Fast Vengeance

by Kaylea Cross

  His answering smile took her breath away. “You’re welcome.”

  Tearing her attention from him, she turned to Lockhart. “And you got dragged into this too, huh? Lucky you.”

  The former Ranger’s lips twitched in the semblance of a smile, but his pale blue eyes twinkled. “I came willingly.”

  “Well I’m glad you’re both here.” She felt much better now than when she’d left the courthouse, lighter and somehow warmer inside to know that these people cared about her this much. “I gather you heard the news?”

  Oceane nodded. “My security team got the call about the verdict on our way over here.”

  “I hear the judge was freaking awesome in the way she worded the sentencing portion,” Lockhart said.

  Victoria would never forget it, or the goosebumps that had risen all over her skin in reaction to the woman’s intensity. “She was.”

  Oceane reached for one of her hands, squeezed. “How are you feeling?”

  Tired. Empty. But less empty and less alone than she had. “I’m not sure, to be honest. Relieved. A lot of other things.”

  Oceane’s eyes filled with empathy. “I can imagine.”

  Yes. Victoria knew she could.

  When they’d first met, she had been determined to hate Oceane on sight because she was Manny Nieto’s daughter. Then she’d realized that Oceane was as much a victim as she was. And since the day Oceane’s mother had been brutally murdered by Veneno sicarios months ago, Victoria had made it her mission to befriend the younger woman. Together they’d formed an invaluable support system for each other.

  They were more than just friends; they had become each other’s family. Who better to understand than someone who has gone through similar horrors? Their bond would never be broken. Not even when Victoria left D.C. and would never see or hear from her again.

  The thought brought a wave of sadness. She shook it off, forced a smile. “I’m glad you came.”

  “Well, should we eat?” Brock said.

  Victoria took in all the food laid out on the oval table in the kitchen. A cheese board, fruit and veggies, finger sandwiches, mini quiches. She arched a brow at him. “Quiches? I’m surprised you’re okay with them,” she teased.

  He shrugged and picked up a plate from the counter, handing it to her. “I’m comfortable enough with my masculinity that I can handle quiche just fine.”

  More than his words, his tone made warmth bloom in her abdomen. Yes, he was definitely comfortable with his masculinity. And it was sexy as hell. There was so much she wanted to learn about him, so many things she wanted to take the memory of with her when she left D.C. any day now. “Thanks,” she said, taking the plate.

  “What about you, Lockhart?” Brock asked, handing his teammate a plate. “You okay with mini quiches?”

  “It’s free food, so yeah, I’m good with it.” He handed his plate to Oceane, gently guided her in front of him with a hand on her lower back. “Ladies first.”

  Victoria caught the flush in Oceane’s cheeks as she smiled at him, though Lockhart didn’t react. He had originally been assigned to guard Oceane before she and her mother agreed to join WITSEC. He’d been there for her when no one else was the day her mother had been killed. The four of them had met at the orientation center maybe a dozen or so times prior to FAST Bravo deploying overseas, for meetings, briefings and updates about the ongoing manhunt for Oceane’s father and his bastard of an enforcer.

  With a full plate she sat on the long couch in the living room while Oceane sat across from her on the loveseat. A minute later Lockhart sat beside Oceane, and Brock came over to Victoria with a flute of champagne for her. “It’s not exactly Dom Perignon,” he said, “but it’s wet and it has bubbles.”

  She took it with a smile. “I’ll love it, thank you.”

  Once Brock handed everyone a flute, he lowered himself beside her and raised his glass. “To new beginnings,” he said, looking into her eyes, his words sending a shiver of anticipation up her spine.

  “Cheers,” Oceane said, smiling at her.

  Wanting to deflect the attention off herself, Victoria searched for a safe topic to talk about. “I’m curious. What do you guys do to amuse yourselves while you’re over there for four months?”

  Brock and Lockhart exchanged a look, and both of them smiled. “It can be dull,” Brock admitted. “But never for long. There are always missions or briefings going on, and in our downtime, we’ve got Granger and Maka to keep us entertained.”

  “They’re the team clowns,” Lockhart said, his voice drier than the champagne.

  “Why, what sorts of things do they do?” Oceane asked.

  “Mostly immature stuff,” Brock said. “Practical jokes. Whatever is most annoying to the rest of us. They feed off each other. But I gotta give it to them, when it comes to lip synching, nobody does it better. And board games. Man, those two are something else.”

  Her family had loved board games. Growing up, they’d spent hours at the kitchen table on Saturday nights playing Risk or Monopoly. Once they’d become old enough to join in, her nieces and nephews had loved it too.

  A pang hit her, taking her off guard with its sharpness. She set her plate on her lap and swallowed, the backs of her eyes burning. God, was it ever going to get easier? Would she ever be able to go a day without something triggering a painful memory of them, or a terrifying one of her captivity? And soon she would lose the people with her right now too.

  She felt Brock’s eyes on her. “You okay?” he asked.

  She nodded, put her plate on the coffee table and stood. She needed a minute to herself before she embarrassed herself and made everyone else uncomfortable. “Be right back.”

  Heading to the bathroom, she shut and locked the door behind her, leaning against it and closing her eyes while she fought back the tears. They wouldn’t help. Wouldn’t change anything. And she didn’t want Brock and the others to know she’d been crying.

  Opening her eyes, she stared at her reflection in the mirror. Sunlight streamed in through the bathroom window, illuminating her face. The concealer she’d dotted beneath her eyes couldn’t hide the shadows there. Or the ones in her eyes. She looked freaking ancient. Far older than the thirty-two years her birth certificate proclaimed.

  And she looked…frightened. Not in the same way she had been. This was deeper, an unsettling sensation like she was standing on the edge of a cliff and knowing the moment was coming when she would be forced to jump.

  The deep sadness in her eyes made her heart clench. She had done all she could to avenge her family’s deaths. Now what? Although she had no choice but to move forward, she didn’t know how. Didn’t know if she’d ever be whole again.

  All right. Enough.

  Giving herself a mental shake, she pushed aside the sadness and the weight pressing on her chest. Brock had gone to all this trouble for her, and she refused to spoil it.

  Oceane looked up as Victoria came back to the kitchen. Victoria gave her a smile, then took her seat next to Brock, aware of the way his gaze lingered on her. She didn’t want to talk about it. She just wanted to enjoy the time they had left together.

  Thankfully, Brock picked the conversation back up. Lockhart interjected here and there with his dry sense of humor, making her and Oceane laugh. “Wrestling?” Victoria asked, shaking her head.

  “Superhero wrestling,” Brock corrected.

  “And let me guess, you were Captain America.”

  “Of course.”

  “And who were you?” Oceane asked Lockhart.

  “I abstained,” he said in a wry tone. “Or more like, stood watch and provided lookout so the rest of these man-children—” He gestured to Brock, “could body slam each other through tables and smash chairs over each other’s heads without command overhearing.”

  Victoria gaped at Brock. “What the heck?”

  He shrugged a broad shoulder, a smile playing around the edges of his mouth. “Had to win the belt back from Maka, defend my position
as team leader.”

  “And did you?”

  “Sort of,” Lockhart interjected. “Cap brought in the rest of the Avengers and they all ganged up on Maka, who was of course the Hulk.”

  “The Hawaiian Hulk,” Brock corrected.

  “Yeah. Anyway, they piled on top of him, finally pinned him down, and then Cap stole the belt back. Yay.”

  “I took the belt back,” Brock corrected. “And our Hulk did turn a little green after all, in the end. With envy.”

  Victoria met Oceane’s eyes and they both shook their heads. “You guys are ridiculous. If the DEA only knew what you got up to over there.”

  “Nah, it’s good for morale,” Brock said, grinning now. “And we only busted a few tables.” He chuckled. “Maka’s been moving pretty slow since we put him through that last one.”

  Testosterone. It was a dangerous thing.

  Oceane’s phone rang, breaking the easy atmosphere. Checking the display, she sighed. “That’s my cue to leave,” she said, her face falling. “Someone’s coming up to get me now.”

  “I should call my team too,” Victoria said, reaching into her purse for her phone. She hadn’t spoken to them about this, had no idea what the plan or timeline was, but if Oceane was leaving, then likely Victoria would be too.

  “I already cleared it with them for you to stay until six,” Brock said, causing her to look up at him. “If you want.”

  She studied him. More time alone together? She wanted that. But if she stayed, wouldn’t word get back to WITSEC and maybe even the DEA that something was going on between her and Brock?

  People talked. She didn’t care what anyone said about her. She just didn’t want to cause any trouble for Brock. “Are you sure it’s okay?”

  “Positive.”

  Well… Her other option was to return to the WITSEC center and spend the rest of the night alone in her room working on the outline for her novel. The thought made her feel lonelier than she expected. “Okay, then.” It would give them a couple more hours to further explore her proposition. And time was of the essence, so…

  “I’d better head out too,” Lockhart said, climbing to his feet. He walked into the kitchen and grabbed his ball cap from the counter, tugged it over his dark blond hair and picked up his leather jacket. “See ya bright and early tomorrow, Cap,” he said to Brock.

  “You know it,” Brock answered, and went to the door. The marshal arrived seconds later and Brock let Oceane and Lockhart out. “Have a good night.” Then locked the door and turned to face her, one hand still on the jamb. “How’re you doing?”

  “Fine.” Tired, but glad to have time alone with him. Aching to feel his arms around her. Even if it was only for a little while.

  He searched her eyes a moment. Then, without a word, he closed the distance between them and gathered her into a tight hug.

  ****

  There was definitely something going on with those two.

  Oceane glanced over at Gabe to drink him in as he walked beside her, both of them following the marshal down the hall toward the staircase entrance. “Is it just me, or did you feel like we were kind of interrupting back there?” she whispered, hoping the marshal couldn’t overhear her.

  One side of his mouth pulled up, then he hid it and his expression went back to its usual setting of neutral. It was eerie, how he did that. Hiding what he was thinking and feeling. Was he naturally like that, or had he learned it in the military? “Nah.”

  She frowned at him in annoyance. “Oh, please. You saw it too, you just don’t want to admit it.” She knew what she’d seen, and there had definitely been sparks flying between Brock and Victoria. Also, her friend was so sad. Oceane wished Victoria’s smiles would reach her eyes. Maybe Brock could help her with that.

  She glanced at Gabe again, thinking about her own situation. Her experience with men was woefully inadequate. She’d had a few short-term relationships and two lovers, but that was it. Hard to date and keep a guy interested when you had armed bodyguards around you all the time, even on dates.

  Harder still when everyone knew she was Manny Nieto’s daughter. His only child, by his mistress. And worse yet that they had known the truth about him when she hadn’t.

  Gabe’s hands were in the pockets of his leather coat. The scent of it mixed with the fragrance of his soap, something masculine and spicy. She loved the way he smelled. His quiet, thoughtful intensity. They hadn’t seen each other since before his deployment, but things had become way easier between them than in the beginning, when he’d temporarily been assigned to guard her. Back then, he’d seen her as a spoiled, naïve cartel princess, as Manny Nieto’s entitled and corrupt illegitimate daughter. Now she got the sense that he saw who she truly was.

  The one upside of all the tragedy she’d experienced was that it had brought her closer to Victoria, and by extension, Brock and Gabe. Whenever she met with Victoria, Gabe had usually been there too. His four-month-long stint in Afghanistan with the rest of FAST Bravo had seemed to last forever. She thought about him constantly, no matter how often she told herself to stop.

  “What will you do now?” she asked him.

  “Go back to taking the fight to the bad guys.” He glanced at her as they reached the stairwell. “You?”

  “I don’t know.” She was in limbo for the time being. Not really a federal witness at this point, since neither her father nor Montoya were in custody, so there was nothing more she could give the government on them. She was still under threat, however, since her father seemed to have lost his damn mind and put a bounty of sorts on her head for anyone who could return her to him unharmed. She still needed the government’s protection.

  Right now, she had no idea what the future held. If the government decided it no longer needed her, it would cut her loose. Might even send her back to Mexico.

  Cold seeped through her veins at the thought. She wanted to stay here in the States, become a citizen someday. “I want to feel useful again.” Back home, before her life had been reduced to ashes, she’d been a successful financial advisor. She’d managed her mother’s sizeable estate and many other large accounts from wealthy clients.

  Money and clients she now understood had come from her father. Was anything about her life real? Had she earned anything on her own merit? It was too depressing to think about.

  He’d stolen everything from her. Her life, her identity, her trust. But worst of all, her mother, and in a horrific way that was seared deep into her brain forever. Oceane would never forgive him for it. As long as it took, she would see him in hell for that.

  “You could start working on your financial advisor certification here while you wait to see what will happen,” Gabe suggested.

  “Maybe.” But what was the point if they were going to boot her out and send her back to Mexico?

  “Any new leads on Montoya?”

  The mere sound of her godfather’s name scraped over her nerve endings like barbed wire. He’d been dispatched to find and bring her back to her father. And while he’d been doing that, his sicarios had raped and butchered her mother.

  Remembering the things she’d seen that day was like swallowing shards of broken glass, slicing her up inside. Without Gabe to lean on that day, she would have shattered into a thousand pieces. He had seen things, knew things about her that no one else did and didn’t judge her for them. Did he know how much that meant to her? She couldn’t bear the thought of never seeing him again once she left the city.

  “No. They still think he’s back in Mexico somewhere,” she said.

  “Any possibility he’s hiding out with your father, wherever he is?”

  “Doubt it.” She’d been doing everything she could to help investigators track the men down. But she couldn’t tell them what she didn’t know, and since her parents had deliberately kept her ignorant of her absentee-father’s true business involvement, it wasn’t much.

  It was still so hard to believe everything she had learned since escaping to the States. Unt
il the night armed gunmen had stormed the gated mansion where she and her mother lived in Veracruz, she hadn’t fully believed that he was involved with a drug cartel. And certainly not that he’d become one of the Veneno bosses.

  The man had even gone so far as to pay off her dentist to have a tracking device implanted in a filling. The FBI had removed it the same afternoon they’d found it. Someone within her father’s network had taken her mother’s body back home and allowed her family to give her a proper burial in the plot her mother had purchased years before. The feds had shown Oceane pictures to confirm it.

  Her father, of course, had not attended the funeral, and none of the guests agents had questioned seemed to know where he was. Only that they had heard rumors that he and his wife Elena had separated. Word had it that the funeral and reception had been paid for by an anonymous source. The U.S. authorities were trying to trace it back to the owner, hoping they could link it to her father.

  Oceane knew in her heart it was a futile effort. Her father was simply too good at covering his tracks and burying his money.

  She and Gabe reached the SUV waiting under the building. She paused, looking at him. He was impossible to read. But he had been good to her in the hour of her greatest need, and she trusted him. Felt something real and powerful for him.

  Did he feel anything for her at all beyond obligation and a sense of duty? She had no idea and didn’t want to fall for him any more than she already had, in case it was all one-sided. Because it probably was.

  “So I guess… I won’t be seeing you much now,” she said softly, her chest aching.

  His pale blue eyes gazed down at her steadily. “I’ll be around.”

  She couldn’t think what for, or what might allow their paths to cross again, unless something big came up with her father or Montoya. “Well. I’m glad you’re back. It’s good to see you.”

  His lips curved a little. Not exactly a grin, but close. “Good to see you too. You take care of yourself.” He opened the back door for her.