Page 23 of K-9 Justice

Right. Of course he had. Because that was what partners were supposed to do. Ivy chastised herself for seeing a potential threat where there was none. She didn’t know whether it was fromthe painkillers or the trauma she’d sustained that raised her defenses, but there had to be a point where she let herself take something at face value. There wasn’t always a hidden agenda. She reached for his hand, pressing her thumb between his first two knuckles. “Thank you. For getting me out of there.”

“Actually, that was Max,” he said. “Turns out she’s a lot better at retrieval than I gave her credit for.”

“I’ll be sure to thank her, too.” Ivy pulled on his hand until Carson’s upper body had to come with him.

“You’re going to have a hard time getting her attention with all your operatives keeping her busy out in the parking lot.” A smile pulled at one corner of his mouth, instantly erasing the memory of Dominic Rojas. The partner she’d fallen for locked his gaze on hers as he leaned into her.

“In that case, I think we should enjoy this time we have alone together,” she said.

“Believe me, Agent Bardot.” Carson pressed his mouth against hers, and the pain, reality and a whole lot of bad disappeared at the contact. “I intend to.”

* * *

They couldn’t goback to the cartel safe house.

Not as long as Sebastian—or whoever the hell the killer was—was alive. Whatever remained ofSangre por Sangrehad been called to a final fight, with Sebastian at the forefront. There was no going back. There was no more Dominic Rojas or the connection he’d built over the past two years. No resources. No team he could rely on. And Carson couldn’t help but feel a hole beginning to develop at an entire two years of his life gone just like that.

Once they’d given their statements to Alpine PD, they’d been permitted to leave the clinic. As long as Ivy promised to rest. An impossible task for a woman determined to take on the weight of every suffering human and find a dozen solutions inthe process. He pulled the SUV off to the side of the road of a little neighborhood he hadn’t stepped foot in since he’d gone undercover. Max’s tail hit him in the face as she climbed over the center console and across Ivy’s lap to look out the window. “Get out of here, you giant fur ball.” He tried to maneuver her into the back seat, but there was no derailing the German shepherd.

She was home.

“What are we doing here?” Ivy studied the small house with its pristine stucco, traditional-style roof and maintained front lawn. The tree out front looked much bigger than he remembered the last time he’d been here, and the garage had been painted black instead of its original white, but everything else pulled memories from a happier time.

A time when he knew who the hell he was. Where he belonged.

The bruising along one side of Ivy’s face had darkened to a sickening purple and blue but told him Sebastian favored his right hook. Something to keep in mind the next time they met. “You realize I don’t live here anymore, right? I live part-time in that place full of bullet holes we escaped four nights ago and the other part in a stronghold with a team of mercenaries.”

Carson shouldered out of the vehicle. His forearms ached with the use of the small muscles extending from his wrists to his elbows. Protecting his head from being bashed in with a pipe had left its stain beneath his skin, but it was nothing compared to the pain Ivy had to deal with. They needed somewhere she would be safe, that gave her the time she needed to recover. Where nobody could find her. Rounding in front of the SUV, he felt Ivy’s eyes follow him as he approached her door. He opened the passenger-side door and offered his hand. “Trust me.”

Max took the opportunity to spring out of the vehicle. She bounded up the driveway and pranced around the front yard as if she owned the place.

Ivy stared at his hand, then cut her gaze to the house behind him. He could practically see the wheels turning in her head, considering all her options. Trust him or die at the hands of a killer who’d been playing mind games with them all this time? The choice should’ve been easy, right? Slipping her uninjured hand into his, she let him pull her and her go bag from the vehicle. “What did you do?”

“Nothing big. Just convinced the people who bought the place from you to sell it to me.” Carson led her up the driveway, slower than he wanted to go but fully aware of her limitations after surviving what she had.

Disbelief and something along the lines of joy etched into her features. Ivy couldn’t seem to take her eyes off of the house. “When did you do this?”

“While you were recovering in the hospital. Not sure you know this, but you were asleep for a long time.” A move of this magnitude had taken precision planning and people skills. But, in the end, he knew it was worth the effort. Just for the look on her face. “I know you had to give this house up when I went undercover. We couldn’t hold on to our old lives when we started this war, but considering our options are limited to usingSangre por Sangreresources or putting you in the crosshairs with a Socorro safe house, I figured this would be the best place to lie low for a couple days.”

“How…? How is this possible?” she asked.

Carson offered her the key. “Want to go inside?”

She nodded, seemingly incapable of responding. They moved as one up the rest of the driveway and past the black iron gate protecting the front door from solicitors and anyone else looking for their pound of flesh. Ivy slid the key into the dead bolt and turned.

Max pushed past both of them, nearly knocking Carson off-balance. Her nails clicked against the simple, oversize tileinstalled throughout the entryway as she raced through the maze of rooms. The rug positioned to greet visitors crumpled behind her.

“Knock it off! You’re going to break something.” Carson guided his partner over the threshold, and for a moment, he couldn’t help but think of the night Ivy had invited him inside this place for the first time. How she’d kissed him right here at the front door. It had been a simpler time then. All they’d had to contend with was the FBI’s rules on office romances. Everything had gotten so…out of order since then.

“It all still looks the same.” Ivy unwound her hand from his and limped down the narrow hall leading to the rest of the house. “What did you do, ask the previous owners to leave their furniture and belongings and get out?”

“Something like that.” A lot like that actually. Though he’d certainly made it worth their while. Hundreds of thousands of dollars over value. The thing about working for criminals for so long was he’d learned to become one. He’d known his days as Dominic Rojas would have to come to an end eventually. He hadn’t known the exact moment when, but Ivy’s influence had trained him to prepare for every threat. Every possibility. The cartel wouldn’t get the drop on him. No matter the circumstance, and so Carson had ensured his own future. With the help ofSangre por Sangre. He set Ivy’s belongings by the door and followed after her into the kitchen. “It’s purchased under another alias for obvious reasons. Your operative who works your team’s security—Scarlett—helped with the details.”

Ivy ran her uninjured hand the length of the expansive kitchen island. Large enough to seat four people, though Carson had never known his partner to invite anyone into the space but him. The tension drained from her shoulders minute by minute. “I didn’t think I would ever get to be inside this place again. I drive by it sometimes. Wasn’t too happy with them paintingthe garage a different color, but they took good care of it, from what I can see.” She surveyed the kitchen and the attached living room. “Do you think there’s a chance they left anything to eat?”

“Already on it.” Carson dodged Max’s beeline for the living room couch. “If you don’t calm down, I’m going to put you outside.”

Ivy’s laugh followed her into the living room, where she sat down on the sofa beside the German shepherd, and in that moment, it was easy to imagine they were on the other side of this investigation. That they’d survivedSangre por Sangreand Sebastian and everything else the world threw at them, and all that was left was…this. This peace.

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