Mastered By The Mavericks

by Angel Payne

  She turned the device so everyone could see the screen, consumed by images of a building that had, at one time, likely been an architectural showpiece. In the pictures El showed, the giant glass and chrome building was closed off by chain-link fences, and was rocking the “overgrown decay” look. Rain had streaked the dirt from the roof down over the walls, and tall weeds rose up from the ground to meet the stains.

  El scrolled to some links on the side of the page. “Looks like it’s still registered to Verge.”

  “Only a two-hour plane trip from here,” Kell filled in, “as opposed to the five hours required for D.C.”

  “Good point.” For a second, Shay’s face didn’t look so ravaged.

  “Feels like our best bet,” Zeke concurred.

  Rhett studied the screen more closely. “Especially because this complex isn’t as helpless as it looks.”

  Rebel stepped in too. “You’re right,” he murmured. “The weeds on the fence have only grown as high as this break point. They’d have overtaken the top if the wires there weren’t still charged.”

  “And look at this.” Rhett spread his fingers to expand an image. “Around the loading docks, in the back.”

  Rebel shifted closer, practically pressing his cheek to his buddy’s for the better view. Nobody in the room flinched—Brynn imagined they all operated under close quarters when on missions—though she wondered if anyone picked up the new strain in Rhett because of it.

  “That dust has been scuffed recently,” Rebel murmured. “A lot of it, too.”

  “And there.” Rhett pointed at the screen again. “Fresh tire marks?”

  “Or some huge fucking slugs, looking for a little shelter,” Rebel countered.

  “It’s Texas,” Zeke inserted. “You never know what Mother Nature’s going to allow.”

  “No shit.” The mutter was nearly indiscernible, issued from Rebel’s thinned lips as he stepped away from Rhett—though Brynn wondered if he’d traversed a lot farther than that in his mind.

  No matter what, the last minute had exposed a couple of truths to her. One, the waters of both Rebel Stafford and Rhett Lange ran deeper than the world saw—and maybe, as the team’s notorious rule breakers, that was how they liked it. Two, she shouldn’t be so curious about grabbing her psychological scuba gear for those waters—especially not now.

  No. Not ever.

  What the hell had gotten into her about both of them, anyway? Stay on the shore, girlfriend. Those waters are laced with your personal arsenic. Men like them are death sentences to your heart and spirit.

  If only Zoe were here to lend her willpower.

  If only Zoe were here, period.

  Rhett’s comment sliced into her rumination. “There’s some very fancy security hardware here, too. The picture is fuzzy, so I can’t catalogue it.” He shook his head, making the red tips of his hair dance beneath the light. “This is going to take recon. Probably from the inside.”

  “Recon?” Rebel folded his arms and growled. “From the inside? Right. Because we have that kind of time?”

  Rhett grunted. “So you vote for just blowing the lid off the place?”

  “Sounds like a plan to me,” Zeke drawled.

  “Right.” Garrett snorted. “That’s a fine plan—unless Adler’s fun little fairies have been hard at work building in some cute booby traps for wandering C-4 enthusiasts. Just to make things more interesting, yeah?”

  Zeke narrowed his eyes. “You’ve been watching too many James Bond movies.”

  “And you’ve been to too many CrossFit sessions.” Garrett caught enough of Rhett’s commiserating glance to go on. “The ability to bench-press a tractor tire doesn’t do you shit beneath a mountain of rubble or a lungful of sarin gas.”

  Rebel glowered back into pirate mode. “Better the guy who tried than the guy who stood around ‘strategizing’ with his dick in his hand.”

  “So you’re all dead,” Rhett snapped, “and Zoe and her baby are still turned into Adler’s human sushi.”

  That took care of any remaining stomach flips—and turned into Brynn’s bravado for whacking the man’s shoulder. “There’s a word in the dictionary called ‘tact,’ bozo. Look it up. And you,”—she stabbed two fingers into Rebel’s chest, cutting short his gloating snicker—“aren’t any better.”

  Rebel glowered. “Huh?”

  “Are you really licensed to play with explosives? Who do I write a letter to about that?”

  Shay shoved from the wall and barreled toward them. “This bullshit’s getting us nowhere. If I have to tear down that building brick by brick, I’ll do it.”

  Zeke hooked him to a halt. “Negative.” He shrugged in reply to Shay’s snarl. “That’s exactly what Adler’s anticipating, not to mention your fun friend Nyles. Sorry, I-Man. If Zoe’s their holy grail, you’re their golden Arthur. On top of that, you’ve barely slept or eaten, not to mention the emotions that are fucking your game to shit.”

  “And yours wasn’t, when you went running after Mua when he took Rayna as revenge when you put away his brother?”

  “I was way clearer than you.” Z jerked up his chin and firmed his jaw. “I was also a lot less valuable to Mua than you are to Adler.”

  “And Mua was a moron,” Garrett inserted.

  Shay fumed into silence. Brynn winced again in sympathy. The guy had no other option. Homer Adler and “moron” didn’t belong in the same sentence. The man was brilliant—to the point of daunting.

  But while Brynn had sworn off soldier studs like these as lovers, she knew their fiber as men. “Daunting” was part of their job description, along with terms like “impossible”, “risky”, and “what-the-fuck-are-you-thinking”. She could practically see the gears churning in their heads already, about what they were going to do for Shay.

  And Zoe.

  As if the conviction of her conclusion drew him forward, Rebel moved to the middle of the room. But that was where things got weird. He didn’t stomp forward; he sauntered. Like a gentleman pirate strolling the decks in the sun, he clasped his hands behind his back while glancing at Rhett.

  “Hey, Double-Oh?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Weren’t we about to hit up Franz for those two weeks of leave?”

  Rhett closed the laptop with a knowing grin. “Do believe we were.”

  “Seems a good time to make that happen.”

  He grinned wider. Rhett mirrored the look.

  “The mavericks haven’t had an adventure in a long, long time.”

  “God help us all,” Zeke muttered.

  “Sending that the wrong direction, buddy.” Garrett jabbed hands into his pockets. “With those two, we’ll be posting bail money to hell.” When he pulled a hand back out, a child’s pacifier dangled from his fingers. His eyes softened, undoubtedly succumbing to a vision of his nearly two year-old son, Racer.

  “As long as they take care of recon on Texas first, I don’t give a shit.”

  “Amen, brothah.” Kellan lifted his hand, wiggling a confident Hang Ten. “And while you guys are checking out shit in the land of longhorns, I can cross the D.C. warehouse off the list. Wouldn’t hurt to check out LA, too. If Adler formed relationships with any of Stock’s show biz buddies, he might be going that route, as well.”

  Z bumped a fist in his direction. “Good thinking. What better place to hide someone than the land of ultimate illusion?” His head jerked, a thought clearly piercing it. “You have any lines on where to find a discreet pilot?”

  Kellan curled a wolfish grin. “Sam Mackenna just got into town.”

  Z chortled. “Mackenna! They really let that ape leave Scotland?”

  “All six-foot-whatever of him.” Kellan chuckled. “He’s here for some cross-training between the air forces, only they’ve been delayed due to some bullshit red tape. He’s sitting on his hands over at Nellis, going stir-crazy. Seriously, you’d think he’d been forced to hole up in a cave for years or something.”

  “Call him. Right away
.”

  “Done.”

  Zeke cocked a wry look at Garrett. “I’m pretty sure Franz won’t have a problem with our request for some leave, either.”

  “Under the circumstances?” Garrett returned. “No. But adding in the can of whoop-ass we unleashed on those drug traffickers last week, and the fact that he’s in training now?”

  Z snorted ruefully. “Why training gives that guy a nonstop boner, I’ll never understand.”

  “Don’t bother to try,” Kell interjected. “Just be grateful.”

  “Agreed, Slash-tastic. Agreed.” Zeke’s resilient tone reflected a newly buoyant mood among the guys—even Shay, who stood without the help of the wall or sofa for the first time in hours. “We’ll put together the mission command center right in the next room so you can monitor everything that’s going on, I-Man.”

  Shay growled. “If they find Zo, ‘monitoring’ won’t be all I do, asshole.”

  “Bridge to cross later.” Garrett clapped a hand over the big man’s shoulder.

  El stepped forward again. “I can be here a lot, too. Help out in any way you guys need with the tech.”

  Brynn frowned at her. “You’re in two shows right now.”

  “One’s dark for two weeks,” El countered. “And they can grab someone to cover for me at Papillon. Thank God the Braneff Brothers believe in huge show casts.”

  “Outstanding.” Rebel smacked his palms together. “And I’ve got a guy who can hook up Double-Oh and me into a place just outside Austin.”

  Rhett jogged up a brow. “Of course you do.” He traded a look with his friend that solidified Brynn’s earlier assessment. Deep waters. Both of them. A lot of them traversed together.

  Which meant they didn’t need company.

  But some moments in life were just dominated by other forces. Maybe divine ones. That was the excuse she went with, as a string of insane words spilled off her lips.

  “And I can help you two with that part.”

  Both men looked up. The pirate and the Viking stared at her, scrutinizing with two distinct shades of deep blue that dared a girl to get lost in them. What an ideal match for the rabbit hole she’d surely just flung herself into.

  Rhett’s ruddy brows were the first to crunch. “With what part, peach?”

  Okay, forget being entranced by his eyes. Peach? Had he really gone there? It seemed so—and in one syllable, turned a dorky endearment into an all-hail for the deepest tissues of her sex. She stood there with the wet panties as proof, desperately praying she effectively hid the sexual cataclysm that had just struck.

  Maybe going to Texas with him wasn’t such a keen plan, after all.

  “El, Garrett, and Zeke have things handled here. Kellan’s scoping out D.C. and Hollywood. So why don’t I help you two in Texas?”

  So exactly why was she pushing the point again?

  “Please. I need to help find her, too.”

  There it was.

  It sure as hell didn’t come easy. She wasn’t wired to beg for anything in her life. Only when the moment really called for it did she flip open the circuit box and consciously decide to rewire her nature. But if any cause was worth it—if anyone was worth it—Zoe Chestain-Bommer was that person. Brynna had a nonexistent father, a mother who might as well have been, and a sister who lived in fantasy land most days. Ryder, El, and Zoe were her only real family now. She’d be damned to stand by and just watch a monster rip one of them away.

  “Please,” she repeated, “I have to do what I can. You have to let me help get Zoe back—somehow!”

  Chapter Three

  ‡

  “ARE YOU INSANE?”

  Rebel might as well have thrown tacks at her instead of words. But the regret didn’t stop his dick from its primal need, twitching against his camos after two seconds of impact from her huge, pleading eyes.

  Her eyes.

  Fuck.

  From the moment Rhett and he had arrived to the sight of her on the couch with a desolate Shay, he’d prayed her gaze wouldn’t be as huge and stunning and mesmerizing as he remembered—that he’d overly embellished things since seeing her at Shay and Zoe’s wedding last August. He’d deliberately steered clear of her that day, knowing she was still hot and heavy with Dan Colton. The less he was around her, the easier it’d be to ignore how breathtaking she’d be once her turn at the altar came—as Colton’s bride. Dan wasn’t a stupid guy. He was probably just being polite about things, waiting for Shay and Zoe to have their special day before announcing he and Brynna would be celebrating theirs.

  Or so Reb had thought.

  Colton had been a dumb shit, after all. Had let a treasure like her slip through his fingers.

  But now, Rebel Masterston Stafford was going to be just as big a couillon.

  Uh-uh.

  This was not the same.

  He wasn’t letting her go as a friend and lover. He was simply informing the insane beauty that as sweet as it was, her noble gesture wasn’t going to end up like some gal-pals retreat. No champagne breakfasts and pony rides, even if they did find Zoe.

  And that was a big fucking if.

  They were, in all meanings of the word except a few—like having the government’s official blessing and even a shred of advanced intel—embarking on a covert operation. That meant risk. Lots of it. And danger. Lots of it. And if combining the two, the very real possibility that at least one of them wouldn’t leave Texas alive.

  If that shit went down for either Rhett or him, procedures were easy. He and Double-Oh had bent or broken the rules so many times, they’d memorized each other’s wishes for what would happen after the formalities were taken care of, like making sure the world was told they’d been in an “accident” while on “vacation” then notifying all the pertinent people for each other.

  Ironically, the first half of those instructions was the harder part. Rhett’s family was thrown to three corners of the world—his mom, dad, and brother lived in New York, London, and Shang Hai respectively.

  Then there was the issue of Reb’s “pertinent people”.

  On paper, it all seemed easy. There was just Father, after all. But “second shack to the right, one mile into Terrebonne Swamp” wasn’t an address one openly shared. Still, after a close call in Cambodia had slammed his mortality down his throat last year, he’d sucked it up and dragged Rhett on that dismal excursion. He’d barely cut the motor of their rented skiff, letting Rhett look his fill as they drifted by the place: two rooms beneath a tin roof on stilts that rose from mud oozing duckweed, mosquitoes, and a shitload of bitter memories. He hadn’t offered to take Rhett inside. Nor had Rhett asked for it.

  Reb had been grateful for the tact, but braced for the questions to come later. They’d never come. Rhett had simply known, in ways as mysterious as the bayou they’d just journeyed from, that parts of Rebel would always be like the mossy shadows of the place. Left behind and forgotten.

  Things with Rhett had always been like that. Intimate but accepting. Hard but easy.

  Brynn Monet was not easy.

  She was ethereal and beautiful, generous and adorable—but at the edges of her composure, in places she fought to hide, she was wild, too. He’d never bought the voodoo tales about the rougarous who shifted from human to wolf, or the feu follet, dragonflies turned into mischievous fairies, but this woman gave him pause for thought—especially now, with the craziness that had just spilled from her delectable mouth.

  And continued to, as well.

  “Insane?” she echoed. “About wanting to help get my best friend back here safely?”

  Rebel forced down a calm breath. Damn it. She wasn’t making this easy, with those copper flames in her eyes and the queenly flare of her nose. “Helping is an awesome idea.” Unbelievably, he kept his tone reasonable. “Just not in the middle of Texas hill country with Double-Oh and me.”

  Her brows formed a pair of dark ginger arcs—the perfect invitation for him to throw back with a heavy hand on the haughty. Instead, h
e shifted from foot to foot, wondering why his adrenal system had kick-started a soul-deep tangle usually saved for the shittiest parts of missions. What the hell? How was she turning his senses into sawdust and his equilibrium into a goddamn teeter-totter?

  “You think I just want in on the adventure, is that it?” she charged. “That I’m just one of Zo’s old dancing buddies who feels ‘left out of the fun’ and doesn’t understand the risks of what you’re doing?”

  He had a retort for that—but damn him if the words just jammed in his fucking throat. It had to be her eyes—again. It had to be how they took on an unearthly sheen, framed by those gold-tipped lashes, pulling every piece of reasoning out of his goddamn head.

  “Do you know anything about me, Sergeant Stafford?” She swiveled her head back, combo’ing a nod and a shake, which should’ve given her a bitch-poser vibe. Instead, all Rebel thought of was an Amazonian princess, down to the question of whether he should take a knee and drop a bow. “Okay, I can’t help hack into a security system like El or interpret five languages like Zo, but did you know that the reason I started dancing in shows was to make money for school? That I’m only four classes away from landing my criminal psych degree? That maybe, just maybe, I can help you read these guys faster and sharper than any computer readouts or artificial analysis?”

  Behind her, El jabbed a fist into the air. “Point for Monet. Go, girl.”

  She hitched a no-shit shrug. “He gets a minor bye on that one. How could he have known that, without stalking me?” Her quick little glance would yield her nothing but his dark, guarded stare. Oh, mon chou, if you only knew how close I was… “But you don’t get mercy for the rest, Moonstormer.”

  Strangely, a laugh tripped off his lips—coaxed by the magic of his call-sign on hers. Her voice…every word out of her elegant lips reminded him of home. It was sultry and smoky, knowing but innocent—and yes, unbelievably, the balance he needed to echo her words back with authority instead of stupidity.