Renegade with a Badge by Claire King Page A

from spilling onto the desert floor.
    “What’s wrong with you?”
    “Nothing. Be quiet,” he growled.
    She glared at him. “Very nice,” she said, her breath coming out in gusts after their flight. She waved wildly in the direction of the hacienda. “I just saved your ass back there, if you weren’t paying attention.”
    His head whipped around, and Olivia was instantly sorry she’d poked at the wounded beast.
    “I was paying attention to everything you were doing back there,” he said through his teeth. “I was certainly paying attention when you let that son of a bitch put his tongue down your throat and his hand on your—”
    “He’s practically my fiancé,” Olivia said rashly.
    “The hell he is,” Rafe muttered, and started walking again. He pulled her roughly along when she slowed. They crossed the road and dove back into the low, sand-swept cover. This time, they headed west, toward the foothills.
    Olivia stumbled along as best she could, every few minutes or so experimentally tugging at her hand, which was still clamped firmly in Rafael’s. “Are you going to tell me where we’re going?” she asked again after a while.
    “No.”
    “Ow,” she said loudly as her sandal snagged on a rock, peeling a strip of skin from the side of her big toe.
    Rafe didn’t so much as glance back at her exclamation or slow his pace. “Quiet.”
    “I think you just ripped off my toe.”
    “You wear stupid shoes,” he muttered, though the first glimpse of her small, slim feet in those strappy sandals back in that dim hallway had made his mouth water. “I’m surprised you have any toes left.”
    “I didn’t know I was going to be kidnapped tonight or I would have worn something more sensible.”
    He stopped, turned very deliberately to her. “I didn’t kidnap you, princesa, ” he said, and watched the light of fire come into her eyes. Good, it would help propel her the rest of the way up this mountain tonight. When Bobby discovered Rafe had never made it back to the beach camp, he’d meet them there. Rafe and Bobby had worked out a contingency plan weeks ago, before Dr. Galpas had ever come along to ruin his mission and his destiny and possibly his life. “You tossed yourself into this whole mess headfirst.”
    “What was I supposed to do—let Ernesto kill you?”
    He snorted. “You think he could have killed me?”
    Olivia gaped at him. “He had a gun, you moron.”
    “So did I.”
    Olivia threw her free hand in the air. “Are you stupid? What makes you think he wouldn’t have shot you first?”
    Rafe shrugged. “I’m faster.”
    Olivia hoped a derisive snort would let him know her opinion of that bit of lunacy. When he appeared unfazed by it, she decided to make her point more forcefully. “You’re not the sharpest tack in the box, are you.”
    Rafe glanced over her shoulder. He could see men fanning out into the scrub around the hacienda. “Keep your voice down.”
    “You may have been faster, but you were in his house,” she continued in a furious whisper. “Without me, you never would have gotten out alive.”
    He looked down at her. Her mouth was swollen—from the bastard’s kisses, he thought sourly. Still, he could think of nothing he wanted more than to pull her into his arms. She had saved him. She was far braver than he ever would have given her credit for. Far braver than any woman he’d ever known. Not that he’d tell her that.
    “Now is not the time to congratulate yourself, princesa, ” he said into her ear. He bit down on her lobe, making her gasp. “If you don’t start moving your butt up this mountain, your efforts will have been for nothing.”
    “Why are you holding onto your chest like that?”
    “I think your boyfriend broke me,” he said shortly. “Let’s get moving.”
    “He broke you? He broke your ribs?”
    “Yes.”
    “Oh, my God. How many?”
    “I don’t know,” he said. “My X-ray vision is on the blink.”
    “Let go of my hand. Let me