Devast would follow their planted trail. Mercer and the EOD agents could capture him.
And Tina would be able to head back to her old life.
He pushed open the bar’s door. His gaze swept the area, checking for any threats and, when he was satisfied, Drew gave a nod to the bartender. The redhead raised her brows when she saw him. Like Sarah, this woman had ties to the EOD. The bartender’s brown gaze flickered toward the Staff door.
A band was playing. A somebody-did-me-wrong slow tune. Three couples were still on the dusty dance floor.
Drew eased past them. Tina glanced over at the couples, hesitating.
“Come on, Doc,” he said. “We need to go.”
A sad little smile tilted her lips, but she followed him. Just past the Staff door, a narrow flight of stairs waited for them. Drew had actually been to this bar a time or two before. He’d crashed here between missions, so he knew exactly how to find the hidden key to the upstairs apartment. They headed inside, and he secured the door.
“The bar will close by four,” he told her, putting the motorcycle helmets down. “Then it will be dead quiet, and you can have plenty of time to rest.”
That same smile—one that looked a little sad and a little lost—curved her lips as Tina ditched her blond wig. “And when I wake up again, I’ll go back to my old life?”
He nodded. “That’s the plan.” A fast and frantic plan that he’d had to make as soon as he realized exactly how Devast must be tracking them.
The music drifted lightly in the room, muted, so that he couldn’t clearly hear the singer’s words, but he could easily hear the guitar’s strains. The low melody was sad and soft.
Tina brushed her hand through her hair. “I never thought so much could change for me in just a few days.”
“You’ll be back to safety soon.”
“Safety.” She seemed to be tasting the word. “Yes, I guess I will be safe again.” She glanced toward the bed. Narrow, only built for one.
Drew cleared his throat. “You take the bed.” He could crash in the chair. If he could crash. Ever since he’d gotten that call from Devast, his body had been tight with tension and too much adrenaline.
He’s not the first person who thinks he can buy my allegiance.
But this wasn’t about allegiance. Not really.
It was about Tina.
There were some things in this world that money would never be able to buy.
Tina didn’t advance toward the bed. Instead she turned and walked closer to Drew.
The tension in his body got even worse. Hell, if the woman was about to try her hand at seducing him, she wasn’t going to need to try too hard.
Any time she got close to him, desire pushed through him and he wanted. Not an easy need. Frantic and fast. Consuming. Not safe, when safety was what she seemed to need so badly.
“Drew...”
The way she said his name had him clenching his hands into fists. Husky, sexy. She’d been running for her life that night. He needed to back off, but if she was saying—
“Will you dance with me?”
That was not what he’d expected the doc to say. Drew just stared at her.
Then he saw the color flood her cheeks. The embarrassment because she thought he was rejecting her.
“Never mind.” She spun away from him. “That was stupid. I—”
He caught her shoulders in his hands and slowly pulled her around to face him. “I’m not much of a dancer.”
Her lashes lifted. She gazed up into his eyes. “Neither am I.”
No, she didn’t understand. “My life is about missions and violence. Following orders and getting the job done.” His left hand slid down to the curve of her waist. His right caught her hand and cradled her fingers in his.
Her br**sts brushed against his chest as she stepped closer to him. Her scent filled his head. Strawberries shouldn’t make a man feel drunk, but her scent worked better than wine on him.
“There wasn’t a lot of dancing when I was young,” he confessed to her. The music was still playing from downstairs. “There wasn’t a whole lot of anything.” Except a kid on the path of destruction. A mother with a heart that was breaking because she couldn’t seem to stop her son.
His feet moved. Slowly. Carefully. “I won’t ever be the polished guy.” Not the one who could blend in at any party or ball.
Her movements matched his. But she wasn’t awkward. She was graceful and perfect.
His doc.
He took his time, trying to give her what she wanted because making her happy mattered to him.
“There’s more to you,” Tina said softly as she glanced up at him with eyes that seemed to gaze right into his soul, “than just bullets and combat.”
She didn’t understand. It was the combat that had saved him. “When I was eighteen...” His fingers tightened around hers. At eighteen, Tina had watched her parents die. And at eighteen, Drew had been trying to find his life. “I had a choice. Get my life in order, join the army, or find myself in jail.”
“Jail?”
“I told you before I wasn’t the good guy back then.” He’d been the guy always looking for trouble, and finding it. “I was on a crash course with destruction. I knew what waited in my future, and it wasn’t pretty.”
“Why?” No judgment. No censure. Just curiosity. “What was happening to you?”
The music kept playing. So he kept dancing with her, bringing her even closer to his body as they moved so slowly around that little room.
“My old man didn’t want to be a father, and my town... Hell, ‘poor’ didn’t even describe it. There was no way out for us. My mom was trying, but she couldn’t make enough to take care of me and my three sisters.”
For an instant she stilled.
“Crime was the way to make money for them. So I did whatever I could. Whatever I had to do. The only law I followed was my own.”
He waited for her to stop looking at him with such trust in her eyes.
Only, she didn’t.
They kept dancing.
“I stole,” he confessed. “I cheated. I found myself in the back of a patrol car a dozen times.”
“What made you change?”
The money had been good. He’d finally been able to buy nice clothes for his sisters. For his mother. My mom... “My mother cried over me. When the cops came—when they were taking me back to juvie—she begged me to stop.”
He could still see her tears. “I wanted to help her, but all I was doing was hurting her worse.”