by Nico Rosso
Sunil put his hands on his hips and stood, defiant. “Explain to me what’s happening.”
James sidestepped his father and ventured deeper into the house, where the guest bedroom was by the door to the backyard. Sunil thundered after him on bare feet.
“James Sant!” His father used his name like a lasso and tried to drag him back into the hall. But James was already in the room and threw open the door to the closet that protruded in one corner. Shoved the extra clothes aside and got into the closet. “James.” Sunil stood before him, pointing at the ground where he wanted his son to report.
Things were about to get worse. James swung the hammer into the wall next to the door on the inside of the closet. Plaster cracked and dust flew. He pounded again and again, cutting a trench, despite his father’s protests of, “Oh my goodness!”
Even April looked distressed. “What are you doing?”
The hole was large enough, and James dropped the hammer to the floor. He reached inside the wall and pulled out exactly what he needed. Sunil retreated to the other side of the room when James emerged from the closet with a pump action shotgun half wrapped in fabric and a box of extra shells.
Sunil whispered, heartbroken, “These are the actions of a good guy?”
James shrugged. “I built you a closet, didn’t I?” He left the room, knowing his father remained on the trail. “I’ll fix the hole later.” He went out the back door and obscured the shotgun as best he could on the way to the detached garage behind the house.
The side door was unlocked, and he entered into the dry shade. A switch on the wall turned on a hanging fluorescent light, illuminating a two-car garage with only one car at the moment. He opened the back door to his father’s immaculate sedan and placed the shotgun in the wheel well.
Sunil put his hands on the trunk, as if he could stop the car with his will. “I am not loaning you my car until you tell me what’s going on.”
James went to the small workbench on the side of the garage, pulled out one of the drawers and lifted a false bottom. “You’re not loaning me the car. I’m stealing it.” Under the bottom was a large envelope, right where he’d left it.
He found a screwdriver on the workbench and tried to return to the car, but Sunil blocked him. “No, James.”
“Where I’m taking this car, I don’t want it connected to you at all, so give me two hours, then call 911 and report the car stolen.” He tried to snake around his father, but the man remained nimble and shifted to bar the path.
True worry joined the frustration on Sunil’s face. “You must tell me.”
There wasn’t time to tell him everything. “I’m still a soldier.” Down the road, he’d have a meal with his father and mother and tell them everything, including his time with Hathaway.
“For who?” Sunil squinted, like he was trying to piece the last few years together.
“For the good guys, Papa.” James stepped to the side of his father and returned to the car. He handed April the envelope and unscrewed the license plates. She tore the paper open, revealing another set of plates with sterile numbers that Automatik had supplied him months ago. She gave them to him, and he attached them to the car.
Sunil rubbed his forehead. “This isn’t the kind of thing good guys do.”
James put the legitimate plates on the workbench and tossed April the keys to their car. “Bring it in here.” He hit a button on the wall and opened the garage door. She hurried down the driveway, leaving him alone with Sunil. James confessed as much as he could. “You’re right. I used to be a bad guy. After the SAS.” Emotions sheened in his father’s eyes. Hurting this man drove a barbed spike through James’s chest. He had to clear his throat to continue. “But not anymore.”
The two men stepped behind the sedan when April drove toward them, then parked the small, battered SUV in the empty space. James put his hand on his father’s shoulder. “After we leave, close the garage door and don’t open it until I get in touch.” James let his father go and retrieved the spare key for the sedan from a jar full of rusty nails on the workbench. April dragged the carry-on from the old car and put it in the backseat of the sedan.
James reiterated to Sunil. “Two hours. Report the car as stolen. Say it was parked on the street when it disappeared.”
His father just stared at him, hurt and sadness still in his eyes.
James took the time to breathe and address Sunil directly. “You don’t have to believe me, but please believe me. I’m part of a team of ex-special forces men and women.” He held his hand out toward April. “She’s part of this team.” Her lips parted with a question she kept to herself. James continued to his father, “We help people. Did you hear about the gunrunner gangs who destroyed each other in the Midwest?”
Sunil nodded slowly.
“That was us,” James told him. “We protect people when they can’t protect themselves.”
His father pointed vaguely to the south. “The freeway?”
“Mercenaries,” James answered, his anger churning again. “Paid to hurt her.” He looked to April, ready to fight for as long as it took to make her safe.
All was silent in the garage. Sunil looked at April and at James with his wise perception. He finally replied. “Two hours, then I call the police.”
“Thank you, Papa.” James gave his father a quick hug and hurried into the sedan. April strapped herself into the passenger seat, and James started the engine.
Sunil leaned into the open driver’s side window. “You are coming back to clean up this mess.” He waved at the battered car April had just parked. “This cannot stay. And the hole in the closet must be repaired.”
“I will take care of everything.” He patted his father’s hand.
“Miss Banks.” Sunil gave her a small bow.
She waved back. “Thank you for everything, Mr. Sant. I’m sorry about the circumstances.”
“Be safe.” Sunil turned his tearing eyes back to his son. “You be safe. And you come back.”
Emotion rose and tightened in James’s chest. “I will.” He put the car into reverse and backed out of the driveway. By the time they hit the street, the garage door was closed and he no longer saw his father.
* * *
The quiet around James was thick with meaning. Watching some of his interactions with his father reminded April of her family dynamic. No matter how old she was, there were always the old ruts of communication to rely on, rather than actually saying what they meant. Beneath it, though, was real love. She saw that too with James and Sunil.
She tracked the map on her burner phone, seeing how far it was from their location to Quartz Hill. James didn’t need directions yet and drove them from the neighborhood to more populated streets lined with businesses. Most of the shops and restaurants were Indian.
James scanned over the businesses and ended his silence. “That’s why I moved them to Artesia. Good community.”
She watched the ebb and flow of emotion in his eyes. “So if you ever offer to do some home improvement for me, I should expect to have a shotgun sealed into the walls?”
“Life in Automatik.” He tapped the steering wheel. “Contingencies everywhere, and you hope you never need them.”
Was that her life now? She couldn’t exist under that much fear. “When you told your father that I’m a member of the team, was that because it was easier to explain?”
“As soon as you told me you wouldn’t go to the safe house, and you had to pursue the hackers yourself, you became a member of Automatik.” He smiled warmly at her, but she remained unsettled.
“Does that mean I have to stash guns everywhere?” She didn’t even know if her house was still standing. “Make contingency plans for abandoning my life at a moment’s notice and starting a new identity?”
“That’s not you,” he insisted. �
��It’s me. That’s what I’d been living.”
With the way things had happened so quickly, throwing her and James together into the danger, into the desire, she hadn’t thought about what the next step after the mission would look like. If they survived the mission.
“It’s always like this for you?” she asked.
“This op is...different.” He drove them from the streets onto a freeway. Traffic thickened and slowed their northern progress. “A lot of unexpected turns.”
“After the op?” She knew everything beyond the moment was unknown.
“I’ve been running and gunning for quite a bit.” He stared past the distance ahead. “Never been one to plan too far ahead.”
“You planned the shotgun and the license plates.” She didn’t blame his lack of structure beyond the mission. She’d designed her life once, then found out how quickly everything can change.
“That’s tactical.” He waved it off. “That comes easy.”
“I know the rest is hard.”
“That’s what makes you remarkable.” He brought his focus from the distance and to her. She warmed with his look. “You never stop fighting.”
“I’ve stopped.” She chewed her lip. At her lowest point, she’d done nothing, just stared at the shadows made by the windows on the walls.
“I’ve never seen it.” He extended his hand, turned his palm up and laid out facts. “We get hit, we go down. Some people stay down. You took a huge hit, you healed, you fought your way back.” His hand remained out. He looked at it, then her hand, and back to his.
She placed her palm on his. He curled his fingers around her. The connection went beyond his words. His admiration and caring sank through to her bones and deeper into her chest. His fierce protectiveness lit her own fires.
He continued to hold her hand and looked at her, determined. “Once the op is over, we’ll return to my parents’ house. I’ll introduce you as not only my teammate and partner, but my girlfriend.”
Planning beyond the latest second took bravery. She tightened her hold of him. But the term “girlfriend” seemed out of date for people their age. “How about your lover?”
“Yes, we’ll do that.” He smiled, with a wicked edge. “It’s so avant-garde.”
“And it makes people more uncomfortable when you say it.” She imagined her sculptress alter ego swanning through his parents’ house in oversized glasses.
“Even better.” He drew her wrist to his lips for a kiss. It sealed a pact. Not a somber one, but alive with the quick energy they shared. The grave mood came shortly after. All the promises would only count if the op was a success. If they made it out alive.
Chapter Twenty
“Bloody Los Angeles goes on forever.” Traffic loosened and tightened with no causality, making the target of Quartz Hill seem impossibly far away.
“This is still Los Angeles?” April looked about in shock.
“The people who live in these outlying cities will tell you some other names, but it’s all one giant cluster fuck.” He pounded on the steering wheel in an attempt to spur the cars around them.
“Charlie Foxtrot,” she said, melancholy in her voice. He imagined her husband had taught her the military lingo.
“That’s right.” He scanned the darkening hills around them. The sun would soon set behind them and bring on the yellow shadows of city night. “The whole basin is Charlie Foxtrot.”
She checked her burner phone. “The map says we should pick up speed after the next off-ramp.”
“But it doesn’t say why.” He sped up just to slow down behind the car ahead of them. “It never says why.” His frustration was amplified by the lack of tactical knowledge of their destination. He hadn’t ventured to this area. There was no time to recon and plan. He and April took point and would have to act and adapt as the situation unfolded.
Her nerves appeared calm, but he couldn’t read what went on beneath her surface. She held up the phone for him to see the map. “We exit in five miles. Highway 14.”
“Roger that.” One pistol and one shotgun. No body armor he could wrap April in. Or an armored car where she could stand by until he’d cleared the hostiles from wherever it was they were headed. The sun fell behind the mountains. Their peaks cut a crisp, jagged line in the sky. He welcomed the night. “We’re invisible again.”
Her tension revealed itself in an uneasy smile. “Around a half hour until your dad reports the car stolen.”
“That’s mostly for insurance and to sever any suspicion of him.” He adjusted the air freshener clipped to a vent. “The cops will take forever to find it.”
“I thought it was part of a big plan.” Her smile completely disappeared.
“Nothing that crafty.” He couldn’t afford to lose her to the anxiety of the unknown. “Do you know how to load pistol magazines?”
“Yeah.” She perked up with more resolve.
“The rounds are in the suitcase.” He drew his pistol and ejected the magazine. She climbed back and rummaged through the carry-on, returning a moment later with the spare ammunition and the large flashlight she’d taken from her home. He handed her the magazine, and the empty one he’d stored in his shoulder holster after the firefight on the freeway.
At first she fumbled with the mechanism, but soon managed it. She leaned over her task, meditative. The bullets clicked into the magazines in a regular rhythm. The first full one she handed him went into the pistol, the second into his holster rig.
He pointed with his thumb behind him. “There’s a box of shotgun shells on the floor. Can you open it and stuff some in my pockets?”
Her jacket and shirt lifted up, revealing a crescent of flesh above the waist of her jeans as she stretched her body between the chairs. Her curves had fit so right along his body, sometimes moving with him, sometimes making him move. The circumstances of the car ride into blackout territory didn’t stop a jolt of attention in his cock.
He reached a hand out, then paused to ask, “I see some skin and I’d like it.”
She twisted and looked back. A knowing grin grew on her face. “Take it.”
His fingers glanced across her smooth skin. He moved his hand further to the small of her back. With the touch came more memories of her wrapped around him and her sleeping next to him, her warmth like a shield against the rest of the world. That they’d found this within only a few days didn’t mean it was rushed. It meant he’d been starving for her and hadn’t met her yet. April sighed and swiveled so he rubbed back and forth along her waist.
But her position was awkward, and she had to bring herself back to the front seat. On her way, she put a kiss on James’s cheek, then his mouth as he drove. He swerved toward the right, trying to get more of her, but corrected quickly. By then the kiss was over.
She took her seat and opened the box of shotgun shells. “Slugs?”
He shouldn’t have been surprised she knew what type of ammo it was. “The shotgun’s got nine buckshot in the tube. Slugs after that. I like to hit hard.”
“Mmmmmm.” She put on a show with a throaty purr. “How hard?”
He chuckled, though his cock took her seriously and thickened. “So hard that I end all pain forever.”
“Leaving only pleasure.” She made two handfuls of shotgun shells and edged toward him.
“For you.” He stopped wishing they could be somewhere private and alone and found himself basking in the desire he felt in the moment. “For you, only pleasure.”
She pressed her chest into his arm. He struggled to steer. She whispered into his ear, “Which pockets do you want these in?”
Her voice was so erotic it took him a few seconds to register the question. “Front pockets of the jacket.”
She zipped the nearest down, slowly, with a growing grin. He ground in his seat in order to
adjust his growing erection. Her hand in his pocket was almost too carnal to handle. She deposited the shells, then lingered there and scratched his belly through the fabric.
“Cheeky bird.” He stole a kiss on her ear and nipped the lobe with his teeth.
She faked coy reproach. “I’m just doing what you asked.” Then she slithered across his lap to open his other pocket. Their bodies rubbed and surged into a steady rhythm. But they were still on the freeway and not near the safety and open time they needed. She finished her task and returned to her seat. A bemused giggle bubbled from her. “That’s so not me.”
“You’re whatever you want to be.” The saucy mood was over, but his body didn’t know it yet. He rolled his shoulders and stretched his hands; still his erection was slow to abate. “Probably didn’t imagine you’d be a field op either.”
“Never.” She held up her thick flashlight. “Those fuckers had better watch out.”
“Yes, they’d better.” He was prepared to take them on with his bare hands if he had to.
She kept the flashlight on her lap. Traffic lightened for a spell, finally allowing them onto the next highway. The high desert roads had fewer cars and fewer streetlamps, sinking the shadows deeper. Planned communities huddled on the side of hills, cut into the rock. Outside the pools of light was the kind of darkness James lived in.
His phone buzzed, and he put his earbud in. Raker came over the line. “We have fresh wheels and are ready to move.”
James caught them up on the situation and the vague Quartz Hill location. Raker consulted with Art and they estimated at least two hours of travel time to catch up.
“We’ll bunker and wait for you if we can,” James told his teammate. “But we’re going in with no map, no friendlies, no intel. All we have are bad intentions.”
“Sounds ideal. Keep us posted.” Raker signed off.
James hung up and informed April, “Raker and Art are two hours out.” Her face was drawn, worried. “I told them we’d wait it out—”
