by Misty Evans
The sky was so lovely. So serene. Focus on that. Sip your tea. Don’t slip back into that dark hole of memories.
“Yes, it does, doesn’t it?” A cold slice of fear still managed to snake down her spine. “But I fear it may not be. My gut says there’s more going on with the situation than it appears. A simple explanation and a few scars won’t convince them. I need to figure out the rest of the story and look at the video again before I can snap the pieces together to form the whole picture. I can’t let Nicolae get away with what he’s done. The terrorist either.”
“I’m onboard with that. I want both of their heads on a platter for what they did to my brothers.”
He was still grieving. She heard it in his tone. “I know I’ve said it before, but I’m so sorry.”
A muscle jumped in his jaw. He stared at his hands, seemingly unable to respond.
She’d thought he’d moved on. Now, she saw he’d only been in a holding pattern.
Give him some space.
She didn’t want to. She wanted to throw her arms around him and help him through the grief like she’d tried to do in the cabin. The distraction of physical comfort took the mind off the past and, she’d believed, it helped heal a broken heart. Now, she wasn’t so sure.
Her attention on the scene outside the window, she wasn’t prepared for Miles’ touch. His hand glided over her arm, gently, lightly. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have brought up the scars.”
He was worried about her reaction to the scars comment when she was worried about him hating her for inadvertently killing his men. What a pair they made.
Change the subject. “I have my suspicions about who the terrorist is, but I was so rushed that day, I couldn’t place him. I need to look at the video, follow the trail back to him and his followers. Until I do, I can’t trust anyone inside MI6.”
“Why give me the key?”
A knot had formed in the spot between her neck and shoulder. She’d removed the sweatshirt earlier and now slid her fingers under her collar so she could work her fingers into the kink.
As the engines hummed, vibrating the table, tiny ripples formed in her tea, rolling out from the epicenter of the liquid, one after another.
Ripples. Like the ripples in her life from her decisions. “When I realized I had to go back to Nico to try to figure out who the terrorist was, I needed a safe place to hide that key. I planned to give it to my handler, but he was never around. I’d only seen him a few times after arriving in Romania; we used dead drops if we needed to physically exchange information. The day I called Emit Petit to come get you, I thought I’d have a few days before he arrived. Turned out he had someone who could pick you up immediately. My timeline moved from a few days to hours. I had to make a call. No way could I leave the key in the cabin. Nico might have his men toss the place, and I couldn’t get in touch with my handler.”
His fingers brushed hers away as he took over massaging her shoulder and neck. “Smart move.”
She raised her gaze to his, the feel of his fingers kneading her tight muscles making her want to moan. “Was it?”
He worked on her shoulder, ran his fingers along the sensitive spot where her neck met her collarbone. “I probably would have done the same thing.”
His voice had grown huskier. He drew the edge of her shirt down over her shoulder, baring her skin to his expert manipulations.
“You were the only person I trusted,” she said. The kink was slowly loosening. Other parts of her were doing the opposite, growing taut, begging for his attention. A deep longing for his touch infused her very bones.
“How did you contact Petit when communications were so limited?”
“Once the snow melted, I could get up to the top of the hill. I hauled the portable satellite tower and antenna up there one afternoon while you were in the forest gathering fire wood.”
He leaned closer, his hand going to the back of her neck and holding her in place as he spoke in her ear. “Thank you.”
His warm breath brushed over her skin. Memories of his lips on her, his tongue teasing her, made her close her eyes. She never expected to hear those words. Thank you. Two simple words she hadn’t heard a lot of in her life.
But it wasn’t the words causing goose flesh to run up and down her arms. If she turned her head, their lips would be close enough to meet. She wanted a repeat of the kiss at his truck. Did he want that too?
She hated unanswered questions. They led to sleepless nights and regret. Turning her head slowly, she looked directly into his eyes. A hunger she remembered from the cabin haunted them. “You’re…welcome.”
They stared at each other, silence descending. His thumb drew tiny circles on her shoulder, his intense stare sending vibrations through her body like the waves in her teacup. He brushed a strand of hair that had broken free from her ponytail off her neck, sending a fresh wave of goosebumps over her skin.
He lowered his lips, eyes still locked with hers, to the vulnerable skin on her shoulder. His kiss was gentle, his lips lingering. A question…
Did she want more?
Charlotte’s breath stuck in her throat. A shock of electricity went straight to the spot between her legs. The need to have his hands on her, his mouth kissing every inch of her, became a singular, driving force that nearly blinded her.
She touched him then, letting her hand land on his thigh. The muscles bunched at the contact and she did a slow, smooth stroke, trailing her fingers from his knee up to parts higher.
“You really shouldn’t get involved with me again,” she said.
His hand moved into her hair, kneading the back of her skull, gently tugging at her pony as he kissed the sensitive spot under her ear. “I agree. You’re trouble, but I’ll take my chances.”
His tongue flicked out and caught the bottom of her earlobe, sending a fresh shock of electricity coursing through her nerves. She moaned and tilted her head, giving him full access to her neck.
He didn’t need any further invitation, his lips kissing her skin, teeth nibbling at her ear, her jawline. Strong fingers worked through her hair, pulling the ponytail loose, his nose sinking into her hair and as he drew a deep breath.
Through half-lidded eyes, she saw movement, heard a voice say, “Don’t mind me.”
Jolting like she’d been pinched, Charlotte flew to the far side of the seat. Miles’ jaw jumped and he glared at Megadeth.
“Plane’s on autopilot.” The man wasn’t looking at them, hands up blocking his view of them as he passed by. “Gotta take a whiz, man.”
A second later, he disappeared behind them into the back area. Miles stood, returning her shirt to cover her shoulder and leaning over to plant a chaste kiss on her forehead. “I’m going to divert the plane to a new location while he’s in the head and call Beatrice. I want to know if she’s the one who gave us up.”
As he pulled away, Charlotte grabbed his shirt, dizzy with a whirl of emotions. “I want to be in on that conversation.”
He touched her elbow, slipped his hand down to entwine his fingers with hers. “It’s better if I talk to her alone first.” His intense gaze bore into hers, that charged silence falling between them again. He squeezed her fingers. “I’ll be back in a bit.”
He didn’t say it, but there was a promise there. In his eyes, in his voice. He was coming back for more. He still had questions, doubts. He still wanted to get her naked. The two desires warred with each other, but he wasn’t afraid of waging that war. He was going into battle with her.
Charlotte just hoped she didn’t let him down.
BEATRICE HAD CALLED his cell phone eight times. She’d stopped leaving messages after the third call.
Miles punched in a new destination for the flight log, put on his headset, then called her back on the SFI secure communication line.
Her greeting was less than genial. “What the hell are you doing?”
“I was about to ask you the same thing.”
There was a pause. “Where are you? Why is
the plane’s GPS disabled?”
He checked his dials and readouts. “I’m twelve clicks south of Newfoundland over the Atlantic, no thanks to you. I disabled the GPS because I don’t want you to know where we’re going.”
Another slight pause. He could see her shifting back in her seat, her pregnant belly jutting out in front of her. She was married to Cal Reese, who led Shadow Force Alpha Team, and they were expecting their first child in a month. “Explain.”
“What’s to explain? You betrayed us at the airport. I’m not letting that happen again.”
“I betrayed you? How?”
“MI6 showed up. I’m sure that was no coincidence.”
“The manager of the hangar called and told me. He and everyone else who deals with us were questioned quite extensively after your daring getaway. You think I called SSI?”
“Who else knew Charlotte’s real identity and that we would be at the Van Nuys airport at that time?”
“The safety of SFI employees is always my number one priority, so while I’ll admit to having serious misgivings about this assignment because it’s clear you have feelings for this woman, and I guarantee, that will be an issue down the line—she is certainly not the first hot client we’ve had, nor would I ever betray one of my own men.”
A “hot” client for the security service was anyone too hot to handle for law enforcement. Those with special security needs or unique situations, such as Savanna Bunkett who’d had the president of the United States stalking her a few months prior.
“Sorry, Beatrice. I’m not buying it. While Colt and the others knew I was hustling Charlotte out of the country, none of them know who she is or that MI6 is after her. You and I are the only ones with that tidbit of info.”
“She must have a tracking device on her person.”
“Nice try. Already removed one at the house. Nicolae Bourean inserted that puppy, not MI6.”
Interference crackled over the comm line. “You’re confident that was the only one?”
“Positive.”
“So unless MI6 has advanced technology we don’t know about, she’s clean.”
“Yes, and if they had an advanced tracking device on her, they’d have caught up to her long before the safe house.”
“I haven’t been able to verify the identities of the men at the airport. You’re positive they’re MI6?”
“Yep. One of them is an operative named Andy Hardy. He was in the Carpathians with me last winter.”
“I don’t get it.” No one ever heard those words from Beatrice’s mouth. “I’m at a loss.”
Jax appeared in the cockpit, nodded at him and took the co-pilot’s seat. “You and me, both,” Miles said to Beatrice, “but you can understand why I suspected your involvement.”
Beatrice’s superior intellect made her good at her job. She never let emotions guide her thinking; facts and logic defined her decisions and directives.
So what came out of her mouth next surprised Miles. “I don’t know your client, nor do I give a monkey’s backside about her, in all honesty,” she said. “You, however, I do care about. You’re one of my team. I would not, under any circumstances, jeopardize your future.”
He hated to admit it, but he believed her. In the time he’d been with Shadow Force and the Rock Stars, he’d seen Beatrice go to bat for every one of the men, under many different and challenging circumstances. They didn’t always play by the rules. Hell, they rarely followed rules period.
Except hers. They all respected and trusted her. For some of the men, after their past experience with the government, she was the only person they trusted. She’d earned it, time and time again.
“Why, boss, I do believe that pregnancy is making you soft.”
Another rarity—she chuckled. “We don’t have all the facts surrounding your client’s past missions or her work with Vauxhall. I suspect she isn’t telling us everything. Someone knew she was in the States and making contact with you. They may have been tracking you as much as they were her.”
Miles didn’t doubt that was true. “I’m working on intel gathering. Getting her to open up after what she’s been through will take time, though.”
“I’m glad your feelings for her haven’t completely short-circuited your common sense and training. I’m sending you a file, some information I dug up from some very deep sources about her. There are holes, and some of it’s not pretty, but it may help you steer this…mission…and not end up dead or in prison.”
Beatrice might not be happy with him, but she did, indeed, have his back. “Send me whatever you can on Bourean too. His business partners, his personality, the chinks in his armor. He was working with a terrorist. I have no intel on the man, but see if you can find any connections.”
“Rory is working on it. There’s a lot of intel out there on Bourean. He even has an Instagram account. Rory will comb through it all and we’ll be in touch with anything pertinent.”
He wasn’t used to saying thank you, but it seemed like those words had tumbled from his mouth an inordinate amount of times in the past few hours. “Appreciate it, but here’s the thing, I’m not turning the GPS back on. No one, with the exception of me right now, knows where this plane is headed and that’s the way I’m going to keep it. I’m going dark until we land. I’ll make contact once I’m sure it’s safe to do so.”
“I understand.”
He knew she did. That she wasn’t taking his actions personally.
“Be safe,” she added and the connection went dead.
Jax didn’t say anything for a long time, but he fidgeted with the controls, with his seat. Finally, he offered up an apology. “I didn’t mean to interrupt. You know,”—he cocked a thumb over his shoulder—“back there.”
If he didn’t need a co-pilot, he would dump Jax’s ass at the first available spot. “You didn’t interrupt anything.”
“That so? I suppose that’s your ‘intel gathering’ technique.”
Miles shot him a stony look. “You got an issue with my interrogation methods?”
“Not at all.” Jax shook his head and smiled. “Hell, I’m thinking I need to revamp mine if that shit works.”
It worked all right.
And Miles couldn’t wait to get started on some further in-depth cross-examination.
Chapter Nine
_____________________
______________________________________________________
THE PLANE TOUCHED down after too many hours in the air and CB Norris roused himself from his first-class seat and made his way through the Bucharest airport terminal. His ulcer was acting up, thanks to Carstons fucking him over. The multiple gin and tonics on the plane hadn’t helped his stomach lining either, but goddamn. That girl drove a man to drink.
He was swallowing another antacid without aid of water when his cell phone buzzed. God, he hated the damn things. Fumbling to get to the phone inside his coat pocket, he finally got hold of it and wished he hadn’t when he saw the caller ID.
“Norris,” he answered.
“Where is my posh ratt?” Nico’s heavy accent made his words nearly run together. “You have her, yes?”
In a manner of speaking. “She’s on her way back to Romania.”
His non-answer answer forced the stupid crime lord to think for a moment. Something he wasn’t used to doing. “In what? A coffin? You promised her delivered to me alive.”
“She’s alive. She’ll be at that old horse dealer’s place within a day or two.” The only way to get there was by all-wheel drive or on foot. The tiny cabin had long ago been abandoned. “I’ll catch up with her there. Once I have the USB, I’ll deliver the girl and you can tell me Blackwater’s whereabouts.”
“You said you would capture the bitch in America.”
“Change of plans. This is better. I didn’t have to transport her. I’ll grab her at the cabin, get the USB, and then she’s all yours.”
“Renege on this deal and I will take pleasure in cutting off your ball
s, old man.”
Yeah, like that was going to happen. “Trust me, I can’t let Carstons loose after I get that USB anyway. You might as well have her. You still know Blackwater’s location, right?”
“I have his daughter. He won’t leave without her. Bring me my Gypsy girl and you can have Blackwater’s. Then we are done.”
Norris couldn’t leave Carstons or Bourean alive after this. He would set it up so it looked like Bourean killed Carstons, then he would kill Nico making it look like he arrived a minute too late to save his beautiful, but pain-in-the-ass agent. Tragic, but with the video on that thumb drive Carstons had told him about and Blackwater’s location, he’d be a goddamn hero.
He’d finally have closure. Good time to retire.
Norris disconnected, Bourean ranting in the background. Little prick. Bourean was nothing but a means to an end, but the world would be much better off without him when Norris put a bullet in his brain. It was too damn bad Charlotte Carstons had to go down with him.
The only problem was going to be the SEAL, Duncan. The real hero in this scenario, it appeared he was a standup guy trying to help a woman in distress and keep her out of trouble. Poor bastard had no idea just how much trouble Carstons was.
He’d have to find a way to take out Duncan. Not a job he relished. Too many loose ends, too much cleanup work to do afterward. Somehow, he’d have to make it look like Nico’s handiwork. Orlo would come in handy for that.
With the way he’d set up Carstons to look like a traitor to her country, she was going to tarnish the good SEAL’s reputation as well. With the piece of information Norris had in his back pocket, he could manipulate the truth of their time together in that cabin to look like they were both double agents, working together to screw over America and the United Kingdom. A Bonnie and Clyde duo that he would personally put an end to.
Taking the SIM card out of the phone, Norris stomped on it, busting it into a dozen little pieces, then tossed the plastic case in a nearby garbage can. He grabbed his carryon luggage and headed for Orlo waiting for him outside.
