Tattoo Read online

  I’d spent so much time with other people (mostly criminals) and not being myself that I honestly wasn’t sure who I was anymore. It was the reason I was here in this little hotel room—because I didn’t have a place of my own. I hadn’t had a place of my own for two years now.

  The prospect of starting all over again, of reinventing myself once more, was not an exciting one. It exhausted me just thinking about it. Maybe some guys could toss aside their undercover identities like yesterday’s trash, but I couldn’t.

  I glanced at the clock beside the bed and did a double take. It was already after ten. I couldn’t remember the last time I slept so late.

  I couldn’t remember the last time I had a day off either. But now here I was with two full weeks stretching in front of me. Empty days to fill and no alarm clock demanding I get my ass out of bed.

  So what did a guy with essentially no life outside of work do when he found himself with time off? He went fishing. I tossed the covers off the bed, letting them fall partially onto the floor and not bothering to fix them. That’s what maid service was for.

  Scratching myself, I went into the bathroom and took a quick shower, not bothering to shave. In the corner of the room was my bag of belongings. From inside, I pulled out a pair of worn jeans, a T-shirt, and a long-sleeved, plaid flannel that I left unbuttoned and untucked.

  Before heading out the door with my bag, I slid a navy baseball cap onto my head, swiveling it around backward, and palmed the keys to my beat-up Ford pickup.

  It was already hot outside; the Raleigh sun and humidity was relentless almost every time of the day. After dropping off my key to the room, I pulled out of the lot and didn’t look back. My fishing pole and gear was already in the back, along with the few other items I had to my name. The drive to the Emerald Isle was two and a half hours so I decided to run through a drive-thru to get some food.

  After I ordered a couple breakfast sandwiches and a large coffee, I pulled through and paid, pulling out the last bit of cash I had. Guess a stop at the bank was in order as well.

  Shaw Trust was located on a busy street in Raleigh, North Carolina. I had been banking with them for the last five years. I didn’t have many material goods to my name, but my bank account was better for it. Well, that and never being able to spend my own money.

  The inside of the bank greeted me with a blast of cold air and was just as brightly lit as the sidewalk outside. The walls in here were white and so were the glossy tile floors. I stepped through the roped-off line, lining up behind several others already waiting. Four tellers stood behind the long wooden counter, each with their own computer.

  It seemed like I stood in line forever, and I grew irritated because I just wanted to get the hell out of here and onto the open road.

  Finally, it was my turn and I moved down the counter toward the last window on the end. I yanked out my wallet and bankcard, then looked up.

  Suddenly the amount of time I waited didn’t seem like such an inconvenience. In fact, if I had known she was the person waiting for me at the end of this counter, I would have waited longer.

  Her light scarlet hair was long and filled with loose curls that fell over her shoulder and down her chest. Her complexion was flawless with the flush of fresh peaches, and her lower lip was fuller than the top, making it appear as though she had a permanent pink pout.

  “How can I help you today?” she asked politely, glancing up with crystal green eyes. I watched them widen slightly and rich satisfaction flowed through me. I wasn’t pretty like her, but I wasn’t completely lacking in the looks department.

  “Hey,” I said, leaning on the counter with both my elbows. The movement brought me a little closer to her. “I need to make a withdrawal.”

  She glanced down at the bankcard and ID I extended between us and then back at me. I gave her a lazy smile and she cleared her throat, taking the cards. She looked them over and then her polished fingernails flew over the keyboard.

  I glanced at her chest, being distracted by her nice rack, but my eyes finally found the nameplate pinned to the front of her top. Taylor.

  “How much would you like to withdrawal?” she asked.

  “Four hundred.”

  She input the amount without saying anything.

  “So…” I said, leaning toward her again. “You come here often?”

  She rolled her eyes, but a small smile played on her lips. “Just the days I feel like earning a paycheck.”

  I grinned. “Paychecks are overrated,” I drawled. “I’m going fishing.”

  “Says the man with a huge bank account,” she quipped. Then she winced and looked up. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t—”

  I laughed. The chagrin on her face and the way her cheeks bloomed with bright pink spots was entirely amusing. “Never said I didn’t work. Just said I thought it was overrated.”

  She relaxed when she realized I didn’t give a rat’s ass that she knew how much was in my account. “You should bait your hook with hot dogs. Fish love them.”

  She was right. Surprise rippled through me. “You can’t tell me a girl like you likes to fish.”

  “And what,” she asked, arching a red brow in my direction, “is a girl like me?” She hit a couple keys and the little dispenser to my right started flinging out cash.

  “Your withdrawal is to your right,” she said professionally.

  I let the cash sit there. “Are you a tomboy in disguise?” I whispered conspiratorially. I enjoyed the emotion, the animation that played over her features. She was beautiful—there was no doubt—but it seemed that she also had a lot beneath that pretty exterior.

  “Don’t tell anyone,” she whispered back, handing me a receipt. Her teeth were really white and really straight. I got this sudden craving to run my tongue along their smooth surface.

  “Your secret is safe with me.” I tore my eyes away to pocket the cash, not bothering to count it. Oddly, I trusted her. I never trusted anyone.

  Behind me, a loud banging sound boomed through the room, and I tensed, spinning on my heel. Four guys pushed through the entrance, each of them pulling out a gun.

  I couldn’t even get away from this shit on vacation.

  Adrenaline spiked my system and began pumping through my veins and accelerating my heart. It didn’t take an idiot to guess why they were here. This was a bank and they had guns. I looked over my shoulder at Taylor, who was watching the men with wide eyes.

  “Get down!” I ordered quietly. “Hide. Hide good.”

  The thought of her being hurt was like a foul odor that caused me to wrinkle my nose. Taylor reacted instantly, dropping down behind the counter and out of sight. I hoped she crawled somewhere that no one would think to look for her.

  I turned away, unable to see if she was on the move because I didn’t want to draw any attention her way.

  The men were yelling and waiving the weapons around, ordering people to hit the floor. People were crying and whimpering. The security guard who looked like a rent-a-cop pulled out a handgun and held it up with shaking hands. It was clear he had no idea where to aim because there were four criminals and only one of him.

  One of the men closest to him took him out in under three seconds, hitting him in a way that made the man sprawl onto the floor, the gun lying next to him, forgotten.

  I reached behind me to pull out my own weapon, my hand only meeting air. I wasn’t armed. I spent the last two years with a gun or weapon on me at all times. It figures the one time I didn’t wear it, I got caught up in the middle of a bank heist.

  “I said down on the ground!” one of the men yelled, swinging the gun around to me. I was the only one left standing.

  I held up my hands like I was surrendering and dropped down, lying on my belly. From this vantage point, I looked at the gun beside the security guard. It was across the room, but if I could get to it, I might be able to take several of these assholes out before they figured out who was shooting.

  “Anyone calls the cops and I w
ill shoot to kill,” one of the men said in a calm, collected voice.

  The tellers didn’t keep money in cash drawers in this bank. The machines beside the patrons counted out the money and delivered it almost like an ATM. I watched as one of the guys tucked away his gun and palmed a sledgehammer.

  With one powerful swing, he bashed in the first machine, reaching in his arm and pulling out fistfuls of cash.

  Behind the counter, I could hear the men ordering someone to open the safe, and I prayed it wasn’t Taylor. The girl started crying and I knew instantly it wasn’t her. I knew on instinct that Taylor wasn’t the type to lose her shit in bad situations. I might not know her, but I knew how to read people and I was never wrong.

  I began to inch forward, keeping my eyes trained on the man guarding the door with his gun. The other three were behind the counter, and I knew I wouldn’t have to worry about them seeing me until I was already halfway to the gun.

  I blocked out all the sounds in the room; I focused on the gun, on what I had to do to get there. Once the familiar feel of that weapon was in my hand, all bets were off, and I was shooting to kill.

  I managed to keep my concentration. Until I heard Taylor’s voice. It’s funny how something I heard so little of, something I was just introduced to, could become so innately ingrained inside me. I would know her voice anywhere. It was so familiar it was almost like my own.

  “Last time I checked, robbing a bank and holding a gun on a person was a crime,” she said.

  I shut my eyes, wishing she had kept her mouth shut. Why hadn’t she gone off and crawled in a cabinet or something?

  The sound of skin hitting skin set my nerves on fire. It was almost as if I stepped in a pile of red ants and they swarmed my bare skin, racing up my legs and biting into me with every chance they got. Ripples of burning pain skittered over my skin, and I ground my teeth together.

  “Hey,” I called, abandoning my progress toward the gun and pushing up off the ground. I knew it might get me shot, but I’d rather take a bullet than watch her get knocked around again. “I thought you were here for the money and not to hit women.”

  She glanced my way with fear in her eyes, and I felt the side of my jaw tick when I saw how welted her cheek already was.

  The man who inflicted those welts aimed his gun at me. It crossed my mind to dare him to shoot me. It wouldn’t be the first time I took a bullet, and I could use the chaos of being shot to my advantage to get the unmanned gun.

  Instead, he turned his attention back to Taylor and shoved her toward the safe.

  When she didn’t do what he wanted immediately, he rammed her into the unforgiving metal door and she fell back on her ass. I leaped over the counter. To hell with watching a woman get beat up.

  I was guilty of a lot of things in my life, but I didn’t hit women.

  One of the douches trying to rob the place appeared beside me and rammed the nozzle of his gun between my shoulder blades. “Take another step and I’ll shoot you.”

  I thought about calling his bluff.

  Instead, I held up my hands like I was surrendering and watched the scene play out. It was a mistake that would likely haunt me for years.

  I saw the look in the robber’s eyes when he decided to shoot her. I saw the momentary thrill that being in power gave him. I moved fast, spinning instantly and disarming the guy who thought he was holding me hostage.

  I hit him in the head with the butt of the gun and dropped him, turning back to Taylor.

  But just as I turned, a gun went off.

  2

  Taylor

  I never really gave much thought to what it would be like to get shot. It’s probably good I never wasted my time thinking about it because I never would have imagined it would be like this.

  I literally felt the bullet rip into my body. I felt the heat of the metal, and the impact of the shot spurred me backward. I lost my balance and fell. I didn’t even notice my body colliding hard against the floor.

  White-hot pain burned through me, eclipsing all else. I didn’t think. I couldn’t even react. It was almost like I was paralyzed for long moments. The pain began to ebb away, and I stared up at the bright lights in the ceiling as numbness overtook my body.

  I knew I should be hurting more, but I couldn’t seem to summon up the amount of worry that I needed to lift my head and look.

  A flurry of movement surrounded me, and the guy whose name I couldn’t remember appeared over me, clutching a gun and assessing me with a tight mouth.

  One of the thieves pressed a gun to his head and his eyes narrowed.

  “No,” I gasped, the motion hurting me, and I moaned.

  “Give me the gun or I’ll shoot her again,” the thief told him.

  I watched him debate for a long moment, and I wondered what the hell made him hesitate. But then his eyes slid back to mine. His stare reminded me of freshly brewed espresso, dark and intense. The kind of eyes that could stare right through a person.

  He put the gun down and shoved it away from us.

  Part of me was disappointed, but the other part of me was charmed he would do something like that in an effort to help me.

  The gun held against his head was removed and the men stealing the money started moving around a bit more. I didn’t pay attention to them though because his dark, intense stare leaned closer.

  “Stay with me, Taylor,” he said, reaching out and wrapping a hand around my upper arm. It hurt and I cried out.

  “You were shot. I’m applying pressure to the large artery running inside your arm below your armpit in an attempt to slow the bleeding.” He spoke calmly, like I wasn’t bleeding all over the place.

  “Do you feel pain anywhere else besides your arm?” he asked.

  “Is that where I was shot? My arm?”

  He glanced at me. “Yes, your upper arm. I don’t think it hit an artery because the pressure I’m applying is slowing the blood flow.”

  “It hurts,” I told him.

  “I know, sweetheart,” he murmured, letting go of me. Pain began to throb and I felt my arms and legs begin to shake. I watched as he stripped off the flannel shirt he was wearing and draped it over my torso. It was warm and I sighed because the heat was so welcome.

  “What’s your name?” I asked, needing to know the name of the man who was trying to help me.

  “Brody,” he said as he yanked off his T-shirt, pulling it right over his head.

  “This might hurt,” he warned and used the T-shirt to apply renewed pressure to my arm.

  He had tattoos. A lot of them. In fact, his completely shredded body was covered in them. They ran over his chest, down the impressive wall of abdominals, and across his shoulders. He had a vine that wrapped all the way down one of his arms and ended just above his wrist.

  It was sexy. Probably the sexiest thing I’d ever seen. So sexy that it distracted me from the bleeding gunshot wound in my arm.

  He grunted, applying more pressure, and I hissed a breath between my teeth. Sweat broke out over my forehead and my body resumed shaking.

  “I’m going to get you outside¸ to the ambulance,” Brody said as I watched the way the tattoos rippled when his muscles shifted.

  My vision dimmed for a second, his figure swimming before my eyes. His fingers wrapped around the underside of my chin and he held my face, staring down. “Taylor, stay with me. Look at me.”

  “That won’t be very hard,” I murmured.

  He smiled.

  His body was shoved from behind and he jerked forward, slamming his hands into the floor on either side of me, using himself as some sort of defense for my injured form. Brody’s entire body was like a solid piece of granite caging me in, protecting me.

  “Look at this,” one of the men called out.

  Brody swore softly and I glanced up, meeting his eyes. “Call me Slater,” he whispered.

  Didn’t he say his name was Brody?

  Several of the men (including the one who shot me) leaned over us, star
ing down intently at something.

  “Where’d you get that tattoo?” one of the men demanded.

  The muscle in Brody’s jaw jumped and a sort of coldness cloaked his body. He didn’t give me another look when he pushed up and around to face the question. “I earned it.”

  “If you earned it, then why haven’t we seen you around here before?”

  “Because I earned it down the coast, not here,” Brody replied.

  What the hell were they talking about? I was lying here bleeding, these men were trying to steal millions, and here they were taking a timeout to discuss a tattoo?

  Maybe blood loss was making me delirious. Or maybe these men were world-class idiots.

  “Where?” demanded the man with a gun.

  “I ran with Pike’s crew. Before he got busted.”

  “You ran with Pike?” The man seemed skeptical.

  “Indirectly. I was part of his crew in supply.”

  “Hell-O,” I said, “I’m bleeding over here.”

  “Hang on, Tay,” Brody said over his shoulder.

  “You know her?” the man demanded.

  “Yeah,” Brody said tersely.

  “Oh shit!” the gunman said. “Did I shoot your girl?”

  “Yeah, and I gotta tell you, I’m pretty pissed off about it,” said Brody… or Slater (I had no idea), folding his arms over his chest. It stretched out the skin across his wide back and I was able to see the tattoo that everyone was so worked up about.

  It was circular, probably the size of my palm. It was all in black ink with an intricate filigree pattern making up the entire circle. In the center was something red, but I couldn’t make out what it was.

  “Shit,” the guy swore, snapping my attention away from the design.

  Oh, what? Suddenly he was having an attack of conscience now that I was Brody’s girl.

  Brody’s girl. That had a nice ring to it.

  Yep. I was definitely delirious.

  “We got company!” yelled the guy manning the entrance to the bank. I breathed a sigh of relief. I needed a really big Band-Aid, and I was sure the police had one.