Grab Read online

  Reaching into his pocket for his phone, he called the only guy he could think of that could possibly help him.

  “Evan? Do you have something that can see video feeds of the diner on the corner of Sixth Street and Lamar?”

  “The Twenty-Four Diner? Let me check.”

  “Video feed for the last twelve hours, not current feed,” Jordan clarified.

  “I’d have to hack for that. Is it worth it? I could get in trouble.”

  Jordan looked at the closed bathroom door and listened to the shower running. Trying to conjure the naked, soapy girl behind it, he realized he was more scared for her than horny for her. Holy fuck.

  “I need anything you got on a Volkswagon Cabriolet in the parking lot. More specifically, any vandalism or someone fucking with the tires.” He chewed on the inside of his cheek. “Besides, you yourself said you’re invincible,” he pointed out, as only a kid brother could.

  “Cabriolet? Those are still around?”

  Losing patience with his brother, Jordan snapped, “Can you just fucking check? If it’s beyond your skill set, just say something.” The heat of his temper rose in his belly, and he reined it in, letting it out in a rush of air. Now wasn’t the time.

  “I can fucking do it, shut up. I’ll call you later.”

  “Thanks, bro.”

  Jordan watched the bathroom door, waiting for it to open, marveling at what was happening inside his body and mind. Pressure was off. He knew what he wanted.

  He’d spent weeks with Mia, and when he thought about it, he realized he’d been getting to know her. He knew her mom had been married seven times, and she didn’t care much for boyfriends, as they had too many expectations. He knew she loved to bake cakes but never had the time, so he had yet to taste one. He knew her mother was following some guy all over the world, her latest flavor, hoping the laws somewhere were different as far as matrimony were concerned. Mia was saving up to bring her sister home and get her out of whatever third-world environment she was currently in. He knew she was funny, laid back, smart, and sexy as hell.

  He hadn’t had a girlfriend in many, many years. And it was about time. He didn’t know why now, tonight, he’d decided to change his entire way of thinking, but he did.

  He knew he wanted to know Mia better. And sex was no longer a priority.

  Sure, he wanted to have sex with her, but it was no longer something so urgent. It was a slow burn in his gut, an eventuality he could wait for, anticipate, savor. He really liked Mia.

  Now he just had to tell her.

  When she finally opened the bathroom door, walking out in a cloud of steam, Jordan’s breath left him in a rush. He stood from the bed and gestured for her to get under the covers. Stripping down to his underwear, he crawled in after her and snuggled up against her body.

  Yup. This was totally what he wanted.

  She made a noise of contentment as she settled in, and something tugged in Jordan’s chest. “Mia?”

  “Mm?”

  “I like you.” There. He said it. Exhaling deeply, now he just had to wait for her response. Nothing. “Mia?”

  “Tomorrow, Jordan. Let’s have sex tomorrow, okay?” She let out a deep sigh that ended on a low snore, and Jordan couldn’t help the soft chuckle that answered her.

  Oh, yeah, there was going to be some sex tomorrow. Along with some sort of declaration. Jordan had a dry spell to break.

  He hadn’t had a girlfriend in years.

  Mia woke up in a strange bed, hearing low murmurs in the background. She opened her eyes and realized she was in Jordan’s apartment. Disappointment at the fact she didn’t remember any amazing, mind-blowing sex was quickly dissipated by the sudden memory of actual events.

  She couldn’t remember the sex because they hadn’t had any. Because her tires had been slashed. And she’d walked home.

  Instead of trying to figure out how much an entire set of new tires would cost, she rolled over and sank her nose into the pillow to inhale Jordan’s scent. That was better than almost anything else she could possibly think about.

  The futon dipped, rolling her over to look into Jordan’s deep blue eyes. They were made a deeper blue with concern, a damn sexy wrinkle creasing his forehead. “You okay? Do you have to go into work today?” His hand reached out and stroked her arm, and Mia ignored the heat filling her body.

  “Yeah, I do.” She sat up, and the motion put her squarely against Jordan.

  “Well, I took care of your car. Called a tow-truck to come get it and fix the tires.” His hand still stroked her arm. “I’ll give you a ride in on my bike when you’re ready.”

  She was about to say something to the effect of ‘thank you,’ but was frozen as his eyes darted to her mouth and parted slightly. Pulling her close, he whispered against her lips, “Gonna kiss you first, though.” It was almost like he was talking to himself, but she didn’t care. As soon as his lips touched hers, she was a goner.

  Jordan was a hard man but his lips were incredibly soft as they moved over hers. He’d recently brushed his teeth, and the minty air that blew across her mixed with his normal manly scent, turning her insides to goo. Her hands rose to his chest, resting against the hard planes.

  Jordan buried his hand in her hair, tangling it to the roots and tugging her closer. With a soft whimper, Mia opened her mouth, and when she touched his tongue with hers, a low sound came from his chest and his other arm went around her back, pressing her closer.

  Their tongues tangled and swirled, a ritual of promises made and possession taken, and it scared the hell out of her. Just like a roller coaster scared the hell out of her, but she had to have more, ride it again, to continue the thrill.

  His grip eased, and too soon, the kiss was over.

  “I’ve got some calls to make, and I’ll take you to work when you’re ready.” He stood and adjusted himself discretely, but Mia noticed and hid her smile behind her hand. It was a damn good thing women’s arousals weren’t so obvious or she’d be in some serious trouble around Jordan.

  Looking at the clock, Mia realized she had an hour before her double-shift today. She didn’t really want to go, but now she had a tow truck to pay for, too, so there really wasn’t much of a choice.

  As Jordan’s bike rumbled the two miles to Mia’s diner, he tried to ignore the way her tiny arms felt wrapped around his chest. Or her thighs pressed against his. Or her hot little pussy against his backside.

  He really needed to focus on how he was going to work Misty’s case. But at the same time, he wanted to utilize company resources to find Mia’s creeper and kick his ass. Jordan didn’t feel right with Mia going back to her apartment after the tire slashing episode. The douche bag might have done it to make her easier to follow home. He could be in her apartment right now.

  Of course, when he’d gotten up, he’d checked, and her place was empty. But that really didn’t mean anything. If the guy had followed her, he knew where she lived.

  Jordan pulled up to the curb and turned off the bike as Mia swung her leg off. He grabbed her hand and turned her body back to his, pulling her in for another kiss. The one earlier wasn’t going to last him all damn day.

  This time, he buried both hands in her hair and covered her mouth with his. He wasn’t giving her a goodbye kiss, he was giving Mia a ‘come back to my bed’ kiss. One of Jordan’s hands crept down to her ass, pulling her closer until he was surrounded by the smell of cherries and Mia.

  She moaned against his lips, and when her tongue swept inside his mouth, it wasn’t tentative like earlier. It was in total agreement with his intentions.

  Jordan wished to the heavens above they didn’t have work today. He’d love nothing more than to haul her back to his place and bury himself inside her until they both forgot why they had to go to work.

  But he had bad guys to catch. One of them, hopefully, the asshole who slashed her tires.

  When they broke the kiss, they were both breathing hard, her breasts heaving under the tight polo shirt she w
ore for work. “What was that for?”

  “In case he’s here. I want him to see you with your boyfriend. He needs to know I’m a tough motherfucker.” Jordan winked at her, but she tilted her head and stuck her fist on her hip.

  “I thought we weren’t doing strings. I don’t do boyfriends, Jordan.”

  He kick-started the Harley and pushed his sunglasses up on his nose with his finger. “You do now.”

  She opened her jaw to say something, but he interrupted with a casual, “I’ll be back to pick you up after work.” Then he roared off before she could contradict him, a ridiculously feeling of accomplishment rising in his chest.

  Mike sat cross-legged on the floor of Mia’s apartment, beyond frustrated. Misty hadn’t worked out any more than Evelyn had, but he vowed Mia would be different. He hadn’t meant to hurt Evelyn, and he hadn’t hurt Misty. As soon as he saw she wasn’t working, he’d put her in the garage, with Evelyn. He would figure out what to do with her later.

  Clenching his fists in his lap, his thoughts swirled around in his head—a loud blur, screaming around so fast he couldn’t grab hold of what to do. So he did the only that made sense.

  He went after the next one.

  But it wasn’t off to a great start. He’d watched her, like Misty. That part seemed to work out okay for him. So he’d repeated it. And then he’d followed her home, so he’d know where she lived. But some guy was there when they got home, and he couldn’t act that night.

  He’d waited, his head screaming in that psychedelic blur of noise he’d gotten used to. Slashing her tires had made him feel marginally better, but not much. She hadn’t come home that night, and he could only assume she went to her boyfriend’s place. He may need to do something about him. The guy could be trouble. That wasn’t part of his plan, though, and the swirling screams inside his head weren’t conducive to making plans involving new people.

  Now, he sat in her closet, surrounded by clothes coated in the cherry-flavored perfume he hated. Evelyn wore White Shoulders, a sweet, floral scent that reminded Mike of his childhood and better times. He could get Mia to wear that when he got her home, and things would be better.

  If he could just get her home with him, everything would be better.

  So he would wait—wait for days if he had to. She had some food in her fridge. It wasn’t the type of stuff Evelyn would have eaten. Evelyn liked to cook and had a fridge full of ingredients, no ready-made stuff and leftovers. But that was okay. Mike had all the time in the world.

  If he could just get the screaming in his head to stop.

  Jordan kept his mind off Mia that day by focusing on the case at hand. Misty was a barista in a coffee shop on Sixth Street. She’d shown up at work one day, complained to her friends about a guy staring at her through most of her shift, then went home. That night, she disappeared. Everyone Jordan and Ryan interviewed believed she’d been followed home by the guy and grabbed, but nobody could agree on what he looked like.

  The punk who’d stared Mia down at the diner surfaced in Jordan’s uneasy conscience, but he didn’t match any of the descriptions given by Misty’s friends. He was heavy, he wasn’t, he was brunette, he was blond, he was young, he was old… The renderings from the police sketch artist were so all over the place to be useless. Every person who said they saw the suspect gave a different description.

  Eye witnesses were notoriously unreliable.

  Jordan put the pasty-faced asshole at Mia’s restaurant out of his mind and focused on Misty’s case. Jordan would work Mia’s tire slashing when he wasn’t being watched. He’d already asked Evan to let him know when he got into the camera images, and he said he had shit running and would let him know, whatever that meant.

  Misty’s shithole apartment gave them nothing, same as her neighbors. The police were actually cooperative, which told Jordan they wanted Pierce Securities working the case. They were short-handed, and they apparently trusted Simon. That actually went a long ways for Jordan. If the cops were willing to copy most of their files for Ryan and Jordan, maybe he’d been a little quick to judge.

  His perspective of his workplace was changing, and just like he’d settled into his revelation with Mia, Jordan adjusted to the idea that this job wasn’t going to eat his soul like he’d initially thought.

  By the time Jordan was on his way to pick up Mia, he and Ryan had interviewed almost every one of Misty’s friends and co-workers, searched her apartment, and skimmed the police files. He had them in his knapsack and was planning on looking over them again for anything he missed while he had a beer sometime tonight.

  But there was some sex to be had first. And he planned to tell Mia he’d changed his mind and was serious about the boyfriend comment. Jordan wasn’t sure exactly what he wanted. He didn’t know her well enough to spout the word ‘love’ at her, but he knew enough about her to know she was worth more than a series of booty calls.

  The waitress working the diner told Jordan it was slow tonight, and Mia had been sent home early. Annoyed she hadn’t called him, he sped home to tell her how their new situation was going to work. He was her ride for now until they figured out who had slashed her tires.

  It may be heavy-handed, but she was in danger now, and as he parked his bike in the garage he paid more for than his apartment, he tried to calm himself. She wasn’t going to react well if he went in there all cave-man on her. It was just getting dark out, and she didn’t need to be walking alone.

  But as he came around the corner, thoughts of heavy-handedness fled as he watched a man shove her into a van right in front of him. She was fighting and saw him when he turned the corner. Her eyes widened, and he was shocked nobody was stopping this. She was being abducted on the street.

  “Jordan!” The sound ripped his heart out of his chest, and Jordan’s arms and legs started pumping in a sprint for his life. He had to get to her. Mouth open in a silent scream, she was frantically kicking, fighting her attacker for all she was worth. Jordan yelled, but the man slammed the doors shut and raced around to the driver’s side, tossing a look over his shoulder at Jordan. It was the guy from the diner. No doubt.

  And the few people who were on the street were just standing there, doing nothing to stop it.

  Wheels on the van spun around, trying to catch purchase, giving Jordan time to catch up a bit, but when the rubber finally gripped asphalt, the van shot away from the curb and down the street. Veering back and forth, Jordan prayed the driver would lose control, but it turned the corner, and with that, the dirty, windowless van was out of sight.

  Jordan continued his sprint after it, yelling Mia’s name, pushing people out of his way. But the van was gone by the time he got to the end of the block. Breathless, he yanked his phone out of his pocket and dialed his brother. Hands on his knees, he took huge gulps of air, trying to fight the nausea rising in his gut at his failure to get her from him.

  “Evan, I need you to run a plate on a white van, number 5-Echo-something-Delta-something-Quebec.” His breathing was rough, but he managed to still hear his brother’s scoff.

  “Your Mia has a date and you running the plates?”

  “My Mia’s been grabbed! Just run the fucking plates!” Jordan was beside himself and couldn’t take the unintentional teasing. He knew Evan didn’t mean anything by it and wouldn’t have said anything if he’d realized the severity of the situation, but it didn’t stop the rock that plummeted through his gut, ripping out his insides as it did.

  Jordan ran back to his apartment house and raced up the stairs, into Mia’s apartment. The door was hanging open and all Jordan could do was look at his surroundings.

  She hadn’t gone quietly, and Jordan fought the rising guilt at not being there for her. He knew, just from looking, if he’d been here, he could have stopped this. There was no way he wouldn’t have heard what happened in this room. There was broken glass everywhere, torn fabric, splintered wood… Mia had fought.

  Possibly for her life.

  No. He couldn’t thin
k like that. If the guy wanted to kill her, he would have done it. He wouldn’t have put her in a van and driven off with her. He had another purpose, and Jordan had an idea what that purpose was. He had to find her before the purpose could be fulfilled.

  He called the detective on Misty’s case and reported the kidnapping, formulating a plan.

  Suddenly, Misty’s case and Mia’s case didn’t seem so unrelated. He cussed himself mightily for not calling her with a warning today. He could have done something to prevent this. Instead of spending two days following a bunch of dead ends, he could have been here, protecting her. Making that connection earlier could have helped.

  God dammit.

  In his apartment, Jordan shut himself in his bedroom and went to his closet, pulling out two enormous duffel bags, calling Evan again.

  “Dude, I need an address,” he growled when his brother answered.

  “I’ve got one, but if it’s legit, I’ll eat my shoes. The plate is registered to Ethyl White over on Westlake Drive. That’s one of the most expensive parts of town, hardly a hideout for a kidnapper. My guess is the plates are stolen.” Evan’s voice was grim. “It’s probably a gardener’s van or something, and she hasn’t even noticed it’s gone.”

  “Roger that.” Jordan hung up, not defeated, but not coming up with anything else. He had to wait for the cops to show. He filled his duffel bag with everything he would possibly need to find Mia, as soon as he had a location, then put it back into the closet. It wouldn’t do any good for him to have his arsenal laid out on the bed when they got here.

  A rough knock sounded on the door, and Jordan took the four steps necessary in his tiny apartment to reach it. Detective Hollerman stood there, concern etched on his features. “Jordan.” Holding out his hand in greeting, the grave look on his face wasn’t exactly reassuring. “You know her?” A pair of uniformed officers were already across the hall, while another one was knocking on doors down the hallway. As if the people in this neighborhood would talk. Yeah, sure. The pimp down the hall would be real eager to talk to the cops.