by S. M. Butler
Based on the time the sub could operate underwater and how secure the terrorists potentially were in their plan, the nuke could end up anywhere. Miami, Virginia Beach, Baltimore, Boston—or maybe Los Angeles or San Diego.
Yeah, the damn thing could be anywhere, though it seemed most likely the East Coast was the target since the sub had last been seen in Cartagena. The US Navy was on high alert, as were the Coast Guard and the port authorities. But the ocean was mighty big, and the sub mighty small. Talk about your basic needle in a haystack.
Ivy juggled her groceries and unlocked the door. This was new territory for her, but she understood the urgency—who wouldn’t? You’d have to be insane not to get why this was important.
Still didn’t mean she liked the idea of working with Dane. Maybe she should have called Leslie up and told her she couldn’t do it after all—but that wasn’t the way Ivy operated. She was stronger than that.
Dane was a complication, but she could handle him. Even if seeing him again made her heart ache and her body light up in ways she really didn’t appreciate.
Damn his handsome face and spectacular body anyway.
She set her groceries on the counter, then took everything out of the bags and put it away. The light on her answering machine blinked incessantly, so she went over and pressed the button. She knew a lot of people only used their cell phones, but she kept a landline too. In the event of a catastrophe, cell towers wouldn’t work while landlines still could.
Ivy frowned at the thought. She’d always been paranoid. Always planning for the worst that could happen rather than the best. She’d planned her entire life that way. Dane used to tease her about that.
Ow. She rubbed in the vicinity of her heart and deleted the first message, a generic spiel from a telemarketer offering to cut her credit card interest rates in half. The second was dead air. The third started to play…
We know who you are, Ivy McGill… we know where to find you…
The message ended with a sharp beep, and Ivy’s heart kicked inside her chest. She was accustomed to being threatened, but this was the first time anyone had ever phoned her at home.
And her number wasn’t simply unlisted—it was unpublished. Unavailable to anyone except those people she wanted to have it—other than random telemarketers who targeted every known number regardless of who lived there, of course.
Out of instinct, Ivy pulled her gun and swept through her apartment. There’d been no signs of forced entry, but that didn’t mean anything these days. Criminals were clever. Drug dealers like the Ruizes were even more so.
She didn’t find anything that indicated anyone had been inside, and the apartment was clean. But she had to take the threat, however vague, seriously. She wasn’t going to stop working and go into hiding, because that would mean the criminals had won—but she would go to a hotel while her agency sorted this out.
She went and grabbed her bugout bag and her computer, then headed back out again. She phoned Ace once she was in the car and told him what had happened.
“Ivy, what the fuck? Do you think it’s the Ruizes?”
“Who else could it be? We’ve been working on bringing them down for months now.”
Months in which she’d traveled a lot, slept a little, and eaten a load of fast-food crap as they stalked the Ruizes and waited for a break. They’d thought they’d had it with the submarines. And then the fucking Freedom Force had to get involved.
Ace snorted. “Yeah, true. But what if it’s someone fucking with you? What about that musclehead you call an ex-husband? Would he do something like this to screw with you?”
Ivy’s gut clenched. “What? No way! Dane might still be pissed off at me, but he wouldn’t threaten me. Not even as a joke.”
“Okay, okay, calm down. If you say so, I believe you. Where you headed?”
“I’m checking into a hotel near the base. Might as well stay near HOT HQ since we’ll be working there for the foreseeable future.”
“Yeah, sounds good. You calling Leslie next?”
Ivy bit her lower lip. There was the possibility Leslie would pull her from the HOT mission over this—but the threat was real, and Ivy wasn’t stupid. Leslie had to be informed.
“Yes, I’m telling her. She can get a trace put on that call, see if we find anything.”
Ace blew out a breath. “Yeah, good plan… You need anything, Ivy? Need me to come watch your back tonight?”
“No, I’m good. I’ll see you in the morning. It was a vague threat, Ace. We’ve certainly heard worse.”
“True dat. Let me know where you’re staying.”
“I will.”
They finished the call and then Ivy phoned Leslie. Her boss wasn’t precisely happy, but she said she’d start the IT forensics department working on the call. If they figured out where it came from—where it really came from and not just the VOIP masking system the caller had used to hide the number from her caller ID—maybe they’d learn something useful.
Until then, there was nothing Ivy could do except check into the hotel and keep doing her job.
After she was settled, she texted Ace her information and then opened up her computer and started searching through some of the unclassified files she had on the Ruizes. There was a lot to think about with the missing sub and the Freedom Force, but the Ruizes were her specialty. And maybe something in the files would trigger a thought about the terrorists.
Ivy had been scanning the files for approximately ten minutes when there was a hard knock on her door. Her heart leapt, and she shoved the computer aside to reach for her gun.
“Ivy! Open up! It’s Dane.”
Ivy blinked. Dane? Here? Oh, holy shit.
She went to the door and opened it, though she didn’t slide the chain back. Dane loomed on the other side, his face thunderous. He was dressed in jeans and a navy T-shirt that molded the hard planes of his sculpted chest like a second skin.
She swallowed. “What are you doing here?”
“Heard you’d moved in. I’m down the hall.”
Ivy couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “Wait… you’re staying in this hotel?”
“I’m TDY, Ivy. I don’t live in DC. Yeah, I’m staying here. Now open up.”
She clung to the door like it was a lifeline. “Well thanks for checking in, but I’m fine. Now go away.”
He pushed his foot in the door when she would have shut it. “Mendez said someone threatened you.”
Ivy stopped trying to push the door closed. “Why would he tell you that?”
“Because we’re on the same team. He told everyone.”
“Jesus, you military types and your need for disclosure.” She’d known Colonel Mendez, as the HOT commander, would need to be informed of her new location. She hadn’t known he’d be told everything—or that he’d share it with the whole damn team. “This is irrelevant to the current mission.”
“No threat is irrelevant to the mission, baby.”
“Don’t call me baby.”
She thought he might have growled. “You used to love when I called you baby.”
“Used to. Past tense.”
“For fuck’s sake, Ivy, let me in.”
“Get your foot out of the door and I will.”
His eyes narrowed. “If you don’t, I’ll break the fucking thing down. Got it?”
She was tempted to shut the door and leave it that way. She had no doubt Dane would follow through on his threat—and then the police would come and haul him away for damaging hotel property. Probably wouldn’t look so good on his military reports, come to think of it.
Not that she cared. She totally did not care.
Still, she slid the chain off the latch and opened the door.
Chapter Seven
‡
Dane was even more imposing in full view than the slice of him she’d had earlier. God, had she really lain beneath that powerful body and felt it moving inside hers? Had she worshipped his body with her hands and mouth and thought
she’d found nirvana?
She turned away and moved back to the couch in the living area of the suite. Damn, she should have gone to a regular hotel instead of the kind of temporary living suites that government workers and business travelers frequented for long stints away from home. But she’d gone where she was most familiar, so the fact the place was probably chock-full of military on TDY assignments or government contractors going to classes on the base really shouldn’t surprise her.
Dane came inside and locked the door behind him. Then he stood there and shoved his hands into his pockets. He still looked angry as she sat down and leaned back to watch him. She was doing her damnedest to act unaffected, but she could feel her pulse thrumming like a hummingbird’s wings in her throat.
“So why did you want to come in? Didn’t have enough fun on memory lane earlier?”
Dane tugged a chair from the table and turned it around, sitting down backward, his legs straddling the back, his arms lying casually over the top.
“We were married for six months, Ivy. Together for almost a year. I care that someone threatened you.”
Ivy blinked. Tears wanted to spring up behind her eyes, but she wasn’t going to let them. That would be too much. There was too much water under the bridge for her to get emotional now.
“I don’t need you to care.”
And it was true. She’d been through a lot over the past four and a half years, and Dane hadn’t been there for any of it. She’d been threatened. Shot at. Held hostage once. Where was he then?
“You don’t get to decide that.”
Ivy turned her head and stared at nothing. Then she rubbed a hand over her eyes. Damn, she was tired. “We haven’t spoken in over four years. I find your presence here very disconcerting.”
He sighed. “You aren’t alone in that, Ivy. But we’re here… together… working on the same mission. I can’t act like I’m not concerned.”
She really wanted to throw something. “You didn’t have a problem being unconcerned for four years. I don’t see why that needs to change now.”
He shot to his feet and paced over to the window and then back again. He reminded her of a caged animal, angry and ready to pounce. If she let him, he would tear her throat out.
“What did you expect me to do? Call you up from time to time and ask how you were?”
She swallowed. “No, of course not.”
But maybe it would have been nice to hear from him every once in a while. When he’d walked out of her life, she’d waited for him to walk back into it. Waited for him to cool down and come home.
He hadn’t, and she hadn’t gone after him. They’d both been too proud to give an inch of ground. It had seemed like such a small thing, in a way, at first—and then it just kept getting bigger and bigger until they reached the point of no return.
He stopped and put his hands on his hips, staring down at her angrily. “And no way in hell were you calling me either, right?”
She looked down at her hands lying in her lap. “What would have been the point, Dane? You made it clear how you felt. Talking only ended up in arguing. Neither one of us enjoyed that.”
“You know, when I went on my first mission as a SEAL, I kept hoping I’d come back and find a message from you. I think I must have still thought there was a chance. But when I got back, there was nothing. That’s when I knew it was really over for good.”
Ivy swallowed the hard knot in her throat. “I didn’t even know you were gone.”
“Yeah, but what does that matter? You could have left a message on my phone because you missed me. You didn’t.”
Oh, but she had missed him. Terribly. Every minute of every day since he’d walked out on her. But she didn’t know how to breach the divide. Didn’t know how to give them what they both wanted and make it all work.
So she’d thrown herself into work and tried to ignore the fact that her heart had shattered into a million pieces. She’d needed to be strong, needed to take care of herself. She knew what happened when a woman let herself believe a man would be there for her.
She hadn’t thought Dane was anything like her father, but then he’d gotten angry and walked out, and she’d known right then that every man was only a heartbeat away from abandoning you. Even if she hadn’t had her parents as proof, Granny had told her so more than once—Grandpa had left her with three sons to feed. Just up and walked out one day. The end.
When a man got tired of dealing, they left. She knew it to her core, and she wasn’t ever letting herself be that vulnerable again.
Ivy got to her feet. “Look, I appreciate your concern, but I’m fine. You know where I am now, and you can comfort yourself with the knowledge I’m not leaving this room again until morning if it makes you feel better.”
Dane stared at her for a long minute. And then he shook his head and laughed. The sound wasn’t humorous though.
“Jesus, Ivy. You’re the best in the world at avoiding the shit you don’t want to talk about. I don’t know why I thought anything had changed in the past few years.” He stalked past her and then stopped at the door with his hand on the chain. “I’m in 224, two rooms down on the left. Call if you need anything. I will have your back. Even if you’d prefer I didn’t.”
*
Ivy didn’t sleep too well, but she was up early and back at HOT before seven a.m. She didn’t see Dane at the hotel again, but the minute she walked inside HOT HQ, he was there, looking much too appealing in his cammies. He held a go-cup of coffee in one hand and stood with two other guys. His gaze slid over to her.
She gritted her teeth and kept her chin up. These guys all knew that she and Dane had been married. In a way, it was kind of a relief. That thought made her pause for a second—huh, maybe he’d been right after all. Now that everyone knew, there was nothing to hide, nothing to feel guilty for. It was all about the work now. Even if being in the same room with Dane again made her heart pound a little bit harder and her brain insist on conjuring up images of him without his clothes.
Colonel Mendez arrived a few minutes later, and everyone snapped to attention. Even Ace. Ivy simply stood straight and still and waited until the colonel told everyone to be at ease. Then she sank into a chair and sipped her coffee.
“We’ve had intel that indicates our target might be headed for Miami. The Navy is sweeping the waters around Cuba and trying to intercept.”
Ivy thought that might be an end to it then. She and Ace would be sent back to the DEA and the Navy would find the sub.
“Agent McGill,” the colonel said, and Ivy’s head snapped up.
“Yes?”
“How do you feel about going to the Keys?”
“The Keys, sir?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t think I understand.”
“Miami’s too logical a guess for where they’re headed,” one of the men said. The name tape on his chest said Gordon. What everyone called him was Flash. “They know it as well as we do. And that’s not how the Freedom Force operates. They won’t sail into a port—any port.”
“No,” the colonel said. “They’ll put into the Keys somewhere, meet up with the sleeper cell that’s currently there, and truck the missile overland—but not to Miami.”
“Where are they going then?” Ace asked. He looked all kinds of fascinated right about now. Ivy was too, but damned if she’d show it.
The colonel pointed at the map of Florida on-screen. “Tampa. US Central Command is based at MacDill Air Force Base, as well as Special Operations Command and Command Central. It’s a helluva target.”
Ivy shuddered. It was indeed. Wipe out CENTCOM and you dealt a severe blow to the US’s ability to fight wars in the Middle East—not to mention the hit to the nation’s morale should such a thing happen.
“But wouldn’t it be easier to sail into port in Tampa?” Ivy asked. “Why risk trying to offload it in the Keys?”
“It would be easier,” Dane said, “but these guys aren’t exactly experienced seamen. It take
s a special kind of person to be a submariner, and I’m going to guess these men aren’t it. They’ll be claustrophobic and half-crazy by the time they reach the Keys—assuming the Navy doesn’t pick them up first.”
“That’s right,” the colonel said. “And if the Navy doesn’t get them first, we can’t let that nuke into the US. We’re intercepting it in the Keys.”
“And if we can’t find them?” Ivy asked.
The colonel’s dark eyes didn’t waver. “You’d better hope we do, Agent McGill. The alternative is that tens of thousands of people die—and Florida becomes a nuclear wasteland.”
Chapter Eight
‡
DC was muggy, but Florida was muggier. Ivy twisted her hair up onto her head and secured it with a ponytail holder from her purse. Then she grabbed her suitcase handle again and kept walking down the trail.
They weren’t in Key West itself but on a smaller island called Emerald Key. It was still popular, but not as jam-packed with tourists as Key West. The team was staying in a resort that featured small bungalows tucked away among the palms. Ivy had her own bungalow thankfully. The beaches weren’t far, and there were several restaurants and shops on the main street. It was on Emerald Key that the Freedom Force sleeper cell was supposedly located.
One of the men ran a small marina while the others worked in the various restaurants and businesses on the island. They had dossiers on the men from the CIA, and the plan was to track each of them down and follow them as they went about their daily business. If HOT was lucky—and they really needed to be lucky, Ivy thought—they’d find the submarine and the nuclear weapon before it could do any damage.
Ivy stuck the key in the lock and opened the door. Blessedly cool air hit her as she walked inside. The bungalow wasn’t big—a main living area, a kitchenette, and a bedroom with an en suite bath—but it was clean and cool.
And it was all hers. There were definitely some perks to being the only woman on a mission. As she understood it, there were a couple of women who worked for HOT as special operators—but they were on other assignments at the moment. That was fine with her because she preferred to be alone. Ivy kicked off her shoes and unzipped her case. Ace had escorted her back to her apartment to grab some clothes for this trip. The IT department was still working on a trace on her mysterious phone call, but there’d been nothing further.
