fall out, they always loved me unconditionally.”

Something rippled beneath the surface of her expression, impossible to decipher in the shadows of the car and gone before Ryan could even try.

“Have you always known that you’re adopted?” she asked, and he nodded, the story continuing to flow right out.

“Pretty much. I’ve lived with Lou and Carleen since I was two weeks old, and they adopted me pretty quickly after that. By the time I was six, I was old enough to fully understand what being adopted meant. I knew I was safe with them, and that they’d always be my parents, which is what the social workers all tell you to wait for before you drop that news on a kid. So yeah, I’ve pretty much always known.”

Addison’s brows went up. “You’re so open about it.”

“And that strikes you as weird,” he said.

“And it strikes you as weird that it strikes me as weird,” she flipped back.

Okay, fine. So he didn’t exactly keep his feelings off his face. “Yeah, a little. Why wouldn’t I be open about it? It’s the truth.”

“It’s also personal,” Addison pointed out. “Just because it’s true doesn’t make it easy to talk about.”

Ryan tilted his head at her in concession. “That’s fair. I guess my parents were always so open about it, it never occurred to me to be any other way. Plus, they kind of had to tell me something, at that point, because that’s when Grace came to live with us, too.”

“Your older sister,” Addison said, and right. Of course she remembered from the night Chloe was harassed.

“Yep. She’s five years older than I am, and from the minute she came through the door, I thought she walked on water. Pretty much still do, if I’m being honest.”

“How old were you then?” Addison asked. She’d turned toward him, her right shoulder pressed against the driver’s seat just enough for him to get a full view of her face, and Ryan turned to mirror her.

“Six. A couple years after that, my brothers Jack and Miguel arrived. They’re bio siblings. Miguel is my age and Jack’s three years younger.”

A soft laugh crossed Addison’s l!ps. “You should keep a spreadsheet.”

Ryan had heard no less than a thousand jokes about the size of his family. He’d learned ages ago to roll with them, as long as they were well-intentioned. Plus, as much as he’d complained about having to share a bathroom and a car with his brothers (as the only girl at the time, Gracie had won out in the bathroom department), he loved having a large family. Always had.

“I know, right?” he said. “Then, Chloe came much later. She’s been a Dempsey for ten years, even though she never legally changed her last name. She was fifteen, then. The rest of us were out of the house at that point, except for Jack, who was only home on breaks from college.”

Here, a twinge moved through Ryan’s chest. He remembered the first day Chloe had come to live with Lou and Carleen. He’d just enrolled in the fire academy, and had gone over for Sunday dinner, as was their tradition any time all of their schedules meshed. Chloe hadn’t said a word, simply staring at her plate and flinching any time anyone close to her moved. It had taken nearly a year’s worth of those dinners, along with constant support and a boatload of therapy, to get her to fully come out of her shell.

“Lou and Carleen never said so in as many words, but I don’t think they intended to adopt a fifth kid,” Ryan said. “We were all pretty much on our own, at that point. One look at Chloe, though, and they knew she needed us.”

“Wow,” Addison murmured. “Sounds like she’s lucky, too.”

Ryan grinned with fondness. “We all are. Chloe’s a kicka*ss little sister. She’s hilarious, with a crazy-dry sense of humor. She once made our brother Miguel laugh so hard he w*et his pants, although he totally denies it. And holy crap, she’s a great baker. She makes these macarons that are like”—he closed his eyes and made a face like he’d taken the express train to heaven just to hammer it home—“your sweet tooth would explode, I swear. But she’s the baby, and Lou and Carleen always taught us to look out for each other. My brothers and sister and I are probably a little more protective of Chloe than we are of each other, but we’ve got good reasons for that.”

Addison’s nod surprised him. “I get that. I mean, not the family thing. That’s still weird to me. But I feel like that about Maxwell and Isabella and Hollister and Garza. Capelli, too, even though he’s usually never in the field with us. And my—”

She stopped short, her teeth crashing down on her bottom l!p. Ryan wanted to press her—God, he really did. But then, she’d just put up the Great Wall of China and he’d be back to counting the bricks on Chloe’s apartment building and trying not to die of boredom. So, as much as it pained him not to push his luck, he sat quietly and waited for her to keep going.

Which, miraculously, she did. “I’ve studied martial arts for a long time. My Tae Kwon Do master kind of took me under her wing, and…I guess she’s the closest thing I have to family besides everyone in the unit.”

So. Much. Whoa. Ryan started with the easy stuff. “I get it that you’re close with everyone at the Thirty-Third. It’s kind of a given when you’re trusting them to have your back once people start shooting at you.”

“I’d guess it’s kind of the same for you, running into burning buildings and all,” Addison said, and oh, look. Another easy answer.

“It is. All those guys on Engine and Squad are like a second family to me, for sure.” He thought of Shae McCullough and Lucy de Costa on Engine and laughed. “Even though some of them aren’t guys at all.”

He let a beat of silence pass before he added, “So, Tae Kwon Do, huh? Can’t say I pictured that.”

“Most people don’t.” Addison shrugged. “But Master Ah-lam is about five-one and clocks in at maybe a hundred and ten pounds if she’s soaking w*et. I still wouldn’t f**k with her, even on her worst day.”

“She sounds like you.”

Addison’s chin jerked up in surprise, and if he were being honest, it made two of them. Ryan hadn’t exactly meant for the words to slip out. But they had, and more importantly, they were true, so he gave up a mental f**k it and rolled with it.

“I mean, there aren’t a whole lot of people out there who can stay calm when dealing with a stalker and the overprotective older brother of the woman who’s being harassed. Plus, I’d have to guess you didn’t get a spot in the city’s most elite police unit on your charming personality alone.”

“Cute,” she said, although she couldn’t hide her smile. “Yes, my martial arts training comes in handy on the job. But it’s a lot more than just being able to protect myself and other people, if I need to. Master Ah-lam gave me a path when I needed one and she’s always been there for me to help me figure things out. The physical stuff she taught me is really just extra.”

Intuition kicked at the back of Ryan’s brain. “You’ve got, like, a crazy black belt, don’t you?”

“Just a regular black belt,” she said, biting her l!p before adding, “or two. I told you, Master Ah-lam isn’t someone I’d cross. But she is the closest thing I have to family, even if we’re not related.”

Ryan nodded. “I’m living proof that family doesn’t have to be b***d-bound to matter. I hear that.”

He gave in to a couple seconds of silence before his mouth got the better of him. “You’ve got some pretty solid walls around you, you know that? Not a slam,” he said when her shoulders stiffened and her smile cranked shut. “Just an observation.”

Addison scanned the street around them, remaining completely quiet, and shit. Shit. He never should’ve opened his big, fat mouth. She clearly had reasons for not wanting to share, reasons that were none of his damned business. He should have just dropped it, or, even better, never brought it up in the first place. He should have—

“Maybe,” she said. “But it’s like I said last week. I don’t do strings.”

“You mean relationships,” Ryan said. Something flickered through her expression—hesitation, maybe?—but she didn’t shy away from the question.

“Yes. They get messy.”

“But you slept with me,” he pointed out.

“That wasn’t a relationship,” Addison said. “That was…” She broke off, her cheeks flushing in the shadowy light of the car, and Ryan took a gamble.

“Good.” He leaned toward her just slightly, his pulse flaring when she did the same.

“It was good,” she whispered.

He smiled. “You know, in my experience, if things feel good, that usually means they’re worth doing more than once.”

“That’s because you fly by the seat of your id,” Addison said, the edges of her mouth tilting up just enough to make him want to take a hot, fast taste.

“You say that like it’s a bad thing, but it’s how we ended up together that night in the first place, and I have absolutely no regrets.”

“I don’t, either,” she said, firmly enough that Ryan believed her without hesitation. “I’m just not really a more-than-once kind of girl.”

Here, he tread with care. “Do you want to be?”

If Addison said no, he would drop it entirely. Yeah, he might be impulsive as f**k. He still wasn’t interested in talking her into something she wasn’t one hundred percent sure she wanted.

God help him, she didn’t say no.

“Yes,” she murmured, her gaze dropping to his mouth for just a split second before returning to his eyes. “But repeats come with complications, remember?”

“We agreed not to let that happen last time.” Tipping his head, he conceded, “We had a bit of a stutter-start, but I think we can pull it off.”

Addison laughed, the sound warm and so, so sweet between them. “So, what? Last time was just a test-run?”

“Sure. Knowledge is power, right? Look”—Ryan held on to her gaze with his—“what if we start slow?”

“Slow isn’t exactly your speed,” she said.

Well, she had him dead to rights, there. “Not always, no. But it’s yours.”

She looked at him as if to say fair enough. “What if it turns out to be a bad idea?”

His laugh flew out with ease. “Sweetheart, I’ve got a whole head full of bad ideas. K!ssing you? Not one of them.”

“Oh,” Addison said, although it was more of a sigh than an actual word, and f**k, Ryan felt it in a dozen places at once. Leaning toward him, she brushed her mouth over his. He tried to remember decorum, to hold back and let her have the control she so clearly needed. But then that sigh became a m**n in the back of her throat, all velvety and lush as she murmured, “Screw slow” against his mouth, and just like that, his hands were in her hair, his palms cupping the back of her neck to hold her close. Addison returned the favor, her hands pressed flat against his long-sleeved T-shirt for a brief second before turning to fists over the cotton. She held him right back, her l!ps parting and her tongue slipping over his in a hungry bid for more, and there was no force of nature on the planet big enough to keep him from giving it to her.

Ryan k!ssed her, giving and taking and testing the pressure of his mouth on hers until—there, yes—she let go of another m**n. They were like jet fuel on a flame, those hot little sounds she made, daring him to burn through to the next one, and the next, then the next, until their clothes were nothing more than a pile on the floor and Addison’s m***s had turned to fevered pleas for him to make her come on his—

A car alarm went off about a block away, sending Ryan’s heart halfway up his windpipe and Addison whipping back to the driver’s seat. Her breath arrived in heavy bursts, her eyes wide and her fingers pressed over her k!ss-swollen l!ps, and his chest immediately tightened. He should say something, he knew, but “I’m sorry” was a lie, and “that might’ve been the hottest k!ss anyone has ever f*****g laid on me” felt a touch extreme, albeit a hell of a lot closer to the truth.

He settled for a different version of the truth. “Well. Nothing like a good, old-fashioned car alarm to make sure you’re wide awake.”

Addison paused before letting go of a soft laugh. “Yeah. Probably for the best.”

Worry crowded Ryan’s gut. “Hey—”

“We’re here to make sure Bishop doesn’t turn up to bother Chloe,” she said quietly. “I know it’s been quiet for a week, but that doesn’t mean we should get distracted.”

Ah, hell. She had a point, and a damn good one, at that. Still, he didn’t want to lose the tenuous thing that had sparked between them entirely, so he let one corner of his mouth lift. “It was pretty distracting, wasn’t it?”

She schooled her smile too late. “Behave yourself, Dempsey, or I won’t share the rest of my Sour Patch Kids with you.”

“What a travesty that would be,” he said, giving up a full-blown grin before turning to look out the window to scan the street around them.

Ryan would focus on the task at hand. But if Addison thought he’d behave himself, especially as far as she was concerned, and double especially after a k!ss like that?

She was out of her smart, sassy mind.