Page 26 of The Vigilant

Goose bumps scattered over my skin, running from the heat of his words. I should be relieved hewasn’t turning me into the police.Not yet, at least.Instead, all I felt was my rage. Already unleashed on Jack for his role in what happened to Mara, I couldn’t turn it off. Like a storm that had made landfall, I couldn’t control what—or who—it tried to decimate.

Lifting my chin, I reached and gathered my hair into a thick rope, winding it around my single bloody knife and anchoring it up again on my head. The whole time I held Tynan’s gaze like I wasn’t going anywhere.

The tick in his jaw threatened to detonate as he stepped closer and lowered his head, his face hardly an inch from mine. “Now, little wasp.”

It wasn’t his fury but his unexpected endearment, a tenderness in the midst of fury, that broke my cycle and caused a crack in my reckless fury.

I let out a slow, unsteady breath, and then turned on my heel.

As my boots thumped down the street, I heard Jack’s scream of pain as Tynan pulled the knife from his hand.

Pig.

The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.

Was Tynan my enemy? I still wasn’t sure.

From the back of his rumbling Harley, I watched him free Jack and send him on his way with a clear warning. But to me, Tynan said nothing. Not when he returned to the motorcycle. Not when he climbed on in front of me. Not when I pressed my blood-covered front to his back.

I half-expected him to take me to the police station. He’d caught me red-handed. Literally. Jack’s blood had hardened around my dark nails and streaked my skin like a bad tattoo. But he didn’t. The beast of a motorcycle chewed up the stretch of highway between San Francisco and Carmel Cove until we were pulling into the gated garage of the townhouse.

It was actually unnerving that he wasn’t saying anything. I anticipated fury. Confusion. Questions. Demands. But there was nothing…and I didn’t know how to react to nothing.

Just as water retains no constant shape, so in warfare there are no constant conditions.

The reminder stilled me. It straightened my spine and kept my breaths evenly paced. His conditions might be changing, but mine wouldn’t. I wouldn’t be afraid of what was coming. Punishment, imprisonment, or otherwise. I didn’t care what he said or threatened me with. He meant nothing to me in comparison to Mara. And now that I knew she was in danger, I’d brave anything to save her.

My boots thumped along the hardwood in the hall, desperate to grow the space between us. Forget dealing with his anger, I’dhad to deal with his proximity for the last hour. Riding from his garage to this house was one thing, but a whole hour pressed to the hard heat of him while his bike vibrated underneath me, the image of him coming for me like some kind of leathered guardian angel…it was enough to make me want things I shouldn’t want. And the fact I had no underwear on the whole time was nothing more than an insult to injury.

I spun and faced him, catching the way his shoulders slumped as the door shut behind him. He looked up, his silver eyes slicing into mine, and I braced myself.

He came closer, but I wouldn’t move away. I’d take whatever anger he threw at me. God knew, I’d survived much worse than a man’s anger.

Tynan stopped when he was in front of me, and again, his eyes scoured over me in the light. An army of goose bumps lifted from my skin, but somehow, it felt like no defense against the heat of him.

“Go ahead,” I muttered. “Ask your questions.”So I can muster up anger and adrenaline to mask the real reason for my racing heart.

Tynan’s jaw twitched, and the second it took him to answer seemed to stretch for minutes.

“Is any of that blood yours?”

My lips parted, my chest deflating as air rushed from my lungs.Of all the questions…all the things…andthen I glimpsed the full depths of his ache. That assessing look. The hard line of his jaw. He wanted to wipe the blood from my skin—to clean it as surely as if it could wipe away everything that happened.

And for a nanosecond, I wanted to let him.

“No.”

An impressive shudder racked his big frame. “Good.”

I stiffened. “You’re not responsible for me.” No one was. No one had been for a long damn time.

“No?” He stepped closer and invaded what little space was left between us as surely as the knife had punctured Jack’s skin, anger and frustration seeping into the air like blood on our breaths. “You just stabbed a man?—”

“His hand,” I hissed.

This close, I could see the shadow of his beard. The slivers of silver in his dark eyes. Every breath brought the heady scent of sweat mingled with leather and his spicy musk.

“And carved ‘PIG’into his chest,” Tynan growled, and I felt his gaze searching. I felt the claws of his curiosity trying to dig into me and uncover the truth.

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