“That was a compliment.” There was genuine shock in Christian’s tone. “That’s two in one day. Am I dreaming? Quick, someone pinch me.”
“You’re not trying to get mental exercise,” Emily asserted. “You’re trying to distract yourself.”
“From what?”
“From your ashy dick and the fact that I have a… How did you put it? ‘A small but rather plump ass.’”
“First of all, I thought I made it clear you mustn’t take any of that personally. And second of all, I said bottom not ass. I would never be so crass.”
Ace took it back. He was no longer happy for the distraction Emily and Christian provided.
Listening to them snipe at each other made him want to reach over and knock their heads together. He knew that despite Christian’s insistence to the contrary, what Christian felt for their resident office manager extraordinaire was very personal. The same could be said for Emily. Their feelings toward each other were written all over their faces anytime they were in the same room.
If Ace was forced to describe it, he’d say it was a dash of longing mixed with a dollop of lust sprinkled atop a near-nuclear pile of need. But to his everlasting dismay—and irritation—neither seemed willing to admit it.
Really, what the holy duck fuck was their problem?
They were both attractive. Both single. Both engaged in espionage and blacker-than-black missions. However—and this was a pretty big fracking however—for reasons he highly suspected stemmed back to trauma in their childhoods, neither of them expressed any interest in romantic relationships.
He got that. Lord, did he ever. The things a person endured in childhood often left indelible marks as an adult.
A vision of his father dragging him to that damned conversion therapist climbed out of the mental lockbox he kept it in and leered menacingly. He shoved the fucker back inside and slammed the lid shut, then imagined adding a nice big chain and a combination lock for good measure.
“Sorry I’m squashing you,” Rusty said. “My shoulders and crowded conditions don’t mix.”
“Not a problem.” Ace hoped the big man didn’t hear the hoarseness in his voice.
Flipping on the stolen truck’s blinker, Angel used a straightaway on the country lane to swerve around a granny in a Volkswagen puttering away at ten miles per hour under the speed limit. Since the farm truck was old and crotchety, and since the back road could use some work, the maneuver was less graceful than expected. Rusty was suddenly smashed against Ace’s side. A tingle spread across Ace’s collarbones, and if he wasn’t mistaken, a burst of heat flew to his cheeks.
“Damn. Sorry,” Rusty said again. “You okay?”
Rusty had a nice voice. All deep and sure. It hit Ace directly in his belly. Which was not where voices were supposed to land. They were supposed to land in the ears and stay there, damnit.
There had only been one other voice in Ace’s whole life that hit him in the belly, and the fact that Rusty’s did so now made him feel guilty. As if he was somehow cheating on the memory of that other voice.
“Fine,” he said. Or more like croaked.
Now that lovely, terrifying heat wasn’t only in his cheeks. It was everywhere. Spreading across his chest, down his arms.
He tried to blame it on the warm air coming from the vents, but knew he was fooling himself. It had nothing to do with the heater and everything to do with Rusty. Rusty and his big, strapping body. Rusty and his deep, stomach-churning voice. Rusty and his sweet smile and oddly sad eyes and…
Ace shoved his thoughts aside and lifted a hand to…what? Fan his face? Holy hobbling Christ on a crutch, talk about obvious.
Instead, he pointed the vent away from him as if that had been his intention all along. Too late, he realized that was obvious too, damnit!
Fisting his hands in his lap, he cleared his throat and tried to concentrate on something, anything, other than the redhead plastered along his side. It might have worked, had the people in the pickup truck offered any sort of distraction. But Christian and Emily had fallen quiet. Angel was no help. He was back to being his usual buttoned-up self. And Rusty…
Gah! Ace’s mind had circled back to the very thing he was trying not to think about!
The seconds plodded by like hours. The air inside the truck seemed hotter, despite him having turned off his vent. And the silence… Fracking hell, the silence! It grated on his very last nerve because he could hear Rusty breathing, hear Rusty swallowing, hear Rusty’s whiskers rasp against his rough palm when he rubbed a hand over his face.
Ace couldn’t stand it a second longer. “So, Rusty,” he blurted, “you never told us what brought you to England. I mean, really, how does a former marine from Pittsburgh end up as a charter fishing boat captain in Folkstone, UK?”
“It’s a long story.” Rusty shrugged.
Ace glanced at his watch, then at the sign telling him they had seven miles to go before they reached the airport. Which translated into seven more miles of silence unless he could get Rusty to fill it. Since seven more miles of silence would feel like an eternity, he figured he’d start with something simpler. “How long were you a jarhead?”
“Eight years.”
Ah, progress. “And what made you leave?”
“I got a bum knee, thanks to a bad mission over in Afghanistan that made me not so good at humping gear and squatting in foxholes. They honorably discharged me as soon as my contract came up for renewal.”
“Was that difficult? I mean, assuming you wanted to stay in the Corps?”
Again, Rusty shrugged and remained frustratingly silent. It’s like pulling teeth, Ace thought.
“And afterward? Is that when you moved to England?”
Rusty shook his head, his eyes zeroed in on the road ahead, but unless Ace was mistaken, Rusty wasn’t really seeing it. He seemed to have turned in on himself. “I ended up going back to Pittsburgh to work for my pop at U.S. Steel. But I…” Rusty’s jaw hardened. “I wasn’t happy there.”
“No? Why not?”
“Lot of good ol’ boys I didn’t fit in with ’cause I’m…” Rusty made a rolling motion with his big paw.
“I think the word you’re looking for is gay.”
“Yeah.” Rusty hitched one mammoth shoulder. “And then there was my dad’s crew, the white-collar boys. But I didn’t fit in with them either ’cause I’m more brawn than brains.”
“I wouldn’t say that.”
“You don’t know me so well.” Rusty chuckled, but it sounded fake, and within a second, his face fell flat. “But the long and short of it is, when my grandfather died and left his house in Folkstone and his charter fishing business to my mom, I jumped at the chance to make a fresh start. To try something new.”
Ace couldn’t put his finger on it, but there was something about Rusty’s story that didn’t gel. “And your folks? They were okay with you moving half a world away?”
Ace wouldn’t have thought it possible, but Rusty’s jaw hardened further. “Not really. But I had to. I needed…um…well, I guess I needed space.”
Call it intuition or a sixth sense, but suddenly Ace knew what Rusty wasn’t saying. His heart sank. “Your folks don’t know you’re gay, do they?”
For a redhead, Rusty’s skin was incredibly tan—all those hours spent on an open deck, no doubt—but Ace still spotted his blush.
“It’d kill my mom if she knew,” Rusty said. “She’s a devout Christian. Some might even call her a bible-beater. And my dad, well…let’s just say he’s made it clear my whole life what he thinks of fuckin’ fairies.”
The way Rusty spat out the words, Ace knew Rusty was quoting directly from his old man. Hadn’t Ace heard similar nastiness from his own father?
His mental lockbox rattled around, threatening to disgorge its contents once again. “You want some advice?” he asked Rusty
.
“Not really.”
Ace gave him some anyway. “Rip off the bandage. Even if your folks are hurt, hell, even if they say they never want to see you again, at least you won’t be living a lie.”
A muscle ticked a sharp rhythm in Rusty’s cheek. “Easier said than done.”
“Like most things,” Ace insisted. But a final hitch of those shoulders told him Rusty wasn’t buying it.
Too bad, he mused. I thought maybe we could—
He squashed the thought before he could finish it. He’d been down that road before. He refused to go down it again. And besides, his heart belonged to another. Always had. Always would.
Still, it’d been nice to fantasize. Just for a while.
Angel followed the signs directing them to the private hangar at the airport, and they eventually found their way to a meandering access road that would take them there.
Ace had always appreciated private air travel. Since the über-rich and famous, or those folks with bull’s-eyes on their backs, tended to get around that way, it meant private jet hangars were discreet. Discriminating. Exactly what a quintet of covert operators needed. Or rather a trio of covert operators, one mouthy office manager, and one poor, unsuspecting former-marine-turned-civilian.
Passing through the gate of a chain-link fence, they pulled into a small parking lot. Since theirs wasn’t a commercial flight, there was no need for gung-ho security measures. The thought being, if someone wanted to hijack or bring down their own plane, well…so what? It’s not like they’d be taking innocent civilians with them.
With the rain still coming down in sheets, it wasn’t until they were piling out of the truck and wiping it down for fingerprints—leaving behind easy evidence was a no-no, and of course there was Rusty’s identity to protect—that Ace noticed the black SUV swinging in to park three spots down. He didn’t give it a second thought. Figured it was a pilot or a mechanic or even an air traffic controller. That was until he saw two men hop from the vehicle and lift sidearms.
The driver yelled in a thick English accent, “Put your bloody hands in the air!”
Chapter 5
Cornwall Airport Newquay…
Emily barely had time to blink, much less react, when the two men hopped from the car brandishing big, black handguns.
The same could not be said for Christian.
No sooner had the man in the SUV shouted his order for them to reach for the sky than Christian grabbed her wrist and yanked her behind him. He took a half step back, pinning her between his big body and the farm truck.
The rain was biting, and the metal of the truck was cold, but Christian’s back and legs provided surprising warmth. They helped ease the chattering of her teeth. Alas, nothing could stop the runaway beat of her heart. Blood pounded like a snare drum in her ears, then crashed like cymbals.
She prided herself on her bravery. How many times had she stood up to the playground bully? Or cursed out the preppy girls who’d teased her about her clothes or her ratty shoes or the fact that her mother was on her third husband in four years? But there was a vast difference between mouthy kids from the South Side and the two men pointing really scary weapons in her direction.
So close, was all she could think. They had been so close to making a clean getaway.
“You!” The man who had barked the order to put their hands in the air spoke again. “Come ’round to this side of the truck so I can see you!”
Emily glanced over her shoulder to see Angel nod. Just an infinitesimal jerk of his chin. His advance was slow and calculated, not a hitch in his step that would cause their assailants to get antsy as he joined the rest of them on the passenger side.
When she dared peek from behind Christian’s broad back, she blinked away the icy water sluicing down her face and saw all the men in her group were mirroring Christian’s stance. Muscled legs slightly spread. Big hands raised in the air, but only lifted to shoulder level.
None of them would put their hands any higher unless ordered, because all of them knew it was the work of an instant to drop their hands, should the opportunity arise for them to make a move to disarm their assailants. People who actually put their hands all the way over their heads, arms extended, were fools who hadn’t been through months of CQC training and then spent years putting that training into practice.
Even Rusty, who’d waved buh-bye to the marines over four years ago, hadn’t forgotten the lessons he’d learned about close quarters combat.
“Who are you?” Christian demanded, his voice competing with the roar of the rain against the corrugated roof of the private jet hangar. Rivers of water poured from the gutters, the tin channels unable to keep up with the rate of the deluge. “What do you want?”
“I’m asking the questions here, Watson!” the man yelled.
Emily would not have thought it possible for Christian’s muscles to clench any harder. But suddenly he was wound as tight as the yarn inside a baseball.
Their assailants, whoever they were, knew who he was. And it wasn’t like Emily’s day had been a rainbow sandwich before, but she got the feeling it had just gotten a whole hell of a lot worse.
“How do you know me?” Christian’s low tone said he’d like nothing better than to reach down the men’s throats and start pulling their bones out of their mouths one by one.
“What did I just say?” the man shouted.
Obviously, he was the one in charge. Big and burly, with a flat nose and a Neanderthal brow ridge, he reminded Emily of a barroom brawler. And yet there was something in his eyes that assured her he was more than that. Some scary knowledge or odd certainty.
Or maybe that’s simply rage, she thought, trying with little to no success to blink the rain from her eyelashes. She didn’t remember ever being this wet in her whole sorry life. Rain had filled her hiking boots until it felt like she was standing in buckets of water. The leggings she usually found so comfortable clung to her like a sopping wet second skin.
She felt Christian struggling to hold his tongue, struggling not to tell Neanderthal to take his handgun, shove it straight up his ass, and pull the trigger. All of the Knights, but Christian in particular, disliked taking orders from anyone who didn’t have the title “president” or “general” in front of his name.
She didn’t know what possessed her. She snuck a hand under the hem of Christian’s coat, beneath his sweater, and laid her fingers against the hot skin of his lower back. Then she rubbed. Gently. Soothingly. If she wasn’t mistaken, Christian shivered. But there was no way to know if it was because of her touch or because her fingers were ice cold.
“Tell the woman to step out from behind you!” Neanderthal shouted.
The woman. Not Emily. Not Miss Scott. So whoever they were—Spider’s men?—they only knew Christian.
“Go bugger yourself!” was Christian’s quick response. See what she meant about being bad at taking orders?
“You sorry sonofabitch!” Neanderthal yelled. Peeking from beneath Christian’s raised arm, Emily saw spittle fly from Neanderthal’s mouth and mix with the pouring rain. “Do you fancy dying?”
He took a step closer to the group, and Emily didn’t miss the change in the men with her. They hadn’t moved. Hadn’t batted a lash. But suddenly they reminded her of a nest of vipers, poised and ready to strike.
“What I fancy is for the woman to stay precisely where she is,” Christian murmured, but somehow his voice cut through the clamor of the rain. “Whatever you want, whatever you came here to do, you can do it with her back there.”
“You’re not the one calling the bloody shots here!”
Yep. Rage. That’s definitely rage I see in his eyes.
The fool took another step closer to the group. But he quickly realized his mistake when the atmosphere around them turned electric. You could almost taste the tension and anticipation in the air. He qu
ickly backpedaled toward the SUV before yelling to his companion. “Ben! Come ’round to this side! I need you next to me!”
Aha. So Neanderthal’s cohort was named Ben.
Apprehension detonated at the base of Emily’s brain. If Neanderthal let a name slip, it meant she and the BKI boys were dealing with one of three possibilities. One, Neanderthal was an idiot. Two, Neanderthal had never done anything like this before. Or three, Neanderthal didn’t worry about slinging around names because he planned to kill them all.
None of those scenarios made her very warm and fuzzy.
Christian must have felt the same. The muscles beneath her fingertips went rock hard. He was readying himself to make a move. Any move. All he needed was an opening.
Ben, who had been aiming at the group over the steaming hood of the SUV, slowly skirted the front of the vehicle. His black work boots splashed through puddles. His jeans were soaked clean through and hung low on his waist.
He looked a lot like Neanderthal. So much so that Emily decided they had to be brothers. But where Neanderthal appeared resolved to do whatever it was they’d come to do, Ben looked uncertain. His dark eyes were too wide. The big-knuckled hand on his weapon was too shaky.
Once Ben was in a better position, Neanderthal turned his attention back to Christian. “What are you up to, Watson? What did you blow up back in Port Isaac?”
“A car,” Angel answered for Christian. There was no hesitation in Angel’s voice. No inflection. Just those two words.
Emily’s eyes pinged to the Israeli and noted that he wore the same unreadable expression he always did, despite the rivulets of icy water sluicing down his too-handsome face. She wondered if he’d look like that even if a nuclear bomb was about to fall on their heads.
“To distract the reporters, eh?” Neanderthal’s thick lips quirked in a knowing smirk. “So you could sneak out the garden door, catch a plane, and leave the country?”
“Yes.” Again it was Angel who answered. Maybe because he feared what calamity might spill out of Christian’s mouth if Christian was left to do the job.
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