He chuckled. It hit every single one of her nerve endings and she shivered. Didn’t she have other things that were more important to do than get turned on by some man she’d just met?
“I just wanted to touch base and see how life was treating you. Did you enjoy your shopping trip?”
This time she laughed. It was met by silence.
Good, maybe he’s turned on too!
Stop it, stay on task.
“How come I’m not surprised you heard about my trip to the mall? Tell me, just how many cars were following me? More than the two that I spotted?”
“Nope, just the two.”
How did he manage to sigh and laugh at the same time?
“I thought the CIA only wore windbreakers in the movies.”
“I wouldn’t know about that. I don’t own a windbreaker,” Leo said.
“Yeah, but you’re special forces. A SEAL, right?”
“I thought we covered that at lunch,” Leo said.
“We covered the fact that you’re really good at side-stepping questions. Just like you did now. Since you’re going to play that game again, I don’t see any reason to stay on this call, do you?” She knew she was being a bitch, but she didn’t have time for this shit. She needed to talk to Rayi and Alistair, then find out what the hell Jim was up to with Deyvid, because that could be scary as hell.
“Here I thought I was being cute.”
“Nope. It was getting old. Are you going to start being straight with me?”
“Daisy, I’ll be as straight as I can. Yeah, I’m a SEAL. Yeah, we’re looking into how we can help your father, but I can’t say much more than that.”
“Help my father or rescue my father?”
“What’s the difference?” Leo asked.
A brick that had been sitting on top of her chest lifted. The idea that Navy SEALs were planning a rescue had her breathing easier. It didn’t mean she wasn’t going to look at things from all angles though. Hope for the best and plan for the worst, that was her motto.
“Earlier you said it was bad. Are you going to act quickly?” she asked.
“That’s another thing I can’t answer. The when and how are need-to-know.”
“So if you can’t tell me anything, and I answered all of your questions at lunch, why the call now?” she asked him.
“Because you shook your tail this evening.”
Daisy barked out a laugh. “I think that’s a dance. ‘Shake Your Tailfeather’. Or did you mean something even more, shall we say, evocative?”
Leo snorted. “Don’t get me started, Ms. Squires, I would like to be all sorts of evocative about your tail.”
Daisy rolled her eyes; this was so inappropriate, but it felt good. “Look, Leo, let’s get down to it, what do you want?”
I did not say ‘get down to it.’ How long has it been since I’ve been laid, anyway? Holy hell! Two years! No wonder everything coming out of my mouth sounds like a cheesy porn movie.
“Daisy?”
“Hmmm?”
“What did you do when you got away from the CIA?”
“It doesn’t matter. I haven’t found anything out that will help yet. Now that I have your number, I’ll call you if things change.”
I have to get off this call now. God knows what will come out of my mouth next!
“Daisy, we need you to stand down. We’ve got this under control. The last thing we need is you getting into trouble too.”
“Leo, you know who I am. You know what I do. I’m careful. Thousands of women around the world depend on me. I’m talking about their very lives. I’m not going to screw this up. You can trust me.”
“Then tell me what you were doing today.”
“I told you, it came down to nothing.”
“So far. There’s a part two, right?”
Shit, how does he know that?
“There might be, but who in the hell knows. This is Afghanistan.”
He laughed again. Daisy shivered…again.
“Can I get you to promise to fill me in if you hear anything that might make a difference? And I’m serious, Daisy, I need you to stay out of trouble. I also need any information that you might have that could help this situation.”
“I don’t plan to do anything that will put me in harm’s way.”
“I’m holding you to that.”
7
Leo had tried to get ahold of Daisy that morning, but no luck. The only good news was that Tom Ludlum had put a camera outside Daisy’s hotel room and she hadn’t left her room all night. She’d actually let in room service that morning, so Leo at least knew she was safe. Still…
“Perez, are you listening to me?” Kane wanted to know.
“Sure, you were going over the topography between where the Blackhawk is going to land tonight and where the cave is. It’s hilly and rocky. I got it.”
“Since you know everything, how about you telling us what you know, like what’s so goddamn interesting on your phone?” Max asked sarcastically.
Leo thought he might lose it, which was just fucking stupid. He’d only met the woman yesterday, but he was acting like she mattered. Not that she shouldn’t; everyone should matter, but she mattered.
“I’m seeing if Dr. Squires’ daughter has tried for another escape, or if she has contacted me with any new information she might have found.” At least he kept his voice level.
Nic laughed. “It was great that she gave the CIA the slip. I like her already.”
“I’m right there with you, Kid. Any woman who can be that good, and that sneaky, is aces in my book. Hell, Kane, she reminds me of A.J. or maybe Eden,” Cullen said as he turned his head to look at Asher.
“Not Carys?” Nic said.
“Carys would be in their face and demand they stop following her. It wouldn’t occur to her to give them the slip. She would go all doctor on them.” Cullen’s voice held nothing but love and admiration for his fiancée.
Leo thought about it. Cullen was right. His woman was calm, cool, and collected, but when she was advocating for a patient she roared like a lion. Daisy would be like that too, he just knew it. But if subterfuge was more expedient, she would go that route, which is what she’d done yesterday.
“So, Tom has eyes on her? She’s there at the hotel?” Max asked.
Leo nodded. “She said she would call me if she got any information that might be useful. She hasn’t called, so I guess she didn’t hear anything.”
“Did you really think she would find out anything more than Kane would?” Max asked.
“I thought it was possible,” Leo said. “She’s a force to be reckoned with.”
“If you feel like that, call her,” Max said. “After the briefing.”
Leo nodded.
Kane continued going over where they would be landing and what they could expect according to the drone pictures.
“If things are set up as we’ve seen before, Dr. Squires should be held in the back of the cave. We have no idea how deep it goes. What would be best is if we could get them coming out of the cave instead of us going in,” Kane explained.
“That’s where I come in,” Asher said as he stepped up and pointed at the map.
“Wait a minute,” Raiden interjected. “Are we sure this cave doesn’t link to any other cave or caves?”
Kane shook his head. “This is uncharted territory for us. There is no way to know. The drone has done an intense grid pattern for a kilometer around this area, and there is no other sign of life. No people or vehicles. So hopefully, this is the one and only hiding place.”
Sounded like all possible recon had been done.
Max nodded to Asher so he would continue. “With Raiden’s help, I’m going to set explosives under the jeep and two trucks. That will act as the diversion we need to get the terrorists to vacate the cave.”
“But we don’t think all of them will leave,” Max said. “While Asher plays with C-4, Cullen, Nic, and I will be positioned on either side of the cave. Duri
ng the chaos, we’ll head in and look for Dr. Squires.”
“What time is this going down?” Leo asked.
“We’re expecting some bad weather from twenty-one hundred hours until zero one hundred hours, so we’ll take off after that. Our ETA is zero two hundred. That would put us at the caves at zero three hundred.
Leo examined the topographical map. He glanced over at Ezio. As the team’s snipers, it was their duty to find high ground so that they could cover everybody as they did their jobs.
Kane would monitor everyone’s position on his laptop so that he could coordinate movements where needed. He’d be with either Leo or Ezio. If things fell to shit, Leo, Ezio, and Kane could go in.
“Are we going to get more shots of the target area?” Max asked Kane.
“They’re planning another at eighteen hundred hours tonight, before the bad weather starts,” Kane said.
“Who’s coordinating this?” Max asked Kane.
“Captain Miller, USAF. This is what she does.”
“Have you met with her?” Max asked.
“Yep. Did yesterday,” Kane answered. “She knows her shit. The only downside is this is a new area to them, which is good and bad. Good, that they’ve now got something else nailed down. Bad in the sense that she doesn’t know the area inside and out like she normally does. She’s hating life. That’s the reason for more drones and more photos.”
Max turned to Leo. “Go make your call. Let me know if anything new pops up. I don’t want any more surprises from the doctor’s daughter.”
Leo nodded, grabbed his briefing binder, and hauled ass out of the cramped conference room. It was only seven o’clock in the morning. The heat was already oppressive, but the outside fresh air still felt better than the stifling conditions of the indoors. He walked around the building and leaned his shoulder against a wall, then called Daisy.
“Hey, Handsome, aren’t you calling pretty early? Weren’t you worried you’d wake me up?”
“No, can’t say I was.”
There was a long pause.
“So, do you know exactly what I had for breakfast?” she asked with a hint of a laugh in her voice.
“Nope, just that you called for room service. Everybody on Team Good-Guy is happy to know that you’re tucked safely in your room.”
She chuckled. “Team Good-Guy, huh? I’m not sure I would want to be affiliated with those fucknuts that I had to deal with at the embassy yesterday if I were you.”
“You have quite a way with words, Miss Squires,” Leo smiled. He liked it. She cut through all the bullshit and didn’t make him try to decipher what she was thinking and feeling, she just said what she was thinking.
“Just calling it the way I see it. So tell me, is the good-guy team part of the embassy clown-car?”
“Just one of the guys. He didn’t do any talking. He was in charge of yesterday’s tail. Now that he realizes just the quality of woman he’s up against, he’s upped his game.”
“Tom Ludlum?”
Leo stared at his phone for a second.
“You know, you’re kind of scary the way you get information.”
“Leo, do you know what’s really scary? The fact that Tom’s supposed to be good at what he does and I still managed to lose his men. Anyway, they think they have me pinned in today, so they must be happy little campers,” she exhaled slowly. “So tell me, Chief Petty Officer Perez, the man who was one of the top marksmen in SEAL Sniper School, what is on your agenda today.”
“Whoever your information source is, they don’t miss much, do they? Are you done showing off now?” he asked.
“Damn, you don’t even sound a little bit pissed-off,” she murmured. “I like that. Are you going to tell me what you’re planning today?”
“Daisy, the only thing that’s beginning to piss me off is that you haven’t told me anything of significance. Before I side-step your questions, I’ve got more questions of my own.” He heard her huff out a laugh. “Besides inoculating Siraj’s nephew, did your dad, or any of his team, do anything else to piss off the Haqqani Network?”
“It’s still the same crap we talked about at lunch yesterday.”
“So, you came up with bupkis? I find that hard to believe.”
“Why?”
“Because you would be out of your room doing something instead of in your room eating breakfast.”
She let out a real laugh. “Okay, you’re right. My contact is getting me a meeting with somebody he says he trusts. He’s with the new arm of the Taliban who has been part of the ceasefire.”
“Are you nuts?! Just what in the hell are you planning to talk about?” Leo felt his blood pressure triple.
“I’m going to see if we can offer Siraj money in exchange for my father. It was one of the things I promised my brothers I would try to do before I left the States.”
“They’re not going to go for it.” Leo thought about how Squires had told the Imam that the prophet would be ashamed of them. There wasn’t a chance in hell that anyone would go for ransom.
“I’ve got to try.”
He had to stop this shit from going a step further.
“Daisy, it’s more than just inoculating Siraj’s nephew. He also invoked the prophet Muhammad’s name when dealing with an Imam here in Afghanistan. He told the Imam the prophet would be ashamed of him for not inoculating his family.”
He heard her groan. “Please tell me you’re making that up.”
He didn’t answer her.
“No, of course, you’re not. That’s just like Ethan Squires. He has to pour gasoline on every damned situation.”
“So you see why meeting with this decent guy from the Taliban isn’t going to do you any good, right?”
“I hate not having a back-up plan to my back-up plan. I know you Navy SEALs are supposed to be the shit, but Leo, something could go wrong. You might not find him to rescue him, have you thought of that?”
Again, he didn’t say anything.
She sucked in her breath. “You mean you have found him?”
“Daisy, you can’t meet with anybody from the Taliban. I’m going to tell Tom Ludlum to put you under house arrest.”
“He can’t do that,” she protested.
“Yes, he can. He’ll have two men put outside your door in minutes, and they won’t let you leave your room. If you protest, they’ll just take you to the embassy.”
“Don’t think I’m the only Squires out there trying to free my father. There are others trying just as hard and are just as desperate.”
“What’s that supposed to mean? Are one of your brothers or your sister coming to Afghanistan?”
“They don’t have to be in Afghanistan to do something reckless.”
Leo stood up straighter. “What are you talking about? Who’s doing something reckless?”
“I can’t tell you. It would betray a confidence.”
“I call bullshit. You’re too smart of a woman to just let that dribble out of your mouth unless you wanted to talk to me about it. So talk.”
Leo swore he could hear her closing her eyes and resting her head back against a chair or the headboard or something. “You’re right. I don’t know how this is going to play out. But my brother has connections with somebody who can cut through a lot of red tape and get in with the Russian embassy here in Afghanistan.”
Leo’s stomach plummeted.
“Russia, the country that was paying the Taliban-linked militants to kill American troops, that Russia? Is your brother out of his fucking mind?”
“No, he’s trying to figure out a way to start a dialogue with the Haqqani Network.”
“Then he is out of his mind. They’re killers, and your father managed to step right into the hornet’s nest. Tell your brother to back off.”
“I’m going to try.”
“Do better than try, or I’m going to have to bring Tom Ludlum into all of this.” Leo paused. “Dammit, that’s what you wanted me to do, isn’t it? That’s why you’re
mentioning it, isn’t it?” Maybe she wasn’t as straightforward as he’d originally thought.
“Fuck, Leo, I don’t know. I hardly got any sleep last night. I don’t know if I’m coming or going, and my family is driving me insane. If you could just tell Tom that somebody is going to try to loop the Russian embassy into getting my father released through the embassy’s Taliban contacts, without naming names, that would be wonderful. My brother’s Russian connection isn’t well-known, so I hope to God Jim’s name won’t be brought up in this.”
“Fine, I’ll talk to Tom. Maybe he can get our state department to tell the Russians it will be detrimental to their political standing if they get involved.” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “But Daisy, just because you were able to lose your tail last night, doesn’t mean you should underestimate these men. Once I tell Tom, he’ll be searching for the connection. This could get your brother in trouble.”
“For having a Russian friend?”
“If your friend is shady, and Jim has done anything shady with him, then things will get on the CIA’s radar.”
“Jim’s clean. Trust me.”
“Honey, I’m trying to. I really am. Go eat your breakfast, and I’ll call Tom.”
“Leo, you be careful out there. I know risking your life is what you do, but still, you just be careful, okay?”
“Always.”
8
“How bad is this?” Kane leaned over and asked Leo.
Leo could hear the stress in Kane’s voice. Some of it was because the last drone flyover that everybody was anticipating didn’t come back with any good photos because of the sandstorm. But a lot of it had to do with the fucking weather.
Leo looked out the Blackhawk’s gunner door’s window. The dust wind that had subsided two hours ago before they had departed had suddenly come on strong again. If he had to guess it was damn near eighty miles an hour. The only good thing that Leo could see was that there weren’t thick pillars of dust coming at them, but that’s because of their altitude. God knew what it was like on the ground.
The pilot was going to have to determine what the situation on the ground was like before choosing to land. If it was impossible to see because of the sandstorm, then the smartest thing to do would be to abort the mission. Even with the synthetic vision system, there was too much of a chance that the wind could cause the helicopter to bounce around to hell and back, no matter how good the pilot was, and the surroundings had too many hills and big rocks to take the chance of landing without good sight.
Her Sensual Protector: A Navy SEAL Romance (Night Storm Book 5) Page 6
