by Lisa Hughey
Which was bullshit.
That must be some weird hormone endorphin buzz from the magnificent orgasm he’d bestowed upon her.
Maria just smirked.
Rissa blew out a breath. “You want to go to the gun range?” She posed it as a question, hoping, praying that Maria would deny it and give Rissa an out.
Yeah, that made her a coward but she wasn’t ready. Her heart was pounding and her head was light. And it wasn’t from anything so exciting as sex. It was straight-up fear.
But the Universe didn’t hear her plea, because Maria nodded. “Yes. I want to learn how to shoot a gun.”
And there went her excuse. Rissa would never inhibit Maria. She’d been a hostage to too many other people in her life, however Rissa wanted to make sure that Maria had a handle on her reasons.
“Learning to shoot won’t necessarily make you safer,” Rissa cautioned. “It’s a good skill to have in your toolbox but you still have to stay vigilant.”
“I know.” She had the impression that Maria was mentally rolling her eyes at her.
“Okay, good. John will be ready soon.”
Thud, thud, thud. The door trembled behind her back. “I guess he’s ready now.”
Maria smiled, her entire face lit up with an ethereal glow. For a moment Rissa envied her, that simple joy shone through, the fear and the terror she’d endured nowhere to be seen. “I’m ready.”
Maria speared her with one last ironic glance that seemed to ask, Are you?
Of course the answer was unequivocally…hell, no.
John braced for the deafening bang of gunfire. He knew coming to the range would be difficult for Rissa but he wanted to help her. He hadn’t really counted on how hard it would be for him either. He hadn’t been in combat, hadn’t been anywhere near people discharging firearms, since he’d been blown up.
“We aren’t going to need weapons on this op.” Rissa was still trying to stop this from happening.
“Maybe.” This was a major US city, not the Helmand Province. The odds of a shootout with bad guys, assuming they were even on the right track to find the bad guys, was about a million to one. “But before I was a Marine I was a Boy Scout. And I take that shit seriously,” he said with a completely straight face.
Rissa snickered and her shoulders relaxed. Mission accomplished.
“Start with a .22.” John placed the little pea shooter in her hand carefully, his fingers wrapped around hers, the weapon pointed toward the dirt floor. Her skin was warm beneath his and he flashed back to last night when her hand was wrapped around something far more intimate.
The sensual heat in her blue-green eyes told him she was remembering the same thing.
Thinking about last night was far more pleasurable than thinking about firing the weapon. He also knew she needed to do this.
The cement lane buffered the sound of gunfire from the other patrons but he still had to brace himself for the sharp bursts hitting his ears like thumps to the chest. And he remembered last night in that strip club. How Rissa had completely freaked at the noise. The impulse to comfort her made his palms itch.
John grabbed the ear protectors hanging around his neck, held on to the ear muffs to stop from reaching for her.
He leaned in, their torsos nearly touching. His lips brushed the shell of her ear, the contact a straight zap to his cock.
“Last night.” He glanced away from her, at the target hanging fifty yards out. Damn, he’d rather be back at Camp Leatherneck than have this conversation. “I froze for a second.”
The confession was ripped from his depths.
Her surprised gaze caught his.
He nodded. It was true. He’d completely lost where he was for a second, but then he saw Rissa freaking out and he tore himself out of his own memories to help her. “But you needed me and I pulled it together.”
Rissa’s eyes were wide with shock.
“If someone else was in danger, you’d handle it.” He had no doubts.
John took a deliberate step back, then set the box of ammunition on the table next to her. “I’m going next door to work with Maria.” He figured she’d want to be alone anyway.
John headed out before her hesitant vulnerability caused him to do something inadvisable.
Rissa nodded and turned away from him without another word. He only hoped his admission had helped.
Rissa didn’t want to watch John walk away.
His confession had surprised her and she knew a moment of shame for still being afraid. She stared at the matte-black finish of the small firearm. A .22 was the most innocuous of weapons. The rounds could do some damage up close but as a defensive weapon, most LEOs picked something with a little more firepower.
And yet, her heart was beating so hard in her chest, her fear drowned out everything but the overwhelming sounds of the range. Every bang, every round fired, rolled over her like a tsunami crashed over land and wiped out everything until she was isolated by her fear.
Cordite stung her nose. The taste lingered on her tongue. The scent of the desert, mesquite and sand, underlaid the smells of weapons being discharged and her own sweat. The gunpowder residue burned her eyes, yeah, that’s why she was tearing up. The lie clogged her throat.
“This is stupid, Riss,” she berated herself. “Lift up the damn gun and aim.”
She tried to raise her arm. But she was shaking so hard that she was afraid she’d accidentally pull the trigger and the shot would go wild. Obviously the cement lanes prohibited her from hurting anyone around her but still, the possibility lingered in the haunted crevasses of her brain.
She dropped her head, letting the weight pull on her neck, and closed her eyes, willing her heartbeat to slow. Carefully she braced her left hand under the grip on her right, weapon still pointed straight down at the dirt floor. Now both arms were shaking uncontrollably.
Sweat gathered at her hairline. The tension in her shoulders ramped up her stress level even as she tried to relax. Rissa inhaled slowly on a long, desperate attempt to calm, to breathe.
Dammit. She just wanted to stop being afraid. Stop hiding behind a bitchy persona. Stop painting makeup on her face to hide the ugly that festered beneath her icy demeanor.
Rissa lifted the her arms, her posture and stance textbook as she stared down the sight on the small weapon. Her arms shook. She wanted to throw up. Tears gathered in her eyes as she tried to control her breath, control her movements enough to actually release the trigger. Her index finger skimmed along the curved metal and she shook her hair away from her face. Sweat pooled under her arms and across her back.
Every new exhale, she had the chance to shoot.
But no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t make herself fire.
Memories flashed across her vision.
The warehouse, her partner, the sound of the bullets hitting his chest. The scream trapped inside as she tried desperately to save him. The gurgling gasp as blood filled his lungs and spilled across the floor. The wail of the sirens as the ambulance arrived. Sticky blood between her fingers, running in rivulets over the back of her hands as she tried frantically to hold it in his body.
The rise of bile as reality hit her. He was gone.
Rissa let her arms drop, and very, very carefully placed the weapon on the table meant to hold supplies. Then she dropped her head to the rough plywood surface and breathed slowly, trying to get back to a place where she could function. But reality was slow to return. The sounds of gunfire echoed all around her. Each report like a blow.
Two years and she still couldn’t shoot a weapon. She’d known this was a bad idea.
“Hey.” John’s arms wrapped around her waist from behind.
She stiffened. They didn’t know each other well enough for him to touch her so casually. But while she was trying to pull her invisible armor over her and get her bitchy façade in place, he was turning her around and tilting her chin up. His fingers were rough yet oh so gentle on her face.
He tenderly
wiped the moisture from her cheeks while she cursed that he’d seen her cry. Dammit. Show no weakness. The last thing she needed was John Pulaski reporting back to Jack Stone that she couldn’t do her job.
His gaze shifted to the blank target. Not a single hole marred the paper. “There’s always next time.”
A snort escaped. Next time. Right.
She was a weak fool. But she couldn’t admit that she didn’t think there would be a next time. “How did Maria do?”
She stepped back, needing the physical distance. Needing to not give in to the weakness that slithered through her. So tempted to lean into his embrace, to take comfort rather than handle her inadequacies on her own.
“Not bad.” John seemed reluctant to let her go. “But she’s ready to head back, if that’s okay.”
Rissa couldn’t wait to get the hell out of here. Every single report of a weapon was the bang of a nail in the coffin of her failure. She nodded and tried to focus on the job. “We need to review any new information that Connor’s been able to pull up for us anyway.”
But John wouldn’t let it go. “Things change,” he said gently. “Maybe your new reality doesn’t include firing a weapon.”
His voice was understanding. She couldn’t bear to see the pity that she was sure he felt.
Even though her soul was ripping apart and her heart was heavy, she tilted her chin up and gave him her patented “back off” glare. “I’ll get Maria.”
The writing was on the wall. She was done in the field. Done with this line of work altogether.
She would stick out this assignment. She refused to give up on Maria. She wouldn’t let Jillian or Bliss down either. She’d give one hundred and ten percent to this op, and then she’d have to find a new line of work.
Chapter 9
When they arrived back at the suite, Jack was already there. As soon as they walked in, Jack gave Maria a hug and kissed her on the forehead. “How you doing?”
She smiled tentatively at Jack. “Good. Great actually.”
John nodded. “She did really well for her first time out.”
Jack squeezed her shoulder with his big palm. “Excellent.”
Maria glanced around the suite. “Where’s Bliss?”
“Ah, I came over on my own.” Read: he’d left Bliss behind.
Maria looked quizzical. “Oh.”
“Listen, Ava wanted you to call her.” Jack handed Maria a slip of paper. “Here’s her room at the Palazzo.”
“Okay.” Maria shifted her gaze between them, clearly sensing the tension in the room. She lifted the paper. “I’ll just go call her in the other room.”
Once Maria went through the connecting door, Jack said, “We need to talk.”
John raised his eyebrows, clearly taken aback by Jack’s harsh tone. Rissa was surprised he was here again and wondered if they’d had a break in the investigation.
“Bliss told me about last night.”
Last night?
Panic fluttered in her belly. How could Bliss know about her and John having sex? She hadn’t told a soul. It certainly wasn’t her most professional moment. Shit. Way to represent Adams-Larsen. Jillian was going to kick her ass.
All that flittered through her mind, rapid-fire, until she comprehended there was no way he was talking about her and John.
Further back, Riss.
Crap, he was talking about the club. Jeez, she was three catastrophes out from the initial freak from fireworks. But she sure wasn’t going to share that tidbit with Jack.
Her private shame was on public display and up for discussion. She felt out of control. whirling, reeling from one hit after another. She waited for John to admit that she’d broken down at the gun range too.
“She handled it.” John frowned at Jack. “We handled it.”
Rissa could have fallen to her knees and kissed him. Then other things she could do on her knees hit her frontal cortex and a full body flush spread from her toes to her hairline. Fortunately, Jack didn’t notice. But John was giving her a strange look.
“I think we should take Rissa out of the field.” Jack’s white button-down sleeves were rolled up his forearms, his hands on his khaki-covered hips, a thick rubber dive watch emphasizing his thick muscular wrist.
John immediately replied, “No. Not happening.”
Jack paced the suddenly crowded-feeling living area. “You can continue alone. Say your wife is having second thoughts or she’s sick. We can come up with something believable.”
John didn’t even hesitate. “Not a chance. We need her.”
Rissa was silent, watching it play out. She wanted to protest, say she’d be fine. But what if she wasn’t? What if she jeopardized John’s safety?
The tension in the room had escalated from zero to Mach three in seconds.
Jack and John faced off. Both men had bulked up, hands on their hips, and their expressions were hard, uncompromising masks. The family resemblance was there in the jut of their jaw and the shape of their eyes. Jack was the epitome of well-dressed businessman, while John’s more casual cargo pants and polo shirt emphasized the breadth of his shoulders and the thickness of his biceps. Both alpha, but each with their own distinct edge.
“She can handle it,” John defended her. “We have a solid lead. We can’t let it disappear.”
John was right. They couldn’t afford to waste this opportunity.
Hadn’t she just recommitted to seeing this operation through? “I’ll be okay.” Rissa thought she understood Jack’s worry. “I’ve got John’s back.”
Jack flicked his hand. “Of course you do. But we’re in a time crunch here. Once Fernandez’s testimony is public, we won’t have much time before this asshole, Ortega, goes to ground. He’s got ties in both the US and Mexico. And he’s rich enough to use an emissary to do business in the US if he’s implicated. He can eliminate himself from the public eye and we’ll never get the fucker.”
“Does your concern mean Con has more intel for us?”
“Yeah.” Jack sat down on the sofa. “Once we knew the website, Con was able to start running searches on Ortega’s possible and known aliases.”
“Is the guy really that stupid?”
Jack scrunched up his face. “Um, maybe I should clarify. The government has a file on the guy but they’ve never been able to pin a thing on him. To most people he is just what he appears to be, a prominent legitimate Mexican businessman.”
“So how did we get this intel?” Rissa asked, thankful that he seemed to have dropped wanting her out.
“It’s possible that Con—” Jack placed his palms over Rissa’s ears, “—went in a backdoor somewhere.”
“He has a backdoor into the FBI’s database?” Rissa blurted out.
Jack’s grin lit his face up like a mischievous little boy’s. “I never said that.”
“And I didn’t hear that.” Rissa still had friends at the Bureau. But sometimes the end justified the means. In this case, eight years ago the FBI had gotten nowhere in finding these girls. The trail had been that well-hidden. If Stone Consulting and Adams-Larsen had the chance to right this wrong, with a little help from illegally obtained information, she wasn’t going to protest. She knew they wouldn’t use the access for any nefarious purpose. That still didn’t mean that she wanted to know the details of the method in which they procured the information.
But she did need to deliver some caution. “You need to make sure any evidence is admissible.”
“We can make sure that we obtain the information legally, after the fact if need be.” John tilted his head.
Rissa raised a brow. Really?
“No one has more paperwork rules and regs than the US Military,” John said. “And once you know the rules, it’s easier to subvert them…without getting caught.”
“Not just paperwork,” Rissa said. “Everything has to be above board in order to serve warrants.”
“Don’t worry about that,” Jack broke in. “I’ve got a friend who works Vice at
LVPD. He’ll be able to get an initial warrant based on an anonymous tip if it supports the info they already have. He says they’ve been searching for the right piece of evidence to cement the warrant and put it in front of a judge.”
“Okay.” Rissa rubbed her hands together like an evil mastermind. “So what have we got?”
Jack handed them printouts of women’s profiles on Backdoor.
“Con has managed to link all these girls to a single account. After a lot of digging, he found the connection between that account and an alias believed to be Manuel Ortega. He believes the girls are part of Ortega’s stable. But that’s as far as he’s gotten,” Jack said.
Acid bubbled in Rissa’s stomach, spreading sickness through her as she stared at the pictures. There were easily fifty young women’s profiles in the stack. Reduced to files on a website, who knew how many of these girls were victims? Individuals who had hopes and dreams until they’d been stolen from them. She traced her finger along the edge of the paper.
“I need you guys to figure out if there’s any other connection, or how we can dig deeper.” Jack glanced at the watch on his wrist.
“Any facial recognition matches between the profiles and our missing women?” Rissa asked.
“Not on Sophia and Graciela. Con is working on it,” Jack said again. “But we did get matches to some older missing teen cases on the West Coast.”
“Good.” John said fiercely, “But we also need to find Maria’s friends.”
Rissa’s heart clenched. What about all the rest? The construct of safety was fragile. Just like Maria wanting to learn to shoot a gun, had all these girls once thought that something would keep them safe? One small, seemingly insignificant decision could change the course of your life.
She tuned back into the conversation just as Jack asked John, “How are you doing?”
John lifted his eyebrows. “What do you mean?”
“This is a little outside what you’re used to.” Jack flattened his palms on the breakfast bar counter. “Enough action for you?”
