The Mercenary Next Door (Rogues and Rescuers #2) - Lucy Leroux Page 0,84
tried to separate them to get their statements independently.
The responding officer hadn’t liked that very much, but Mason had stood firm until Detective Silano arrived, taking over the questioning.
“I have a good feeling about this,” she said after electronically fingerprinting the man Laila had tased. But the detective didn’t elaborate, and Mason was too focused on getting them both out of there to argue much.
They ended up spending the night at Elias Gardner’s spacious Carbon Mesa house.
“This is a real honest-to-God mansion,” she told Mason excitedly after they had been shown to a sumptuous guest room that rivaled any five-star hotel room Mason had ever seen.
“Ian and Elias are cousins, but they grew up in different worlds. I’ve always thought that it was to Elias’ credit that he followed in Ian’s footsteps instead of his father’s.”
She was about to ask Mason what the Gardner family business was when she caught sight of his face.
“Hey,” she said, walking into his arms. “I’m okay. I wasn’t hurt today.”
Mason swore under his breath, but he wasn’t angry. His blue eyes were soft but intense as if there were lit from a fire within. “That’s because you’re incredibly smart and so fucking brave. You thought strategically. You knew you couldn’t outfight them, so you hid, but you managed to keep the high ground.”
He pressed her closer, his hands working under the T-shirt she was wearing to settle warm and heavy against the bare skin of her back.
“But,” he sighed, “you should never have been in danger in the first place. I would never have left you if I thought they would be able to find you. I’m only glad I didn’t stop at the main office as I’d planned.”
Laila tugged his head down, pressing a brief but hard kiss to his lips. “You can’t watch me every minute of the day. The important thing is I’m okay.” She hung off his neck, letting him bear her weight until his strong arms picked her up, cradling her to him. “Not to mention the vast majority of the time, you are going to be the one in danger. And I won’t be there to save you then. We’re both going to have to learn to deal with it.”
Mason cocked his head at her. “Hey. You did save me.” He sounded stunned.
“You don’t have to sound so surprised,” she chided, but then laughed when he growled and tossed her on the bed.
The mattress was so thick she barely felt the impact. Laila tugged at Mason’s shirt as he crawled over her.
“Wait,” he said as she kissed the delicious line of his strong jaw. “We still don’t know how they found you.”
“That’s tomorrow’s mystery,” she said, finally succeeded getting his shirt off. “Right now, I need you to touch me.”
Mason kissed her, but his demeanor didn’t lighten. “Laila, baby, you are my life,” he told her. “I know there are no guarantees in life, but I’m going to spend the rest of my days taking care of you. If anything ever happened to you—”
Laila silenced him with a kiss. Mason’s protective instincts were too deeply engrained. She was never going to convince him that she was all right using words. She was going to have to show him.
So that was what she did…again and again.
Chapter Thirty-Three
“It took a few hours, but he cracked,” Detective Silano told them.
Mason had brought Laila to the police station, agreeing to come only after the detective had assured them her assailant had been transferred to central booking.
They sat in the detective’s crowded office, their two chairs crammed against the wall catty-corner to the desk instead of across—or else the door wouldn’t have been able to close.
They soon learned why she wanted privacy.
“Who is he?” Laila frowned at the mug shot of a sallow-faced dirty-blond man in his late fifties.
“Elmer Lugge. Elmer and his cousin own the Stag and Stars.”
“So this is connected to the bar,” Mason grunted, putting his arm around Laila.
Detective Silano nodded, pushing another paper toward them. This one was a picture printed out on plain printer paper, but it was wrinkled. The detective had slipped it into an evidence bag. “He was arrested with this on him.”
Laila looked down at the picture, then gasped. Mason picked it up. It was blown up and grainy, but it was a clear picture of Laila in the passenger seat of his car. Her phone was in her hand. It was right after she’d taken a picture of the front of the bar.