by D. C. Stone
Her face shook back and forth, tucked against his neck. “I don’t think I’m safe here anymore. I hoped we would be safe, but I don’t think we are.”
We?
“What isn’t making you safe?”
“The fire…” She hiccupped, her body silently wracked with sobs. “He had to have found us. I don’t think there’s anyone who would be cruel enough to break the glass window and set a fire. It has to be him. He won’t let me escape.”
Pieces of the puzzle started falling into place. The secrets she’d kept were specific to her safety. He got it. While he’d never dealt with domestic violence, he knew enough, had read enough, to understand the very real fear of being in such a relationship.
“I don’t think he found you,” he started and looked down at her as she pulled back to meet his gaze. “I think whatever happened to your clinic tonight has more to do with me. Not you. You’re safe here, Red. Dwayne, Charlie, and I will make sure of it. You have nothing to fear.”
“Charlie?” she asked.
He nodded. “Yeah, you saw her earlier out on the deck with D and I.”
She froze and pushed aggressively away, her face shutting down, yet again. This time, he wasn’t having it. He crowded into her until he backed her against the wall. He didn’t touch her. Only set his arms next to her head.
“I think it’s time you explain yourself. What happened? Did someone say something to you?”
She looked up at him, her big green eyes pleading. What the hell was this?
“Please, Chris.”
“Woman. Tell me.”
“Let me go, please.”
“Tell me!” he snapped.
“I saw you!” she yelled.
Delta Alpha let out a warning bark.
He froze. Her tone and the look crumpling her face caused some serious palpitations in his chest, as if his heart had suddenly taken up the idea of playing on a trampoline.
“Sweetheart, what exactly did you see?”
She took in a shaky breath and looked over his shoulder. “I saw you holding her. You two were so familiar with each other. Your face was soft, so much softer than I’ve ever seen before, and I realize what we have is new, casual even. We should stop this now before it gets any worse.”
He took a minute to gather himself. What woman did she refer to? And casual? Other women? Had she not been paying attention at all?
“I need you to focus on me for a minute or two, Red. And pay close attention because we have a lot to go over here. Look at me.”
She took longer than he liked but finally lifted her bright gaze to his.
“When did you see me holding another woman?”
“Outside,” she said. “Just a while ago.”
He blinked and the outburst from when he entered the room made sense with a slap across his senses. A silly misperception, but he was the idiot who hadn’t explained who anyone was. Charlie and Samantha hadn’t met, and seeing things through her eyes, he could picture how the entire scene would have looked to an outsider.
“That’s Charlie Lopez.”
She bit her bottom lip, turning the normally bright pink skin white. He cupped her face and pulled gently at her lip before swiping his hand over the abused skin.
“She’s Dwayne’s partner. Has been for as long as I can remember.”
“She’s very pretty.”
He smiled.
“Chris…”
“She’s also like a sister to all of us. She’s practically a Gonzalez, sweetheart. I’ve never looked at her with anything resembling a sexual attraction.”
She blinked her big green eyes, and her mouth parted slightly. Christ, her face, what she did to him. He didn’t think she realized how much she had already burrowed under his skin. He inched closer, the slight brush of her breasts against his chest a sensual delight.
“Now there are a few other things we need to cover.” He trailed his hand he had at her cheek over her shoulder, watching the progress. Reaching the strap of her camisole, he hooked a finger beneath the cloth and moved it over her shoulder, sliding down her arm. “There are no other women in my life.”
The tank had pulled so low that one breast popped out. Her dusty pink nipple, the same shade as her lips, tightened under his gaze. Chris shifted, turning his attention to the other strap on the opposite shoulder. “And what’s going on between us, Red, is anything but casual.”
He pulled the other strap down, and her other breast came free. Sucking in a breath, he looked at her bared to him. She took his breath away. Her body was damn near perfect. A collarbone jutted out with each breath she took, but her breasts, they were perfect for his hands, and even more beautiful under the soft glow of the lamp.
“Chris,” she said on a shaky breath.
“I want this,” he said, tracing around one of her nipples with the tip of his finger. “And I want this.” He placed his free hand over her heart, directly above her breasts. He looked into her eyes. “And I’m going to spend as much time as I need proving that to you.”
She stared up at him, her bright green eyes full of a vulnerability he would have never guessed she’d have. Samantha, a woman who seemed to have such a strong stance in the world, one who had reduced even his very aggressive partner into a pile of mush when it came to her. Who would have thought she had a chink in her confidence, had such violent secrets of her past, would have questioned anything going on between them?
Her breasts shook with each shaky inhale, tempting his gaze. Her lips quivered under his attention. And she called to him as a woman called to a man. He was all too ready to answer.
He leaned down slowly, holding her gaze. His hands tightened on her arms, feeling the sculpted muscle beneath telling him she worked daily at her job and didn’t sit around. She tilted her face up to meet him. Their lips stopped a breath apart.
She sighed, fanning his mouth with her desire. Her hands clutched at his shoulders.
Someone pounded at the front door, and the rumbling sound echoed throughout the house.
“Christ,” he said, squeezing his eyes shut. “Who now?”
Pulling away from a very warm and tempting Samantha was about the hardest thing he had to do. He stomped down the hall and flung the front door open ready to light into whoever had interrupted what was looking to be a very nice night.
“Holy shit,” he said under his breath.
“Crack!” Squirrel yelled then took one, two steps before jumping into Chris’s arms. Captain’s legs wrapped around his waist and he took two steps back, tightening his hold on him lest he drop him on his ass. As it was, he was still active duty and despite Captain Ford acting very unbecoming for an officer—not that he had ever really acted one before, Squirrel would always have enough of Chris’s respect that he’d never let him down.
His arms shook under the bulky weight of the captain, but rather than toss him off, Chris set him down and gave a good-natured shove. “Thanks, Squirrel. My friggin’ back will be screaming for the next week.”
“Here he goes again,” said Sergeant Dean Davis, stepping across the threshold, “always complaining about not getting hurt. You would think this guy wanted to go back to Security Forces, rather than hang with the adults in Special Forces.” Davis grinned, his white teeth a stark contrast against his dark-as-night skin.
Chris laughed and shook his head, hooking a finger through his belt loop. “And you’re still an asshole.”
Davis’s grin grew, and he stumbled back a step, a hand to his heart. “You wound me.”
Nathaniel McKinney came up behind Davis and rolled his eyes, the team’s medic more than used to the jesting among the team. “Watch yourself, Crack, Davis is in one of his moods. The whole way up here he tried to get me to spill on apparently all the doctor-nurse fantasies I’ve played out.” Nate set a duffle bag next to his feet, catching Chris’s eye.
He met Doc’s bright-blue gaze. “And how many times have you acted that out?”
Nate lifted the side of hi
s mouth in a smirk. “A gentleman never tells.”
Chris stared at him, then deadpanned. “So how many times?”
Max Carletto limped in and burst out laughing. “If you’re a gentleman, Doc, then I’m the friggin’ Easter Bunny.”
Davis turned around. “Do you have a thing for fluffy tails in the bedroom, Sig?”
Max groaned. “No. Nope. We’re not starting this kinky-what-you-like-to-do-in-the-bedroom conversation again.” He faced Chris. “I’m beat, man. Point me to the nearest couch and I’ll be out in minutes.”
Chris straightened. Plans were his team would be on their way, but the specific date hadn’t been clear. He figured he had a few days. Showing up on his doorstep wasn’t unwelcome, but they usually all just fell asleep wherever, walked around in their skivvies, and did, well, man things. There had never been any females around during those times so it was all out, not giving a shit. Samantha, however…
“You guys staying here?” Chris asked just as little doggy steps came into the room.
As one, the team turned toward the new sound just over his left shoulder and froze. Like a planned performance, one by one, each turned back to Chris wearing shit-eating grins.
“Oh, yeah,” Davis said.
“Totally.” This from Max.
“This is going to be fun,” Squirrel said with a chuckle.
Nate’s cheeks pinkened, and he looked to the floor, but not before Chris saw him punch his tongue to his cheek, fighting a smile.
He turned and found Samantha.
She leaned against the entry to the living room and kitchen, those same shorts riding low on her hips, a white camisole covered by a white cardigan. Her hair fell in waves around her face and behind her, the soft glow of the room highlighted every beautiful curve. DA stood at her side while she idly pet the top of his head. His dog had his tongue hanging out of his mouth, in heaven with the affection.
Sweet Jesus, she took his breath away.
She captured Chris’s gaze with her own, giving him a smile before she turned to his team and lifted a hand. “Hi. I’m Doctor Samantha Eagen, Delta Alpha’s veterinarian.”
Davis burst out laughing again.
Chapter Sixteen
The next morning, with the sharp aroma of bacon in the air, Samantha at the stove multi-tasking between scrambling eggs and flipping pancakes, Chris took a sip of his coffee, the bitter liquid like nectar to his sleep-deprived body, and tried to focus on what Sig, aka Max, said.
“You’re losing me here, bud. Try it again, except this time, how about you explain it to me like I’m in third grade?”
“So not far off from where your mental capacity is now, then?” Davis joked.
He shot his sergeant the bird while Max turned from the laptop to face him.
“Okay, so after Barber started digging around, he mentioned he didn’t have a good feeling about anything that had gone down on the mission. Problem was, he couldn’t be the one to look into anything as any sort of inquiry he made would be official due to his position.”
Chris nodded. “Right.”
“But that wouldn’t necessarily stop someone else from say…” Max shrugged and tossed his hands out before resettling them on his knees. “Making some unofficial inquiries, right?”
“Right.” Seeing as Sig was their resident genius when it came to any sort of investigative skills, he tracked exactly what he was saying. Max, in his hacker-type position, a role he played officially for Uncle Sam, and unofficially in a “dark hat” capacity, had started digging with Barber’s not-so-official orders.
“One thing that bothered me was how Tayseer knew we were coming, almost as if someone had given him a heads-up. So, I may or may not have hacked into one of the alphabet agency’s email systems.”
“Shit. Say you’re fucking kidding, man.”
Sig looked to Davis. “I’m kidding.” He deadpanned, but continued, “However that search didn’t turn up much. Only a lot of cryptic emails going to a bunch of outside Gmail addresses.” He leaned back and crossed his arms. “Gmail is easy enough to crack in on. Problem with that is each account had somehow received one message before shutting down. That message being from the aforementioned agency account.”
Chris brought his brows down in a V. “Doesn’t make a lick of sense. Why create an account for just one email?”
Sig held up a finger. “Ah, ah. But it was for two. A received email and a sent one.”
Now Chris popped his brows up, but before he could ask, Max went on.
“So, pop into that account, right? Surely there will be more there, right?”
“Right,” Squirrel answered from the couch, his feet propped up on the table in front of him.
Max looked over and smiled. “Wrong.” He grinned. “Sorry, Cap’, I couldn’t resist. I have been waiting for-ev-er to say that to you. But in this case, it’s true. Same activity on that account, one email in, one out. So, I went to the next, and the next. And so on. You get the drift.”
He spun back to the computer. “However, after chasing my dick through a few accounts, I started to notice a pattern. Something I hadn’t seen before.” He typed something on the laptop and brought up a document that showcased a bunch of different numbers.
Chris pulled his chair closer. “What is this? Looks like a bunch of numbers without any rhyme or reason to them?”
“Didn’t you ever play spy as a kid? Captain Midnight? Come up with a secret language?”
Chris turned his head and met Sig’s metallic-colored eyes and shook his head. “Dude, my childhood is a long story, but I was more of a dirt-and-mud type of kid than a cops-and-robbers. Catch my drift?”
Max grinned and his eyes danced, his excitement evident. The guy got off on this shit.
“What better way to hide what you’re trying to say in plain sight than to create a code? And,” he said, typing furiously on the laptop again, bringing up different documents as he spoke, “seeing as the original email came from an agency that employs some of the best spies in the world, it would have to be a code that no one has seen before. Something difficult to breach. So, you’d have to split up the cipher into different messages in order to make sure the receiver could decipher the message. Typically, you see letters and numbers in codes, but this was something I had never seen before, a cipher that really didn’t stand out due to the use of numbers only.”
Chris rubbed at his temple and took another sip of his brew. “You’re losing me again, man.”
“No, no, no, I think I’m tracking,” Squirrel said. “Go on.”
Max nodded and continued clicking through multiple documents. “In order for the cipher to be useful to both parties, there had to be some sort of message prior to them being sent, a method or an algorithm, as many call it, set in place. Otherwise, the receiver wouldn’t have an idea how to crack the code. So, a key was set in place. That being said, I went back through some…” He coughed. “Personal phone records from our sender, of course everything total legal.”
Chris rolled his eyes. Yeah, right.
“And found a weird text that had been sent to a number that didn’t seem to match the rest of the numbers in the history of this guy’s calls. Guess what I found?” He drummed a beat on the table.
“The key,” Squirrel answered.
“Give the guy a trophy. The key! And this key is a constantly changing one, which makes it even more unique. And with that key, if you put it to use deciphering all the messages sent and received…” In a flurry of movements, his hands moved over the keyboard too fast for Chris to keep up. With a flourish, he hit the last key and lifted his hands.
“Holy shit,” Chris breathed.
“Oh, man,” Squirrel said from behind, having come off the couch.
Before them on the laptop screen showed a listing of all the messages that had been sent and received, in plain English, the code fully broken. Account numbers and locations, his team’s name and arrival time of the mission, their names, movement of money going
all around the world, and finally, his parents’ home address in Nyack.
Chris stood abruptly, sending his chair toppling over behind him. “We have to go.”
“Hold on there, big guy,” Max said.
Chris whirled around to him and pointed at the screen. “My parents—”
“Are completely safe,” Max cut in. “There’s more.”
Chris closed his eyes, his mind spinning a million miles an hour. “What more could there possibly be?”
“He’s here. In Nyack.”
“The fuck you say,” Davis barked.
Chris said nothing. Instead, he opened his eyes and met Max’s stare. “Yeah, buddy, your instincts were right on this one. Tayseer is here in Nyack. And you have in fact been seeing him. I think he may have gone to your parents’ place, but all the break-ins here, the sightings you said you’ve seen? That’s the one and only.”
Chris swiped his hands over his head, trying to gain traction in a world slipping out of control.
“And it gets worse,” Max added unhelpfully.
“Tell us,” Captain Ford ordered, all business.
Max turned back to the laptop. “The good news is we have the account numbers from the messages and the key that deciphered them. So, being able to trace money wasn’t an issue. A little electronic intrusion here and there, and voila, you get the full picture about not only where the money came from, which, by the way, pisses me off to say this, but it came from an account reserved for Uncle Sam black hat activities. The blackest of black. But I was also able to track where the money went. And that’s where the bad news comes in.” He paused.
“Jesus-effin’-Christ, Sig, don’t take a breather now,” Davis shouted.
“Hold your damn horses, Sarge. I’m getting to it.” Max typed a bit more, then another document popped up on the screen. “On one account, the purchases don’t look all that bad. A home improvement store purchase here. Some food there. But when you combine all the purchases across multiple accounts, another picture forms.”
“And what picture is that?” Chris asked, leaning toward the screen again.
“A picture worth a thousand lives. Millions. It seems,” Max answered, his voice much more somber now that all the purchases were there on the screen for them all to read. “It’s a picture that paints the full recipe for a cocktail involving one serious chemical agent Tayseer had planned to bring to the US all along.”
