Fasten your seat belt...

You’re in for a white-knuckle ride.

Posing as criminal syndicate drivers, heiress Stephanie Shun and mechanic Arash Shamshiri want to take down a human trafficking ring. Each thinks the other is a bona fide member, but neither can resist the sparks igniting as they speed into a nightmare of revenge, danger and desire. And if they can’t trust their hearts, there’s bound to be a crash!

NICO ROSSO was a writer in search of a genre until he was introduced to romance by his wife, Zoë Archer. He’s worked in many forms and was deeply honored to have one of his romantic suspense novels be a finalist for the RWA RITA® Award. When he’s not writing, Nico can be found in his shop, building furniture for the California home he shares with his wife and their cats.

Also by Nico Rosso

Renegade Protector

Countdown to Zero Hour

One Minute to Midnight Seconds

to Sunrise

Heavy Metal Heart

Slam Dance with the Devil

Ménage with the Muse

The Last Night

Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk

Undercover Justice

Nico Rosso

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ISBN: 978-1-474-09382-8

UNDERCOVER JUSTICE

© 2019 Zachary N. DiPego

Published in Great Britain 2019

by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF

All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.

By payment of the required fees, you are granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right and licence to download and install this e-book on your personal computer, tablet computer, smart phone or other electronic reading device only (each a “Licensed Device”) and to access, display and read the text of this e-book on-screen on your Licensed Device. Except to the extent any of these acts shall be permitted pursuant to any mandatory provision of applicable law but no further, no part of this e-book or its text or images may be reproduced, transmitted, distributed, translated, converted or adapted for use on another file format, communicated to the public, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher.

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Version: 2020-03-02

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Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

About the Author

Booklist

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Epilogue

About the Publisher

Chapter One

Stephanie Shun didn’t steal cars. Her father had always told her if there was a car she wanted that someone wasn’t willing to sell, there were people they could hire to steal it for her. But she’d stopped listening to him long ago, around the time she decided that his criminal empire tucked into a corner of Chinatown, San Francisco, wasn’t the legacy she wanted to be buried under.

And yet here she was, crouched next to a car in a dark parking lot, prying the plastic cover off the side-view mirror. To anyone who might catch her, it would look like she was a car thief, and that was exactly what she wanted. This job was the first step to ingratiating herself with a crew of drivers who contracted out to the worst criminals on the West Coast, and it had to look perfect. Nobody could know she was stealing her own car.

Once she had the side-view mirror cover separated out enough to spot a collection of thin wires, she placed a plastic wedge in the gap and pulled a multi-tool from her belt. Even if it was her car, bought and paid for with the profits from her various investments, it was still a crime to threaten the bodywork of the sleek Mercedes. Striving to minimize any exterior damage, she selected one of the wires and stripped the insulation from a section using the knife of the multi-tool.

Footsteps froze her. It was after three o’clock in the morning, and still someone was up on the second floor of the private parking lot to retrieve their car. One of the hazards of committing crimes in a city as populated as San Francisco: there was activity at all hours. She coiled her body by the front wheel, in case anyone was searching below the chassis. The buzzing lights on the concrete ceiling created deep shadows for her to hide in. She knew she was undetected by the security camera, but an individual might spot her, even though she wore all black and carried a black bag.

The quick pace of the footsteps put her mind at ease. A guard would’ve been less direct, but this person had no intention of lingering in the parking lot. They got into their car and closed the door. Stephanie used the sound of the engine starting to mask her retrieving an electronic device from her bag. Headlights turned on three rows over, making her shift her feet so they were in the shadow of the wheel next to her.

But the other car didn’t move. Checking their phone? Waiting for the heater to kick in? The night was cold, but Stephanie shivered with a deeper chill. Her watch read 3:21 a.m. The instruction from the driving crew boss was that she had to have a stolen car on the road by 3:30 a.m., when he would text her the next move. If she botched this job, it would kill her chances to get in with the crew. And if that happened, the ultimate target could slip through her fingers.

This was the one shot to find human traffickers who’d eluded law enforcement for too long. And while Stephanie had access to the law’s resources, she didn’t have to play by their rules. That was the point of re-forming Frontier Justice over a hundred years after her ancestor had first helped create the organization. The vigilante group wasn’t exactly legal then, or now, giving her the space she needed to go after the bad guys.

The other car in the parking lot finally chugged into gear and crept up the aisle. It was a risk, but the clock was ticking, so she resumed her work on stealing the Mercedes before the other car completely descended this level. She attached a small metal clip to the exposed wire in the side-view mirror and plugged that into the electronic device in her hand. The dim screen immediately started scrolling with information taken from the central computer of the coupe. Pushing buttons on the side of the screen narrowed the focus of the data scan until she located the factory-set key codes for the car.

She adjusted a mode switch on the side of the handmade device, pressed another button to broadcast the captured code and the doors to the Mercedes unlocked. Of course, she could’ve done all that with the key fob that sat in her Pacific Heights condo, but that wouldn’t make this theft look legit to the driving crew.

After detaching the clip from the wire and replacing the side-view mirror cover to a near-perfect standard, she eased open the passenger-side door and pushed her bag into the footwell. She climbed over the seat and slid behind the steering wheel. A press of the button on the dash brought the Mercedes purring to life.

She was going to miss driving this car. Undoubtedly, once she delivered it to the driving crew they’d replace the VIN and sell it on the black market. All the registration paperwork was tied to a shell company she owned that could never be traced back to her, thus maintaining her reputation for the criminals.

The sleek two-door coupe slithered from its parking spot and down the aisle. She checked her watch; still on time. Barely. As she eased the car down the circular ramp, she wondered if maybe she should’ve stolen her Audi that was parked one floor away. Or the Subaru tuned for street racing in her condo garage. But as much as she loved the handling of the coupe, she was ready to move on from this Mercedes. One of the last passengers she’d had was a first date that had fizzled as soon as the tech entrepreneur’s eyes had lit up while asking her about her father. It wasn’t the first time a man was more interested in dating Eddie Shun’s daughter rather than seeing her as simply Stephanie Shun.

All for the best, she sighed to herself. She’d gotten her thrills collecting the pieces to Frontier Justice and shooting at armed guards on a multimillion-dollar estate near San Jose during their very first mission. The first mission of this century, at least.

And there was no way that date would’ve acted as lookout while she’d stolen her own car.

She drove to the front gate of the parking lot, which lifted automatically, and slipped through, casually using her hand to obscure her face for the security cameras. Any guard there would’ve recognized her, but the whole gambit had to be airtight. If the information Frontier Justice had collected from police and FBI communications, as well as underworld rumors, was correct, the driving crew was tied to human trafficking run by the Seventh Syndicate, and those bastards didn’t miss a detail.

One block away from the parking garage, the phone she’d bought and set up for this mission buzzed with a text from the head of the driving crew, Ronald Olesk. She’d never actually met Olesk, but had made contact through a friend of a friend of a friend. The message was simple. A time and address.

“Son of a...” Tension rang in tight coils up her spine. She had ten minutes to get there. At this time of night, it shouldn’t be a problem. The real trouble was the address. It was a warehouse owned by her father.

* * *

THE LAST TIME Arash Shamshiri had robbed someone, he thought he was going to die. Maybe not that night, but he’d known that if he’d continued with that life he would’ve wound up with a bullet in him. Yet here he was, letting his muscle memory take over as he picked the lock to an office on the second floor of a warehouse catwalk.

He’d already cased the patterns of the guards from an upper window. Dim lights high in the warehouse turned everything into a mosaic of black and green. He’d creaked the window open during a gust of wind that had made the whole building groan. Climbing across girders and down steel supports had been the easy part. Now he was on the same level as three of the guards, scraping his old lock picks against the tumblers and knowing any second there would be shouting followed by shooting.

Luckily he hadn’t completely lost his touch and the lock gave way. The guards were at the farthest point of their rounds. He opened the door just wide enough to slide inside the office. Breathing slow in an attempt to keep his heart from pounding out of his chest, he crouched among the desks and file cabinets. Somewhere in this mess was the single piece of paper he’d been tasked to find.

It was a test. He’d known that when the instructions arrived in a text from Ronald Olesk. But it was a test he couldn’t fail. Arash knew how these gangs worked: prove yourself and you were in the door. Keep proving yourself and you gained their trust.

Once those murderers thought he was one of their own, he could strike.

But before he could think about revenge, he had to find the schedule for Eddie Shun’s produce trucks. The most up-to-date one would be on the top of any stack. From the way the broccoli and brussels sprouts were smelling on the warehouse floor, it was time to move them out. The drivers would probably arrive in just a couple of hours.

He checked a clock on the wall. Damn, it had taken longer to get into the office than he anticipated. The text from Olesk had been very specific. Arash was to get to the location on foot. His ride away from the warehouse would be arriving at 3:40 a.m. and departing before 3:41 a.m. He had four minutes to find the piece of paper and get to the street.

Panicking wouldn’t get this job done. He focused on the space. He’d been a truck driver before, making predawn deliveries while working his way through trade school. Manifests and schedules were always flying through these offices. The large desk at the center was the hub. He crept there and craned his head up to look over the surface.

The first thing he saw was one of the guards walking past the safety-glass windows that made up one side of the offices. Arash froze and his pulse thundered in his ears. He knew if he ducked out of the way too quickly the movement would tip the guard off. The man’s silhouette continued past the windows, then around another stretch of the catwalks.

Arash eased out a breath and refocused on the desk. Askew on one corner was a clipboard. Its grease-stained edges showed that it had traveled from the warehouse floor and back up to these offices. Keeping his eyes on the front windows, he stretched his arm out and snatched the clipboard back.

The content on the page was illegibly dark. He had a very powerful flashlight in his jacket pocket, but that would surely alert every guard in the place that he was picking through their business. He got as low as he could and crept toward the front windows to let the warehouse light bring the text into focus. The date at the top was today and the shipping times were all laid out in a grid with truck numbers and cargo.

Arash released the page from the clipboard and folded it into his jacket. He replaced the clipboard on the desk, then returned to the front door of the offices. The clock on the wall told him he had two minutes to meet his ride out of there. Not enough time to sneak his way back up to the roof. Hell, there wasn’t enough time to walk out the front door.

He stood up and opened the door to the office. He had to run, right past the guards.

* * *

STEPHANIE HADN’T WORN any rings, in case they’d caught the light and given her away while stealing her car, but now she wished she’d brought at least one so she could release a fraction of the tension by twisting it around her finger.

Her mother had always hated the habit. She’d wanted Stephanie to pick one set of jewelry and wear only that to demark her presence in the world. Changing it out every week had kept her grounded, though. A variety of rings felt differently on her fingers, making her focus on her hands. She hadn’t been ready to define herself as a teenager straining against a family and lifestyle she hadn’t chosen, and still wasn’t.

3:40 a.m. If her pickup wasn’t here in the next minute, she had to leave. Whoever they were, why the hell hadn’t they been early? Every second that ticked by with her parked in the shadows near her father’s warehouse was another opportunity for doom. If he found her there, her cover would be blown. And she had to operate with the confidence that Olesk and his crew had no idea who she was.

A side door on the warehouse slammed open. She jumped, startled, then quickly gathered her composure and put the car in gear. She’d stolen the ride, and now her job was getaway driver. A single figure sprinted onto the sidewalk, then toward her as she approached. Shadows enveloped him; she couldn’t pick out any of his features. He reached the car and threw open the passenger door.

Just then, two more men emerged from the warehouse door. One of them limped. Both held pistols. Her pickup leaped into the car and slammed the door closed. “Get us out of here.” He didn’t yell, but his urgency was unmistakable.

Not that she needed encouragement. The two armed guards were enough. She hit the gas and zipped past them before they could bring their guns up. The car handled the next corner perfectly and they were quickly away from the warehouse.

Her passenger was twisted around in his seat to watch the rear. When he turned to the front, she could finally steal a look at his face. Intense dark eyes peered forward. Black hair was pulled back into a short ponytail, accentuating his chiseled cheekbones and pronounced nose. He had a trim goatee. His mouth was set in a grim line. She guessed he was Middle Eastern, and honestly would’ve been happy to spend more time examining this handsome thirtysomething-year-old man’s distinctive features, but the street curved ahead again. And he was a member of a criminal driving crew she was intent on taking down.

He turned again to scan beside and behind them, bringing his shoulder and broad chest close to her in the small coupe. His body was covered in black clothes, but the cords of his neck and the energy that radiated from him showed how strong he was.

“Damn it...” he growled.

“Did you get what you went there for?” She couldn’t allow this job to go sideways and ruin her chance with Olesk.

“Of course I did,” he shot back. “Why do you think I was running away?”

“Then what’s the problem?”

“Three cars with their headlights off following us are the problem.” He pointed to a street parallel to theirs. Two sport-tuned compact cars and a high-end sedan prowled into an intersection, then veered directly toward Stephanie and her passenger.

She sneered, “Awesome,” and stood on the accelerator. Her passenger tugged his seat belt on and braced himself against the door frame. They zipped through the flat streets of the Dogpatch neighborhood, but she couldn’t shake the pursuers. “What’s your name?” she asked through a clenched jaw.

“Arash.” He continued to turn, tracking the other cars.

“Okay, Arash, in the side pocket of my bag at your feet is a transponder.” If this man was skilled enough to steal something from Eddie Shun, then he should be able to figure it out. Though he wasn’t so masterful that he got out of the warehouse undetected.

He pulled the bag into his lap and dived into the side. “Got it.” Holding the device up, he said, impressed, “These things are expensive.”

“Who says I bought it?” In fact, she had, from a third-party contact she had in the black market.

“Slick.” His gaze scanned her for a moment and she thought she detected a quick heat of attraction. It inspired an unexpected bloom of warmth across her chest. The two of them raced over the San Francisco streets and for the first time in a long time, she felt a little reckless. She shut it down immediately and focused on the road. Arash cooled, as well. He turned to the device in his hands. “You used this to get the Mercedes?” His thick fingers traced up the lead wire with the metal clip. “Picked up the key code from the CAN bus in the main computer.”

“Can you operate it?” There was no time to walk him through. The other cars were gaining, and she was going to run out of streets and wind up in the bay within a few blocks.

“Get me close.” He clicked over the device, and her quick glance told her he was setting it up to give the oncoming sedan a false key code. Like he’d read her mind.

“Ready?” She eased off the gas enough to allow the oncoming cars to close the gap.

“One second.” He continued to adjust the transponder.

Her composure threatened to crack. The cars were too close. Sweat chilled her arms. If any of those guards saw her, they’d know who she was. And if she screwed up this job, her chance to infiltrate Olesk’s crew would be ruined. “Time’s up.”

“I’m good.” Arash held up the device and looked out the back window. “Closer. We have to be within—”

“Three feet,” she finished for him. “I know.”

“Then put us in the sweet spot,” he clipped. One of the sports cars broke off from the formation to flank her. The other held tight to the closing sedan. She slowed, her heart racing, until the sedan nearly brushed her back bumper.

“Not yet!” she called out. Before Arash could question her, she yanked the steering wheel to the right and commanded, “Now!”

Arash hit the button as the sedan was swerving to adjust to her sudden move. The riding lights flashed on the sedan, then the car went dead. The sports car that had been next to it couldn’t get out of the way in time and jammed into the side of the sedan. Both the cars ground to a stop. Arash barked a harsh laugh of victory. “I have to get one of these.”

“Don’t steal mine.” She shared a glance with him, again shocked by the heat in the brief look. Was she turned on? No. Not by a criminal.

“Broadcasted key codes won’t work on the tuner.” He jammed the transceiver back into her bag. “Totally different security system.” One car remained on their trail. Her action with the sedan had slowed her down enough for it to keep a steady pace now. And it was gaining.

She sped through the streets, hugging corners and scanning ahead for anything she could use to stop the other car. Arash reached into his jacket and pulled out a dark metal object. Ice spiked through her nerves. “We don’t need a gun,” she growled. Whoever was chasing them was an employee of her father. While his businesses weren’t 100 percent legal, they also didn’t involve the kinds of crimes that hurt people. Like human trafficking.

To prove what she said, she navigated quickly into an alley and gained ground on the last car. Arash answered, “I’m not packing on this run.” He displayed the object in his hand, a heavy-duty flashlight. “But I can still punch back.” The passenger window glided down, blasting cold, briny air into the car. He leaned out the window and extended the flashlight back. Suddenly the alley behind her was filled with bright white strobing light.

The next street arrived and she steered hard to the left. The driver behind must’ve been dazzled by the strobe, because the sports car turned early and jammed its nose into the side of a building. Metal and plastic crunched. The last car was out of the race.

But she didn’t let off the speed until they’d slipped completely out of the neighborhood. Easing into the flow of the few cars on the road, she started to drive like a civilian. Arash rolled up the window and gave her an approving nod. “Nice wheel work.”

“Nice work riding shotgun.” It was way too easy to flirt with this man. This criminal.

Arash’s crooked smile disappeared into a thin line when he pulled out his buzzing phone. “Text from Olesk.” Her awareness sharpened. Nerves prickled. The first test was a success. What was next? Arash continued, “It’s the address where we’re to meet him.” His dark gaze stared ahead. His voice was low and serious. “We have two hours to get to Sacramento.”

The gravity of the message shook deep into her bones. The mission for Frontier Justice had started, and the only way to go was forward. Olesk and his crew were out there waiting, and she was headed right toward them with one of their own riding next to her.

She steered the car toward a highway, already past the point of no return.

Chapter Two

Arash’s hands itched without a steering wheel in them. His foot pressed against the floor of the Mercedes, even though there was no gas pedal beneath it. He always drove. Not that the woman in the driver’s seat couldn’t. She’d handled the machine like she was part of it.

His pulse was still racing, even though they’d long lost their pursuers and were on the dark highway to Sacramento. Damn, but it had been sexy to see her pretty lips curled into a sneer as she bared her teeth during the chase. Her dark eyes had somehow remained cool while she’d assessed the road ahead and the cars coming after them. The sleek angles of her black bob haircut fit her perfectly.

He hadn’t been thinking about any of this while Eddie Shun’s men were bearing down on them. But once they were in the clear, he’d been hit by the charged thrill of watching her drive and how they’d worked very well together. Too well.

“I didn’t get your name.” He couldn’t find many personal details looking at the Asian woman who seemed to be around his age. No jewelry. Her manicure was neutral. Even her black, military-style jacket was lacking any logos or brands.

“Stephanie.” She kept both her hands on the steering wheel, not offering one to shake.

“Good to be riding with you.” He leaned back in the seat but couldn’t get any calm to sink into his muscles. The car rocketed through the night, toward a fight he couldn’t wait to start, but he didn’t know how or when. He wasn’t driving. This badass woman was, he kept reminding himself, part of the gang he was going to destroy. It took some effort to keep his voice casual. “Been rolling with Olesk long?”

“First gig.” Her cautious gaze pierced Arash for a split second, then returned to the black highway.

The information resonated like a gunshot. He tried to use it to shape more of what he knew of Stephanie, but he couldn’t find enough pieces to bolt together. She could’ve been lying, but that would be found out as soon as they arrived at Olesk’s place. He examined the angles of telling her his own truth and couldn’t find any reason not to reveal just a little. “Mine, too.”

“Have you met Olesk?” This time when she assessed him there was a little surprise in her eyes.

“Nothing face-to-face.” Tension hummed in his spine, not knowing what he was going to do when he was finally in the same room with the man responsible for Marcos’s death.

“So we’re both on the trial run.” She looked him over again, and he felt like she might have X-ray vision the way she took him apart. “What did they send you into the warehouse for?”

He took the piece of paper from his coat and unfolded it. “Shipping orders for today. From Eddie Shun, no less.”

She clicked her tongue, nodding, impressed. “You managed to do it.”

“And you got me out of there.” He put the paper away.

“We passed this test.”

So she was heading into the unknown, too. Her face was unreadable in the dash lights. “Olesk will be lucky to have you on the crew. Where’d you learn to push a V8 biturbo like that?”

“I went to private school with a bunch of rich kids.” A sly smile crossed her lips. “There were a lot of expensive cars to wreck.” She kept her eyes on the road ahead. “But their parents still never paid attention.” When she finally turned to him, it was to blink slowly with that smile still on her face. He saw the truth of her words within her nonchalant attitude. And something else, deeper in her look. What she’d seen, and lived, still dwelled in her. He found himself drawn to that depth, wanting to discover what it was she’d learned from her side of life.

“You picked a winner.” Before he stared at her too long, he snapped himself back to the moment and ran his hand over the dashboard.

“I’d cased it for a couple days and it hadn’t moved out of its parking spot.” She patted the steering wheel. “Machine like this needs to run.”

And Stephanie seemed like the perfect person to own the streets with the sleek beast. “And clean.” He opened the glove compartment and found only the normal paperwork. There wasn’t a fast-food napkin in sight. The floor mats in the back seat looked like they’d never been touched by the sole of a shoe. “Whoever’s car this is, she was...meticulous.”

“How do you know it was a woman?” she challenged.

“Perfume.” The dark spiced aroma had hit him once he’d been able to breathe easily after the chase. “It’s different from yours.”

“I’m not wearing any.”

“Your soap, then.” The cabin of the car suddenly seemed especially small. Intimate. Like he’d had his face close to the skin of her neck.

She rubbed her thumb along the side of her finger in a slow meditation, then abruptly stopped to grip the steering wheel. Her gaze remained forward. “Breaking and entering, theft, perfuming. What else can you do?”

“I can drive anything with wheels. Tear it down and build it back up again.” Was he bragging or flirting? “If it has a motor, I can make it sing.” Stick to bragging, he scolded himself. There was no room for a hookup with this woman in his plans for Olesk and Olesk’s crew.

“Bet you didn’t learn all that in private school.”

“I’ve been seriously in the grease since I was fifteen.” Marcos had been right next to him. Until addiction and the need for easy cash pulled Marcos away, leading him ultimately to Olesk. And his death.

“When I can afford one of these—” she tapped the gearshift “—I’ll call you to work on it.”

He laughed, again the car feeling smaller than before. The early-morning hour seemed to dress a heavy curtain around these moments with the mysterious Stephanie. “A ride this fine never comes into the shop where I wrench. Only mechanics with white coveralls and stainless-steel calipers are qualified to tune these machines.”

“So if we break down out here in the middle of nowhere, you couldn’t fix it?”

“Hell, yeah, I could.” As long as it wasn’t the computer brain. “I’ll bet you could, too.” He pulled the transceiver out of the side pocket of her bag. He’d only heard of these multithousand-dollar devices used to break into the most tech-heavy cars, and had never handled one. It was clearly made on someone’s bench, but it was solid and had already proven itself.

“I know my way around combustion.” Stephanie shrugged and ran a fingernail down the edge of her bob, straightening it along the side of her cheek.

Now he wanted to see her wiping her greasy hands on a rag while standing over a purring engine. His own heart started thumping at the rate of the fantasy pistons until he shoved the transceiver back into the bag and tried to erase the image from his head. “What other gear is in here? Police radio scrambler? Attack drone?” He hauled the bag into his lap.

“Changes of clothes.” She grabbed the bag and slid it into the back seat. “Private changes of clothes.”

The tenuous intimacy cooled. “So you knew we’d be road-tripping?” She’d said this was her first gig for Olesk, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t tighter with the man and his crew than Arash was.

She shook her head. “I prepared for a few possibilities.” Her eyes assessed him with some disappointment. “You didn’t.”

He straightened his jacket and crossed his arms. Flashlight, knife, multi-tool, the cell phone he’d set up specifically for contacting Olesk. Not much else. “I’ve been focused on other things.” Like how to get into the gang without anyone knowing he was really there to destroy it.

“Plan ahead.” Stephanie settled in her seat, still alert, but not driving like they were being chased.

He’d always sucked at chess. His father had tried to teach him a couple of times, but he’d always been better at the backgammon games with his mother. More chance. Thinking on the fly. But Stephanie was right. Olesk had to be smart to operate a crew for this long without getting caught. Arash had to be smarter. He gave her a small salute. “Eight moves ahead.” One hour until Sacramento. Two hours until sunrise. He had to be ready for Olesk and anything else. That meant not getting twisted up in an attraction with a woman getaway driver. It didn’t matter that they’d handled the trouble in San Francisco perfectly, like dancing to the same rhythm. Stephanie was still the enemy.

* * *

TWO HOURS DRIVING through the early morning in a “stolen” car with Arash had stripped the insulation from her defenses. The chase through San Francisco hadn’t rattled her as much as the cautious conversations they’d used to learn about each other. Not that either was revealing all their truths. She knew he was hiding as much of himself as she was, though he probably wasn’t working secretly for an underground vigilante group. But she kept having to remind herself that this man, who listened with interest when she spoke, was part of the evil she was tasked with defeating.

“The next right.” Arash’s low, gravelly voice was more suited to the bedroom. He’d navigated them off the highway and toward a generic Sacramento suburb. The light from his phone revealed weary eyes. He took a long breath and sat up straighter, rallying. More life shined in his expression as he scanned the area.

She reset her focus. A new day was about to begin. She was about to meet Olesk. Any mistakes she made now would be deadly.

The workday around them had started before the sun, with cars and trucks and vans already on the road. The neighborhood she turned into seemed like it was still sleeping. Lights off. Cars cold. She tried to predict which house was her target but couldn’t make any of them seem more criminal than another. Olesk was slick.

But not perfect. “I see it.” She aimed for a two-story house covered in taupe stucco. A pickup truck parked on the street in front of it had a wider stance than what rolled off the factory floor.

Arash chuckled. “You’re good.” He put his phone away. “Someone threw some spacers on their pickup wheels.”

“The only nonstock car on the block.” She slowed the Mercedes and turned into the driveway. As soon as they crossed the sidewalk, the garage door opened. A line of white light widened ahead, until the space inside the two-car garage was completely exposed. A sport-tuned compact import car took up one spot.

“I hope they have a real shop to work in.” Arash cocked his head with a disapproving frown.

She pulled in next to the cluttered workbench, with only basic tools and a scattering of bottles of motor oil and detailing supplies. If Olesk and his crew were breaking down cars, they were doing it somewhere else. Nothing in the garage seemed illegal. Stacks of boxes, a rolling rack hanging with clothes covered in plastic. All perfectly normal to anyone who might be driving or walking past when the door was open.

The Mercedes purred to a stop and she shut it down. She didn’t have a moment to take a breath with the resting car before the garage door started closing behind her and Arash. He swung out of the car and faced a door at the back of the garage. She could see that the car ride hadn’t locked him up too much. His body was balanced, ready.

She took her time, collecting her bag from the back seat before getting out of her Mercedes one last time.

The door at the back of the garage opened. A tall white man in his thirties with shaggy blond hair filled the frame. His head was cocked to one side confidently, like he was looking at a piece of art he already understood. While his smile was friendly enough, if a little aloof, his eyes were hard. When he stepped down into the garage, Stephanie saw that a woman stood behind him. Blunt bangs dyed dark blue and a high black ponytail. This white woman in her late twenties didn’t move into the garage, but stared long, her mouth a thin line.

“Arash, Stephanie.” The man moved closer, hand extended. “Ronald Olesk.” Arash stepped to him and shook his hand. Stephanie did the same, happy it was just a brusque gesture, without a lingering touch. Olesk checked his watch. “Right on time.” His smile cooled. “Heard there was a little extra rubber laid on the ground.”

“We handled it.” Arash shrugged it off.

Stephanie tipped her chin up, not backing down from Olesk. “Just a little something to get the blood flowing.” The first step of her mission was in play. Now that she knew this location, she could start to put a target on Olesk’s back. But taking him down wouldn’t give her what she ultimately wanted. This deadly game wasn’t going to end quickly.

“You have good taste.” Olesk put his hands on his hips and assessed the Mercedes.

“I do.” She nudged the car with her hip, sorry to see it go.

The woman in the doorway craned her neck to look in. “Did you nick the fob off of someone?” She had an English accent and a judgmental sneer.

Stephanie answered as dryly as she could. “I pulled the factory key code off the CAN bus.”

“She’s got the tech.” Arash hooked a thumb toward Stephanie with a grin. “Thing of beauty.” His energy was so different than the other two. Comfortable and loose, he didn’t have to posture to prove he was tough.

The woman in the doorway narrowed her eyes on Stephanie, ignoring Arash. Olesk chuckled and said to Stephanie, “You’ll have to show Ellie that trick.”

“After some sleep.” It might be Olesk’s crew, but she didn’t have to act like a minion.

“Of course.” Olesk waved his hand toward the doorway. Ellie slipped away into the house. Stephanie stepped first to the door. As Arash passed Olesk, the blond man put his hand out. “You have my paperwork?”

Arash pulled the folded page from his jacket and slapped it into Olesk’s palm. It might’ve just been early-morning frayed nerves, but the move seemed somewhat aggressive to Stephanie, though Arash kept the smile in his eyes. If Olesk felt it the way she did, he didn’t show it.

Olesk unfolded the paper and looked it over, nodding. “You guys deliver good stuff.”

Arash picked up one of the empty bottles of motor oil from the workbench as he passed it. “I hope you didn’t bring me here just to do oil changes.” He tossed the bottle back; it clunked against the others, knocking them over in a noise too loud for this hour of the morning.

Olesk stopped walking and both Stephanie and Arash turned to him. Warning tension prickled up her spine. Her back was to the open doorway where Ellie had disappeared. Olesk ran his hand through his hair in what appeared to be a practiced move. “We’re the Slick Track Racers,” he explained. “Anyone mentions STR and you know that we’re the best at stealing cars, breaking down cars, fixing them up, moving them without being caught.” He took a dramatic pause. “Sometimes we do oil changes. Sometimes we get paid a lot of money to get someone’s merchandise from one place to another without a scratch, and without anyone knowing anything about it.”

She forced a casual look on her face while her blood boiled. The merchandise he was talking about were human beings, people trafficked by the Seventh Syndicate.

“I’m here for all that.” Arash nodded with approval, lowering her opinion of him.

“Good.” Olesk waved them toward the doorway again and they all moved into a featureless mudroom. “Because we need reliable people for a very important gig.” They passed a laundry room, then emerged into the kitchen. Empty packages of convenience food were stacked on the counters. There was no aroma of fresh cooking. “We had a problem with a conscience.” Olesk drew a horizontal line in the air with a long finger, as if demarking a border. “And we don’t want those.”

Ellie emerged from the other side of the kitchen with two white envelopes. She handed them to Stephanie and Arash, eyes still wary.

Olesk pointed at their envelopes. “Work solid, get paid.” Stephanie sneaked a peek into the envelope and riffled across eighty hundred-dollar bills. Anger continued to simmer beneath her skin. Blood money. The big gig he was talking about was what she really wanted. Then the STR and the Seventh Syndicate could go down in flames. Olesk walked them farther into the house. Few pieces of furniture littered the tan carpet, just enough to crash comfortably for a few hours. “Thom and Hector are sleeping. You’ll meet them tomorrow after they finish their assignments.” He stopped at an open doorway in an undecorated hallway. “This is you.” He pointed at Stephanie. “Bathroom’s down here. And on the other side’s Arash.” Wrapping his arm around Ellie’s hip, he ambled toward a flight of carpeted stairs. “We’re upstairs. Get your rest, take the morning off, get outfitted. Expect to move.” He sent Stephanie and Arash a wave as he ascended the stairs. Ellie didn’t look in their direction.

Arash stood outside his room for a second and turned to Stephanie. “Good night.”

“Good morning,” she answered wryly and stepped into her room. The door closed securely and luckily had a lock. Still, she wedged the back of a small chair under the handle. Arash’s last word wrapped around her like a thick blanket, muting sound and making her think about a possibility of meeting this man who seemed to balance easily with her somewhere where they weren’t surrounded by a criminal gang. Meeting him in a different life, when he wasn’t part of that same gang.

She sat on the bed and took out her phone. There were no details of her real self anywhere in the device. It would be so easy to send a text to Ty, Mariana and Vincent, the other members of Frontier Justice, to let them know where she was and that she’d made the first move into Olesk’s gang. Any kind of lifeline or reminder that she wasn’t alone. But if anyone in this house caught sight of that contact, she’d be dead.

The narrow mattress creaked as she stretched out, shoes still on. She dug her phone charger out of her bag and plugged it in. It rested on the small nightstand, next to the slim automatic pistol she laid within reach.

Thick curtains covered the one north-facing window. They should be enough to block the coming day. Still, she knew there was only time for a couple hours of sleep. This house wasn’t set up for long breaks, and Olesk’s energy revealed there were plans in the works.

Her heavy bones sank her deeper into the bed. She convinced herself not to worry about the sleep she was going to miss, and just to concentrate on the rest she felt in that moment. For now, she was alone. Despite the ease with which she and Arash worked together, he couldn’t be trusted. Frontier Justice was miles away, and she couldn’t call them in until she was much closer to her ultimate target. Her life was on the line to help others, just like her nineteenth-century ancestor on her mother’s side. Li Jie had emigrated from China to the American West, worked in the mines, lived through the collapses and dynamite and the racism. Many people had seen him as less than human, and legally he couldn’t testify against a white man in court, yet still he had the strength to help form the first Frontier Justice and fight for others who suffered under that same oppression.

He’d survived. Now she must do the same, to save countless people from Olesk and the Seventh Syndicate.

* * *

ARASH NEEDED TO SLEEP, but all he wanted to do was tear down the walls of the house around him. A man snored steadily in the next room. Arash would never feel that calm, that safe, until he knew that Olesk and the STR were wiped off the face of the earth.

Had Marcos been in this room? Lying on the mattress on the floor, resting between gigs for the gang? Olesk said he’d had a problem with a conscience. Arash knew who he’d been talking about. Marcos had been found dead in a car wreck on the highway south of Livermore. Arash hadn’t seen the body, but he’d found the twisted car in the scrap yard. And he’d tracked down the spot where it had happened. It wasn’t an accident. It was murder. Another car’s paint scraped into the side of Marcos’s vehicle. Tire tracks revealed the moment of impact, perfectly timed to send Marcos into the concrete pillar of an overpass.

Recounting all this wasn’t the way to get to sleep. Arash’s heart thundered with anger, thinking about his friend’s last race toward freedom. He’d texted Arash that night and asked for help. Marcos was finally looking for a way out of the spiral he’d gotten into. But forever after that text, that last contact, was...silence.

Arash took a long breath and focused his memory on Stephanie’s hands. Her fine fingers were so sure as she steered the Mercedes through the chase. Remembering her movements helped bring a bit of a hypnotic calm. He knew he shouldn’t be thinking of her this way. She couldn’t be trusted. But something about her ethic didn’t fit with Olesk and his crew. She wasn’t ruthless. She’d been against using a gun in San Francisco. He couldn’t hold Marcos’s death against her because she was new. But he didn’t know what side she’d be on when he decided to destroy Olesk and his drivers.

Chapter Three

Stephanie woke with a gun in her hand. Several other noises had pulled her from a thin sleep, but the footsteps down the hallway had her fully aware and gripping her automatic. The metal was cold, the chill extending all the way into her bones. This was the world she was in now. Any second she might have to make the choice to pull the trigger.

The footsteps took a turn into the bathroom and she soon heard water running. Her watch told her it was after eight o’clock. Not nearly enough sleep, but her own discomfort couldn’t matter until after this job was over.

She set her gun down and quickly changed into a fresh set of clothes before repacking her bag, including her pistol, and arranging herself for the day. The chair she’d wedged under the door handle remained in place; no one had tried to get in. She removed the chair and stepped into the empty hallway.

A second later, Arash opened the bathroom door. Water glistened in his dark hair, which had been released from its short ponytail to brush about his shoulders. He wore a tank top, revealing well-muscled arms and dusky skin. The flush of heat over her chest at seeing him this exposed proved that her body was still operational with little sleep. But she kept her face neutral and said only, “Morning.”

He ran his hands through his hair, showing off the muscles of his shoulders. When she could see his face again, he was wearing a small, pained grin. “Why you gotta hurt me like that?” His voice was low and gravelly. Straight out of the bedroom.

She cleared her throat to erase the image of his piercing eyes glowing in the early dawn, his body surrounded by a tousled bed. “The truth hurts.”

With a groaning laugh, he stepped out of the bathroom doorway and ambled toward his room. “What’re the chances there’s coffee around here?”

Ellie descended the stairs at the end of the hall with an answer. “Take the car in the garage.” She tossed him a set of keys. “Keep your kit with you. Be ready to jump.” She breezed past Arash and Stephanie without another word and disappeared out the front door of the house. An engine revved outside, then drove off. The house was quiet.

Stephanie was alone with Arash. “Two minutes,” she told him, then closed the bathroom door. She emerged within her time frame to find him in the kitchen, fully dressed in his clothes from yesterday, nudging boxes of breakfast cereal on the counter. He still wore his hair down, making him seem more accessible and less like the man she saw running from a crime scene the night before.

“I’m driving.” He dangled the car keys.

They went into the garage to find the Mercedes already gone. Her sense of loss was quickly swept away with the idea that the car had died a hero, getting her into Olesk’s gang. Arash didn’t seem to have any lingering feelings about it and climbed into the low sport-tuned import that remained in the garage. She tossed her bag into the back seat and climbed in next to him.

His hands hovered over the steering wheel and shifter for a moment. She understood this moment of assessing a vehicle before entering into a relationship with it. The car was modified and bare-bones. Racing seats and analog gauges. It didn’t even have floor mats. But when Arash turned the engine over, she could feel the power in the quick growl. She hit the garage door opener on the visor, letting daylight in. Arash put the car in Reverse and eased out.

“How is it?” She closed the garage once they were clear.

“It’s good.” He didn’t sound convinced. “But I could make it better.” Throwing it in First, he sped them away from the house. “Find us some breakfast, and a mall. I need clothes.” From the way he was squinting, he needed sunglasses, too.

She put on her own sunglasses and pulled out her phone to search for their next stop. Again, the urge to contact the others at Frontier Justice made her pause before switching to the navigation. But she was still far from being in a safe space. She knew the whole internal debate didn’t last long enough for Arash to see her hesitation. He drove without comment as she directed them toward a mall.

Lack of sleep put a frothy edge around the bright, cool day. Things grew more ordinary when they parked and walked to the chain coffee shop on the perimeter of the mall. The morning crowd was still in full effect, restraining Stephanie and Arash’s conversation to the bare minimum. They certainly couldn’t compare notes about their first night in the midst of a criminal gang.

She ate and felt more human with each sip of her latte. Arash leaned his elbows on the table, both hands around his cup of coffee. He glanced surreptitiously at the others around them before asking, “What do you normally drive?”

The unexpected question made her shiver, as if an intimate barrier had been crossed. “’74 Datsun 260Z.” No way would she have pretended to steal that one for Olesk.

He sat back and assessed her with surprise. And there was a hint of sadness in his eyes that blinked away before she could fully explore it. He mouthed a couple of words, then finally said, “You’re hot.”

“Changed the timing and compression ratio for more horses.” She adjusted the hang of her bob along her cheek. “Got the suspension low and tight, just how I like it.”

He moaned sensuously, drawing a couple of looks. After licking his lips, he ventured, “Color?”

“Brick red. Matte.”

“Hell, yes.” He thumped the side of his fist on the tabletop. A growing sexual energy in him caught her up. Breath ran hot in her and an effervescent tingle spiked her fingers and toes. And in a moment it was gone. Arash’s face frosted over and he focused back on his cup of coffee. “I’d like to see it sometime.”

She leaned forward and whispered, “Just don’t steal it.” Part of her missed the brief carnal connection they’d shared, but she knew it was for the best to keep this kind of contact shut down.

“No promises.” He stood and nodded toward the door. She moved with him and they were soon back in the bright, cold sun. They’d only walked a couple dozen yards from the coffee shop when a car started up nearby and Arash froze.

His sudden reaction sent her into high alert. Electric charges shot through her legs, ready to move. She’d left her pistol in her bag in the car, knowing they were in too populated an area to carry it, but she did have a switchblade in her pocket. “What is it?” she hissed, looking about for the threat.

“Can you hear it? Car trouble.” He motioned her toward the idling, twenty-year-old sedan in a nearby parking spot and approached the driver with a greeting wave. A Latina woman dressed for an office job sat in the front seat, eyeing him cautiously. He pulled up at a nonthreatening distance and pointed at the front of the car. “I’m not trying to sell you anything. I just heard a little problem.”

The driver rolled her window down, her gaze switching between Arash and Stephanie. “I’m on my way to work and I don’t have time...”

Arash kept his hands open and nodded. “I want to get you to work. No BS. If you could just rev the engine for a second.”

The woman kept her hand on the shifter, ready to throw it into Drive and run, but did give the engine some gas while idling. Arash cocked his head, then nodded again. He maintained his distance and turned to Stephanie. “Do you hear it?”

She listened to the revving motor and found nothing out of the ordinary for a car of that age and make. But when the driver released the gas and brought it back to idle, a faint metallic double knock caught Stephanie’s attention. “I think I got it.”

Arash turned his attention back to the driver. “So there’s a sound, a double knock, that goes away when you rev, but I hear it in your idle. Get your ride to a mechanic you trust and tell them that you might have a bad piston pin. They’ll track it down. Take care of it soon, before it turns into big trouble.”

The woman revved the engine again, squinting and concentrating when she brought it back to idle. Stephanie picked up the double knock again, but couldn’t tell if the driver detected the sound. The driver seemed less skeptical and warmed with a small smile. “Thanks. I’ll get it looked at.” She put her car in Drive and headed out of the parking lot, waving out the window before she turned onto the boulevard.

Once she was gone, Arash continued his walk across the parking lot toward the mall. Stephanie strode with him, studying his face out of the corner of her eye, trying to find the motivation for what he just did. Instead of looking smug, or downright cocky, his expression was neutral. “You’ve got a good ear,” she told him.

He stuffed his hands into the pockets of his jacket. In the light of day she saw that it was a simple black work jacket, heavy cotton with a corduroy collar. “Been living next to engines long enough.”

“But you’ve got a soft heart.” She couldn’t puzzle him out at all.

“Not when it comes to business.” His eyes hardened. He tipped his head in the direction where the woman had driven off. “I wasn’t going to make any money off that ride. Wasn’t going to fix it, steal it, part it out, joyride it or use it in a getaway. She was just trying to get to work, and I know a lot of people like that.”

Sure, that sounded on the level, but did he know that by taking the gig with Olesk, Arash would be running boys and girls for some of the worst criminals in the country? Those people were just trying to live their lives, as well. Stephanie’s chest tightened thinking about them. Before that anger took her over and she railed at Arash, she asked simply, “So what’s your ride?”

“Mazda RX-7 Turbo II, ’89.”

“I can see that.” He would fit well into the low-slung sports car, and there were plenty of opportunities to tune the ride into a well-handling street rocket. “White, with a turquoise roof?” It was from the ’80s, after all.

He chuckled. “Matte black, completely murdered out.” A hint of warmth cracked through his stony face. “That car...it’s what my parents would’ve driven if they’d had any money once they’d settled in the States after getting out of Iran in the late ’70s.”

She kept reminding herself to hate him, or at least that she couldn’t trust him, but hearing his softer tone when talking about his parents, or seeing the way he’d gone out of his way with the woman in the parking lot, Stephanie started to recognize that her job seeking justice was going to be way more complicated than she’d anticipated.

* * *

ARASH CURSED HIMSELF for helping the woman in the parking lot. He couldn’t make any more mistakes like that. Not while Stephanie or anyone else from Olesk’s gang was watching. She’d said he had a soft heart. Usually, he’d take that as a compliment, especially after all he’d seen growing up in the city. But a conscience had killed Marcos, and Arash had to stay alive to get revenge.

He hadn’t been able to read Stephanie when she called him out. She wasn’t directly looking down on him, or complimenting him, either. Her conscience remained a mystery. Under different circumstances, he’d try to trace her wiring, find out more of who she was. If this was just a simple road-trip fling, it would be different between them. So far there hadn’t been much friction. Neither was trying to pull too much leverage over the other.

As they walked past the sliding glass doors to the mall, he wanted to reach out and take her hand. Maybe they could rush away from Olesk and this mess together. Or he could convince her to run while she still had the chance. Then he could find her once it was all over. He kept his hands in his pockets. The urge was impossible. She’d wanted to join up with Olesk. How the hell could he convince her to break that? One wrong word to her and she’d go to Olesk, putting a target on Arash’s back. The only chance he had was to surprise the gang when they were all in one place. The big gig Olesk mentioned. He hated to think that he’d have to take Stephanie down, as well.

The morning people at the mall went about their business, wrangling kids, hurrying for last-minute items or strolling aimlessly like they had all the time in the world. None of them looked at Arash and Stephanie as if they were criminals. He navigated through the ordinary world, very much outside of it.

“Department store.” Stephanie pointed to a multilevel store that anchored one side of the mall. “That should set you up, and I need some things, as well.” She cruised forward, like she was completely comfortable in her skin.

While he was edged with bands of tension around his joints. Helping the woman in the parking lot was a lousy attempt to collect karma, and it hadn’t offset that he was a bad guy again. It didn’t matter if he had the best intentions. For the first time since running with burglars and car thieves in high school, he was part of a bad crew about to do bad things.

Stephanie stopped walking and stared at him as if waiting. He blinked at her and she spoke slowly. “Menswear.” She moved her gaze deliberately to a sign off to their right. “That coffee hasn’t kicked in?”

“Gonna need a gallon.” Not true. He was fully awake, mind buzzing between guilt and revenge.

“Rally,” she said. “Olesk could text any second and we have to be ready to burn.”

“I’m on.” He rolled his shoulders to move his blood.

“Do you need me to wait outside the dressing room?” she sassed.

“You can help me decide between boxers or briefs.” He was a breath away from inviting her into the dressing room and testing how well they really balanced.

She took her time looking him up and down, giving him the sensation of cool river water running along his body. A shiver shook him and he was left thirsty for more. She finally gazed into his eyes and blinked slowly. “Split the difference. Boxer briefs.” And she was gone, before he could answer or see if there was really a hint of heat in her eyes. She cruised easily toward the up escalator. He stared too long and she knew it, waving without turning around.

He turned and walked toward menswear. If she was watching from the escalator, he didn’t give her anything except a casual strut. But inside, he stormed. He barely paid attention to the clothes he was grabbing. T-shirts, spare pair of jeans, sweatshirts, all of them dark colors. It didn’t take long for his arm to be full, making his search through the socks and underwear more awkward than it should have been. Stephanie had called his bluff and identified his preferred underwear choice. No doubt she’d gloat if she saw the packages of boxer briefs on top of the rest of his pile of clothes.

A division of the menswear area had sport clothes and shoes, where he picked up a backpack to contain everything. In his normal life, he’d have been watching the price tags closer, but he had an envelope full of dirty cash in his jacket and wouldn’t miss it once it was gone.

Arash peeled some hundred-dollar bills out of the envelope and pocketed them before walking his clothes to the cashiers at the front of the store. The young black man manning his station was cheerful and bored. They went through the requisite small talk, Arash saying he didn’t need a bag because of the backpack. The cashier didn’t blink when Arash handed over the crisp cash to pay, then took his change.

While Arash was stuffing his new clothes into the backpack, he could see out the front windows of the department store and into the mall. On the floor above him, Stephanie walked out the doors of a cell phone carrier and disappeared up the walkway. She wasn’t moving too fast or looking over her shoulder, but it was still sketchy. He packed faster and hurried out of the department store with a thanks to the cashier.

When he hit the walkway in the mall, Stephanie was nowhere in sight. He got up to the second floor via a flight of stairs, trying to figure out all the justifications that she could’ve been at that store after not mentioning it before. And if she was doing something that wasn’t in the best interest of Olesk and the gang, would Arash tell them? The convolutions knotted around him.

“Did you get your tighty-whities?” Stephanie’s voice unfurled behind him.

He spun with surprise, unable to see how the hell she got there without him seeing her. He gathered his composure as quickly as possible. “Decided to go commando.” That got a little laugh out of her and the convolutions complicated into a deadlier web. He pointed at the black bag she always carried and looked in her face, not at the cell phone store behind her. “Get what you needed?”

“I did,” she said more cheerfully than he expected. “I’d forgotten a phone charger.” She opened her bag and showed a DC charger branded with the store name she’d left a few moments ago.

A clean alibi, but maybe too deliberate. “Seems like something a planner like you would’ve thought of.” He kept the tone casual.

“Not for the car.” She started walking toward the exit of the mall and he strode next to her. “Didn’t know we’d be on the move this much.”

“Good point.” He hadn’t even thought to bring along a wall charger.

“Don’t worry—it’ll charge two phones at once.”

“You do think of everything.” But he wasn’t entirely convinced she wasn’t sketchy. But then again, in the light of day, they were both crooks.

“Even had some time to buy some jewelry.” She held up her hand to show that two of the fingers were encircled with fine gold bands. One formed an X, the other crisscrossed, like the tracks of a planet orbiting her. “And...” Her hand disappeared into her bag before he stared at it too long. “I found something for you.” She produced a box containing a burly sport watch.

He took it as she offered it, but he didn’t open the box. The watch was definitely his style. But he couldn’t figure out what the endgame was for her. Part of him burst with a small flare of pleasure at her gesture. “I can’t take this.”

“It’s not from me,” she explained, holding out her palm in refusal to take it back. “It’s from the woman with the faulty piston pin.” A warmer light shined in her eyes, pulling him closer to her. “I know you didn’t do it to get paid.” Neither spoke for a moment.

“Thanks.” He opened the box and put the watch on his wrist.

Stephanie backed off a bit. He wanted to reach for the connection again, but he didn’t know if he could trust it. She fixed the edges of her hair. “Besides, Olesk has us on a tight schedule. I can’t have you driving and checking the time on your phone.”

“Always planning.”

“Exactly.” She reached into her bag again and produced a pair of black sunglasses, which she held toward him.

He backed away, shaking his head. “But I’m all out of good deeds.” Yes, he didn’t have any sunglasses and she took the time to notice. Any pleasure in her thoughtfulness was overshadowed by the complex and deadly maze he found himself walking blindly within.

“These are from me.” She stepped to him, sunglasses still extended. “If I’m riding shotgun, I can’t have my driver squinting into the sun.” Her face was serious, without a wry smile or irony in her voice.

The labyrinth around him shifted and spun. He’d steeled himself with heartless resolve for this journey of revenge and hadn’t expected to find any good here. But Stephanie wasn’t good. He had to keep reminding himself that to combat the lightness in his chest she could evoke with the smallest gesture.

“I’m your driver.” He took the sunglasses.

For a moment, they seemed exposed. He was free from the lies and the crime and faced her as a man facing a woman. She stared back at him boldly, without artifice. And there was a heat in her eyes, a reflection of the attraction that pulled him closer to her. Her lips parted with a breath, and he wanted so much to know what she tasted like. What she would feel like slammed against him.

Then the moment was gone. She stepped back and pulled her buzzing phone from her back pocket. “Olesk,” she explained, a slight huskiness in her voice. She cleared her throat and erased the warmth in her eyes. “We’re on the move. He says to get a full tank of gas and head east. More instructions to follow.”

The labyrinth erupted all around Arash again. He strode with Stephanie into the parking lot, slipping his sunglasses on. “I’m your driver.” And he couldn’t let himself feel anything anymore because every turn ahead was deadly.

Chapter Four

Stephanie spun one of the new rings around her finger. She slowed her breath and tried to keep the building tension from breaking her apart. Arash pumped gas into the compact racer while she sat in the passenger seat. Her cell phone rested on her thigh, ready for the next move. She couldn’t read Arash’s eyes behind the dark sunglasses she’d bought for him, but she could see his jaw was clenched. Both of them knew something was coming.

Whatever she was about to rush into, she had a sliver of confidence now that Frontier Justice had been updated on her situation. It had been a mad rush to get through the department store, then up to the cell phone place before Arash had made his way through his shopping. Luckily the young white woman set up the contract-free phone quickly, allowing Stephanie the time to call in her “stolen” car to her insurance company for the sake of verisimilitude in case Olesk was looking hard in that direction.

Texting Ty and the others from Frontier Justice her flood of information while standing in a service hallway of the mall had tested all her composure. She was sure some words were jumbled or autocorrected improperly, but she had to get everything out before sending one last message: This phone is burned. She’d pulled the battery and SIM card out, scraped the SIM card against the wall until it was unusable, then threw it all out in a trash can behind Arash before he’d spotted her.

But the man was sharp. As soon as he’d turned to her with suspicion in his eyes, she’d known he’d seen her at the phone store. She’d had all the excuses lined up, but still he’d remained cagey. Neither of them was on solid footing.

Especially once she’d given him the gifts. What had started as an honest want to repay him for helping the woman in the parking lot, and Stephanie’s selfish need to have her driver not wrapping their car around a power pole because the sun was in his eyes, turned too damn intimate too quickly. His appreciation for the gesture gave her way more of a thrill than she’d expected.

It had felt like they’d been speeding without brakes toward each other. Sometimes she longed for a reckless crash. This one, though, could have deadly consequences. Olesk’s text had come at just the right time.

Arash finished fueling the car and leaned into the open driver’s-side window. “Any word?”

She checked her phone, even though she’d looked at it two seconds ago. “Nothing.”

“Food allergies?”

“No, but I hate coconut.”

“What a shame.” He sauntered to the gas station convenience store, shaking his head the whole way.

Two seconds later her phone buzzed. Olesk texted them an intersection and a time frame. She was about to slide over into the driver’s seat when Arash returned, faster than he’d left. He tossed two bottles of water and a handful of candy bars into the back seat and rushed behind the wheel. The car was already out of the gas station and onto the street by the time he asked, “Where to?”

She read him the directions from the map, then checked the time. “Seven minutes.”

“I saw you going for the driver’s seat, but I couldn’t let you have all the fun.” His grin was wilder than his driving through the flow of traffic. She knew it wouldn’t take much for him to turn it loose. He pulled his phone from his jacket and handed it over to her. “Can you throw this on the charger?”

She hooked him up, then directed him through the next intersection. Their destination was close and they were running early for a change. Pride at a job well done was quickly tempered by the knowledge that she was aiding criminals. The same went for the rush she felt from the coordination between her and Arash. It didn’t matter who was driving and who was shotgun; they handled their jobs and kept each other moving. Her brief elation dived quickly into a sense of loss for what could’ve been in a very different world.

As soon as he hit a straightaway, Arash pulled a hair band from his pocket and swept his hair back into that small ponytail, fully revealing his sharp features. “Good call on the sunglasses.” He looked over to her for a second before turning his attention back to the road.

“They look fly.” She’d considered a couple frames before settling on these and was rewarded by him looking sexy and severe.

“You have good taste.” He shook his wrist to flash the watch. A perfect fit.

“Except when it comes to men.” If she really had good taste, she wouldn’t be feeling small electric thrills raining up through her as she looked over this car-thief criminal with his rough hands all over the steering wheel and shifter.

Instead of shutting him down like she’d hoped, it evoked a quick laugh and an even wilder smile. When he stood harder on the gas, making the engine moan, the bastard knew she couldn’t look away.

She reminded herself of everything at stake, cooled herself and flattened her voice. “After the next right is our intersection. We’re one minute early. Circle until I hear the next move.”

“Understood.” Arash must’ve known better than to push her any further and matched the businesslike tone.

Her phone buzzed. She read, “‘Run interference for white cube van with Nevada plates. Draw any cops off.’”

“I’ve got eyes on the truck.” He tipped his head to their left, where a medium-sized cargo truck trundled out of a storage-facility parking lot.

“You know them?” She didn’t recognize the driver or the man riding shotgun.

“No, but there’s Olesk and Ellie.” They were in a sport-tuned Subaru that was clearly straining against its muscle as it cruised half a block behind the truck. Olesk drove and Ellie rode passenger with a cell phone in her hand. She acknowledged Arash and Stephanie with a brief nod before swiveling her gaze to take in the area.

Stephanie did the same. “If they need us for interference, then they know someone’s onto this move.” There’d been a couple of local PD blips regarding Olesk’s gang in the Frontier Justice control center she’d helped install in Mariana’s farmhouse. It pulled radio signals, internet leads and poached cell phone conversations from law enforcement and back-channel sources in an attempt to track the Seventh Syndicate and other organizations that were attacking anyone who couldn’t defend themselves. Fitting that the hub of all this information was the home where Frontier Justice had started over a hundred years ago.

And Stephanie knew that farmhouse was still in good hands. Mariana was the perfect fit for Ty, both determined as hell. Their strong wills extended out to their unwavering care for the other, something Stephanie knew was a rarity in this world.

“Unmarked car at seven o’clock.” Arash shifted his vision from the side mirror to the road ahead. Stephanie snapped out of her thoughts and spun to check behind them. The dark brown car had state-exempt plates and a nearly invisible flasher bar in front of the visors.

“He’s driving like he means it.” The police car slipped past Olesk and Ellie, on the hunt. Instead of relief arriving with the police, Stephanie’s pulse kicked faster. Olesk and the STR couldn’t get busted before she’d pierced all the way to the Seventh. “Run him off.”

“Olesk has him.” Arash held back amid the normal traffic. The Subaru separated out and sped forward. After passing the unmarked car, Olesk swerved hard in front of it and raced up a side street. The police car couldn’t resist the bait. The light bar strobed on and its tires chirped before propelling it after the Subaru. “No discipline. Those cops should’ve stayed on their mark.”

“Whose side are you on?” she quipped, hoping no one would ever ask her that question.

“Cash money.” His mouth thinned. She locked a snapshot of the moment in her memory, to be pulled out every time she felt herself being drawn toward this man.

The cube van continued up the wide boulevard, and she started to predict the route. “They’re heading for the highway.” A police patrol car pulled quickly onto the street. “Cruiser.” There was no sign of Olesk or the unmarked car.

“On it.” Arash broke out of the normal flow of traffic but held two car lengths back from the police car. She surged forward in her seat and put her foot down like she had her own gas pedal. He shook his head. “We’ve got to know what they know. If they’re onto the truck, it doesn’t matter how many distractions we throw at them. Helicopters, roadblocks, highway patrol will come down hard.”

She knew he was right. Whatever intel the police were acting off must’ve been vague, because the patrol car seemed to be searching rather than following the truck directly. Even when it had a free lane to slide up behind the truck, it held back, and other cars filled in the space. “They’re hunting blind.”

Arash rolled his shoulders and snugged himself into the racing seat. “Let’s give them something to chase.” He downshifted and the car lurched forward with power, then it sped when he threw it into the next gear. Instead of sweeping past the patrol car, Arash steered off the boulevard and across the corner of a strip mall parking lot.

“Looks like you suffer from premature acceleration.” She watched in the side-view mirror as the police car disappeared up the boulevard.

Arash laughed and slowed the car. “He saw us,” he reassured her. “Didn’t want to make it look like we were deliberately distracting him from the real target.”

“That was Olesk’s move.”

“Exactly.” He pointed in the rearview mirror and she turned to see the patrol car coming after them along the residential street. “Too cocky.” He stepped on the gas. The cops didn’t hesitate to give chase and they were soon blasting past parked cars and winter-bare London plane trees.

It seemed like the police would catch up to them. Blue-and-red flashing lights were close enough to color the interior of Stephanie and Arash’s car. A voice came over the loudspeaker between siren blasts. “Stop the car. Stop the car and pull to the right.” Arash was only in third gear. “Stop immediately.”

Arash hung back another second, then stepped on the gas. The car shot forward, leaving the police voice a jumble behind them. The patrol car sped to catch up, but its engine could already be heard straining. She spun to watch the police, seeing the passenger on the radio. “Backup will be incoming.”

“Anyone who wants to get embarrassed is welcome to show up to this party.” Arash downshifted around a corner and put a full block between them and the pursuing police.

“You got your wish.” They pulled back onto the main boulevard just as two more marked police cars hurried into the area. The cops were quick to turn on their sirens and clear a path to Stephanie and Arash.

“Any sign of the truck?” Arash upped their speed but maintained a calm approach that never felt reckless.

She searched over the street and saw they were right by an on-ramp for the highway. “No truck. They must’ve hit the highway.”

“What the hell’s our next move?” Arash bared his teeth as he made another hard turn off the boulevard and into another neighborhood. The police had to stack one in front of the other, limiting their tactical maneuvers.

Stephanie looked over the map on her phone for any areas where they could lose this kind of pursuit. “Train tracks four blocks ahead and to the left might lead to a depot or warehouses we could lose these rollers in.” Her phone buzzed in her hand. “Text from Olesk. They lost their tail. We’ve got to do the same and hit the highway east. Clock’s ticking before the police scramble a chopper.”

Arash muscled the car around another hard turn, gritting out, “You know, this would go a lot better if that freaking mastermind let us in on the plan beforehand.”

“Don’t go right,” she called out after looking at the map. “Cul-de-sac.”

“I can work with that.” He veered right and slowed enough for the police cars to catch up.

“I’d have tried a different approach.” She tensed in her seat and braced her hand on the door panel.

“We can’t agree on everything.” He sped forward again, then yanked up on the emergency brake and jammed the steering wheel to one side. Tires screamed as the car’s rear swung an arc in the cul-de-sac to bring them one hundred eighty degrees around. Once they were facing the oncoming police cars, Arash released the brake and hit the gas. “That would be boring.”

The cops knew better than to play chicken and slammed on their brakes. The two cars staggered, blocking the way out. Arash charged forward, a small smile on his lips. She clenched her jaw and wrapped her fist around the handle above the side window. A hard impact could come any second. They were going fast enough to kill. At the last second, Arash swung the car off the road and into a driveway to the right. They bounced onto the sidewalk and paralleled the street for a second, sending the police cars to scramble into reverse.

Arash turned hard again, taking them over the curb and crossing onto the street between the two cop cars. One car slammed to a stop. The other swerved and fishtailed before jamming its rear into a parked car, blocking the first car from the action. Arash drove back off the street and onto the opposite sidewalk, which was clear enough to get them completely away from the cul-de-sac.

They cruised back onto a normal road, free from police. The engine calmed, but her heart still pounded. She gathered her breath and navigated Arash to the freeway on-ramp. He let out a long sigh once they were moving with the flow. But when they both spotted a highway patrol car stalking about a quarter mile ahead, the atmosphere tightened again in the car.

“Use that semi for rolling cover.” She pointed to a truck hauling a tall load of cargo. Arash nodded and eased the car alongside, between them and the highway patrol.

He kept pace with the truck, even though they had plenty of lane to pass and speed ahead. He grumbled, “Goes against everything I know about driving next to trucks.”

“I feel you.” She always gave the rigs a large halo of space. “But it’s working.” From her perspective, there was no sign of the highway patrol, meaning they must be parallel with them. “I think we’re good to get up front.” Arash added speed and merged into the semi’s lane. She checked all around and couldn’t see the police, so they couldn’t see them.

After two miles of staying within cautious cover of the truck, Arash moved into the faster flow of traffic. She stayed alert for highway patrol, but allowed her body to calm in waves. Her legs ached as she drew her feet back from being braced hard on the floor. The slowing of her heartbeat allowed for a new elation to take over through her limbs. Damn it. It was like good sex.

Arash leaned more casually in his seat, one hand on the steering wheel, jaw relaxed and mouth less severe. She stared at the cords of his neck too long, wondering if she’d be able to feel his pulse match hers. He kept his face forward and put out a fist to her. “Job well done.” But there was a minor note in his voice, barely detectable.

“I guess you can drive.” She bumped his fist with hers.

He sneered a small smile. “Ask those cops.” Through his bravado was that dark thread. She tried to follow it, but the trail deeper into him dissolved before she could grab hold. For the best, she convinced herself. Keep him at a distance. But she still wanted to know.

A text came through on her phone. “Olesk,” she reported. “Next stop—Reno.”

Miles farther away from any safety. Deeper into the danger. Exactly where she needed to be going. Though, traveling there with Arash at her side shook her compass. She knew she would not waver in helping the victims in need, but she now questioned who she would have to become to get this mission accomplished, and how far her hunger for Arash would take her.

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