As they reached the other side of the street, Quinn ran his hand along the waistband of Rikki’s jeans, sitting low on the curve of her hips.
She stiffened beneath his touch. “I don’t think it’s the time or place to be groping me.”
“I’m not groping you, unless you want me to.” He briefly cupped her derriere through the tight denim. “What happened to your gun and handcuffs?”
“He relieved me of them and dropped them in a Dumpster right outside the club.”
Quinn muttered an expletive. “Maybe we can retrieve them tomorrow.”
“We?”
“Here’s my bike. Get that helmet on and hop on the back.”
She placed a hand on his shoulder. “Are you okay to drive this thing? You were sleeping off a bender when I sneaked into your apartment.”
“The events since that time have gone a long way to sober me up.”
She held out her hand. “Doesn’t matter how you feel, Quinn. Your blood alcohol level is probably still over the legal limit. You don’t want to get arrested for murder or driving while under the influence.”
He jingled the keys and glanced down at his Honda. “Can you manage a bike this size? It’s not your little scooter.”
She snorted. “Hop on the back.”
Rikki handled the bike like she handled everything else—with confidence and ease. He did have to help her hoist the bike onto its kickstand, but she’d been right about taking the wheel—or the handlebars. He’d been an idiot to take a chance like that on the bike, no matter how sober he felt, but he couldn’t stand to see her waltz right out of his life just after he’d discovered she’d survived the ordeal in North Korea.
How the hell had she escaped that torture?
As they approached his front door, Rikki hung back. “You didn’t leave your place unlocked again, did you? We’re not going to find Alice waiting in your bed, are we? Or worse?”
“I can dispense with Alice easily enough, but if that man who had you at gunpoint has any friends, we want to make sure he hasn’t ID’d me and dispatched one of his cohorts to wait for us.”
Rikki’s brown eyes widened as if the thought had never occurred to her. If it hadn’t, her spy skills needed some refreshment.
Where had she been since escaping from North Korea?
He tucked her behind him. “Wait here while I give it a quick check.”
Her hand grabbed his side, and she lifted her abductor’s gun from his waistband. “Now I’m armed, too. We’ll take ’em on together.”
“I forgot who I was dealing with.” He unlocked his door and pushed it open slowly with his foot. When it stood wide, he entered his apartment with his weapon sweeping the room.
Rikki closed and locked the door behind them and crept in beside him, peeling off to check out the back rooms. She called out, “All clear.”
Quinn peered over the counter into the kitchen. “All clear here.”
Rikki joined him and blew out a breath. “How would that guy have ID’d you? He barely got a look at you before you took him down.”
“If he knows who you are, he might make the connection from New Orleans to me and me to you.”
“There aren’t many people who knew what we did in Dubai.” Her lashes fluttered, and she got busy putting away the spare gun. “I mean, that we...hooked up. I don’t think some random person from intelligence is going to make that link between me and you.”
“Intelligence? Is that who that was? You said it yourself earlier. The CIA thinks you’re dead.”
She raised her shoulders to her ears. “I don’t know who he was, and more important, he didn’t know who I was.”
“Are you telling me that was some kind of random abduction?” Quinn shook his head. “No common street thug is going to get over on you, Rikki, especially when you have a gun and cuffs on you.”
“I didn’t say he was a common criminal. The guy had mad skills himself and I’m not downplaying your heroic rescue, but he’d let his guard down by the time he got me outside the Gator Lounge. He wasn’t expecting anyone to come riding to my defense.”
“You think he was from the Company?”
“I don’t know. We didn’t get that far in our acquaintance, but he did not know who I was. He asked me.”
“Maybe I am still drunk.” Quinn massaged his temple with two fingers. “If he didn’t know who you were and he was some kind of spy, why was he abducting you and why were you meeting him?”
Rikki hopped on a stool, straddling it, knees wide. “First, you. How did you know I was going to the Gator Lounge when I left here?”
“I didn’t know you were going straight there when you took off, but I saw the text message come through.” He clicked his tongue. “Careless, Rikki. I was looking straight down at your phone, but then maybe you wanted me to see that message.”
She shot up on the stool, her back ramrod straight. “That’s ridiculous.”
“Now you. Who were you meeting at the Gator and why?” He held up one finger. “And don’t even try lying to me.”
She slumped, her shoulders rounding, her hands on her knees. “I don’t know exactly who I was meeting. We had a series of clues for each other, a back-and-forth, starting with his Dodgers cap.”
“That guy was wearing a Dodgers cap. What happened?”
“I spotted him at the bar, everything on track. I ordered a beer, using the agreed-upon language, but he didn’t reciprocate. He went off script. My contact didn’t know who I was and wasn’t supposed to ask, but this guy...” She waved one hand in the air.
“You figured he wasn’t your guy or maybe your guy had been replaced? What did you do?”
“I admitted nothing to him and was getting ready to abandon the mission. I must’ve telegraphed that because the next thing I knew, he had his gun poking me in the side.”
Quinn crossed his arms, curling his fingers into his biceps. “Did he ask you any more questions at that point?”
“Nope. Started marching me away to God-knows-where.” She captured the unfamiliar brown hair in one hand and curled it around her fist.
Quinn’s gaze locked onto the dark, silky strands. Even without her wavy red hair and bright blue eyes, he’d recognized Rikki in a flash. Why wouldn’t he? She’d been in his dreams nightly.
He tugged on a lock of his own hair, which he’d grown out since his previous deployment. “Is that a wig? It’s so...different.”
Her mouth formed an O and released a little puff of air. “I thought we were talking about my abductor.”
“We are, we will, just wondering about the transformation.” The warmth from his chest began creeping up his neck.
Even discussing a violent incident and a mystery, Quinn couldn’t tamp down his attraction to Rikki. He could take her right now, across that kitchen counter, bent over that stool, and not give another thought to her mysterious meeting or the man he’d beaten down in the alley.
What did any of it matter with this woman back in his life, sitting right in front of him, inches away?
She tossed her head, and the dark hair flowed over one shoulder. “It’s not a wig. I had my hair straightened when I had it colored. It’ll last for several weeks—as long as I need.”
Quinn ran both hands over his