"Why?" But she knew. Though it hadn't been spelled out in that BI, it was in there. And it was right here. In that strained, distant stare. Along with all the things she was not supposed to know about this man—much less feel for him.
She almost wished he wouldn't answer.
But he did. "My dad." The ghosts haunting those dark gray eyes strengthened. Multiplied. Crowded out the hope. "I didn't tell you everything last night. Didn't want to scare you off. Hell, I've probably done that anyway."
"You haven't."
"Yeah?" He didn't even try to hide his doubt, much less the gnawing pain and anger. "Let's just say I watched the man crawl into too damned many bottles while I was growing up. And each time he'd beat the shit out of me before he crawled back out. It's why my mom took Beth when she split—and left me with the bastard. She was afraid I'd turn out just like him. Maybe I will. Could be I just haven't hit the right trigger. Yet."
He fell silent, waiting.
Accusing.
He expected her to leave him too. If not now, or later tonight—soon. That betraying pulse of his bellowed it. Dared her to just go. Like his mom and his sister. The friend he'd lost today. And all the other friends and fellow soldiers he'd lost as that bottle—and countless previous ones—had been drained, inch by agonizing inch. He was all but begging her to leave. Before it was too late.
For him.
She wasn't going anywhere.
She reached up and cupped his jaw, directly over that trio of shrapnel scars. She could feel his pulse thundering beneath her palm. He was livid.
But he didn't push her away.
"You're nothing like your dad."
"How would you know?"
"I just do." And not because she'd read his BI. Her hand slipped down to his shoulder. "My grandfather wasn't exactly gentle when he disciplined. He had this worn leather strap he liked to use when I failed to live up to his particular interpretation of the scriptures. My Sunday school teacher saw the welts and bruises once and called him out. But that just…made it worse." Not that the man had really needed a reason to whale on her, though she hadn't understood that at the time. Her failings had simply been his excuse. A way to deal with the humiliation of his son-in-law's betrayal. And his daughter's subsequent suicide.
John's jaw shifted beneath her palm as he swallowed—hard. "Where the hell was your mother?"
"She…died a couple months after my dad." It was true. Mostly. That was what mattered—right?
"So, you grew up with a bastard too."
She shook her head.
"Don't tell me he died as well."
"Heart attack. I was nine." It was almost a relief by then. "I was too old for adoption." Too standoffish and stubborn. Too much baggage. Hers, her mom's. Her dad's. Hell, even her grandfather's. "I went in the system."
"Foster care?"
"Yeah."
"How many homes?"
"I don't know. I didn't keep track."
Liar.
He knew it too, because his fingers came up to soothe her cheek. To soothe her. Given the man's size, it was amazing how gentle he could be. But that ragged pulse was not. Her fingertips took on a life of their own, reaching up to mirror his touch as she traced a path through the evening stubble on his cheek.
The pulse picked up, thumping into her palm once more. This time for an entirely different reason.
He turned his face into her hand and kissed it. She opened her mouth, but before she could say anything, he'd pulled her close and was kissing her.
He didn't need to coax desire from her tonight. It was there, searing in with that first touch of his lips.
She felt those familiar, proprietary hands of his sliding in as well, then down to engulf her lower back and ass as he pulled her closer still. His tongue swept deep, fanning the flames between them for several long, increasingly torrid kisses—until the flames were raging. Part of her knew they were being fueled by the raw emotions they'd just shared; the rest of her didn't care.
Nor did he.
Because the fire was consuming them both.
Her clothes seemed to disintegrate from her body, along with his. Or maybe the fabric had been singed off. She couldn't be sure. All she knew for certain was that both of them were finally, blissfully, down to scarred, bunching muscle and sleek, sinuous flesh. His callused hands and hot, seeking mouth were everywhere now. It wasn't enough. She wanted more. Needed it.
She needed him.
She didn't protest as John lifted her up by her waist and encouraged her to wrap her legs around him as he pressed her naked back into the wall, because his breathtakingly naked front was pressing firmly into her.
She did protest, however, when he broke his string of fiery kisses to rasp, "Condom."
"I'm safe."
She could feel the relief blistering through his massive form—and then he was suddenly, mercifully, blistering into her. Filling her.
Good Lord, everything about the man was huge.
He swallowed her gasp and groaned right back into her as he drove deeper, pushing the both of them higher, hotter, and harder—again and again—until their private scorching world imploded on a series of glorious, mind and body-racking shudders. His harsh breaths mingled with hers, filling the still-smoldering air as they drifted back down together.
Before she realized his intent, John had swung her back up into his arms, cradling her close as he turned to carry her out of the living room and down the hall.
"Where we going?"
"To bed." For the first time that night, that disarming dent in his cheek cut in, along with his deeper, arrogantly satisfied grin. "As earth shattering as that was, it barely took the edge off. We're going to do that again. And, this time—" Both dent and arrogance dipped deeper. "I plan on taking my time."
* * *
She was trapped.
Regan stared at the solid wall of muscle beneath her left cheek as one of those proprietary hands of John's shifted from the back of her shoulder. It slipped down past her waist, then hip, until it was cupping her entire ass as though it had every right. Which, given how they'd just spent the last three hours, it did.
What the hell had she done?
And how did she extricate herself from this king-sized bed without waking its king-sized owner who, even in his post-grief and endorphin-induced sleep, managed to keep her entire body fused to the length of his?
She refused to rush. It was barely eleven. She had time to figure out her plan of attack.
Make that retreat. A full-on, panic and guilt-driven retreat.
And then she heard it.
Her phone.
The ringtone was faint, but that trilling was definitely hers. This late, there were only a handful of callers who'd be trying to reach her. And only if it was critical that they do so. She had to get out of here to take that call.
In private.
She winced as the phone trilled again—and John's torso shifted. She was now trapped more firmly than before. A thick swath of her hair was caught beneath the man's mammoth shoulder. She tried lifting her head and gently tugging, but that caused his chest to move again. Worse, he'd roused enough to murmur that name she'd come to detest.
"Rachel."
She held her breath and waited for him to settle. He did—until the phone trilled once more, and he shifted once more. One way or another, the slumbering giant was going to rouse. With nothing left to lose, she slipped across the front of that hardened body, tugging her hair from beneath his shoulder as she stood.
He sighed…and drifted into a deeper sleep.
Determined to keep him there, she retrieved the comforter from where it had fallen to the floor and carefully settled it over his legs and torso to help replace the warmth he'd lost when she'd abandoned the bed, and him.
As for her, she was buck naked. Her clothes were still strewn across the floor of the living room with her phone. At the far end of the hall.
Was LaCroix home?
She actually
prayed he wasn't.
Either way, her phone was still ringing. Gooseflesh born more of desperation than the surrounding cold rippled over her body as she crept out of the darkened bedroom and down the hardwood slats of the hall. By the time she'd located her phone in the dim light of the single table lamp—beneath John's underwear—it had ceased ringing. She scooped the phone up regardless, along with her own underclothes, sweatshirt, jeans, shoes and leather bag, and headed into the darkened kitchen, once again praying she wouldn't run into LaCroix.
The room was empty. A quick glance out the window beside the back door revealed two cars in the drive, the Tiguan and John's Wrangler. The sergeant was still barhopping with John's buddy then.
Thank God.
She turned away from the window, set her bag on the cooking island and began donning her clothes as rapidly as they'd been removed. Safely dressed, she retrieved her phone to check the caller ID.
Jelly. He'd left an unforgivably pithy text in lieu of voicemail.
Call me!!!
She pushed back at the panic as she stepped into her running shoes. He could be letting her know Brooks had caved, that she was cleared to bring John in on the case.
Though with all that had happened here tonight—in the living room and in that bed down the hall—the possibility of finally coming clean didn't enthuse her nearly as much as it would've earlier in the day. Once John learned the truth, what were the odds he'd believe she hadn't slept with him to make her case? That she'd been as caught up in what'd been happening between them as he?
She tied her shoelaces and faced the kitchen's archway to keep watch for John as she dialed her fellow agent's number.
He picked up on the first ring.
"What's up, Jelly?"
"Rae? I can barely hear you. Is everything okay? Can you talk?"
She raised her voice, but not by much. "Yeah. The captain's…in another room." And she'd like to keep him there for as long as possible—asleep. "What happened?"
"We got a problem."
They were just piling up tonight, weren't they? "Explain."
"You asked me to dig deep into the doc."
Damn. "What popped?"
"Not sure yet, but the issue's not with him. It's the wife. She goes by the name of—" She heard papers rustling. "—Inci Karmandi."
"Goes by?" Dread trickled in at the phrasing.
"That's the problem. At first glance, Inci looks clean. Devoted doctor's wife, stay-at-home mom of a four-year-old boy and a bouncing baby girl. Birth certificates for the kids check out, as does the marriage license for her and the doc. But when I went back further, I found something odd. The trail goes cold. I found a current UK passport and a birth certificate for one Inci Yilmaz, but nothing in between. It's like she doesn't exist for those nineteen intervening years."
Nineteen? The number rattled deep within Regan's brain.
She dropped her gaze to the stainless-steel, motion-activated trash can tucked in the corner near the doorway. A small, yellow sticky note clung near the base of the can. "Inci's British?"
"According to those two records. The only two I found. Anywhere. I can't even get my hands on her visa application for the move to Germany."
That was seriously troubling. So was that number. Nineteen.
Damn, it—why?
The number locked into place. "Shit."
"What?"
"Check the date on the license. How long have Inci and the doc been married?"
"Just a sec."
Regan stared at that stray sticky as the sound of another round of paper rustling filtered through the connection. Reaching down, she snagged the square, along with the tiny wad of paper in the corner behind it. She could hear Jelly mumbling through the math as she straightened.
"Seven years."
Seven? Regan mashed the wad into the sticky, earning a paper cut as the implications burned in. Seven years ago, John was in the middle of his first tour as an SF officer in Afghanistan, just outside Kabul. She was now all but certain she knew what he'd done to earn Ertonç's trust, as well as Ertonç's intercession with that Afghan warlord—and it was one hell of a favor. The kind that would put a then-colonel and now-general in John's debt for life. But to prove it, she'd need evidence. "Do you have a photo of Inci handy?"
"Just the one in the passport. And since she was nineteen at the time, it's a few years old. She's also wearing a headscarf, but—"
"Text it to me."
Regan stared at the yellow sticky as she waited. A drop of blood from the cut between her index finger and thumb had stained the edge scarlet. She flipped the sticky over and stared at the scrawl on the front. It was an address, located in the middle of the next town over. But the handwriting wasn't spiked like John's. Instead, the rounded numbers and letters resembled the samples Jelly had obtained of LaCroix's.
Was it his?
She tucked the sticky and wad of paper in the front pocket of her jeans as her text app pinged. She enlarged the enclosed photo—and cursed.
"Prez?"
She sealed the phone to her ear. "Sorry. Everything fine." But it wasn't. Headscarf or not, "I know who that is." She'd seen the same woman—then a fourteen-year-old girl—in a family photo with her still-living mother, two older brothers and father hours earlier while she'd been holed up in her room at the Lodge, reviewing everything she had that was remotely related to this case. "That's Saniye Ertonç—the general's daughter."
"The one that drowned?"
"Yup." Only she hadn't. Somehow, seven years ago, John had discovered that Saniye was in love with a Christian Kurd and had faked her death for then-Colonel Ertonç.
Damned if the body language she'd observed these past few days didn't finally make sense—all of it. John and the general on the stage; John and the doc at the hospital. Including the general's preoccupation at the window in the conference room prior to the interview he'd granted her.
Ertonç had been oblivious to both her and the captain that morning. But not the scene outside. The soldier and his son. Only it wasn't the soldier who'd mesmerized Ertonç, so much as the boy and boy's indulgent, watching mother.
Seven years ago, while attending university in England, Saniye had fallen in love with the cousin of her father's enemy. Ertonç had been livid. But she was family; Ertonç wanted his daughter alive—but out of his life. And now that she was the only family member of his left alive, he wanted her back in.
Except, given the body language between John and Saniye's husband in that hospital, the woman didn't want back in.
John was involved in a classified, backchannel negotiation all right. Just not the one she'd assumed.
She'd bet her Rachel Pace cover identity that John had the Army's full support with his negotiations too. Because if it had been valuable to have a Turkish colonel indebted to Special Forces and the Army in Afghanistan, imagine the possibilities in having a Turkish brigadier general beholden to them now.
She was fairly certain she understood the timing too. Namely, why Ertonç had carefully arranged for his official military-to-military visit for five weeks hence, only to arrive earlier this week, on his own dime.
Regan craned her neck, peering out from the kitchen's archway into the dimly lit living room and down the darkened hall.
Both were quiet. Empty.
John was still fast asleep.
Even Brooks would agree that she not only had enough to prove John was in the clear, but also to wake him and confess all before asking him to access that guest room. And she would. Soon. But she wasn't looking forward to it. Not after what they'd done. What John was bound to assume about the case—and her.
"Jelly, you mentioned two kids. A boy and a baby girl. How old's the baby?"
"That I know without checking. She was born six days ago. In the same hospital you visited this morning. Not sure if it matters, but she was early. By over a month. Apparently, there was some kind of placental separation issue. Required an emergency cesarean. In fact, they had to ca
ll an ambulance out in the middle of the night to Vilseck. If the doc hadn't realized what was happening, Inci—or Saniye—could've died. Got that from the obstetrics nurse who—"
"Vilseck?" Christ. That was the town on the sticky. "I found a note hung up on the trash. It's in LaCroix's handwriting." It had to be his. She yanked the sticky from her pocket. "Do you have the address for the doc and his wife?"
"Yeah. It's—"
She rattled off the information along with Jelly. It matched. Somehow, the sergeant had not only figured out that Saniye Ertonç was still alive, but that she'd become Inci Karmandi. And he knew where she and her husband lived.
"Rae, we gotta get a tail on LaCroix—now."
"I know." Brooks would finally approve it, too. In a heartbeat. Because while Mira and the rest of that PSU detail were ensuring Ertonç's safety, no one was looking out for the general's daughter and her family. "Call Brooks. Let him know that LaCroix is out and about tonight, but he's not alone. The captain was worried about him so he tasked a buddy with babysitting. They're barhopping—try the one we used for the initial honeytrap. I want that tail nailed to his ass before he returns home." She turned to the island to grab her bag. "I'm headed to the office. I'll see you in a few."
She hung up and shoved the phone into her pocket. But as she reached for her bag, she remembered the wad of paper.
If the sticky had fallen from LaCroix's hand while he'd been dumping his guest room trash…was the wad his too?
She pulled it out and returned to the archway to use the light bleeding in from the living room lamp as she unraveled the paper.
It was a receipt from a local florist.
Regan stiffened as she spotted the itemized tally for an oversized teddy bear, a roll of gift wrap and a trio of eleven-inch latex balloons. Pink.
What better way to disguise a bomb?
Even more chilling, she and Jelly had purchased a dozen latex balloons several months back to celebrate a fellow agent's promotion, only to become annoyed when they'd lost their collective oomph and sunk to the floor by the following night. According to the receipt, these balloons had been filled with helium that morning—when John had been at the hospital with her.
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