by Cassie Cole
I handed it over. He held down the power button to turn it off, then popped out the SIM card. Then he handed the phone back to me.
“You can have the SIM card back when the mission is done.”
“Gee, thanks,” I said sarcastically. “Do you really think they’re tracking our phones? Or texts?”
Logan sat on the edge of the bed and checked the magazine of his pistol. “If you had asked me that this morning, I would have said there was no way. The CLF isn’t that advanced. Plus, I checked your phone. There’s no tracking software installed.”
“Good.” I nodded. “Wait. What do you mean you checked it?”
He gave me a blank stare. “When I retrieved it and your clothes from your apartment. I checked all the background GPS data on your phone and disabled all the apps which might access your location. You’re clean.” He held up the SIM card. “At least, I thought so. Now I’d rather be safe than sorry.”
The guy tied up in the chair chuckled. Logan reached out and slapped him across the face. The smack was as loud as a gunshot.
“What are we doing with him?” I asked.
“Holding him until morning. The same guys giving us a ride back to the mainland will take him off our hands. He’ll be their problem, then.” Logan sneered. “You hear that? I’ve been a goddamn kindergarten teacher compared to the CIA black site you’ll be visiting. You’ll have a grand old time, Alejandro.”
He tried to say something that might have been, “Me llamo Carlos.” My name is Carlos.
“I can’t understand you, Alejandro. You’ve got some shit in your mouth.”
Logan changed—in the bathroom—into his cargo pants and a clean shirt, then lay on the bed with his back propped up against the wall so he could watch our prisoner. He rested his pistol across his legs and looked at me.
“You should get some sleep.”
“What about you?”
“I’m a Navy SEAL,” he said simply. “I’m used to functioning on little-to-no sleep. You, on the other hand, should rest while you can.”
I smiled. “Is that an order?”
“You bet your cute little ass it is.”
I gave a little mock salute. “Copy that.”
Our hostage groaned behind his gag. Logan flipped him off.
It felt weird going through my evening routine while a hostage was in the other room. Wiping off my makeup and applying lotion to my face. Using the bathroom and then changing into pajamas. It was like an uncomfortable teenage slumber party with the added awkwardness of a terrorist watching everything we did.
I crawled under the clean sheets next to Logan and laid on my back with my arms crossed over my chest. After a few moments I decided screw it, and curled up against Logan’s strong, warm leg, resting my head against his thigh as if it were a manly pillow.
“You sure you don’t want me to take a shift watching him?” I asked.
“Positive. Thanks, though.”
“Mmm hmm.” I snuggled closer and whispered, “Do you think Sofia and her boys are okay?”
He didn’t say anything for a long while. I was beginning to wonder if he didn’t hear me when he eventually said, “I don’t know. I hope so.”
“I hope so too.” Then I added, “You’ll keep me safe?”
He stroked my hair, fingers caressing my scalp. “With all my power.”
Even with the terrorist sitting across from us, I fell asleep feeling safe.
40
Karen
Even with the terrorist sitting across from us, I slept feeling safe. I woke up when the sky outside the window was still dark and I sighed, completely at peace.
Then I saw the man restrained in the chair, and I was jerked back to reality.
Oh, that’s right. Someone tried to kill us last night and now we’re holding him hostage.
I closed my eyes and snuggled up against Logan’s body again. His breath was slow and steady and his eyes were closed, but I didn’t believe for a second that he was asleep. If the man across from our bed so much as coughed I would have bet all the gold in Spain that Logan would be awake and aiming the gun at him.
Despite the less-than-soothing way I remembered where we were, it was nice waking up next to Logan. Sleeping with a man was such an intimate experience. Being quiet and vulnerable with them. Just two people dreaming together.
Much better than sleeping with a man and then leaving in the middle of the night.
I thought about that night with Hunter and Cairo, after they’d stopped the asshole who tried to roofie me at the club. If only I had known I would see a lot more of them than the hour or so we’d spent nude, in the throws of passionate lovemaking.
I miss them.
Logan was nice. He was great, even. But I missed the others, too. Seeing them individually was strange. As if they weren’t complete when they were on opposite sides of Europe. It was like looking at one of those heart-shaped necklaces that was split down the middle, but connected together with its counterpart that you were supposed to give your boyfriend. Logan wasn’t fully himself when he was away from the others.
What was I going to do? Sleeping with two guys in the same SEAL team was crazy enough, but then I had to go and bang their Lieutenant Commander and earn myself the toaster. I tried to imagine how they would react to learning I’d slept with Logan. Hunter might make a joke and say, “Dude, what the fuck?” Cairo would just stare at me with those golden eyes, hurt and disappointed.
It doesn’t matter, I told myself. I was going back to North Carolina soon. I would never see them again. Because of that, there was no real difference between sleeping with two of them or three. Soon it would be a long forgotten memory. An exciting week I had at the end of my trip abroad, but nothing more.
But as I watched the scarred SEAL breathe deeply next to me, I knew that was a lie.
His eyes opened and immediately found me. “You watching me sleep?”
“Maybe.”
“Creep.”
“You’re cute when you sleep.”
Logan glanced at the hostage, who was snoring away in his restraints. Logan checked his pistol magazine and then said, “You might be the first person alive to call a Navy SEAL cute.”
“There’s a first time for everything.”
“There doesn’t have to be. He checked his phone and then rubbed his eyes.
I ran my fingers up under his shirt. “Good morning to you too, grumpy pants.”
“Not grumpy. Just tired.”
“Then you should’ve taken me up on my offer to watch Alejandro here.” My fingers traced the line of one of his scars. “How’d you get this?”
He looked down at me. “I don’t remember.”
“Oh come on. If they’re from past missions, you should be able to tell me. And if they’re not, then bend the rules just this one time. To make me happy.”
“How do you think I got that scar?”
I lifted his shirt and got a good look at the scar, which was like the Cheshire Cat’s invisible smile, or a sliver of the moon. “Knife wound? Bullet that grazed you? Oh! I’ve got it. A stray kitten who was upset you wouldn’t pet it.”
He chuckled. “That’s actually the scar from having my appendix removed.”
“Oh.” I blinked. “That’s far less sexy of a story than I was expecting.”
“Sorry to disappoint.” He lifted his shirt higher and tapped the hicky-like puckers along the other side of his chest, one-two-three. “These are bullet holes I took in Damascus three years back, when the Civil War was fresh. Asshole with an Uzi sprayed me the moment I walked through the door.”
I touched the scars. The skin was perfectly smooth. “Wow. You lived?”
“Well, obviously.” He pointed at the long scar above his pec. “This was a machete swing from an ISIS soldier in Tripoli. It’s a good thing Hunter warned me in time or it would’ve taken off half my skull.”
“Holy crap,” I said. This scar did have depth to it, a little valley on the topographical m
ap of his chest. “How deep did it cut?”
Logan grinned with pride. “Not deep enough.”
“I can’t imagine being that close to death. Bullets tearing your flesh, or a machete to the heart…”
His whole body vibrated with laughter. “You know which wound came the closest to killing me?” He tapped the appendix scar.
“No way.”
“We were in deep cover in Nigeria, hunting Boko Haram. It started as a dull pain in my abdomen, but of course I ignored it, the same way I ignored the flies and mosquitoes biting us constantly. My hunger disappeared, also not unusual when on a mission. But then Cairo noticed I was sweating more than the others. Had a fever of 102.”
“Oh my God.”
“My appendix ruptured, and I was delirious with pain. They had to drag me 25 miles out of the jungle to our evac point.” He shook his head while staring off at nothing. “Came this close to never making it home.”
“You’re lucky.”
“Lucky?” He snorted. “That was the only mission we ever failed.” The Boko Haram cell we were waiting for went on to slaughter an entire town. And all because of a useless organ in my gut.”
I didn’t have anything to say to that, so I said nothing.
Logan glanced at his phone. “Alright, it’s about time we got ready. If you want a shower, now’s the time to take one.”
*
By the time I got out of the shower and changed into fresh clothes, we had guests at our door. Americans in plain clothes, jeans and button-down shirts who came inside and unfolded a body bag on the floor of the suite. I don’t know if they were CIA or Navy Specialists, but they gave our prisoner a sedative shot and then packed him in the shiny black body bag, which they draped across a baggage cart and covered with dress shirts.
And just like that, we walked out of the resort and got on a van to the airport.
The private plain had barely enough room for a baseball team, and it flew low over the Mediterranean while the sun rose in the sky behind us. The seven hour ferry ride was less than an hour by plane, and by the time we landed at a private runway south of Barcelona the sky was filled with shades of orange and red.
Two figures waited for us as we exited our plane. Figures who were tremendously muscular and wore huge grins on their beautiful faces.
“Cairo!” I squealed, sprinting toward them. “Hunter!”
Cairo grunted as I tackled him in a hug. “You hear that?”
“What?” Hunter asked.
“She said my name first.”
Hunter stuck his middle finger in Cairo’s face and then pulled me into a hug, his huge bicep pressing against my face. I savored the way I felt safe in his arms. We’d only been apart two days, but it felt like a lifetime.
Logan watched us with his bag slung over his shoulder. I wondered what he was thinking about all this.
The CLF prisoner who had waited in our hotel room was carried off to another plane, which immediately rolled down the runway as soon as they were on board. Our plane was refueled while we stood on the runway, and then we re-boarded, just the four of us this time.
“The gang’s back together,” I said.
Hunter grinned. “We were never apart.” He banged his fist against his chest. “We’re always together in spirit.”
“That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard,” Logan said.
“Good to see you too, LC.”
We were silent as the plane took off. When the cabin pressure leveled out Logan pulled out his laptop. “I’ve got good news and bad news.”
“Good news first,” I said.
“I heard from Sofia Garcia,” he said to the three of us. “She and her boys are okay. They were in a different wing of the palace. There was only one injury, a servant with a broken arm. All in all, they’re lucky the damage was mostly to the structure.”
“That is lucky,” I said. I could hardly believe it.
“The attacker drove a van full of explosives through the barricade and into the east wing of the palace.” Logan stared intently at me. “He drove it into the side of the building where we were staying.”
“Oh,” I said. “Oh.” I shivered at the thought of being killed in the middle of the night while I slept.
“Think that’s a coincidence?” I asked.
“I don’t believe in coincidences,” Logan said grimly.
Hunter put his arm around me and pulled me close. “Good thing you bailed, huh?”
“Don’t encourage bad behavior,” Logan scolded.
“Come on, LC. Lighten up.”
“I’ll lighten up when we’ve completed our mission and the CLF is wiped out.”
“Speaking of that…” Cairo craned his neck out the window. “Where are we headed? Portugal?”
Logan shook his head. “There’s the bad news to tell you about.”
He opened his laptop. A video was waiting on the screen. He hit play.
Aina Jimenez, the leader of the Catalan Liberation Front, strode into view. She wore tight-fitting slacks and a leather jacket, with matching leather gloves which held a piece of paper. She sat at a chair and stared at the camera with eyes that were focused and demanding.
“The demands of the CLF are simple,” she said in Spanish. “We demand the complete withdrawal of all Spanish or European Union troops from Barcelona and surrounding Catalonia. The territory must be allowed total autonomy from the oppressive Spanish government.”
She lowered her sheet of paper and stared daggers at the camera.
“Spanish citizens, I now speak directly to you. Listen to my words. Your soldiers are not safe, as our attack on El Prat has shown. Your royals are not safe, as the smoldering remains of Sofia Garcia’s mansion proves. And your people are not safe. Tomorrow, we will prove that as well. A free and independent Catalonia is what we require. Allow our autonomy or there will be no peace.”
The video cut off in the middle of her standing up and walking away.
“Her nickname is legit,” Hunter said distastefully. “She’s a fucking bitch.”
“She’s fashionable, though,” Cairo admitted. “Say what you will about revolutionaries, but they know how to dress for a war.”
“You’ve got a thing for girls in leather, huh?” I teased.
Cairo narrowed his eyes at me. “Just saying.”
“I’ve got some leather pants back home.”
“I bet you do.”
Logan cleared his throat. “We have more than just her message. Our own intel from our S2 officer shows every surveilled CLF agent on the move. Three in Barcelona are leaving the city. Four in Sevilla. Six in Valencia, one in Bilbao…”
“Bro, we get it,” Hunter interrupted. “They’re all leaving. But where are they going?”
Logan leaned forward. “Madrid.”
“Of course,” Cairo said with realization. “They’re going to hit the Spanish government at the seat of their power. The Prime Minister’s residence at the Palace of Moncloa. Or the royal palace of Madrid. Maybe even Parliament.”
“I bet they hit it all simultaneously,” Hunter insisted. “One terrorist can bomb a building, no problem. But it takes a dozen to coordinate several attacks at once.”
But Logan shook his head. “Our S2 officer doesn’t seem to think it’s any of the obvious targets. They think the CLF is aiming broader.”
“What’s broader than the entire Spanish government?” Cairo asked.
“She did say the people weren’t safe,” Hunter replied. “Are there any sporting events going on? Real Madrid maybe?”
I blinked.
They wanted to target people. Citizens.
I knew exactly what they were going to do.
“This weekend is San Ferdinand’s feast!” I blurted out.
“A festival?” Hunter asked skeptically.
“That’s actually one theory we’ve been presented with,” Logan admitted. “But it’s a long shot. The festival takes up most of the city. People are too spread out for any attack
to be effective.”
“But there are still huge crowds,” I said. “Thousands of people crammed in the streets wearing masks and dancing. Tens of thousands. A few terrorists could cause a lot of damage during the festival.”
“How do you know all this?” Cairo asked.
“Because Linda and I were planning on taking part on the last day of the festival,” I said. “Before you three derailed my vacation plans, that is.”
Cairo grabbed the laptop from Logan and began tapping away. “Do you know what the feast celebrates?”
“I… Not really,” I admitted. “Ferdinand and Isabella?”
Cairo stopped typing and froze. He turned the screen to face us. “Close,” he said. “The feast celebrates the unification of Spain.”
I gasped. Logan clenched his jaw.
“This is it,” Cairo said. “This has to be what the CLF are attacking.”
41
Karen
The plane ride from Barcelona to Madrid was barely more than a hop, but I soon rested my head on Hunter’s shoulder and dozed off. I must not have gotten as much sleep last night as I thought, knowing that a terrorist was in the room with Logan and me.
It felt good to be back with everyone. It felt right. And I could tell the others thought so too.
“How’s your leg?” I asked Hunter after dozing off for a few minutes.
“Dude, it’s great,” he said. “Wanna see?”
Before I could say no, he unbuckled his seatbelt and stood, then pulled down his cargo pants. His boxer-briefs were practically painted onto his thighs, and underneath was a small cloth bandage where he’d been wounded during the apartment explosion. He peeled back the bandage and grinned.
“It’ll make a hell of a scar,” he said proudly.
“Nobody will ever see it though,” I pointed out. “Unless you’re already naked.”
“Good. It’ll help close the deal.”
“Unless you’re with a girl who is turned off by scars.”
He barked a carefree laugh. “Dude, the day I meet a girl who doesn’t like battle wounds is the day I jump off a cliff.”
I couldn’t really argue with that. Scars were sexy. Especially knowing they came from battle.