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  “How does it ride?” Ellie asked, lifting her eyebrows with a little growl.

  Arash must not have seen her suggestive expression and answered honestly. “Rolls too much in the turns, needs to be tightened down.”

  “Well, I’m sure you can get it tight.” Ellie shot Stephanie one last glance, then carried the beers to the house.

  Arash closed the door to the van and stood next to Stephanie with the bags of food in his hands. “Am I that obvious?”

  “Ashamed to be seen with me?” It wasn’t fair to needle him too hard. She was willing to let Olesk’s gang think all they wanted to about her and Arash, but she hadn’t mentioned anything about the attraction or the intensity of the kissing to her own team.

  “Hell, no.”

  “Then put some swagger into it.” She bumped her hip against his.

  “Oh, I can swagger.” And he proved it as he strutted to the house, giving her an excellent view of the sway of his body.

  “That’s the way I like it.” She remained close, caught up in his carnal currents.

  Inside the house, Ellie had already unboxed the beers and lined them up in the refrigerator. Four fresh ones waited on the counter. Hector and Thom wandered into the kitchen and watched, but didn’t help, as Arash and Stephanie unpacked the food.

  Hector picked up the packaged steak and looked it over. “What’re you going to cook me?”

  Arash tossed a box of frozen food onto the island in front of him. “She’s the only one who placed an order.” The two men glared at each other.

  “I’m not feeling that hungry.” Thom pulled a bag of lettuce toward him. “I’ll just have a salad.”

  “Not mine.” Stephanie pinned the lettuce to the island with her hand.

  Thom straightened and jutted his jaw. “You guys just aren’t team players.”

  She faced him. “I’m not part of this team to be your mother or your cook. I can drive and I can fight. And if you need proof of either, keep talking.”

  Thom licked his moving, silent lips. He stared at her, bruise ringing one eye, and looked up and over her shoulder, where she knew Arash was standing. Menacing energy radiated behind her. Hector broke the tension by grabbing one of the beers and sliding it over to Thom before giving him a hard slap on the back. “You don’t even eat salad, bro.” Thom still didn’t move, so Hector lifted the beer and placed it in his chest so Thom had to grab it. Hector took his own beer and led the way out of the room. Thom reluctantly followed.

  Ellie took up the two remaining beers. “I wish you two would go easy on Thom. He’s twitchy.”

  “If he doesn’t want to dance, he has to stay off the floor.” Stephanie resumed putting the food away.

  Ellie shrugged to Stephanie and Arash. “Please don’t break any fingers so he can still work on the cars.”

  Arash growled behind her. “No promises.”

  “Ah.” Ellie put the beers down. “Change and receipt.” Stephanie pulled both from her jacket and handed them over. “Cheers.” Ellie toasted with one of the beers, drank and started out of the kitchen.

  Olesk met her at the border of the other rooms and took the other beer from her. He casually looked over the food Arash was laying out for tonight’s dinner. “Tomorrow,” Olesk said, “Arash is completing his work on the cargo van’s engine. Stephanie, you’re on to the minivan you were driving tonight. When Arash is done, he’s on the minivan with you.”

  “I like it,” Stephanie answered.

  “Sounds good.” Arash nodded to Olesk and arranged a pan on the stove.

  “That minivan...” Olesk stared into the distance and she recognized the focus he had when he drove. “It’s our secret stealth rocket. I don’t want anyone to look at it and know it’s a beast. And I don’t want anyone to be able to catch it.”

  “I’ve got plans for it.” Arash grinned.

  She added, “It’ll be a bullet.”

  Olesk’s attention came back to the room. “Boom.” He smiled, drank from his beer and left with Ellie.

  Even alone, Stephanie and Arash couldn’t speak. The glance they shared after Olesk’s departure said enough. Arash clearly didn’t like the man, and now she understood what had been behind his hair trigger with the gang. He’d played it well, though, pushing just enough to show he had a mind of his own, but still getting his work done and not alienating himself. That internal tension was mirrored in her own.

  “I still haven’t seen your knife work.” Arash placed an onion and a cutting board on the island.

  “One of those guys in the parking lot almost found out.” She unwrapped a cooking knife they’d bought at the supermarket and tested the moderate edge against her thumb.

  Arash took out another new knife and slapped the steaks down on a cutting board. “Wish I’d been there.” He wasn’t particularly delicate cutting the excess fat off the steaks.

  “To see the show?” She flipped the knife in the air and caught it by the handle. The conflict was easy to brush off after taking out the men, but Arash’s heated response resonated unexpectedly through her. She mattered to him.

  “To bust their heads.” He set the knife down and looked at her. “I know you can handle yourself. No doubt at all. But... I wish you hadn’t had to.”

  Every word lit fires deep in her chest. “Thank you.” The video game in the other room prompted taunting shouts that broke the moment between Stephanie and Arash. She took up her knife and sliced the onion. He finished with the steak and prepped the pan at the stove. While he worked she put the rest of the vegetables together.

  Onions hit the oil in the pan and for a moment it seemed like an ordinary house. A hot meal, freshly cooked. Two people moving about a kitchen with ease, checking in with each other about how they liked their food.

  Never mind the gun on her belt, the knife in her pocket or the blood money from the day’s job in her jacket. Or Arash’s thirst for revenge against the very people who welcomed them under this roof. Or the cages that had been built into the vans.

  She couldn’t forget any of that, but she could allow herself to find comfort in the moment as she watched Arash push the onions to the edge of the pan and lay the steaks in. They sizzled and spattered and filled the space with aromas more real than any of the frozen dinners.

  Arash was real, too. Connecting with him had reminded her that she wasn’t just an operative with Frontier Justice—she was a person.

  She remembered her earlier purchase. “I’ve got dessert.” But when she pulled out the packages of cookies from the empanada restaurant from her coat, she found they’d all been crushed. “Those jerks in the parking lot.” It must’ve happened in the thick of the fight.

  Arash looked at the mess of cookies within the cellophane wrappers. “I didn’t think I could hate those guys even more.” He finished cooking and they took their food to the table in the kitchen and sat next to each other so they both had their backs to the wall.

  She savored the first bite of food. Arash chewed and nodded. Her shoulder brushed against his and the two of them were uncomplicated humans for a few heartbeats. The meal continued, as did the conversations in the other room. If she and Arash had any privacy, she could ask him about his friend’s involvement in the gang, and if Arash had a specific plan for taking them down. A hundred other questions. She was sure he had plenty. Instead she stuck to what would look best to the others. “Can you reprogram the brain on the minivan?”

  He took a pull from a bottle of water. “As long as we have a scanner and a laptop with the right software, no problem. I bet you could, too.”

  “I have a little experience with it.” But all of her equipment was in her condo. “Still have to dial in the shocks, get the timing right.”

  “It’ll be a job.” He drummed his fingers on the table. “We can probably strip some weight from the interior without it looking modified.”
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br />   “I can’t wait to get in there with you.” If only it was just the two of them wrenching on a car for the love of the grease.

  “We’ll be so good.” He toasted her water with his. They drank and she understood he was doing the same centering that she had to. Amid all these criminals and their bad intentions, what she and Arash were doing was right.

  * * *

  THE MAZE HE walked was just as deadly, but having Stephanie with him seemed to brighten the blind corners. The path, still twisted, seemed clearer ahead. They’d finished their dinner talking about the modifications to the minivan. To the rest of the STR, it looked like a romance; the real intentions remained hidden. Not that the connection between him and Stephanie wasn’t real.

  Climbing the stairs at the end of the day had been torture. His body raged for her, but his mind knew that there was no safety for that kind of contact. They didn’t even kiss, but the look they shared before parting to their rooms was heavy with the need they both shared, and it kept him warm through the night on his lonely mattress on the floor.

  He woke wondering if all of her unbelievable revelations had been a dream. It seemed like the best way to explain a secret vigilante group started by her ancestor sometime back in the 1800s. But when he caught her eye downstairs, fixing her breakfast, he knew it was all real. She was more complicated with mysteries than he’d ever imagined.

  Everyone got to work quickly that morning. The damp chill outside had wilted the cardboard boxes for the auto parts, but he heated up as soon as he started wrenching. Stephanie drove the minivan behind the house and started to assess the modifications. Soon there was an extensive list written in her tidy script on a whiteboard next to the minivan.

  Hector and Thom had finished modifying the engine on their cargo van and were now elbows deep in boxes of electronics and wiring. This aspect of the build hadn’t been discussed, and every detail could mean life or death for him and Stephanie. Arash leaned out from behind his open hood to call out to them. “Both vans getting that?”

  “Yeah,” Thom grumbled, hands busy untangling wires.

  “Alright. Two minutes and this one’s all yours.” Arash couldn’t see what they were working on.

  Stephanie joined in. “Do I need to add that to the list for the minivan?”

  “No.” Hector shook his head. “Just the two vans are getting the coms.” Hector held up a handheld mic on a coiled cable, like the kind from a police car radio.

  “Got it.” Stephanie nodded to Hector and shot a quick glance to Arash before returning to her business.

  A motor growled to life at the front of the house. Moments later Olesk drove a sport-tuned Subaru around back, with Ellie walking at its side. They parked and Olesk popped open the hood. He spoke while staring down into the engine. “Cargo vans and the Subaru have the coms. Minivan has to look stock. They’ll get their updates through the phone.”

  Arash secured the last bolt on the air intake modification and waved Hector toward the cargo van. “Do your worst.” Hector collected a couple of boxes of electronics and carried them to the van. Arash gathered some tools and joined Stephanie at the minivan. “Private school handwriting.” He looked over the list on the whiteboard.

  “I speak French, too.” She reached into the minivan’s engine and tested the clamps on a radiator hose. He would’ve liked to just stand there and watch as she tightened everything down, but instead he walked over to Olesk.

  “You have a laptop and a scanner so I can update the ECM on the minivan for these mods?” Arash spotted twin turbos and a reinforced chassis under the hood of Olesk’s car.

  Olesk dug a set of keys from his pocket and handed them to Ellie without a word. She motioned Arash to follow and they went into the barn where he and Stephanie had broken down the import tuner. Ellie unlocked a tall metal tool chest and pulled a grease-smudged laptop and an ODB2 scanner from one of the drawers. After locking everything back up again, she handed the gear over to him, warning, “Don’t mess with the Wi-Fi or connectivity on this box—just use the software. It should be fully juiced.” Her eyes narrowed. “You sure you’re qualified?”

  He chuckled and headed out of the barn. “Dare you to find me an engine I can’t make purr.”

  “Pride’s a sin.” She followed behind him.

  “The only sin I know—” he angled toward Stephanie and the minivan “—is a sports car with an automatic transmission.”

  Stephanie had the driver’s-side door open and was already rolling her eyes when he arrived. He handed her the scanner and she plugged it into the information port under the steering wheel. “You going to make this one purr?” she asked with a smirk.

  He opened the laptop and booted up the tuning software. She stood close to him, watching the screen. It felt like the electricity that arced from her body to his would short out all the electronics in his hands. “I’d love to,” he growled quietly. Damn all of this deadly business; he just wanted her in his arms and hours and days to discover more of her strengths and mysteries.

  “The engine.” From the heat in her glance at him, she was thinking the same thoughts.

  Knowing she was a real criminal in this gang had been the one thing barely keeping him in check. Now that he knew what she really was, and that her extensive abilities were focused on helping people, he didn’t want to resist the attraction. “For now,” he told her while clicking over the computer. “If you want, take a ride with me some night, to test the sync on all the systems.”

  “I want that.” Her focus remained on the computer, where the program displayed the current settings for the minivan, but the hunger in her voice was much more primal.

  How all the fuel in the car didn’t ignite, he had no idea. His body burned for just a touch of her skin against his. His mind spun out, imagining the possibilities of the two of them twisted together, before coming back to the work at hand. He said through clenched teeth, “Turn on the engine.”

  She slid into the driver’s seat and he watched every move of her body. The motor sprung to life, jarring in all of its bad timing. All of this was bad timing. Why couldn’t he have met Stephanie in a garage, tuning their rides, taunting each other and racing on the midnight streets? It wouldn’t matter who crossed the finish line first. They would both win.

  But it wasn’t simple. Of course not. A woman like Stephanie wasn’t found in simple places. “Gun it,” he told her. She revved the idling engine. He whispered under the noise, a vow just for her, “I will get you alone.”

  She whispered back, “Promise.” The engine grinded louder.

  The last promise he’d made was to the ghost of his friend. He looked Stephanie in the eye. “Promise.”

  Death was inevitable when running with people like Olesk. But now Arash had a new mission. With Stephanie. He had to fight to live.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Stephanie never believed promises. She believed Arash’s. The vows between Frontier Justice members had been made with actions, protecting each other without question. Words usually meant little, but the way Arash told her what he wanted, there was no doubt he would find a way.

  They had spent hours dialing in the modifications to the engine and updating the car’s computer brain to match them. It was sometimes tedious work, with several frustrating dead ends, but Stephanie and Arash continued to operate well together. Which didn’t mean things never got chippy. When they did, though, the dialogue always remained on the task at hand and never strayed to personal territory.

  Wrenching on an engine had never been such a carnal experience. Their hands often met while gripping a hose or belt, and where the skin touched, the fire grew more intense. His promise kept rushing through her, stoking the flames.

  Lunch had pushed them back into the social mix with the rest of the STR. The usual BS, with Thom grumbling about wanting a hand in the minivan mods. At least she could make her own sandwich and d
idn’t have to tolerate his talk as well as frozen food.

  Arash seized the opportunity to ask Olesk, “You’ve got us on the minivan—are we the ones driving it?”

  “Yeah.” Olesk came up from his food to point two fingers at Thom and Hector. “They’re behind the wheels of the cargo vans.”

  Stephanie sorted that into the tactical data for the upcoming gig. Arash turned on Thom. “If you’re not driving the minivan, you don’t have to worry about how it runs.”

  “We started that project.” Thom looked to Hector for backup, but didn’t get any.

  “Thank you very much, and we will finish it.” Arash put the period on the conversation. Her mind turned the new information over. Her and Arash in the minivan would be good for coordinating their efforts, but they wouldn’t have the same direct communication as the other vehicles and could be easily left out of the loop.

  She continued to puzzle over this after lunch as she and Arash finalized the electronic component of the minivan’s mods. He showed her that he was thinking on the same problem by pointing to the stock radio in the center of the console when they were huddled together in the front of the cabin. She nodded her understanding, though neither seemed to have any answers. Knowing what frequency the other cars were using would be critical ammunition for her, but snooping now was certain death.

  They shut down the laptop and Ellie immediately collected it and locked it away in the barn. Trust only went so far in a gang full of criminals, and the flow of information had to be controlled. Stephanie knew that Ty and Vincent would be running all the addresses she’d given through the local and federal crime databases by now. Any open investigations on those places or people associated with them would be flagged and built on. The biggest gap in her data, the one that gaped like a bullet hole, was the date of the operation. Olesk had a habit of springing things on everyone, so it could be any minute. If she had some lead time, she could find a way to rally the rest of Frontier Justice to her.