AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Tell me, Kingsley. I can handle danger.”
His expression darkened. Then he pressed his palms to his eyes like he was trying to force horror from his head.
“I’ve seen the scar behind your ear,” I said. “Is that a cigar burn?”
He flopped his hands to the water. “You don’t give up, do you?”
I looked into his impossibly perfect eyes. “Do you want to give up . . . on me? On whatever we have going on?”
A tiny smile drifted across his lips, but the turmoil behind his eyes seemed to crush him.
I gripped his hands. “I honestly don’t know what’s going on between us . . . I mean, you’re a cop, for god’s sake.”
He burst out laughing. “And you’re a pain in my butt.”
“I’ll give you a pain in your butt if you don’t tell me.” I shook his hands in the water. “Call this our first major hurdle. We get over this and we can get through anything.”
His expression twisted. “You’re forgetting all the crap we’ve already been through.”
“That was physical problems. They’re a thousand times easier to hurdle than emotional ones.”
Frowning, he tilted his head. “Wow, what are you? A psychologist or something?”
“Or something.” I grabbed his cheeks and pulled him down for a kiss.
His lips softened, and I stepped closer to him, pressing our bodies together.
He eased back from me and heaved a sigh. “I hope I don’t regret this.”
“You won’t.”
“You might change your mind when I tell you.”
“Nope. I won’t.”
A deep frown crossed his forehead as he studied me, then he grabbed my hand. “Come on, we need to find that guy and?—”
I yanked my hand free.
He flared his eyes at me. “And then, while we wait to be rescued, I’ll tell you everything.”
“Yay.” I grinned.
Growling, he wrapped his arm around my back like he was stopping me from escaping, and we pushed through the water to the shore. Shielding the sun with his hand, he squinted up the steep hill we’d climbed down. “Can you see that cave we slept in?”
Blazing sunshine was right in my face as I searched the top of the cliff. “There it is.”
“Good work.”
Water squelched from our boots as we crossed the sand. He picked up the plastic bag containing the hard drive and returned it to his pocket.
“I hope that thing works after all this,” I said.
“It will. Listen,” he said as we stepped back into the vegetation, “when we find those men, their bodies will be pretty gruesome, so don’t get too close, okay?”
“Okay.” I already had nightmares from one lifeless body. I didn’t need to add to those images.
The cliff face loomed above us like an angry demon, but thankfully, it also blocked out the blazing sunshine and made navigating the bushes a fraction easier. Thorns scraped at my forearms.
