by Cassie Cole
Cairo led me back to the sofa. “Are you hurt anywhere else?”
I touched my side and winced. “I took a punch or two in the gut. It kind of hurts to breathe.”
“Let me take a look.”
He curled his fingers underneath my thin shirt, then paused to wait for my permission. I nodded, and he lifted it up to get a good look at my side.
“There’s some bruising, but it’s not bad.” His fingers probed at my first rib. “Does that hurt?”
“Only a little.”
He touched each rib, moving up my chest toward my bathing suit top. It felt like it had been days since I was abducted from the beach, even though it was only a couple of hours. Cairo’s warm fingers pressed against the underside of my breast, but there was nothing sexual about it. He was merely ensuring I was okay.
He lowered my shirt and said, “Doesn’t look like anything is broken.”
“Good.”
He was still kneeling in front of me, and rested his hands on my knees. He smiled sadly and said, “I’m sorry again.”
“It’s not your fault.”
He grimaced. “Well, it kind of is.”
“Fuckin’ right it’s our fault, bro,” Hunter agreed.
“What do you mean?”
Logan returned from his phone call before they could explain. “Aina Jimenez. We were so close!” He punched a fist into his palm. “If we had taken our time, coordinated with the Barcelona PD before storming in there…”
“We had to save Karen,” Cairo said. There was steel in his deep voice. “That was all that mattered.”
Hunter glared, daring Logan to disagree. Refusing to be baited, Logan crossed his arms and leaned against the fridge.
“There’s still one part I don’t understand. What would Aina want with me?” I asked. “She didn’t believe I was a microbiology grad student. She kept asking who I really was, as if I had a secret. And she insisted I knew you two from before the club.”
Cairo and Hunter exchanged a look.
“What?” I asked. “Tell me.”
Logan put up his hands. “Don’t look at me. Your two lovers are going to have to explain this one.”
Cairo sighed and turned to me. “The CLF think you’re working with us.”
“What?” I gave a nervous laugh. “Who do they think I am? A female Navy SEAL?”
He hesitated. “Not exactly.”
“Then what?”
His answer made me laugh even harder.
14
Karen
“The CIA?” I said. It was too ridiculous not to laugh. “They think I’m a CIA agent?”
“Uh huh,” Hunter said with a smirk.
“The Central Intelligence Agency,” I said. “Those dudes who do espionage and stuff out of Washington?”
“They’re based in Langley, Virginia,” Logan said dryly. “But those are the guys. We got a tip some CLF members were moving in on a suspected CIA agent here in Barcelona. We didn’t even realize where it was happening until we got reports of a helicopter landing on the beach. Your roommate went to the police and reported it as a kidnapping. That’s when we realized this was all a big mistake.”
“But why!” I shouted. They were ignoring the key part. “Why do they think I’m a CIA agent?”
“Because of your association with us,” Cairo said with a sigh.
“What association? One night together?”
Logan nodded. “It appears so.” He gave an I told you so look to his two teammates.
“In retrospect,” Cairo said slowly, “our flirting at the bar might have looked like code to someone who was already watching us.”
Code. Spies in a foreign country. Terrorists. A secret Navy SEAL strike team. My head swam as I tried to wrap my head around it all.
“You have got to be kidding me.”
Cairo rubbed my knee in what he thought was a soothing gesture. “This is a lot to take in.”
Logan stepped forward. Without his bulletproof vest his muscular chest bulged against his polo shirt. “You need to tell us everything that happened at the warehouse.”
Cairo twisted to look at him. “She needs to rest.”
“We have to know everything as soon as possible,” Logan insisted. “There could be valuable information that leads us to Aina.”
“Give her a fucking minute, bro,” Hunter said. At a glare from Logan, he added, “I mean, give her a fucking minute, Lieutenant Commander.”
“I’m fine,” I said. “I’ll tell you everything I know. It’s not much.”
I went through the entire experience. The beach pickup, and the helicopter ride to the warehouse with the guys I thought were Interpol. Then the things Aina told me about them.
“She said you were criminals,” I explained. “That they had been looking for you for weeks. She told me the fight at the bar was orchestrated to gain my trust.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Hunter said, balling his big hands into fists. “That fucking bitch…”
“You don’t believe her, right?” Cairo asked gently.
“I didn’t know what to believe at the time, but I’m fairly certain the three men who rescued me are the good guys, and the woman who beat me is the bad guy. What I don’t understand is: why would she lie to me about who you guys were? If I was a CIA agent like she suspected I would know it’s a lie.”
“She could have been testing you,” Cairo explained. “Feeding you information so she could gauge your reaction.”
“She must not have liked what she saw,” I mumbled.
“What did you tell her about us?” Logan asked.
“Umm.” My memory was hazy even though it was only an hour ago. Getting beaten was bad for short-term memory, I guessed. “I gave them your physical descriptions. She seemed to already know some information about Cairo and Hunter, but what I told her about you was new.”
Logan’s jaw clenched. “What else?”
“Names,” I admitted. “Though I only know your first names, so that’s probably not too valuable. That’s about it.”
Logan probed the inside of his cheek with his tongue. “That’s not bad. Fortunately, you didn’t know much to tell her. And it seems the CLF was already suspicious of who we are since they were watching them at the club. Nice going, fuckheads.”
Hunter waited until Logan wasn’t looking to give him the bird. Cairo looked abashed.
“What am I missing here?” I asked.
Logan jerked his head at them. “These two had orders to lay low while we waited for our strike orders. They weren’t supposed to be out last night, let alone someplace public like a goddamn night club.”
The shame in Cairo’s eyes told me all I needed to know. “Seriously? You disobeyed orders to try to get laid?”
“We get it,” Hunter said to Logan. “We fucked up, bro. How about we focus on what to do next?”
Logan sneered. “I’d rather chew your asses out a little bit longer.”
“At least buy us a drink first, LC,” Hunter said. The joke didn’t make Logan smile. The hard commander of the SEAL team turned back to me.
“This brings us to the next problem in our fun list of happy discussion points. If I report Cairo and Hunter’s little field trip up the chain of command—like I’m supposed to—our whole strike team would be riding the first boat back home. They might even get discharged. I don’t want my guys to lose their careers because of one fuck-up.”
Fuck-up. That’s what I was to them. A mistake they regretted.
“Which means we’re sweeping this under the rug,” Logan continued. “We’ve done our best to coordinate with the local authorities to keep it under wraps. Barcelona PD owes us some favors, so I pulled those strings to make it happen.” His eyes narrowed. “But now there’s you.”
His green eyes scanned me, down to my beach flip flops and then back up to my hair. I shivered at the way it made me feel to have such a beautiful man searching me with that intense gaze.
“We can’t turn
you loose because you’re in danger.” Logan sighed. “The CLF will just pick you up again, and this time they won’t be so gentle. But we can’t bring you back to Barcelona Naval Command because then we’d have to explain why you’re involved in the first place.
“Then what are you going to do with me?”
“I’m sorry,” Cairo whispered.
Logan shrugged as if it were out of his control. “The only thing we can do. Keep you close until our mission is complete and the CLF is wiped out. Until then, you’re essentially under house arrest.”
15
Cairo
Karen didn’t take it well.
“I’m under house arrest?” she said, incredulous. “You three are babysitting me?”
“Three hot babysitters, right?” Hunter joked, but Karen was in no mood.
“I’m going to Mallorca this weekend,” she explained. “It’s my final vacation with Linda before flying back to North Carolina. Shit, Linda. She must be freaking out…”
I sat next to her on the couch and patted her leg. “We’ll contact her to let her know you’re safe.”
She turned her death-stare toward me. “And then what? You’ll escort me to Mallorca?”
“That trip is definitely not happening,” Logan said.
Karen made a noise like she’d just learned her dog had died.
“Bro, she’d probably be safer on that island than here in Barcelona…”
“Safer,” Logan said, “isn’t the same thing as safe. You two, of all people, should know how wide-reaching the CLF is in this region. We have to keep her close.”
I begrudgingly nodded. It sucked, but Logan was right. This was the only way to both ensure her safety and keep our bosses from learning Hunter and I went out to the club.
I gave her knee a squeeze. “It’s for your own safety.”
She knocked my hand away. “You were right. This is your fault. If I’d known what I was getting into I wouldn’t have gone home with you two after the club.”
Her words hurt more than any of the gunshot wounds I’d suffered in my career. I rose from the couch and went to grab a bottle of water so Karen couldn’t see the pain that was certainly painted on my face.
“What if I refuse?” Karen suddenly said. “I’m an American citizen. You can’t just kidnap and hold me against my will! I’ll scream. I’ll go to the embassy.”
“You’re not gonna want to do that, honey,” Logan said.
“Why not?”
“First off, the embassy would turn you over to our guys at Barcelona Naval Command. They’ll interrogate you just like I did, only it’ll take them a whole lot longer. A couple days, at least. Then, on account of your interaction with a terrorist cell, you’d be put on internal lockdown until the entire situation here was resolved. That’d delay your precious little Mallorca vacation even worse than if you stuck around with us. And to top it all off, all that attention raised by you going to the embassy would blow our chances of stopping the CLF from doing whatever they were planning.”
“Our LC doesn’t just have a stick up his ass,” Hunter said. “He’s telling the truth.”
“It’d be much easier if you let us keep you safe until our strike mission is complete. Just a few days, then it’ll all be over and we can pretend like none of this happened.”
I could see Karen thinking it over. Realizing that Logan was right, that this was the best way forward for everyone.
“A couple of days?” she finally asked.
“Could be two days, could be 20,” Logan said bluntly. “But based on how active the CLF has been lately, and how goddamn bold they were to pluck a suspected CIA agent off the beach in broad daylight, I’ve got a feeling it’ll be on the shorter end of the spectrum.”
“And I don’t really have a choice, do I?” she said, weary.
“You sure don’t,” Logan said cheerfully. “So you might as well save us all a whole lot of time and trouble and accept it now.”
She stared at the ground and nodded.
“Atta girl,” Logan said.
“What next?” I asked.
“Since we know the CLF has had eyes on you two, we need to go to ground. Take Hunter and Little Miss Muffet here and grab your gear out of the safe house. While you’re doing that, I’ll visit her apartment and grab clothes and toiletries.”
“Why can’t I go with you?” she asked. “Then I can grab my own stuff, and tell Linda what happened.”
“Because I don’t want you talking to Linda. The less she knows, the better.”
“Then I won’t say anything to her,” she insisted. “But let me go pick out my clothes.”
Logan’s face hardened. I’d learned not to argue with that expression. “These people just kidnapped you off a beach in broad daylight. The CLF is getting far too bold for my liking, and they suddenly think you’re an important target. It’ll be safer if I go to your place alone and you go with these two. I’d prefer to keep you here, but the door doesn’t lock from the inside, and I can’t trust you not to run straight to the embassy even though I already explained why that’s a bad idea.”
I could tell Karen wanted to protest. Logan’s stare dared her to try. But then she relented, either because she knew she wouldn’t convince him, or because she knew he was right.
“Good. Give me a list of what you need. Keep it simple.”
“Okay,” she said.
Logan fished his keys out of his pocket and tossed them to me. I caught them in mid-air. “The car’s yours. I want to take the underground in case the CLF have people watching Karen’s apartment, so I can slip away from them easier. Feel free to grab some food on the way back if you want, but make it fast. And call intel to verify it’s safe. If there’s any chatter I want your asses back here quick as can be.”
“Roger that, LC.”
We escorted Karen out of our command center like a prisoner.
16
Karen
Cairo and Hunter escorted me out like a prisoner. Because that’s what I was. For all intents and purposes, I might as well have been in handcuffs.
Hunter opened the back door of their beat-up car for me. “Not exactly a tactical Humvee, is it?” I asked.
Hunter only grinned. “It gets the job done.”
“If we need a Humvee, then we haven’t done our job properly,” Cairo said as he got in the driver’s seat.
I slid into the back seat and Hunter joined me. “Do you really think I’m going to throw open the door and run away?”
“No…” Hunter said in an unconvincing manner.
We drove away from the little fake-cafe.
It hadn’t really sunk in what was happening, so I made myself go over it in my head repeatedly to hammer it in. I’d slept with two Navy SEALs, and now Catalan terrorists thought I was a secret agent or something. Now I was essentially a prisoner until they deemed me safe, however long that took.
I was going to miss the trip to Mallorca, and San Ferdinand’s Feast Day in Madrid after that. My final days in Spain would be spent in a windowless room without any access to the outside world.
Sure, it helped that the three SEALs were drop-dead gorgeous. But only a little bit.
“Your boss is a dick,” I said to break the silence in the car.
“Right?” Hunter grinned. Smiling seemed to be the blond’s permanent expression.
Cairo chuckled in the driver’s seat. “He’s not really our boss. Just our LC. Lieutenant Commander.”
“What’s the difference?”
“A boss is someone who barks orders to subordinates. Logan’s one of us. The head of our three-man strike team, not a supervisor. Every order he gives is one he’s carrying out at the same time with us.”
“Still sounds like a boss,” I said.
Cairo glanced at me in the mirror. I couldn’t tell what thoughts were swirling behind those amber eyes.
“I’m sorry,” he finally said. “We should have told you who we were last night. Or at least found a way to war
n you about associating with us.”
“Yeah, it was kind of a dick move,” Hunter agreed. “Though, I mean, we couldn’t tell you.”
“You have every right to be upset,” Cairo finished. “I just wanted to make sure you knew that.”
My laugh sounded more bitter than I intended. “It’s fine. I mean, it’s not fine, but it is what it is. I was taking my frustration out on you because I didn’t want to accept what was happening.”
Hunter was giving me a funny look. “What?” I asked.
“If we had told you,” Hunter said slowly, “would it have made a difference?”
This time my laugh was more lighthearted. “Honestly? It probably would have turned me on even more.”
The two of them shared a laugh. It felt good to talk about what happened last night without Logan’s judgmental stare.
“You know,” I said, “if not for Logan being such a dick about it, I might think the only reason you guys were holding me hostage was so you could fuck me some more.”
Hunter barked a laugh. Cairo gave me a nervous smile. It was funny seeing someone with so much muscle acting almost bashful. He wasn’t bashful last night when he was fucking me against the wall…
“If only this was all some elaborate way to get back in your pants,” Cairo said.
Hunter elbowed me and winked.
My stomach rumbled loud enough to make Hunter glance over. “I’m starving. Can we stop and get some food?”
“Ehh. Logan said to get it on the way back.”
“He also said to check with intel to make sure it’s safe,” Hunter said. “Come on, bro. I’ll call them and we’ll grab some quick tapas. I’m starving too.”
“I bet you didn’t have two meals interrupted today,” I said.
“Not that it’s a competition, but we did skip lunch to rescue some microbiology student,” Hunter teased.
I raised an eyebrow at the supermodel-like blond. “Surely I’m worth more than a sandwich.”