by Maya Banks
a breath and he pulled her to her feet, enfolding her into his tight embrace, hugging her fiercely. Any other time she would be horrified. She’d have a sarcastic, caustic remark about acting like a bunch of fucking wussies and then punch him in the gut. But God, his hug felt good. It felt solid when nothing else in her life was solid. He was strong and just for a moment she allowed herself to lean on him and to be strong for her. She closed her eyes.
“I know,” he said, fury in his voice. “Because I can’t sleep either, Lizzie. Because for the worst minutes of my life I thought we were too late. That I had failed you. That we hadn’t made it in time and that you were dead. You endured unspeakable torture and you still managed to kick ass doing it. In case I haven’t told you lately or often enough, there is no one I’d rather have at my back than you.”
In a rare moment, she didn’t resist, didn’t avoid or pull away from the close contact with cocky words meant to diffuse an awkward, emotional moment. Instead she rested her temple against Dane’s chest and closed her eyes.
“I just need to get away for a while,” she whispered. “They took something from me, Dane. As much as I hate it, hate admitting it, hate allowing those bastards to have taken any piece of me, they did, and I have to get it back. I don’t expect you to understand. But if I’m going to continue doing my job, and I have no intention of letting those assholes ruin the one good thing in my life, then I just need some time to pull myself back together so I can come back whole again. Because right now I’m a liability. You know it. I know it. Caleb and Beau and the others know it too. And I could never live with myself if I got one of the people I care about hurt or killed because my head wasn’t where it should have been.”
Dane frowned, but as she’d known, he hadn’t argued. She knew she was fragile and it had nothing to do with the assholes who’d abducted her and tortured her. But it suited her purposes for Dane and all the rest to believe just that because then they’d look no further than the surface. She’d never asked for vacation time in all the years she’d worked for DSS. Since its inception, and even before, she and Dane had worked together in a much smaller personal security agency, taking jobs on a much smaller scale.
When Dane had been recruited by Caleb and Beau, he’d accepted with one condition. He brought Eliza with him. No negotiation. And so they’d made the move together and continued to work together, strengthening their already very strong bond.
It was why they had such a close working relationship. They could predict the other’s thoughts, movements . . . She choked back the suffocating, vile thoughts because she’d been about to compare her friendship with Dane, the only true thing she had in this world, to her relationship with Thomas, a man who had known her every thought, fantasy and deepest longing, and used them to manipulate her and make it so easy for her to fall into his lap with no resistance from her whatsoever. Never would she defile and disrespect Dane in that manner. He deserved so much better than the depraved, broken monster she’d become, still was, to guard his back. She just prayed her replacement would take that responsibility to heart and recognize how truly great a man Dane Elliot was and that they, like her, would be willing to lay down their life for him.
“How long?” Dane asked, momentarily confusing her because she’d been so caught up in her own thoughts.
She recovered quickly and glanced nervously at him, hoping he didn’t read too much into the length of her request. Then she shrugged as if she hadn’t put that much thought into it at all. “A month. Maybe six weeks. Provided y’all can do without me that long. Things are quiet right now but we all knows how that goes,” she said with a grin. “I don’t really have a plan. I just want to go where the wind takes me and enjoy the downtime.”
Dane studied her a long time as if determining the veracity of her statement. Just about the time her iron discipline was about to desert her and she started to squirm under his scrutiny, he once again struck her speechless.
“You managed to hide it well, Lizzie. Even from me . . . until recently,” he said in a painful tone that sounded almost hurt. As if the thought of her holding out on him had never once crossed his mind. “But they hurt you and not just physically though those sons of bitches inflicted plenty of damage. They damn near killed you. Far too close for my peace of mind. I still can’t forget that moment, Lizzie. When I thought we’d been too late. Goddamn it!”
His voice was thick with emotion, features blackening with rage and his eyes went as dark as obsidian, glittering with menace and so much pain and regret that it took her breath away.
“Swear to God, I wish to hell Gracie hadn’t been able to identify them or read their fucking thoughts so I could have killed them on the spot. And it wouldn’t have been slow, Lizzie. I would have repaid them for every mark they put on you. For every thought of terror they drove into your mind. And for making you doubt even for a moment that the people who care most about you wouldn’t make it to save you in time.”
“Dane,” she choked out, reaching up to touch his arm. “Do you honestly think I would have lasted as long as I did if I hadn’t known you’d come? You know what I went through and you know most people would have given up. Accepted the inevitable. Even prayed for the end so they could escape. I stayed alive because I knew you and the others would come, that you would have never given up, and I knew we would make every last one of them pay, not just for what they did to me. But for what they did to the other women. Never for a minute think I lost faith in you.”
He shook his head as if rejecting her absolute belief, her unwavering faith in him.
“Still, I should have seen how this affected you. I should have fucking sat on you and insisted you stand down when we took them out. Instead you were nearly killed and swear to God, my heart fucking stopped. I thought I was having a heart attack and if it’s all the same, I don’t ever want to go through that again.”
Her eyes narrowed because now she was getting pissed. She was asking for vacation, not for an analysis of her mental state—or lack thereof.
“Am I or am I not cleared for vacation?” she snapped. “Or do I need to remind you that I haven’t had so much as a day off in the entire time I’ve worked for you.”
Slowly he smiled and the worry and fear dispersed like fog being melted away by the sun’s rays. “Consider yourself on vacation as of five minutes ago. And Eliza? If I so much as see your ass within a mile of the office or poking your nose in one of our cases for at least six weeks, I’ll suspend you and double your vacation time to three months and I’ll have Isaac sit on you and, trust me, after you nearly getting yourself killed twice? No one would have to twist his arm to get him to take that job. He’d take great delight in being allowed to boss you around.”
Then he grinned slyly. “If that’s not enough incentive for you, I’d be more than happy, as part of their training of course, to have one or more of the new recruits keep you under lock and key.”
She made a face and rolled her eyes. “You’re all a bunch of Neanderthals. You just hide it under that smooth, polished preppy look you’ve got going on.”
He frowned and then outright scowled at her.
She threw up her hands in surrender. “Hey, vacation was my idea, remember? I have no intention of doing anything remotely work related.” Okay, it wasn’t a lie. What she had to do in no way involved DSS or anyone involved with DSS.
“I plan to find a nice beach house somewhere private where they have nice cabana boys who will bring me fruity, girly cocktails with little umbrellas in them, work on my tan and hopefully the scars will fade and by the time I come back to work, you’ll all be so sick of me and my attitude, you’ll promptly wish I had taken three months instead of half that,” she teased.
His scowl darkened further at the mention of her scars and she wished she’d kept her mouth shut.
“Dane,” she said, a hint of impatience but gentle understanding in her voice. “I’ll be fine okay? I’m not so stubborn that I can’t or won’t admit I need a
break. It’s been . . . hard.”
She nearly choked on the words, on the admission that she was struggling and needed time to put herself back together. God, she hated this, putting doubt in Dane’s mind that she was no longer capable of pulling her own weight in a job she loved. But then it wasn’t as if she had a job to come back to, so what did it really matter? Dane’s expression immediately softened and his hand went to her shoulder and squeezed.
“I have no doubt you’ll be fine, Lizzie. I won’t have it any other way. Now get out of my office, go get packed, if you aren’t already. But do me a favor please? Would you check in every once in a while just for my peace of mind? I . . . worry about you. You have my word that no one will call you and I’m not asking you to check in with the others. This is purely off the record. Friend to friend. Just let me know how you’re doing and that you’re okay.”
She smiled, a genuine smile and one she hadn’t been able to pull off no matter how hard she tried since her life had irrevocably changed course.
If she hadn’t been so relieved to have gotten past Dane without him being astute enough to know something was definitely going on, other than her sudden desire for an impulsive vacation, she would have remembered that nothing ever got by Dane. And she was an idiot for thinking so.
Not five minutes after she left and Dane lifted one of the slats of the blinds covering his office windows to ensure her vehicle was gone, he then went back to his desk and sat down, punching in a phone number that only served to further blacken his mood.
Never in a million favors would he ask the favor he was about to request from the man he was about to ask it of. He’d never considered any situation where he’d humble himself enough to ask for help from a man who set his teeth on edge. But for Eliza, he had no pride. For Eliza, her safety and ensuring she remained safe, he’d do the unthinkable.
“Wade Sterling,” Dane nearly growled into the phone. “Tell him Dane Elliot is calling about . . . Eliza Cummings.”
If there was one man Eliza couldn’t steamroll, it was Wade, a man who’d taken a bullet for her when he went up against every single member of DSS and told them what flaming dumbasses they were for allowing an injured, tortured woman who hadn’t had sufficient time to recover from participating in the takedown of the men who’d hurt her so horrifically.
And when it became a battle of wills, with Eliza showing more fire and determination than Dane had ever seen from his usually unflappable partner, and her refusing to back down under Wade’s intimidating, ferocious decree, he’d simply honed in on the mission, insisting on going along even though he in no way worked for DSS; and furthermore he was a man who lived cloaked in shadows and Dane didn’t trust him as far as he could throw him.
Only, he’d stepped in front of a bullet that Lizzie’s vest wouldn’t have protected her from. It would have struck the vulnerable flesh of her neck and killed her instantly. Instead, Wade’s much taller frame had caused the bullet to lodge into his arm and even then, the bullet used had been an armor-piercing bullet and had torn through the flesh of his arm, missing bone, thank God; and because Eliza had time to turn, the bullet had gone through Wade’s arm and had wedged itself into Eliza’s protective vest as Wade had taken her down, covering her body with his own.
Yes, if anyone could find out what Eliza was up to and the source of so much pain and shadows in her eyes, and worst of all the fear Dane had seen clearly reflected in a tenth of an unguarded second before she’d visibly collected herself, it was Wade Sterling.
Dane may not like the man, but he owed him a hell of a lot, and he wasn’t stupid. Wade had made a claim on Eliza that any man in a ten-mile radius could recognize. Eliza, on the other hand, was oblivious, but then she was clueless as to her effect on the male population. Always had been.
He could almost feel sorry for Eliza because Dane was effectively throwing her to the wolves—or rather wolf. One large, surly lone wolf. But even losing her trust, friendship and loyalty was worth it if the end result was her safety, and one thing Dane had learned in very short order was that what Wade Sterling considered his, he protected with his every breath.
Eliza couldn’t be in safer hands. Even if she didn’t yet realize it.
SEVEN
WADE Sterling stood inside the open gate to Eliza’s small courtyard which was surrounded by a privacy fence to give her seclusion not only in the front of the homey end unit but all the way around the townhome, encompassing the slightly larger backyard where she’d obviously spent a lot of time landscaping and making it into her escape from the rest of the world. He’d made sure he blended with the shadows so his presence wasn’t detected until he was ready to reveal himself.
Not that he’d ever been invited inside her private domain. The few times he’d approached her in the parking lot in front of her building, she’d made it clear there would be no invitation into her inner sanctum. Her apartment looked like all the others in the complex—on the outside. Wade would bet everything he owned that the inside likely resembled the control room of the CIA or FBI. The image amused him. Hell, she amused him, and, he’d grudgingly—finally—admitted that not only was she a source of rare entertainment for him, but she intrigued and fascinated him. It wasn’t a feeling he was accustomed to when it came to women.
He wouldn’t go as far as to say he was an expert on females. Who in the hell in their right mind would ever make, much less convince others to believe, such an absurd statement. Women, especially their moods and temperaments, changed with the wind.
Except Eliza Cummings. He found that interesting indeed, because he was certain there were a multitude of things buried deep inside. Feelings, emotions, reactions she never allowed to surface because of training and rigid self-discipline that enabled her to suppress them, control them and never allow them their freedom.
He wondered just what it would take to unleash tightly controlled emotions. Then he shook his head in disgust. While he was skulking around her apartment building, not paying attention to his primary objective, she could have easily given him the slip and he wouldn’t have known until it was too late.
As it was, Eliza would be pissed and likely shoot him on sight if she knew he was this close to her and that she was so completely unaware of his presence. Something that pissed him off.
A woman who made her living in security, protecting others, but, most importantly, keeping her own hide from being kidnapped, tortured or riddled with bullets just as she’d been a few short months ago should damn well have better instincts than this. And leaving her door wide open in the middle of the night without once doing a perimeter sweep set his teeth on edge. Was she just trying to get herself killed? Did she have some sort of morbid death wish and that was why she was an unstoppable force for DSS, always taking assignments even if she’d just come off of one after three days of no sleep? She needed a damn keeper, something he’d voiced to her before, and that hadn’t gone over too well. Not that it was a huge surprise. But she couldn’t continue her current pace. Even if her coworkers couldn’t see it, Wade could see the shadows in her eyes that seemed to slowly grow deeper. She had a burned-out look that said if she didn’t have her shit sorted in short order, it was only a matter of time before she got killed on a job. And for reasons he refused to examine or dwell on, that bothered him. It bothered him a hell of a lot. Hell, bothered was too mild of a term. It pissed him right the fuck off.
Observing her with her barriers down, when she thought no one was watching her, made him understand now why Dane Elliot had called him. He hadn’t quite known what to make of the phone call or the fact that a man who had obvious animosity toward him had basically humbled himself by asking for help. He’d never admit it in a million years, but he’d already planned an impromptu visit to Eliza’s apartment with every intention of finishing or at least going a hell of a lot further than the last two times they’d met. He was tired of dancing around. Dane’s call had just caused him to make his move in haste instead of executing a well thought
out plan of attack. One that sealed any possible escape routes.
The idea that now one of Eliza’s team members was concerned after her two horrifying near-death experiences just pissed him the fuck off, and he rubbed at his chest to alleviate the sudden discomfort. What the fuck was he doing here as Dane fucking Elliot’s puppet? Wade could check up on Eliza in his own time. His way. His terms. And he sure as hell wouldn’t answer to anyone else like some hired lackey.
Why hadn’t he told Dane that his babysitting stint was over with and that if he was so goddamn concerned about Eliza to put a team on her? The little time he’d spent with DSS, he respected and admired them and their work. He secretly approved of their tactics and the fact they didn’t always do things by the book. Sometimes justice was best served by old-fashioned revenge.
He wasn’t in the habit of lying to himself, but neither was he willing to admit the truth to anyone else. He’d already made up his mind to keep a very close eye on Eliza Cummings and insert himself into her life in ways she would not be happy about when Dane Elliot had called. It just gave him the excuse to do what he was already going to do without admitting to his own reasons for doing so.
And so here he was, spying on a woman who hated the very sight of him. She was hastily packing and not paying any damn attention to anything else. He supposed he could at least give her a small semblance of credit for not having the lights on because that meant no one could see into the house.
And so it was in the dark that she worked with quick efficiency to pack her belongings and the alarm system wasn’t even on for fuck’s sake. He wanted to wrap his hands around her neck and throttle her for upending his well-ordered life from the moment she barreled into it and got in his face. He’d been fascinated. No, he’d been fucking obsessed from that moment forward. She’d dressed him up one side and down the other and despite her very real fury and loyalty to her teammates, Wade had never felt so compelled to kiss a woman in his life.
He almost had. But they’d had one clusterfuck of a situation going on and he’d had Gracie to protect, not to mention if he had so much as touched Eliza, she would have laid his ass out. Also, Dane would be on him before he could even push Eliza off and, well, then the rest of DSS would take great satisfaction in kicking his ass. Especially Zack, who had the most reason to harbor resentment.
Admittedly, the lights being off would prevent people from being able to see into her home, but the silent cloak of night didn’t hinder him in any way. His eyes, well accustomed to the dark and seeing what most others couldn’t make out in the shadows, could see her hurrying from room to room, tossing several suitcases on the couch in the living room and hurriedly stuffing clothing into them.
Hardly the actions of a woman who merely wanted a leisurely vacation and was in no hurry, had no worries, only where the wind blew her and taking some much-needed R&R. It looked to him as though after her “request” for vacation, she was getting out of town as fast as possible before any of her coworkers, or Dane, decided to pay her a visit to say their goodbyes. Odd behavior for a woman who treated the people she worked with as family, and if she truly was just taking some downtime, wouldn’t she want to say her farewells?
His eyes narrowed as he continued to watch from his post. Eliza was definitely packing for an extended trip. But not a single item of clothing was remotely suitable for a vacation at the beach or any other place of leisure. In fact, other than jeans, shirts, underwear, socks and a pair of tennis shoes, the rest were fatigues, lots of camo. Face paint. And, Jesus, lethal-looking knives that took up one entire side of one of the suitcases.
He was astonished, and he had never been a man who was easily surprised. He’d learned his lessons young and had taught himself to always expect the worst and never be caught off guard or surprised by anything.
Shit. There went that rule . . . again. Fuck!
Her latest addition to her suitcase was several flashbang grenades but what really worried him was the addition of very real grenades and, Jesus, a stash of definitely illegal C-4 of the likes no average civilian would ever be able to get their hands on; and if that wasn’t bad enough, there was also a shit ton of items one could use to build a bomb. Hell, she could probably build a nuclear missile. All she lacked was uranium. For all he knew, she had a stash of that somewhere as well. She certainly didn’t lack for anything in her armory. She was better stocked than most third world military units. Was she planning to go to fucking war?
That idea froze his blood and he felt the stirrings of something he wasn’t at all familiar with, having never experienced it, certainly not to this degree, but it felt like fear. And fear was not a weakness he ever allowed himself. Until now. Until her, goddamn it.
Most people either packed well ahead of time and lined their luggage by the door, got a good night’s sleep and then embarked on an early flight the next morning. Or they procrastinated and packed last minute, getting to the airport barely on time. And just how the hell did she think she was going to get on a plane with a large enough arsenal to build an entire army? She wasn’t dumb, so flying was out unless she had a private jet lined up. He’d looked into her finances and while she could live well on the generous salary DSS paid, she couldn’t afford shit like private jets. For that matter she couldn’t afford all the shit she was packing, even on the black market, which begged the question, how the fuck had she gotten her hands on this shit?
He didn’t disagree that the fool woman needed a lengthy vacation that included plenty of rest and recovery. He’d wanted to shake some sense into her stubborn head when she’d insisted on accompanying her team on the takedown of the remaining fanatics whose only objective was to take the women of DSS alive and subject them to unspeakable experiments and tests; even animals were afforded kinder treatment.
But his built-in alarm system was beating like a mother fucker because, despite the fact it would infuriate Eliza that her privacy wasn’t quite as carefully guarded as she liked to think, he knew a hell of a lot more about her impromptu vacation than even her overprotective watchdog/partner, Dane Elliot. Because right now? Along with that alarm system cutting into his every breath, his vision was hazy with fury and heat scorched over his body as he curled and uncurled his fists.
Vacation my ass. If this was Eliza’s idea of vacation—being a Rambo beach bunny—then the local economy of wherever she went would suffer because she’d scare the fuck out of everyone.
Although he had to hand it to Dane because the moment Eliza had breezed out of his office as if she hadn’t a care in the world, Dane had been on the phone with Wade and crisply outlined the situation to him.
Wade’s curiosity was instantly aroused—after he’d gotten over his rage of her blowing off steam with a fucking cabana boy—because Dane simply didn’t give a fuck and he was a bare bones man of few words. It was his show. He ran the business. But apparently, when something really mattered to Dane—which Eliza clearly did—he didn’t give a shit about putting it out there. And to Dane’s credit, when he, like Wade—now that he’d seen her—had observed whatever fucked-up excuse she’d given—he hadn’t bought her spontaneous, out-of-the-blue request for extended vacation time. Dane was in a very delicate situation, hence the phone call to Wade, which must have pained him to no end, because if he interfered either as a friend or employer, he’d lose Eliza’s trust and he knew her too well. She’d leave. She’d never stay and work under people who’d betrayed her. Even for her own good.
Hell, Wade hadn’t known Eliza a fraction of the time Dane had and even he knew that much about her. It would figure that after Wade had vowed to never cross paths with DSS again, that the cause of his injury—the reason for so many sleepless nights because he couldn’t stop thinking about her—would be the thing that brought him right back into their crosshairs. Or so he had tried convincing himself of. He was such a liar.
He wasn’t clueless when it came to women, and he knew damn well Eliza Cummings was every bit as much under his skin as the bullet he
’d shielded her from. Yet another thing she’d been highly pissed about. Like he was any happier? His life would sure be a hell of a lot easier if he’d never met the blasted woman. He smiled ruefully to himself. Since when had he ever liked things easy?
As signals went, that one was pretty clear. Death was evidently preferable to having Wade anywhere in the vicinity.
But Eliza and Dane? As more than partners, and apparently close friends? Wade was very good at reading people and he’d never seen anything that hinted of Dane and Eliza having a romantic relationship. No sign that Dane was overprotective of her in the way a lover would lock her up if he had to—like Wade would if she were his—in order to keep her safe. The fact that Dane treated her like any other teammate, allowing her to assume the same risks as the others, told him that in no way Dane considered Eliza his woman. All he’d witnessed was a deep camaraderie, a sense of loyalty that was deeply ingrained in all of them. Each and every one of them would give his or her life for one of their family.
Family. That was what he hadn’t been able to put his finger on but what had niggled at his brain. It resembled jealousy, which was stupid because a man his age didn’t lower himself to the indignity of juvenile feelings like envy.
But DSS was family in every sense of the word. He’d seen them in action. Had gone into battle with them. And even if he had no desire to ever get mixed up in their crazy-ass missions, he could admit to being impressed by their expertise.