Taking the Heat Read Free

help how I react when you’re in danger.”
    She glanced at him with those cool eyes that turned him inside out. “Now you know how it feels.”
    Brian took the hit. He’d made the worst mistake of his life thinking she’d come around eventually and take him just as he was. Instead she’d been shot and absorbed into WITSEC before he knew what hit him. It was the worst irony that she’d joined his world, and instead of bringing them closer together, it had taken her further away from him than ever.
    “We made it back to TJ,” she continued. “We were near the border—not too far from that town square with the mechanical bull—when we slowed for a turn. These two guys stepped out of the shadows and lit us up. It seemed like we were getting shot at from all sides. The guy who’d joined us at the last minute fell out of the passenger side and I squeezed out after him. That’s when I got hit. He did, too. He threw himself over me, but I think they wanted him alive, because they stopped firing. I think he knew they’d stop for him and that’s why he did it. To save me . . .”
    Her voice had softened with every word until the last was hard for him to catch.
    “He was the undercover DEA agent? Sandoval?”
    Layla nodded. “Ricardo Sandoval. Although I didn’t know that until later. The gunman standing above us . . . I remember looking up at him over the barrel of a semiautomatic and seeing a sick glee on his face.”
    “Angel Martinez.” It was her testimony against Martinez—one of the cartel’s most prominent lieutenants—that endangered her life. They would not have risked the offensive they’d taken today, on American soil, for anyone less.
    “Yes. Martinez. Agent Sandoval swung at his thigh with a knife he had. Blood spurted everywhere and Martinez dropped like a ton of bricks. The other shooter started firing again, but the shots were wild. It was chaos with Martinez hollering. Sandoval dragged me around the back of the Camaro and into an alley that emptied into another street. Some guys speaking English were partying nearby. I screamed at them for help. They turned out to be marines from Pendleton and they got us back to the border. Agent Sandoval d-died later that night.”
    Sandoval’s murder had been nationwide news when it broke—the blatant attack had hit a nerve first struck by Enrique Camarena’s torture and killing by the same cartel. Layla had been the “unidentified witness” referenced in the reports. Although Brian had heard the story before, listening to Layla tell it, hearing her voice crack and tremble as she spoke ... Fuck it all, she should have been with him, would have been, if he hadn’t been so goddamn stubborn.
    “You still have nightmares, baby?” he asked quietly.
    She looked at him, brushing her wind-whipped hair out of her face. “How did you know?”
    “I know you.” He reached out and caught up her hand. “You hold your pain close to the chest.”
    Her gaze dropped to their joined hands. “So do you,” she said quietly.
    Brian didn’t know if she was referring to her brother Jacob’s death or their breakup. “Sometimes.”
    “I’ve seen you laugh and I’ve seen you spitting mad, but I’ve never seen you cry.” She pulled away. “When I told you we were over, you didn’t even blink. I should have seen that coming. I was too young and naïve, I guess.”
    His fist clenched, his palm aching from the loss of her touch. His damn pride had gotten in the way before, and it was clogging his throat now, preventing him from saying words that would slice him open if she threw them back in his face.
    Still, he had to say, “You knew what you meant to me, Layla.”
    “I knew it wasn’t enough. We had Jacob and great sex in common. That was it.”
    “Bullshit.” He checked his mirrors for the millionth time, canvassing for trackers. “The sex was great because we had something special.”
    “Then why didn’t you come after me when I left?”
    There it was.