“Two.” His eyebrow arched, and he nodded toward the porch, beckoning her to follow. “If anyone comes to the house, stay out of sight.”
Jess climbed the two steps and waited while Ike unlocked the door—at three different places. Under any other circumstances, she’d have teased him about being overly cautious, but given her current situation, those locks seemed more reassuring than funny. “Anything else, boss man?” she asked with more bravado than she felt.
“Yeah.” He pushed open the door, then stood aside and gestured for her to go first.
She stepped inside, her eyes struggling to adjust to the dimness. The house was warm from being closed up, the air still.
Ike turned on a lamp, casting golden light over the small first floor. The living room consisted of an overstuffed brown couch facing a rustic stone fireplace. A flat-screen television hung over the mantle. A console table sat behind the couch, and not too far from that a two-seater wooden table made up the entirety of the dining room. With its white appliances, cabinets, and Formica countertop, the galley-style kitchen was old school all the way, but clean and neat. Brown paneled walls, wide plank floors, and exposed wooden beams made the house feel like the cabin Ike said it was.
Still cute, though.
A series of clicks brought Jess’s gaze to the locks on the door.
You’re safe, Jess. You’re with Ike, out of the city, away from…whoever the hell broke into your house and tried to grab you. Just breathe.
Right. Breathing. Check.
Except, she couldn’t help but feel that she’d brought this whole damn situation on herself. Still, how the hell was she supposed to know that the man she’d picked up at a bar last Friday night had been a bad guy intent on using her to get to her friends? Just thinking of it made her skin crawl and her stomach toss.
“Three,” Ike said, apparently not realizing she was having a mini-meltdown in the middle of his living room.
“Three? I might need to write these down,” she quipped, hoping her voice sounded lighter than her chest felt. Because Jess hated to be scared. She despised feeling helpless and cornered and trapped. Once, she’d fallen apart and let fear get the best of her.
Never again.
Ike was in front of her in an instant, a scowling, unamused wall of muscle and ink. “I’m not fucking around here, Jessica. Take something seriously. For once.”
Sweat dampened her neck under her long hair, and anger lanced through Jess’s chest until her bones nearly vibrated with it. Anger about the danger Jeremy and Nick Rixey—her employers and friends for the past four years—were in. Anger about the fact that their tattoo shop had been bombed and closed…until God only knew when. Anger that her own house was a shambles, too, after a middle-of-the-night invasion that sent her scurrying like an animal into the crawl space at the back of her bedroom closet.
Anger about being targeted and used and hunted by the very animals that had attempted to hurt her friends.
It was all too damn much.
“Wow, Ike. Thanks for clarifying how serious this situation is. Because I was really confused about what the guys with the guns ransacking my apartment last night meant. So much clearer now.” She crossed her tattooed arms over her chest and nailed Ike with a glare. Anger felt so much better than fear.
Ike’s gaze narrowed, but then his face relaxed and his shoulders dropped. “Fuck. Didn’t mean to—”
“Yeah, yeah. Whatever,” she said, blinking the sting out of her eyes. No way was she crying in front of Ike. He already treated her like an overprotective big brother as it was. And that was really freaking annoying because it meant her fantasies of climbing him like a tree and having her wily way with him weren’t ever coming true. Unrequited lust sucked big hairy donkey balls. “So, what’s three?”
“No cell phone, no e-mail, no using credit cards,” he said in a gentler tone. “In fact, give me your cell. Just to be sure.”
The only reason Jess didn’t gripe was because she knew enough about Nick and Jeremy’s über-scary mercenary enemies to know they could probably find her easier than she wanted to think about if she didn’t stay off the grid. She fished the smartphone from her bra and smacked it into Ike’s palm.
His eyebrow arched as his gaze moved from the phone to her breasts and back again.
“What?” she asked, more comfortable with him ogling her boobs than giving her that serious, concerned look he wore a moment ago. “I was afraid it would fall out of my back pocket on the bike.”
Ike shook his head and slipped the cell into the pocket of his jeans. Which immediately made Jess jealous of her phone because her hands would burrow the fuck into those jeans if he gave her half a chance.
But alas…
“Anything else, warden?” she asked.
“You’re not funny,” he said.
“I’m a little funny,” she said.