Renegade Protector. Nico Rosso
Pete about that.”
“I’d like to ask him why he didn’t spend another two hours scouring that parking lot for clues.” Even if they were exes, it was no excuse for shoddy police work.
“Small town.” She shrugged. “They don’t know how to handle this kind of stuff.” Her face darkened. “Or they don’t want to.” She handed his drink over and swirled hers in the glass. “I sell my spread to the developer, they put in a resort hotel, property values go up, property taxes go up, the town does better, the police department does better.”
“That price is too high.” He waited until she sipped at her tequila to taste his. The liquid fire couldn’t override the anger he felt at her situation.
She stared into the distance, eyes unreadable. “Hungry?” Without waiting for his answer, she walked into the hallway and down to the kitchen. Toro remained at her heels. Ty followed. The kitchen was larger than he expected, with a broad center island covered in a warm wood butcher block. One wall was dominated by a stove and vent hood that stretched to the high ceiling. Mariana slid a wire bowl of apples to the center of the island and picked two out. “We have plenty of apples. Can’t sell any of them without harvesters to get them off the trees or customers to show up at the shop.”
She pulled a gleaming knife from a block and quickly segmented the apples. Her hands paused as she pushed some of the slices toward him. He saw her eyes fixed on his hip. His gun. She asked, “Why didn’t you pull that on the guy in the parking lot?”
“I didn’t have it on me.” He reached forward and dragged the pieces of apple to him. “I didn’t know it would be this bad.”
She set the rifle on the corner of the island. “Neither did I.” They silently ate pieces of the apple, drank tequila, then chewed on more apple. Toro glanced between the two of them, like he was looking to see who would give him a handout. Mariana used a piece of apple to point at a slice Ty held. “Do you taste it?”
He’d been eating automatically and slowed down to search. Savoring it this way strengthened the connection he’d been feeling with her all night. Her work, part of herself, was in his mouth, intimate and close. An apple had never made his blood rush like this. “It’s...salty.” A surprising flavor within the balance of sweet and tart.
Her face lit up with a smile, then changed to something more serious as she examined his face. “We’re only a couple miles from the Pacific. The mist comes in from Monterey Bay, bringing the sea salt with it. There are no other apples like this.”
“That’s why I’m here.” She needed to know only part of the reason for now. “There’s too much history here to lose. Your history is here. Your family’s. And if you want to stay, I will help you.”
“With those ghosts from the past?” She nodded out to the living room, where the old photos lay on a table.
“After the Civil War, the West expanded. People tried to carve out lives for themselves. But the law wasn’t always on their side.” Shame and anger shook him, knowing that even as a police officer now, the same injustice occurred. “Money was power. My ancestor joined with others to form a group to protect people who couldn’t protect themselves. Vigilantes. They rode mostly in California. Black, Chinese, Native American, Mexican. Other immigrants. Men and women. They called themselves Frontier Justice.”
Mariana held his look. “You can’t be a cop and a vigilante.”
He stared deeper into her, hoping she saw his vow. “I can if they don’t know. I have to be if no one else will help you.”
Her eyes narrowed, cutting him open for dissection. “Do you ever lie?”
“Yes.” He was no superhero in a cape.
She loosened her posture, resting her hip against the island. “If you’d said no, I wouldn’t have believed you.”
He propped his elbows on the thick butcher block. “We live in a difficult world.”
Despite her casual attitude, her gaze still held steel. “Are you lying now?”
“No.” The night was black and silent outside the kitchen windows. For now, it was just the two of them. In her home. With an unexpected, electric connection stretching between them.
“And you’re going to help me.” She leaned forward. Heat prickled across his chest. Did she feel it, too? “No strings. No motive other than justice.”
“I will.” It wasn’t a lie. It wasn’t all of the truth.
Her gaze fell to her hands and she seemed to wrestle with a thought. She glanced at her rifle, then Toro. A long breath shook through her. She made a fist, released it and looked him in the eye again. “Stay the night.”
Even though he knew the invitation was just for the sake of her safety, the words in her low voice, in that quiet kitchen, fired quick heat through him. The circumstances of his visit to her house tried to ice the flames, but only brought them down to a deep red smolder close to his bones. This job of protecting her had started out feeling important because of the ties to his ancestor. Standing here with Mariana, feeling how hard it was to ask for help and knowing how much she needed it, the job was now very personal.
Mariana had never shared her bedroom with the rifle before. The door was locked and Toro was curled up next to the bed. She sat on the edge of a reading chair, very aware that Ty was in the guest room below her feet. The rifle wasn’t for protection against him. As crazy as his story was, he’d proved she could trust him to help her. Whether or not he could fight off the Hanley Development Group was a different question.
She spoke low into her phone, knowing he could still hear her through the old house. “Hi, Brenda, I couldn’t find an after-hours number for you, so I’m leaving this message.” Her voice was tired and shook as she recounted the minimum details to her insurance agent. “My shop on Pacific was firebombed tonight. Fire department did a good job, but I don’t know how much I can salvage. Call me back and let me know what to do next. Thanks.” She hung up and let the phone slip to the rug.
Brenda was a professional, and had to know the steps for dealing with the nuts and bolts of a claim. Paperwork, phone calls, emails. Impersonal. But that didn’t stop the cold grip that squeezed the back of Mariana’s neck.
Ty had eased that. He knew the violence of the world. And he seemed to understand her. That uncanny perception of his had a way of slipping past her guard. He was probably doing it just then, staring at his ceiling and seeing her rubbing her hands together in an attempt to wring out the tension.
It had been months since the guest room had been used, when Sydney had brought a special bottle of wine and the two had cooked dinner and stayed up way too late. Inviting Ty to stay had taken all her resolve. After all that had happened that night, an empty house would’ve only amplified her anxiety. But when she’d shown him to the guest room, with the made bed against one wall, she was hit with just how intimate the silences between them had become.
Talking about what Frontier Justice had been and what Ty wanted it to be again had occupied her mind like an unfinished puzzle. She’d put the pieces together as he’d spread them out. There were still gaps, like why the old photos had come into her family’s possession, even though none of the people in them had ever been identified as her ancestors. It hadn’t been the time for too many questions, though. Any more information would’ve been overload.
She picked up her phone and walked to the bed, turning what Ty told her over again to see if she could draw any conclusions from what she knew about her own family. The Italian side had come from southern Italy and had started out as farmhands until they could buy their own spreads and plant the kinds of foods they understood. It didn’t take long for them to make ties with the Mexicans in California, marrying into old, established families. Their voices surrounded her, rising up from the earth of the orchard.