“Waning reserves.” She smirked.
“It’ll have to do.” He knelt in front of her and opened his hands. “Give me your belt.”
“Well, now.” Her arms snapped to a knot across her chest. “You didn’t want to teamwork like that thirty minutes ago.”
His cock throbbed. “Trust me.” His words left his throat in a growl. “I wanted to. I’ve never not wanted to team with you. Never.”
Her lips spread. No words escaped. She snapped them back together.
“Your belt?”
Those fuckable red lips parted again and then pressed into a pout. “Okay.” She unfastened it and handed it over.
“Keep a lookout.” McCabe turned to see Zeppelin ears slicked to his head. “I’m not going to hurt you, boy. We’re going to have some fun. Do you remember what that is?” He lowered the material to the dog’s nose and let him get his fill before waggling it back and forth. Millimeter by millimeter, the big furry ears lifted. Deep amber eyes engaged with the rhythm of play. “Fass!”
Zeppelin launched himself at the belt. Damn near one hundred pounds plus all the muscular force it offered slammed into him, knocking him to the dirt.
Natalie’s breath caught.
McCabe smoothed a hand over Zeppelin’s head and tugged on the belt. Zeppelin thrashed in return.
“I have no problem killing a dog,” Natalie warned.
“He’s doing his job, listening to my commands.”
“Why the hell would you tell him to attack you?”
He ordered Zeppelin off the belt, stood and ordered him to attack again. The dog was more hesitant with him standing but complied all three times he called him to action.
“It’s part of the escape. I’ll need you to catch him on the other side.”
Her eyes widened. “He’s huge.”
“I’m not going to drop him from the top. I’ll lower him as much as I can.”
“Let’s go.” She ushered him to the wall, leaned her back against it, and offered her hands cupped in front of her hips. He had all kinds of other ideas for her against a wall, but it was go-time.
Natalie held steady under his significant weight. He climbed up to her shoulders, onto the narrow wall, and reached back for her hand. It fit as it had nearly a decade ago. It fit like it was meant to be there, firm and feminine. She crawled up his body to the wall’s edge and then flipped over it. Her landing was a whisper on a breeze. Below, Zeppelin sat, impatiently shuffling from one paw to the other.
He readied the belt, leaned over the wall and gave the command. Zeppelin’s tail hit warp speed. He sprinted across the distance and soared. The damn near strongest bite in the K-9 world clamped onto the belt and held.
Sweat slipped from McCabe’s brow as every muscle in his body worked. The dog was more dense than Natalie was, and she could climb. Zeppelin placed all his trust in McCabe’s ability to lift him over. He didn’t let the fella down, settling his hind quarters into Natalie’s arms.
The moment McCabe got to the ground, Zeppelin alerted. Natalie opened her mouth, but he clamped a hand over it. Pressing her to the wall with his body, McCabe signaled for Zeppelin to his heel.
“This isn’t my first mission, McCabe,” Natalie hissed and shoved out from his hold. “I can—”
“You’re capable, and I get that, but you don’t know dogs. He’s alerting.” He pointed at the dog at his side.
“Oh.”
On the far corner of the compound, a delivery truck exited the gates and turned in their direction, driving down the only road.
“Give me your jacket,” he ordered.
“Christ, if you want me naked, just say so.” Her words toyed, but she ripped at the button with the urgency he needed her to use and handed it to him.
“Platz.” He pointed at the ground, and Zeppelin hit the deck.
The dog held perfectly still while McCabe draped the jacket over Zeppelin. “Bleib.”
McCabe grabbed Natalie, pulled her to the ground, and covered her body with his. He tried to assure himself it was for shielding purposes only. Her softness, though. He laid his forehead on hers.
“Seriously?” she snarled.
“Quiet.”
“Like anyone’s going to hear us above the racket of that…” Natalie’s head snapped to the side, nearly shaving off his nose in the process. “Renee? What’s she doing out at this time with the delivery truck?” She watched the vehicle putt by.
“You can’t be still, can you? The dog listens better than—”
Natalie’s head whipped back to face him. Her lips collided with his. For a moment, he thought it’d been an accident, but her hand snaked up his torso and wrapped around his neck. Before his brain caught up with the action and his body started to participate, she crawled from beneath him and stood. “Come on. We have to follow that van.”
McCabe rolled onto his back, thinking they needed to do something entirely different that started with another kiss and ended with his balls smacking her plush ass. The look on her face said no chance.
“Natalie, I can run pretty fast but not that fast.”
Chapter 7
“We only have to sprint to the other side of those rocks. Trust me; Base Branch takes care of their own.” Natalie’s insides jumped up and down like a clown on a pogo stick. She needed to follow Renee and fast.
When McCabe didn’t leap to his feet, and Zeppelin remained under her jacket, she offered him a hand. “Come on.”
His warmth and security wrapped around her once more. It took an effort to stay upright and on point. The bouncing clown traded the pogo stick for a drumstick and whacked it against her heart like a gong. A lot of effort.
“Omega would’ve gotten me out of lockup.” He used her hand to jump to his feet.
“Yeah, when?”
Seemingly ignoring her question, he grabbed her jacket off the dog and called him to his side. Damn. The two were a sight. Broad. Beautiful. Majestic. And when all that muscle went to work? Shut up.
“You coming?” he called over his shoulder, running several yards ahead of her already.
“Wouldn’t take much,” she mumbled and tacked on a robust, “Yeah.”
Once their strides matched at a breakneck pace over the rocky earth, McCabe pinned her with a sideways stare. “It never did take much.”
Natalie didn’t think she could blush anymore, but even her feet warmed under his scrutiny.
“Omega would have come when I didn’t report in tomorrow. So don’t kidnap me.” He chuckled.
Son of a bitch. This man knew how to push her buttons. He knew her—too well—which was why he pushed her away. It was only a fraction of what she’d done to him, and it hurt like acid to old wounds—self-inflicted though they were.
They reached the car in a minute. Natalie removed the camo covering, stuffed it inside, and started the engine while McCabe settled Zeppelin into the back seat. She pulled onto the road but didn’t turn on the headlights. Soon, the compound’s illumination of the area died down, and darkness took hold.
“You’re going to run us into a sandpit or a rock if you don’t turn on the lights.” McCabe strained his neck, leaning over the dashboard in search of the road she’d memorized before the mission.
“Trust me.” She searched the desolation for red taillights. The delivery truck couldn’t drive that fast. So Renee should be just around the next curve, if not—
“I did once and look how well that turned out.”
The shot blindsided her, taking what air she’d restored to her lungs with it. Thank fuck for the early model car’s dimly lit dash and the dark outside. It camouflaged her wince. She pulled two long breaths, tried, and tried again until it actually worked. Small red taillights lit the horizon and died. What relief she should’ve experienced flitted out the open windows.
After all the years and their earlier interactions, when he’d feigned acceptance of their situation, he was mad at her. He had every right to be. Hell, she was mad at herself, but the least he could hav
e done was show it, not bottle it up to spring on her now when she’d thought for a moment in the linen closet that maybe they’d had a chance. The moment hadn’t come with his cock pressed against her ass, but when he’d gifted her with his rich, true laugh.
“If you have something to say, you won’t get a better chance. Let me have it.” Natalie flipped her hands into the air and demanded it in the universal “bring it on” gesture.
“Grab the fucking wheel, would you?”
“Only if you start talking.”
“You’re going to kill us all.”
“Even better reason to vent.”
“Christ, woman. It’s always your way. There. There’s number one in a long list of things I can’t stand about you.” He smacked the dash with the hammer of his fist. “Now, grab the fucking wheel and turn on the lights.”
Natalie gripped the wheel to keep from slapping her hands to her face and crying or wrapping them around his neck and squeezing. “I don’t want to make her suspicious.” He didn’t get it at all. Didn’t get her at all. Sure, he knew a lot about her, but so much of that he didn’t understand. “What’s the second thing?”
“Turn the goddamned lights on, Natalie. That’s the second thing. Fuck her, whoever she is. I don’t want to die to prevent her suspicion.”
He didn’t trust her, and she’d not given him reason to trust her. She flipped on the headlights and blinked at the sudden brilliance of the old bulbs. Then recalibrated her brain to the visual road as opposed to her mental one.
They rode in silence for several miles while she tried not to gain on the delivery truck.
“What’s the second thing?” she whispered.
“There’s no list, not really. It’s that one flaw. It just takes shape differently. You extrapolated the situation we had years ago and took the actions you saw fit, leaving no room for the possibilities.”
“What possibilities?”
“Why would they matter to you now, if you weren’t open to them then?”
Why indeed?
Natalie drove through the dust and dirt-rut road and toiled over that very question. McCabe shucked his jacket. His biceps stretched the arm holes of his shirt and his pecs the girth. The car suddenly needed air conditioning on full blast. A pool of warmth collected in her lower lips. She didn’t have an answer to the question, but if she rubbed out an orgasm, maybe she’d find clarity.
McCabe folded his arms over his chest, reclined the seat the mere inches it would go, and closed his eyes. Within thirty seconds, shallow, quiet breaths sailed in and out of his chest.
So much for clarity.
He left her to bat the question around for probably the next hundred miles. The damn dog did too. He conked out on the back seat as though it were a chaise longue. McCabe had always been able to turn the lights out at a moment’s notice. She’d always driven. He’d always slept. It’s how they were.
She wedged an elbow onto the door frame and fumed. Her anger dissipated a little each time her gaze wandered to his sleeping face. Somewhere between mile fifteen and twenty, her fingers itched to smooth through his hair…like she used to. By mile thirty-five, she admitted to herself that she loved him, had really never stopped. At mile sixty, she nearly ran them into a cluster of rocks because, after all this time and all his anger, she wanted him back, no matter the cost.
For the next thirty miles, Natalie tried to talk herself out of the idea while simultaneously brainstorming ways to get him back.
“Who are we following?”
Every muscle and nerve inside Natalie coiled to react.
“Whoa! Whoa! It’s just me.” McCabe settled her with two open palms.
Apparently, she’d reacted.
“Make some preliminary noise or something, would you? Shit.” Natalie clutched her chest and wondered if he could see the scheming on her face.
“You’re awfully jumpy for covert ops, babe.”
“Babe?” Her eyes rolled to the shredded and hanging fabric on the ceiling.
“Who’re we following?” He yawned and stretched as far as the car—front and back seat combined—would allow.
“Her name is Renee Wheatman.”
While Natalie spoke, McCabe rummaged through the pack he’d grabbed at the kennels. He came out empty-handed.
“Got any water in this thing?”
“Glovebox.”
He pulled out a canteen, took several long swigs, and then passed it to her. “And we know her how?”
The thought of his lips having touched the metal before her shouldn’t have mattered, but she suppressed the urge to lick the rim before taking a sip. Water refreshed her, but not as much as his sharing had.
“Renee is the laundry warden. She treats her women like dogs. No offense,” she tossed the last into the back seat.
“Why are we following her?” McCabe recapped the water. His forearms bunched and relaxed.
For only the first time or two since unceremoniously reuniting, Natalie didn’t drool over his physique because she knew she had to answer the question. She’d been able to avoid it before, but he wouldn’t go along on her whim for much longer without explanation. As it was, she’d had a reprieve with his nap, and they neared bustling town streets.
“Stop biting your lips and just spit it out.”
Bull’s-eye.
She growled. It earned her a warning yip from the back seat.
“Oh, stuff it, pup.” Natalie strummed the steering wheel a couple of times with her fingers and then looked at McCabe. One of his brows hiked. She shrugged. “I don’t like being told what to do, especially by a dog.”
His head shook.
“I’ve been trained to follow the evidence.” She let that rest for a minute. “We haven’t found any of the missing women, a witness, or a crime scene. Before the guys attacked me, it was my only lead.”
“I’m following so far,” he urged as they wound through a mesh of cars, motorbikes, pedestrians, and street peddlers.
“When we were in the linen closet—”
“And you tried to fuck me?”
“Shut up.” She shoved him playfully.
The dog snarled and stood, filling the back of the car. McCabe grabbed her hand, held it to his chest, and blocked her arm with his other hand. “It’s okay, Zeppelin. She’s a friend.” He rubbed the dog’s head and added more whispered words in German. He didn’t have to whisper. She knew one word in the language, and it wasn’t a kind one.
Natalie held her breath as the dog measured her. Finally, he laid. Her breath didn’t return. Warm, soft strokes smoothed over her wrist.
“Why’d you kiss me?”
“I needed to shut you up,” she wheezed. “And I wouldn’t call that a kiss. It was a peck.”
“You used to know how to kiss.”
“Well, I’m out of practice.” Stupid to admit, but the truth was the truth.
No man wanted a woman who outranked him, who was taller than he was, who could kick his ass, and who outearned him. Natalie usually checked every damn box.
“Not going to apologize.”
“Wouldn’t expect you to.” She slowed and dropped back behind two cars. Renee’s delivery truck putted into the parking garage of a hotel. “There should have only been inmate and corrective officer uniforms in the linen closet. It’s Renee’s responsibility. She’s the only one with clearance to go in the facility, and she makes sure we all know it. She also makes us wash, press, and fold every load for delivery. Explicit rules are in place dictating what uniforms go where. Never once have regular Army uniforms been in the MP facilities.”
“Hardly seems sinister.”
Natalie waited until Renee cleared the gate and the first level and then turned into the garage. “I wouldn’t have thought much about it, but the bin was overflowing. She has a specific bitchiness about overpacked laundry bins. Then we saw her leaving the base when she has no cause to leave.”
“Maybe she needs to get laid.”
“That’s
a fact, but military personnel don’t have free rein to come and go and neither do civilians.”
“Maybe she’s picking up more sheets.” He shrugged.
“But why at this time of night?”
“Because her workers are slow, and she couldn’t fit it in during the day.” He flashed her a smile. “Kidding. It’s hard as fuck to get a pass. Even harder at night.” His massive shoulders bobbed. “I have no idea what she’s doing, but if your gut says to check her out, I believe in that gut. It’s salvaged a shit-ton of cases over the years.”
A bug might just fly inside her gaping mouth.
McCabe shooed her gaze toward the gate at which she stopped. “Yeah, don’t get all gooey. I checked up on you, knew you did a damn fine job, Major.”
All the bars and medals on her uniform, all the accolades and orders taken paled next to McCabe’s approval. The feminist part of her hated it—she shouldn’t measure herself by a man’s authority—but the feminine part basked in the glow.
“What’s wrong?”
She leaned out the window, pressed the button for a ticket, and waited for the arm to lift.
“Natalie?” His deep rumble cascaded over her ear and down her neck.
“Same as what’s always been wrong. I was raised—briefly—and abandoned by a woman who lived and died by a man’s approval, a man’s whims.” Natalie swatted at a fucking tear that threatened to spring free. “When you see someone else’s shitty decisions—when they wreck your life and you pay the price—you vow never to make the same mistakes again.”
“Damnit, Nat.” His words were soft, filled with concern.
Natalie pulled into a space three rows back from Renee’s van. The vehicle shifted to park, and the engine died. They waited, subconsciously agreeing on silence. Renee didn’t exit the car. No one approached it.
“There. Look at the sway.” McCabe’s hand oscillated.
Sure enough, the top of the truck shifted from side to side at a fast pace, a stop, and then again slowly. It moved again over the next three minutes and twenty seconds.
She was about to leave the car for a closer look when the driver’s door opened, and a short, angry Renee scuttled out with a large tote on her arm and headed for the elevator.
The Omega Team: Furiously Mine (Kindle Worlds Novella) (Base Branch Series Book 12) Page 5
