by Sybil Bartel
My heart broke.
She fucking gutted me.
With her small body in my arms, and her resilience tightening my chest, I fucking held her and plotted how I was going to kill Fedorov.
As if she knew the twisted shit going through my head, she pushed me away and started talking again like she’d never left off. “But this isn’t going to happen.” She gestured between us. “Because you don’t do repeats, and I just had my turn and that turn is up.”
Bullshit. “Try again.”
She shook her head. “I don’t need to try that again. I’m pretty sure you proved your point.”
“That’s not what I meant.” I knew she was about to come when I had my mouth on her. I also knew it was why she’d retreated. “Your turn’s not up.”
She inhaled and looked away. “You don’t own me.”
“Never said I did.”
She crossed her arms as if to protect herself. “Close enough.”
Not touching her now was physically painful. Her scent marking me, her taste leaving me hanging, I wanted to fuck her until she was screaming my name. “Close will be when I’m inside you.”
Her cheeks reddened. “We tried that.”
“We’re going to try it again.” Beautiful, vulnerable, desperate, in danger—she had every marker for disaster I could think of. I didn’t do repeats, let alone complications. But the second I got my mouth on her, I wanted more than one fuck from her. A lot more. The detrimental thought twisted in my head and mixed with my last few assignments. I didn’t want to get shot at for six figures anymore because I’d contracted to fix some asshole’s problem. I was fucking tired of an hour in a hotel room with a woman I’d never see again. My life plan was fucking shit, but I’d never stopped to think about it until I walked into my house and saw a gorgeous blonde in my kitchen.
She glanced at the counter where I’d had her laid out, and sucked in a breath. “I know what you are. I know what you do. I heard the words you said….” She shook her head, as if clearing her thoughts. “But we both know this isn’t going to work.” She started to walk away.
I let her get halfway down the hall. “He was your first, wasn’t he?”
She spun and sexy anger spread across her face. “That’s none of your business.”
I was making it my business. “He took your innocence and you feel obligated to him.”
“I don’t owe him a thing.”
“Then why give him your future?”
“I’m not giving it to him.”
Bullshit. “You’re walking away from me.”
Anger colored her cheeks. “Because you killed a man in front of me and I’m practicing sanity!”
“He was going to hurt you.” He was going to do a hell of a lot more than hurt her. I didn’t regret pulling that trigger, not for one fucking second.
“So are you,” she accused.
I fought for patience. “I killed him because he had a gun to your head and I didn’t like his hands on you. I have no intention of hurting you.” I’d fucking told her that, repeatedly. “You know that.”
“I don’t know anything.” She turned and took another step.
“You’re afraid of me.”
“What woman wouldn’t be?” She didn’t even look over her shoulder. She walked into my guest room and slammed the door.
I couldn’t fucking help myself, I smiled, because goddamn, that was the woman who’d stapled my shit. I grabbed a water just as the phone she’d reassembled and left on my counter vibrated.
My smile dropped. I swiped to take the call then held it to my ear.
“Did you think I would not find out what you did to Peter, pet?”
My nostrils flared. “I’m not your fucking pet.”
Pause. “Ah. It is like this, then.”
“Yes.”
“Cat and mouse. Tell me, do you enjoy the game?”
I didn’t answer.
He laughed. “I suspect you enjoy it very much. You did such good work on Peter. The authorities will never identify him. Pity I am going to kill you. I could have used someone like you.”
“You can’t afford me.”
“Ah, yes, well, you would be surprised what I can afford.”
“You can’t afford a bullet between your eyes.” His money wouldn’t save him from my aim.
He laughed again. “Who can, my friend?”
“I’m not your friend.”
He dropped the fake affability. “You’re right. Friends don’t fuck your wife.”
“I didn’t fuck her.” Yet. “And you’re not legally married.” I was only half guessing. He could have forged the paperwork, but with his track record, I was betting he never bothered. He was never going to keep her long-term.
“What can a piece of paper say that the heart doesn’t?”
“That she’s entitled to half of everything you own.”
He snorted out a laugh. “I think I underestimated you, marine. Maybe you are just looking for a quick payout. Okay, I will humor you. How much do you want for her?”
He was so dead. “Come over and find out.”
“After what you did to my bodyguard? Do you really think I’m that stupid?”
“Yes.” He was egotistical enough to think I would hand her back to him.
“That’s where you’re wrong. We’re going to meet in a public place and you’re going to bring my wife with you.”
“Or?” He was too confident. He had something for leverage.
“Or I’ll give the police the GPS coordinates of the embedded tracking device my late employee had and they’ll see his last location at your residence before his unfortunate incineration.”
“There are a dozen ways you could get my address, not the least of which is tracking her phone when she called you.”
“I’m glad the military taught you to be skeptical.” He smirked. “There… believe me now?”
My current work phone, a prepaid toss-away with a number I gave out to no one, vibrated in my pocket. I pulled it out as it lit up with a new text. I clicked the text then tapped the picture. A map with a tracked route leading from Key Biscayne to my place ended at the location of the overpass.
Goddamn it. I’d been so fucking caught up in her, I’d never thought to look for a tracking device.
Stalling to buy time as I strode to my guest room, I played it out. “Looks bogus.” I pushed her door open and put my finger to my lips as she looked up.
Still wrapped in the blanket I’d put around her, she sat with her knees to her chest as her gaze cut to her phone. Her face fell.
“I assure you, marine, there is nothing bogus about the precautions I take to ensure the safety and well-being of my employees.”
I quickly typed a note on my phone and showed it to her.
She shook her head.
I nodded. “Precautions you don’t apparently take with your wife.”
“Her safety is of my utmost concern.”
Right. Fucking asshole. “Is that why you sent your guard to kill her?” I held the phone away from my ear and put it on speaker so she could hear the asshole’s response.
Fedorov laughed. “I assure you my bodyguard was only going to teach her a lesson. If she chose to fight him on that, then her fate was in his hands. I am not responsible for that.”
“I don’t call rape a lesson.”
He chuckled. “Then you are too soft. She is young and she needs to be kept in line. Something you would know nothing about.”
Anger contorted her features and she opened her mouth.
I shook my head once in warning. “Women aren’t animals you give obedience training to.”
“Ah, yes, your dog. Hunter, is it? Quite the pedigree he has. You would know about obedience training, wouldn’t you?”
My expression locked, I didn’t let her see an ounce of the alarm churning in my gut. “Come over and I’ll introduce you to him.”
He laughed. “Maybe another time. Tomorrow afternoon we will meet a
t the rooftop restaurant Indigo. Bring my wife and I’ll lose the computer file with my bodyguard’s GPS tracking information for the last twenty-four hours before his death. If you are not there by two p.m., I will hand the information over to the police and report him missing.”
Irina started shaking her head.
I held a finger to my lips again. “She’s not coming. She’s done with you.”
“Oh, she will come. I know you have her listening right now, and I know my wife. Something you didn’t factor in when you decided to try to keep her, marine. She is my wife. Not yours. I know what she needs.” He chuckled. “And she’ll be begging for it by tomorrow afternoon.”
“Outside patio, me only. You give me the file and we’ll discuss you seeing her again.” He was never going to lay eyes on her again.
“Inside, Irina comes. I am not negotiating with you further.”
Shit. “You afraid to sit outside?”
“And be taken out by your sniper rifle?”
“I’ll be sitting across the table from you. How am I going to manage that?”
“With your reputation, marine, I have no doubt you will at least try. Enjoy the rest of the night with my wife. It’s the last you’ll get to spend with her.” Fedorov hung up.
“Dane—”
I held a finger up and dialed on my prepaid.
Luna answered on the first ring with a chuckle. “I knew a pickup wouldn’t be the last of it.”
“My prepaid was hacked. My security’s been compromised.”
He instantly sobered. “On it. Don’t say another word. Protocol.”
“Copy.”
He hung up.
Pissed as hell, I spared Irina a single glance and held my hand up before stalking to my bedroom. I cut the modem and the Internet, turned off all security cameras, and powered down both cell phones. I used my laptop in my bedroom to first make a copy to a zip drive of the security footage from the front porch earlier, then I wiped all the security backups from the past week and shut the machine down. Pulling a scanner out of my gun safe, I did a quick and dirty sweep of the house for bugs but found none.
On my heels the whole time, Hunter quietly whined as he followed me back to my bedroom. The house was clear, but I gave him a command to occupy him. “Patrol.”
“You can’t go meet him.”
I turned. Her jeans were back on and she’d put her hair up. The bone structure of her face stood out even more. “Do you know how to shoot?”
She looked more than alarmed. “I’m not using a sniper rifle.”
“Handguns.” But I liked where her mind went.
“I don’t like guns. What’s going on?”
“I have to go out to the barn. You’re going to stay here with Hunter.”
“What? No. I don’t want to stay here alone.”
“You won’t be alone. Hunter will be with you.” I put the scanner back in my safe and locked it.
“And what’s he going to do?”
I turned to her. “Kill. If you command it.”
She looked down the hall as Hunter walked the inside perimeter of the house. “What’s the command?”
“Attack. Say his name, then say the word.”
She hugged her arms to her chest. “You can’t go meet Viktor. He’ll give the police the information no matter what.”
“I know.”
She looked back up at me with determination. “Then I’ll go with you to meet him. I’ll talk to him.”
“Not an option.” I handed her my smallest weapon. “It’s a Beretta PX4 Storm Compact Carry. It has a smooth trigger pull and minimal recoil.”
She took the gun, released the magazine, and checked the ammo.
Fuck, she was sexy. “Fifteen plus one.” I told her the ammo count. “The magazine’s fully loaded.”
“I see.” She put the magazine back in. “What am I supposed to do with this?”
“Shoot anyone who isn’t me or Hunter.”
She set the gun on my dresser. “What makes you think I know how to use that?”
“Anyone who checks to see if the gun is loaded knows how to shoot.” The wind gusted and rattled the storm shutters. “I’ll be back in thirty minutes.”
She glanced at the shuttered windows in the bedroom. “You can’t go out there. It’s too dangerous.”
It was more dangerous not to find out how Fedorov had gotten to me. “Thirty minutes, max. I’ll be fine.” I walked to the door to the garage and she followed.
“What if a tree falls on the barn?”
“I’ll be underground.” I opened the door.
“Dane.”
The panic in her voice made me pause, but the look on her face made me want to kill Fedorov a thousand times over. I gripped her chin and left a kiss on her cheek, because if I touched her mouth with mine, I wouldn’t walk out that door. “You’ll be fine, promise.”
“Hurry,” she whispered.
I nodded once and closed the door behind me. Fighting the wind and rain to the barn made me confident Fedorov wouldn’t attempt to drive in this shit. If he was willing to send a guard to teach her a lesson, he didn’t fucking love her. She was merely a possession.
Cognizant of my staples, I carefully opened and closed the hatch behind me, but I didn’t turn on any of my equipment. I called Luna first.
He answered immediately. “Dios mio.” He typed on a keyboard. “Your shit is hacked to hell.”
“How did it happen?” He’d set up my security.
“One tricky motherfucker is how. Hold up.” He typed some more. “Damn, amigo. Whoever it is, they were attempting to download the footage from your security camera feeds.”
I rubbed a hand over my face. “How much did they get?”
“Hold on… okay, I stopped the breach. Scanning now… shit. The download was stopped before the footage showed you pulling the trigger, but what they did get is pretty damning, amigo. Who’s after you?”
“Could Viktor Fedorov have done this?”
Pause. Then, “Jesucristo. You have got to be kidding me. Fedorov? What the hell are you into?”
“I have his wife.”
Luna exhaled, low and quiet. “Holy mother of God.”
“She needs an exit strategy.”
“Are you fucking suicidal?” He was incredulous. “Because there’s only one way Fedorov will give up his property.”
I didn’t reply.
“Do I want to know who was in the vehicle you torched?”
“His guard.”
“Which one? He has a dozen of them.”
“She called him Peter.”
“Shit, Marek. That was his cousin.”
“Now he’s his dead cousin.” I glanced at my watch. I’d only been gone four minutes but I wanted to get the fuck back to her. “He wants to meet at Indigo tomorrow at two. He’s expecting me to bring his wife. I need backup.”
Luna let loose with a stream of cuss words in Spanish. “Fuck, that rooftop restaurant? All right, all right. Let me pull up the Google Street View and see what we’re dealing with. You meeting him inside or on the patio.”
“He specified inside, but I plan on getting there first and being outside.”
Luna typed some more. “You still have the penthouse at Mira Vista?”
“Yeah.”
“Roof access?”
“Yes.”
“Hmm…. There’s a possibility of a clean shot from there if you’re on the southwest side of the patio.”
“Options if it’s not clean?”
“If he uses valet, there’ll be a small window, otherwise, a car bomb, breach his residence, poison his food? Shit, bro, I don’t know. This is your specialty.”
And I was losing my touch. “Did he personally hack my security?”
“I’m still trying to trace it, but my guess is yes. He has a reputation for knowing his shit.”
“What do you know about his residence?”
“Besides it being surrounded by water on three sides a
nd having a twelve-foot wall on the other side? Nothing. But you can guarantee his security will be better than yours. You have his wife, ask her about it.”
I will. “You set up my security,” I reminded him.
“And he hacked it.”
“I’ve got another issue.” I exhaled. “He had a GPS tracker embedded in the guard I killed. He’s going to the police with the guard’s last tracking before he died if I don’t hand over his wife.”
“Mierda. Does his wife have a tracker?”
“She said she doesn’t have one.”
“Thank God for small favors.”
No fucking kidding. I needed to get back to the house. “I’m not asking you for a favor tomorrow.” He would get what I meant.
“Copy that, but I’m offering.”
“Your business.” This could jeopardize everything he had, and I knew he supported his parents and two of his sisters.
Luna didn’t hesitate. “My business will be fine.”
I wasn’t going to let him take that kind of risk, but I would use him another way. “You take the meet.” We were similar height and built, enough that it would give Fedorov pause, and that’s all I needed. A three-second window. “I’ll take the shot.”
“Take it or make it?” Luna asked. “We both know who the better shot is between us.”
“I’ll make it. Dress like me and be there by one-thirty. Is he going to recognize you?”
Luna paused. “Possibly. I keep my distance, but we know of each other. My men had a run-in with his last year.”
Fuck. “Just keep your head down.”
“Always,” he reassured. “What are you doing about the wife?”
Not bringing her. “I’ll handle that.”
Luna muttered a curse in Spanish. “You’re just as cagey as Christensen, you know that?”
We’d both served with Neil Christensen, and no one was in the same damn orbit as him, let alone as cagey. “The less I tell you, the better.”
“You expecting this to blow up?”
I didn’t know what to expect with Fedorov. “No idea. But he gave me proof already of the tracking file. Who knows who else has it.”
“What are you going to do?” Luna scoffed. “Take out as many as you can?”
Tempting, but a public hit was risky enough, let alone one with multiple casualties. I’d done it before, but it wasn’t something I wanted to repeat. “I’ll start with Immigration.” If I was lucky, none of them were here legally.
