about Gabriel’s suite, sleeping next to him again, having sex. She’d tell him about her intruder before any of that. Find out how he and that Mohawk-haired creep were connected. Stupid ass. Breaking her window…her alarm pad…invading her house. How had he known where she lived?
Her eyes slid open. Come to think of it, how had Gabriel remembered where she lived? He’d only been here once. She looked to her front door, her stomach dropping when she remembered him bringing her into the kitchen when he’d first arrived. A room that wasn’t visible from the entrance. Tendrils of unease snaked around her when she remembered him turning on the lights. The switch was hidden behind the calendar on the wall. How had he known it was there?
Was she being naive to discount her intruder’s crazy warning?
She jumped when Gabriel and Quan appeared from out of the now-dark house. Gabriel headed toward the truck as Quan closed and locked the door.
The expression of genuine concern on his face when he climbed in released the tension in her neck. “You good, sweetheart?”
She nodded while refusing to believe her attraction to him was making her dismissive.
Too tired to resist, she let her head fall to his shoulder and didn’t protest when he wrapped his arm around her and kissed the top of her head. God, he smelled wonderful.
And, really, if she were to question him, he’d probably tell her they’d gotten her address from the paperwork she’d filled out for HR earlier in the day. All Quan would have had to do was put it into his phone’s GPS. Easy.
As for navigating her house… “Gabriel?” she started, the question forming on her lips.
“Yeah, baby. What is it?”
Mmm. She snuggled deeper into him, craving his body heat.
Sleep took her before she could remember what she’d been about to ask.
† † †
“What,” Gabriel snapped impatiently, glaring across the elevator at Quan’s expression.
Eva was once more in his arms, asleep, the numbers flashing on the panel above the doors as they ascended to the top floor of the Crown Jewel.
Quan gave a lazy shrug. “That bruise on her face from a fist?”
Gabriel worked his jaw. “Won’t know until she tells me. But if it is, someone’s gonna wish their old man had pulled out.”
Quan chuckled under his breath as the elevator stopped and the doors swooshed opened to reveal Alek standing in the center of the corridor, arms crossed, legs braced apart.
“How the fuck did we not realize sooner that she’d left the office? That shouldn’t have happened.”
Quan, in a reasonable tone that must have irked, murmured something about free will.
“What are you doing here?” Gabriel asked, having assumed Alek would be guarding Stefano’s guy who they’d picked up.
“The twins are with him in a Motel 6 off I-90.” Impatience lanced like a whip through Alek’s words even as Gabriel relaxed slightly, knowing their captive was being held by two of their best men—the Berkman brothers had been among the few who’d followed Gabriel to Seattle from Queens. “I had one of our SPD contacts set up a DUI checkpoint before the bridge. It’s Furio, by the way. Fingered him and that fucking haircut a dozen cars in.”
The tension came back with a vengeance, Gabriel’s blood running cold as he pictured that Mohawked motherfucker. Furio had been recruited by Albert Moretti himself the year before his death. He and Gabriel had even done the odd job together, which was where Gabriel had learned the guy was colder than stone. Thinking of Eva anywhere near the merciless prick made his skin want to crawl off his body.
Alek looked Eva over. “What happened to her face? And what’s that?” He motioned to her bandaged hand.
“I don’t have the full details yet, but she cut her hand on the glass from a broken window and walked all over the shit for good measure.” He lifted her legs and tilted his chin at the fluffy socks he’d put on her in the car. “Furio’s mine, no matter what.”
He started down the corridor after nodding to the two boys now stationed on either side of the elevator, repeating the greeting to two more halfway down the hall. He thought of the pair tucked away near the front entrance to the hotel’s garage, another duo squatting in a tinted sedan a few cars over from his parking space, the deuce stationed in plain sight at his private entrance. And now he was inclining his head at two others taking up real estate