Deep Trouble: A MacKenzie Family Novella (The MacKenzie Family) by Kimberly Kincaid Read Free Book Online Page B

jacket. “Just keep your eyes open and try to relax, okay?”
    She bit back the joyless laugh welling in her throat. “Tropical beaches are relaxing, Devon. This”—she paused to flick her wrist at the storefront—“is my own monogrammed version of hell.”
    “I get it,” he said, and funny, he actually looked like he did. “I know the whole situation is intense. But the more at ease you look, the less likely we are to attract attention. From anyone.”
    Kylie twisted her hair behind her nape, awkwardly wrangling the baseball hat over the thick knot and adjusting the brim. “Then how come we didn’t go to the Walmart a couple exits back?” It had been the first and only sign of major civilization since they’d hit the road. “Wouldn’t blending in there have been easier?”
    “Maybe. But a more crowded place has a lot of moving parts that are hard to control, not to mention security feeds we’d be sure to show up on. Getting in and out of a place like this will take us ten minutes, tops, with a whole lot less visibility to boot.”
    She followed his lead and got out of the car, sending covert glances around the nearly empty parking lot. Despite Devon’s powerful presence barely two feet from her dance space and the fact that he probably had enough weaponry on him to protect a small nation, Kylie’s heart still took up residence in her windpipe. Sweat beaded beneath the ill-fitting baseball hat, her palms growing clammy enough to slip off the handle of the drugstore’s front door.
    “Everything’s fine,” Devon murmured, so close to her ear that his breath tickled her neck. “Just remember your spaghetti dinner, okay?”
    She nodded, forcing herself to try on a shaky smile. “With wine.”
    “Now we’re talkin’.”
    He opened the door just as easy as you please to usher her inside, and okay. Okay, yeah, this wasn’t so bad. At least as far as running for your life went, anyway.
    Kylie picked up a plastic basket, looping the handles over her arm. Scanning the store’s aisles, she was relieved to see the place sparsely populated at best, and definitely not with anyone who looked remotely frightening.
    She released the breath that had been spackled to her lungs. “I only need a few things.”
    “Okay,” Devon said. Although his stare traveled over every inch of the store, he kept to the whole white-on-rice routine as she walked down the first aisle, her skin prickling with awareness at how closely he shadowed her every move.
    “Don’t you need to get some things too?” she asked, sliding a toothbrush and a travel-sized tube of toothpaste from the shelf.
    “One or two.”
    Kylie waited out the dozen or so heartbeats of silence between them before finally sending a pointed look down the aisle. “Did you want to go do that while I finish up?”
    “I’ll wait.”
    He rocked back on the heels of his boots to look at her like nothing doing, and something inside her chest snapped. Kylie wasn’t stupid—she got how dangerous her situation was right now, and how much worse it could be. But the aisles were low enough to make the entire store visible, and the whole place was four, maybe five rows, max. She didn’t want to run free, but she did want to get the hell out of there as fast as humanly possible. Other than a young woman with a baby on her hip and the store clerk, who was eighty if he was a day, the store was empty; plus, she wasn’t completely soft. Was a handful of paces to choose her deodorant really too much to ask when the place was obviously safe and sound?
    Kylie dropped her voice to a whisper, tucking back a strand of hair that had escaped the lopsided perch of her hat. “You said you need to keep eyes on me, right?”
    “Kylie—”
    “It’s fifteen feet, Devon. And it’ll cut our time in half.”
    He swiveled a gaze around the store, a muscle tightening over the smooth angle of his jawline. “We’re leaving in two minutes. Don’t dawdle.”
    His footsteps sounded off