Page 49 of Clay

How they’d separated, him to care for their client, his charge, and how she’d gone in pursuit of Hamilton. Even with her NVGs, the man had been good. Good enough to get the drop on her. She’d only seen him coming at the last moment, a flash of gray-green movement in her goggles, and she’d twisted. What was a concussion tonight would have been a killing blow if she hadn’t ducked.

She’d awoken just as Clay and Jordan reached her, having heard none of the shootout.

Clay filled in the gaps, meeting Dev’s gaze as he downplayed the severity of his injury.

“He put himself in the line of fire to keep me safe,” Ivy cut in. “Took that asshole out.”

Clay tucked her closer, amazed by her resiliency, at the fact she wasn’t looking at him any differently.

She laid a hand on his jaw. “All I feel is relief in knowing he’s dead. That he can’t threaten Katie or me or any other women again. As for the rest, we can talk about that in private.” She feathered a kiss over his cheek. “Now finish, so we can go home.”

Jordan’s cell chimed and she popped up, heading for the front door without a word. They waited as she returned, with Undersheriff Abel Jones in tow.

“Why are you here?” Dev asked.

Jordan answered. “I asked him to come, rather than sending one of the detectives. We’re all here together, this is the best possible time to take care of it. He was there, he knows what went down, and we need to get our statements in for the record. I can't take them because of my obvious conflict of interest.”

As much as Dev might have looked disgruntled, it was the right thing to do, and they all knew it.

And because Clay had Ivy beside him, he told the rest, how he and Ivy had lured Hamilton out, and when he had the chance, he took aim and killed Hamilton with a head shot, then got Ivy out of there before returning for Cali.

And even though keeping his team in the dark about his miraculous recovery chafed at him, he kept his silence. And so did Ivy and Dev.

Chapter Thirteen

It was almost anticlimactic, Clay thought as he and Ivy walked out of HQ.

There had been nothing new on finding out who had broken into HQ, but they all agreed that it hadn’t been Hamilton. Jones passed on the stills of the mysterious Tobias Davenport and while he'd looked vaguely familiar to Warren, none of the others had ever seen him before. But at least it gave them a starting point to begin facial recognition. And for Warren to try to remember where he might have seen the man before.

Because Dev was sure there had been no further infiltration into his systems, or any activity at all, for that matter, they would make do with daily sweeps of their residences. Because, at the end of the day, the break-in hadn't been violent. Tobias Davenport's presence itself hadn't been threatening, though Ivy still swore the man was scary as hell. His appearance had felt more...business-related. Less thuggish.

And while the break-in and Davenport’s appearance at LVMPD might not be linked, they all thought they were. Sothey’d be on high alert for something that resembled corporate espionage more than an overt threat.

Jones had been mightily pissed that Dev hadn’t reported the break-in, and Clay and Ivy had made their escape as the men argued.

Now she clung to his back as they cruised through the still-warm Vegas night on his bike. She laughed in his ear when he gunned the throttle, and they zoomed down the street. Then she plastered herself against his back and grabbed him around the waist. “Faster,” she yelled, and he obliged, taking them out into the desert and up, up, up into the mountains opposite where Hamilton had taken her, until Vegas twinkled like a jewel beneath them.

And while he may have left the day's events behind, he kept an eye on the rearview mirror. Just in case.

He pulled into a deserted scenic overlook, and they dismounted, pulling off their helmets, hooking them on the handlebars.

Clay reached out, twined his fingers in hers before he consciously realized what he was doing, and in that moment understood that it felt natural because it was real. His feelings for her were deep and genuine and so surprising because he hadn’t thought he had that depth of emotion. Besides his grandmother, he'd never truly loved, and the emotions that swamped him now were almost overwhelming.

But what if Ivy didn’t feel the same way? What if it had been adrenaline and the thrill of it all that had drawn her in?

“I can hear you thinking,” she said, a smile in her voice. Then she sobered. “I’m not really good at hiding my emotions, or really anything.” And that quickly the sunshine was back. “I have feelings for you, Clay. They’re so big I don’t really know what to do with them, or with you.”

He turned so they faced each other. “You just put into words what I was thinking so hard about. I love you, Ivy. And it’s not something that’s situational, tied to what we just lived through. Besides my Nonna, I’ve never held something like this in my heart.” He halted, shocked he’d been able to put it into words, and so eloquently.

She reached up and feathered a hand over his cheek. “My sweet protector,” she murmured. “You’re way better with words than you think you are.” She brushed a kiss over his lips. “I love you more than anything I ever have, and you have no idea how happy I am that you feel the same way.” She let out a watery laugh and he realized she had tears in her eyes.

“Don’t cry,” he begged.

“I’m just happy,” she said, brushing away a tear. “I mean, I’m sorry it took a shitshow of this proportion to get us together, but I don’t know that we’d have met any other way.”

He nodded, though he suspected that fate would have thrown them together somehow. And wasn’t it funny that he was ascribing this to fate, when he’d never believed in it before?

He led her to the rock wall lining the turnout, pulled her down to sit next to him, took a deep breath and said what he didn’t really want to. “We need to talk about my ankle.”

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