Navy Seal To The Rescue

“Worried about break-ins?” she asked as he reached for the doorknob. As soon as he twisted it, she realized she had her answer. It wasn’t even locked.

“Not my place.” He pushed open the door and gestured her inside. He gave her an impatient look when she hesitated. “It belongs to a friend. He’s not here a lot, so he keeps it secured.”

Okay. Lila wet her lips. As she hesitated, a loud crash came from the path they’d come from, followed by a couple of gruff shouts. Lila rushed through the door so fast, she almost tripped over his feet.

“In a hurry?”

“It’s been a crappy night, okay?” she snapped, hurrying over to peek out the front window. The same old men still sat, smoking. The same woman still swayed, singing. But nobody else was out there. She pressed her hand against her stomach, trying to calm the sharp jabs of fear.

“It’s been something, all right,” he agreed under his breath, pulling the door shut behind him.

“Lock it. Please. Lock the door.”

His eyes skimmed over her face, and even though she could feel his exasperation, he silently turned the lock.

“Feel better?”

“No.”

She looked around with a frown. The bulk of the square footage seemed to be in this main room, with a pair of doors on the end leading to what she assumed was the bed and bath. The furniture was simple. A long black couch and a huge black recliner stood in the center of the room, both so big she was surprised they fit in the room. A table and two chairs were shoved in a corner next to a refrigerator that looked older than the house itself.

Something about cataloging the room calmed her. Enough so that she started to feel her legs again and her hands started to tremble. She didn’t want to close her mind; she wasn’t ready to see the scene in her head again. But she figured she had a handle on the babbling enough to make a coherent report.

“We should call the police now.”

“You sure? Maybe you want to wait a few more minutes. Think it all over again.”

Lila turned to stare.

The man was gorgeous. Even in the sad light put out by one rickety looking lamp, he was a work of art. From his sculpted jaw that needed a shave to his eyes, as dark as his midnight-black hair, he had the looks. The body, too, she remembered. She didn’t let herself ogle it for the same reason she wouldn’t let her mind reenact the murder. Because she wasn’t sure she could handle it.

But she couldn’t deny the man had it all going on.

All that, and he was still an idiot.

“You think I went running willy-nilly down the beach on the verge of hysterics, then grabbed on to you, all just for entertainment?” She barreled on before he could say anything to go with the amusement in his eyes. “You think I threw myself into your arms, that I made up the whole story about seeing something that horrible? Why? Just to get your attention?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“You don’t believe me,” she said with a scowl. “So why did you bring me here?”

“To give you time to calm down before you did something stupid, hurt yourself or hurt someone else.”

“Aren’t you the hero,” she muttered, turning her back on him and pulling out her cell phone.

“What’re you doing?”

What did he think she was doing?

“I’m calling the police,” she said, shooting a defiant look over her shoulder before pressing the keys. One. One. One.

Before she hit the seven, a hand reached over her shoulder to take the phone.

“You sure you want to call the cops?” he asked, his voice a slow rumble vibrating against her back. Irritation made it easy to ignore the sensations coiling in her belly, but Lila figured it was smarter to step away regardless. No point in letting her body get stupid ideas.

“Look, buddy,” she snapped, turning to face him rather than leave all that temptation hulking at her back. Mistake, she realized as soon as she stared up into his dark eyes. Big mistake. But she was good at ignoring mistakes, she reminded herself before taking a deep breath.

“I don’t know how things are handled in your world. But in mine, murder means we call the cops. So get out of my way and let me do that, then you can get back to your beer and your beach and whatever the hell else actually matters to you.”

Lila wished that her voice wasn’t shaking almost as hard as her hands, but a person could only take so much.

“You need to calm down,” the man said, obviously impervious to her nasty tone and cutting words.

“You don’t believe me?” she accused, slapping her hand on his bare chest to keep him from walking away. “Why? Why would I make something like that up?”

His eyes locked on hers for a long heartbeat, then dropped to her hand. Her fingers tingling, Lila dropped it to her side. His gaze met hers again and he shrugged. A slow shrug that was just as indifferent as the rest of his attitude.

Years of being ignored, of having her simplest wants and needs and thoughts dismissed as inconsequential exploded in Lila’s head.

She used both hands this time, not to stop him from walking away, but to shove him back a step. Ignoring the look of amused surprise on his face, she gave him another shove. There was something about having a man’s full attention that filled her with a feeling she barely recognized as power.

God, it felt good.

“Call the damned police. Call them now,” she ordered, her voice vibrating with fury. “They’ll figure out what happened. They’ll find Rodriguez.”

“You’re sure?”

She slapped her cell phone against his chest.

Ignoring it, he gave her one last, long look, then stepped over to grab the receiver of an ancient rotary dial phone and made the call.

He spoke Spanish in the local dialect, his words flowing too fast for her to make out more than every third. Her eyes widened when she realized he was actually talking to the chief of police.

“Sí. Rodriguez,” he confirmed. “Casa de Rico.”

Lila held her breath, waiting for the rest of the conversation, but the only thing she heard from then on was grunts on her pseudo rescuer’s part until he said goodbye.

“They’ll meet us there.”

“Someone else probably called it in by now,” she mused, her fingers clenching and unclenching as she thought it through. “There’s no way nobody noticed the chef on duty missing and didn’t go looking for him.”

“No calls from that location or in the vicinity.”

“How do you know?”

“I asked.”

Oh.