Theirs to Keep - Maya Banks Page 0,2

arm so he could flip all the switches at the same time.

He took a deep breath and then counted out to Merrick. “One…two…three!”

He pushed his arm up, and suddenly the entire building was awash in light. Merrick gripped his gun and made a wide sweep of the showroom as Cade did the same, looking for any movement.

But there was none. Everything was quiet. No sudden sounds. No one startled by the light.

“Kids,” Merrick muttered. “Just a bunch of damn kids with nothing better to do on a Saturday night.”

Cade was about to agree when his gaze stopped on one of the large cabinets underneath the rifle display along the wall.

“Check it out,” he murmured, gesturing toward the smear of blood right by the handle.

Merrick frowned and then circled around, separating himself from Cade. He dipped his head to the side to signal Cade to come in from the right while he closed in from the left.

Cade crept forward until they were directly in front of the cabinet. Cade bent and touched the drop of blood on the floor. It was still warm and fresh.

Surely… Well, he wasn’t going to say surely anything, because he’d pretty much seen it all. If their intruder had heard Cade and Merrick, he very well could be hiding in the cabinet. It was large enough for a small person, and if Merrick was right about it being a teenager, then it was certainly possible.

Merrick took position, pointing his gun at the door, and Cade leaned away so he could open it and use the door as a shield. He hooked his fingers around the handle and then looked up at Merrick to make sure he was ready.

Merrick nodded and Cade yanked the door open.

Merrick’s face went from pissed off to what the fuck in two seconds flat. His gun wavered, and then he slowly lowered it.

Cade lurched up and pushed around, wanting to know what the hell Merrick had seen.

To his utter shock, there was a small woman curled into a ball, cowering in the cabinet. She was staring at them both with wide, frightened eyes, and she was a complete mess.

“Holy shit,” Merrick breathed. “Who are you lady, and what the hell are you doing in here?”

Her entire face crumbled, and tears simmered in her wide, blue eyes.

“I don’t know,” she whispered.

Chapter Two

MERRICK STARED AT THE WOMAN huddled in the storage cabinet and immediately knew two things. One, she wasn’t the average intruder out to steal money or merchandise, and two, she was scared out of her mind.

The blood covering her hands and other parts of her body worried him. It worried him a damn lot. She looked like someone had beat the hell out of her, and that enraged him.

He squatted down so that he was closer to her level, but she immediately shrank back, cowering farther against the wall of the cabinet.

And he couldn’t blame her. He didn’t exactly look like Captain America. He was a heavyweight fighter, and both arms were tattooed. His nose had been broken twice, and he knew he didn’t look like the kind of man who posed no threat to a woman.

He was a big guy. Mean-looking. He scared normal women who didn’t look like they’d already gone three rounds with some abusive asshole. He could only imagine how badly he terrified this one. And he hated that. The mere idea of hurting or even frightening a woman put a hole in his gut. Especially this woman who’d already been through so much.

“We’re not going to hurt you,” he said in as soothing a voice as he could manage. “Can you tell us what happened to you?”

Tears filled her eyes again, and she shook her head. At first he thought she was just being cagey, but there was a blankness to her expression that bothered him. It reminded him of fighters who got knocked out and had absolutely no recollection of the event. They woke up and lost the last seconds leading up to the K-O.

She looked…bewildered.

“I don’t know,” she whispered hoarsely. “Please, I’ll leave. I just wanted somewhere warm to stay for the night. I’m so cold…and tired. I wasn’t going to steal anything.”

“I think that’s pretty obvious,” Cade said gently.

Merrick frowned. “What do you mean, you don’t know what happened to you?”

She closed her eyes, turning her battered face away. She was a pretty thing, even with all the bruises, the bedraggled hair and the torn clothing. There was an air of vulnerability about her