The Stripper and the SEAL

by Jenna Bennett

“He doesn’t know,” Max said, his fingers surrounding hers, warm and hard. “Not unless he figures it out on his own when nobody calls him this morning. But both the Norfolk PD and Idaho are keeping the arrests quiet. There won’t be anything on the news to tip him off.”

  At least that was something.

  “And it looks like Sergei’s been keeping him updated by text,” Max added. “In Russian. I spent some of last night writing out an update for today, that the Norfolk PD can send Alex from Sergei’s phone. Hopefully that’ll make him believe Sergei and Yuri are still at large and closing in on you.”

  Gabrielle nodded, her mouth a little dry.

  “Lieutenant Vasiliev will drive you to DC,” Commander Baker said, “and go into the club with you.”

  He glanced at Max, who nodded.

  Gabrielle cleared her throat. “Doesn’t Alex know who Max is?”

  “Sergei has told Alex about him,” Baker said, “and sent a picture.”

  “Then wouldn’t he also know that Max is a SEAL? Wouldn’t he find that suspicious?”

  Max glanced at Baker and got the nod. “The story,” he told her, “is that you haven’t told me everything. All I know is that you left DC in a hurry, and we’re going back to ask Alex for the back wages he owes you.”

  “But he doesn’t…” She’d stopped working for Alex when Trent took her on as his mistress. She hadn’t danced in Alex’s club for more than a year. There were no back wages.

  Max nodded. “I know that. And you know that. And so does Alex. When you ask him for money, he’ll hear it as blackmail. You’re asking him to pay to keep your mouth shut about what you know.”

  “He won’t like that,” Gabrielle said.

  “That’s the idea. But he won’t be able to do anything about it, because I’ll be there. He won’t take the risk of killing me. So he’ll put you off. He’ll let us leave.”

  “Are you sure about that?”

  “Reasonably sure,” Max said, “since I’ll shoot anybody who gets in our way.”

  Baker gave him a quelling look. “What Lieutenant Vasiliev means, is that he’ll make sure nobody tries to stop you.”

  Max looked like he wanted to insist on his own version of events, but he let his commander’s words stand. “After that,” he said, “it’ll be a repeat of last night. I’ll take you to your apartment so you can pack your things.”

  “You mean Trent’s apartment.”

  “Whatever apartment you want to go to,” Max said. “Alex will call, to tell you he has the money. He’ll tell you to get rid of me. You’ll pretend you’re too stupid to realize that that’ll leave you unprotected, and send me off on an errand. Or he’ll try to talk you into meeting him somewhere, without me, in which case you’ll tell him to come to you, that you’ll get rid of me to make the coast clear for him, still pretending—”

  “That I’m too stupid to realize that he wants to kill me.” She nodded. “I get it.”

  “We’ll all be there to make sure that doesn’t happen.” He looked around the room. Everyone nodded.

  “Except you,” Gabrielle reminded him. “Since I’ll be sending you away.”

  “Only until Alex is inside the building. With Yuri and Sergei in prison, along with his crew in Idaho, he’s shorthanded, so I don’t think he’ll bother to send anyone after me to make sure I actually leave instead of just driving around the block. And he’ll want to handle you personally, so he’ll show up himself.”

  Gabrielle fought back a shiver.

  “Probably try to make it look like Engelhart did it,” Gustavsson said thoughtfully. He glanced at her. “His apartment, you said?”

  Gabrielle nodded.

  “So killing you there implicates Engelhart, while Alex is safely back at the club, with witnesses to prove it.”

  Whether he was actually there or not. Gabrielle visualized Konstantin, the bouncer who guarded the door when Yuri didn’t, standing outside the closed door to Alex’s office, telling everyone the boss was busy and they couldn’t see him right now. Meanwhile, Alex was traveling across town to kill Gabrielle in Trent’s apartment.

  They were right about him implicating Trent in her murder. It was something Alex would do. He would make it look like Trent had killed her because she knew that Trent planned to kill Alistair Collins and his wife. The story would be that she’d hooked Trent and the Russians up, with no help from Alex or anyone else. The Russians in Idaho would go along with that. Alex would hang it all on Trent. She’d be dead, and Trent would go to prison for murder, while Alex would slip and slide out of range once more.

  Unless someone did something to stop him.

  She nodded. “I’ll do it.”

  Nobody stood up and cheered. Nobody slapped her on the back and told her she’d done good. It was like they’d expected it all along. Like there’d been no question that she’d do the right thing.

  Maybe Max had told them she had—provisionally—agreed last night. Or maybe they just thought that everyone was like them: willing to do whatever it took, no matter the personal cost, to do the right thing.

  “Let’s go,” Baker said.

  And they went.

  * * *

  Max and Gabrielle took Max’s truck north. The rest of his squad would be piling into a helo—a helicopter—at the Navy base, and get there before them, and set up in Trent Engelhart’s apartment to wait for Gabrielle—and Alex—to show up. She had given them her key.

  She and Max, meanwhile, were driving to Washington. Commander Baker and Max both agreed that it wasn’t likely anyone was following them at this point. They thought, with Sergei and Yuri in prison, that Max and Gabrielle were on their own, and nobody else was reporting back to Alex. But just in case they was wrong, Baker didn’t want to take any chances. They couldn’t let on that a squad of Navy SEALs were part of the operation. So the two of them took the truck and set out to drive the three hours up the coast, the way they would have done if they were really just going to DC to ask Alex for Gabrielle’s hush money.

  It was a mostly silent trip, the only noise coming from outside the car and Toby Keith on the radio. Gabrielle was scared out of her mind, but she didn’t want Max to know it. He didn’t look worried. He probably wasn’t worried. He was a Navy SEAL. He’d faced worse threats than Alex Volkov.

  But she hadn’t. And while she trusted him, and the other men in his squad, it was still scary to confront Alex.

  The alternative was scarier, though. If she stayed out here, sooner or later someone would catch up with her. Alex, or one of his henchmen, or even Trent. Somebody would catch up, and then she’d be dead.

  Better to take some of the power back into her own hands and act first. And it made sense to do it now, while Alex’s forces were diminished and before he realized what was going on.

  Max turned his head and looked at her. “You OK?”

  Gabrielle nodded.

  “It’s OK to admit you’re afraid.”

  She moved to flip her hair over her shoulder, and remembered it wasn’t there. “Of course I’m afraid. If something goes wrong, I’ll end up dead.”

  “Nothing’s gonna go wrong,” Max said. “In a couple hours, this’ll all be over. You won’t have to worry about Alex ever again.”

  “The only way I wouldn’t worry about Alex,” Gabrielle told him, “was if he was dead.”

  Max’s face didn’t change. “That could be arranged.”

  Gabrielle blinked.

  When she didn’t say anything, Max glanced over. “You look shocked. I’m a soldier, sweetheart. We all are. I’ve killed before.”

  “In combat,” Gabrielle said, her throat dry. “Right?”

  He looked back at the road. “Sure. It’s not like I go around killing people who cut me off in traffic. I could have killed Sergei and Yuri the other night, and I didn’t.”

  She nodded. “But?”

  “If you wanted Alex not to survive whatever confrontation is ahead of us, I could make sure he didn’t.”

&nb
sp; Right. “Thank you. I guess.”

  A corner of his mouth turned up. The corner she could see. “You’re welcome.”

  A minute passed. The landscape flew past in a blur outside the window.

  “I don’t want you to kill him,” Gabrielle said. “I just want him gone. I want all of it gone. The whole four or five years since I met him.” The strip club. Trent. Especially Trent.

  Max’s voice was even. “Can’t help you with that, I’m afraid. But I can get rid of him for you. And make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

  “No.” She shook her head. “I don’t want you to kill anyone for me.” Not like that. Not deliberately. If Alex happened to end up dead in, say, a firefight, that would be OK. But she wasn’t sending Max in there, like a hired assassin, to make sure Alex didn’t make it out alive.

  “Your choice,” Max said.

  They drove in silence another minute.

  “You know,” Max said, “if the past four or five years hadn’t happened, you wouldn’t be here now.”

  No. She also wouldn’t be on her way to risk her life by taking down the Russian mob.

  But— “Are you saying it’s a good thing that what happened to me, happened to me?”

  “I’m saying it’s a good thing you ended up at the FUBAR. I’m glad I got to meet you. And I’m glad I’m able to help you with this. Whatever happens later.”

  Later. After Alex was incarcerated—or dead.

  “Let’s both just survive today,” Gabrielle said. “Before we make any other decisions.”

  Max nodded.

  “But I haven’t forgotten that I need to pay you back. In sexual favors.”

  That corner of his mouth turned up again. “Good.”

  “I would have slept with you last night, you know.” If he’d suggested it.

  “When we make love,” Max said, and gave her a little thrill because he’d said ‘make love’ and not ‘have sex,’ “I don’t want you to be thinking about anybody but me. Even Alex Volkov.”

  Fair enough.

  The car kept going toward Washington.

  * * *

  They were getting close to Richmond when Max pulled the truck off the highway and into a gas station parking lot. “Too much coffee this morning,” he told her.

  Gabrielle unbuckled her seatbelt. “You didn’t get any sleep at all, did you?”

  “Not much.” He opened his door and swung his legs out. “But it’s an occupational hazard. Hell Week is five-and-a-half days of training on less than four hours of sleep. You get used to it. Stay there.”

  He shut the door behind him and came around to her side of the car.

  “There’s no one in sight,” Gabrielle pointed out. The parking lot was eerily empty. “I think we’re safe.”

  “That’s when you gotta watch out. There’s safety in numbers. I just couldn’t hold it any longer. And I didn’t figure you wanted to watch me piss into a bottle while we did eighty on the highway.”

  Gabrielle arched her brows as she slid out of the car. She didn’t need for him to put his hands on her waist and lift her down, but it was nice nonetheless. “Is that what you do when you’re on missions? Pee in bottles?”

  “If we have to. I spent two days under an overturned boat once, with no bottle in sight. You do what you have to do.”

  He gave one last glance around the deserted parking lot before taking her elbow and steering her toward the door of the gas station. Only to stop and curse when he saw the sign in the window. “Closed. Damn.”

  “The restrooms might be open,” Gabrielle pointed out. In addition to the closed sign, there was also a sign with an arrow, saying ‘Restrooms in rear.’

  He glanced at her. “I don’t suppose you’ll let me stick you in the truck and lock you in while I take care of business?”

  Gabrielle shook her head. “I have to pee, too. And I don’t know how to use a bottle. Besides, the place is empty. There’s no one here.”

  The place was unquestionably empty. There were no cars parked out front, no cars filling gas at either of the two pumps, and from the looks of the place, and the tufts of grass growing in the cracks in the blacktop, it had been that way for a while. “The bathrooms are probably locked.”

  “I’ll get’em open,” Max said, towing her along. “A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.”

  No problem. Gabrielle allowed herself a little smile as he hauled her around the corner and toward the two doors set into the back wall. They were indeed locked, but it took Max less than a minute to open the men’s room with the tools he kept in his pocket.

  Gabrielle watched with arched brows. “Is this something they teach you during Hell Week, too?”

  “Later,” Max said, fiddling with the lock. “Hell Week is just to see if you can stick it out. The real nitty gritty comes later. There.”

  He straightened and pushed the door open with one hand while dropping the lock picks in his pocket with the other. “After you.”

  Gabrielle stepped across the threshold into the dark men’s room, nose wrinkling. “It still smells bad.”

  “From the looks of it, it’s been locked up for a while,” Max said, following. The door shut behind him, plunging them both into stygian blackness. “Shit.”

  He flipped the switch next to the door, but of course nothing happened. He took a step back and opened the door again. “You can go first. I’ll hold the door.”

  “I can wait…” Gabrielle began, since after all, it was Max who had wanted this potty break to begin with. But he shook his head.

  “Just go. I’m fine for one more minute.”

  OK, then. Gabrielle scurried into one of the stalls and didn’t even bother to close the door. It wasn’t like Max would be peeking. And the less time she spent in here, the better. She couldn’t see the floor, and it was probably just as well, since she had a feeling there might be cockroaches and other creepy crawlies down there.

  She fumbled her way to paper, and didn’t bother to flush, just hurried back to the door and the strip of light. “This is creepy.”

  “Just another minute or two,” Max told her as he left his spot by the door and went into the same stall she’d been in. There were a couple of urinals lined up across from the door, and using one of them would have been easier, so she assumed he was trying to spare her the visual of watching him relieve himself. She didn’t imagine he had a lot of hang-ups of his own about it. Not if he’d spent two days under a boat, doing what he had to do.

  He disappeared behind the wall, and she heard the sound of a zipper. Then she heard another sound, this one from outside the door.

  If she’d had any sense at all—as she told herself later—she would have ducked inside and locked the door, and they could have barricaded themselves in the bathroom for however long it took.

  Instead, she opened the door wider to see what was happening, and uttered a squeak when a hand wrapped around her wrist and yanked her out of the doorway. An arm extended past her into the restroom, gripping a gun. Gabrielle screamed, but the sound was lost in the fusillade of shots splintering the mirrors, penetrating the walls, and sending chips of porcelain flying.

  13

  When Max woke up, it took him a minute to figure out where he was and what was going on. It was dark. Or not just dark, but pitch black. He was flat on his face on a cold surface, with his cheek resting against another cold surface.

  His foot hurt. As he got more awake, he realized that his foot hurt rather a lot.

  He also realized that the cold surface against his cheek was the side of a toilet.

  And then it came back. The drive to Washington—or at least halfway through Virginia. The bathroom break at the abandoned gas station. Picking the lock on the bathroom. Standing guard while Gabrielle used the toilet, and then leaving her at the door while he himself went inside the stall.

  He’d just managed to pull his zipper down when all hell broke lose.

  He managed to get himself to his feet, without the fina
l indignity of sticking his hand into the toilet bowl when he used the seat for leverage. For a second there, it was touch and go, but he managed to save himself. Once he was upright, he put his back against the wall of the stall and took stock.

  His zipper was still unzipped, so he took care of that first. His foot hurt like it had a bullet in it, and it probably did. Nothing much he could do about that right now. Other than a headache, he didn’t hurt anywhere else, so chances were the bullet in his foot was the only bullet that had found a mark. There’d been lots of them, or so he seemed to remember.

  He was pretty sure he was alone. With the noise he’d made, if Gabrielle had been anywhere around, she’d have heard him.

  Unless she’s dead, a voice in his head whispered.

  Max cleared his throat. “Gabrielle?”

  There was no answer. But of course she wouldn’t be answering if she were dead.

  “Gabby? Bree?”

  He pushed himself off from the wall and found his way out of the stall. With one hand on the opposite wall, he shuffled in the direction of the door, keeping his feet low to the ground.

  He didn’t run into anything. His fingers found the doorjamb first, and then he fumbled his way to the knob. It turned, and he yanked the door open. Sunshine flooded through the gap, and Max looked around. Please let her be here. Please let her not be dead.

  But the bathroom was empty. Whoever had shot him—and there wasn’t much doubt as to who that someone was—had taken Gabrielle.

  He burst out of the bathroom at a limping run. The back of the building was empty. There were no cars in sight, and no people. He turned the corner, ignoring the pain in his foot and the way his boot felt squishy. There was probably a fair amount of blood sloshing around inside, and he figured there were one or more small broken bones inside, too.

  But they were small, and he could sideline the pain for the moment. Finding Gabrielle was more important.

  At least his truck was still where he’d parked it. Did that mean there’d been just one person here? If there’d been two—one to drive the car they’d come in, the other to drive Max’s truck—they’d probably have taken it. It’s what he’d have done if he’d been in charge of this op.