by J. M. Madden
Devlin pulled her tight and moved into an easy, swaying dance. “Because I specifically remember dancing to this on our honeymoon in Aruba. And the night we got married. Do you remember?”
“Yes,” she admitted grudgingly, “but this isn’t the time or place to dance down memory lane. The players are here. We need to be listening and gathering as much intel as we can.”
“Granted,” he murmured, “but we also need to look like a believable couple. We have history. Why not let them see that?”
She shook her head with a huff, and he reached up to brush her dark bangs away from her forehead. “Besides,” he whispered, “They haven’t even connected yet. It’ll be a few minutes before they get down to business.”
Amberly knew he was right. She just hated to admit it.
“Just give yourself a minute to remember. Then we’ll sit down and be superspies, listening to the Russians make a deal with a paramilitary flunky.”
Amberly snorted. “Fine, but no grabbing my ass.”
“Oh, baby, that was the best part,” Devlin growled in her ear, sending shivers up her spine. Then he slid his hands low on her hips and spread his fingers wide, aligning their bodies.
Amberly breathed out a sigh and rested her head on his chest. She could feel how excited he was to have her in his arms. “Oh, Devlin.”
For just a moment, she would allow herself to be just Amberly, a woman once in love with a dangerous man. They swayed across the dance floor, reacquainting themselves with each other, and she knew it was a dangerous thing, being with him like this. Because it would make her want again, and she didn’t know if she could survive it if it fell through.
They swayed and brushed and teased, and when the music ended, they stared at one another for a long moment, before quicker, upbeat music chased them from the floor. They walked back to the table, hand in hand, and she didn’t want it to be because they were undercover. She wanted him to hold her hand because he wanted to, not because of some obligation.
And there was no way of knowing what they were walking into going after Regent. Maybe she should snatch at the happiness she could. Last night she’d held back, but if he approached her the same way tonight, there would be no turning away.
They settled into their chairs and Amberly shifted hers over a little, so that she and Devlin could brush shoulders. It’s also gave her a little better line of sight to what was going on a few yards away.
The Russians had gotten their drinks and were more than halfway done with them. Even as she watched, the big male tipped his head back and swallowed down the rest of the mug of beer. The bartender brought him another, removing the empty. The couple didn’t really seem to be talking to one another, but maybe she just couldn’t hear them.
“Hopefully they’ll come to him,” she murmured, reaching up to run her fingers under his chin. The bristles were growing in a little. It had been at least a week or two since he’d shaved. She’d always loved the grunge look on him. Two whiter lines of hair bracketed his mouth, his chin still fairly dark. Devlin had had almost black hair most of his life and at one time she thought that was when he’d been most handsome. But seeing him settle into his age was even better.
“We should be so lucky,” he said, capturing her hand and kissing her fingers. “How is your arm?”
“It’s all right,” she said. “I don’t want to enter a rowing competition or anything, but it’ll work if I need it to.”
Within a couple of minutes, Zed motioned to the bartender for another bottle of whiskey. Once he got it, he carried it over to sit on the other side of the Russian female. Outside of their range of hearing.
“Shit,” she murmured. There was no way they would hear anything that far away.
“Don’t worry about it. It’ll work out,” Devlin said quietly.
Amberly didn’t think so. When she’d left for the meet in Chicago, she hadn’t planned on going any further than Chicago and the single meeting, so she didn’t have a lot of the fun toys the CIA had available to their officers. What she wouldn’t give for a damn bug right this minute. Even if it looked awkward as hell, she’d get it over there somehow. But, it wasn’t gonna happen.
Frustration boiled in her and it was hard to remember that she couldn’t just go over there and hold them at gunpoint to make them tell her what they knew.
“We just have to be patient,” he told her calmly.
Amberly could only see what they were missing out on. Vital information was being shared there, and she couldn’t get to it. “Maybe I can go compliment the woman or something,” she whispered.
“Don’t worry about it,” he told her calmly. “Give it a few minutes.”
And he was right. Within about five minutes, things began to happen. The big Russian jerked his head around at something Zed said, then the woman rocked her head back and laughed, drawing the gazes of most of the men in the bar. The woman slid off the stool, saying, “You two work it out. I have to find restroom.”
In her tall heels, she swayed through the bar. It was obvious she loved the male attention, and she did the most with the body she had. Amberly moved to follow her, but Devlin put a hand on her arm. “Too obvious. Just wait.”
Amberly gnashed her teeth, aggravated that he wasn’t allowing her to do her job.
“If you follow her, she’s going to know you’re some flavor of government. I’m telling you, stay put.”
Amberly forced a smile, even as she planned how to kick Devlin in the balls while sitting down.
Zed and the other man weren’t getting along well, either, it didn’t seem like. Their faces were tense, and their body language was stilted. The woman had left them to iron things out and they appeared to be getting worse. She looked at Devlin and glimpsed the red-haired woman over Devlin’s shoulder. She was staring straight at Amberly, as if she was aware that Amberly had been paying too much attention to their conversation.
The woman stopped beside Devlin’s shoulder, propping a hand on one curvy hip. “Aren’t you two a cute couple,” she purred.
Devlin rocked back in his chair to look up at her and grinned. “Thank you, ma’am. I think she’s the cute half, though.”
Amberly grimaced. “Whatever,” she said slowly, exaggerating her slur a little. She leaned toward the woman a little. “Is there going to be a fight? It doesn’t seem like they’re getting along.”
The woman waved an elegant hand, tipped with bright red fingernails. “They will be fine. Just working out the bill.”
“I told my…” Amberly stuttered to a halt, her tongue tangling. “My…ex, friend, Dev, that I didn’t want to get in the middle of anything.”
“My ex friend Dev?” the woman repeated, eyes sharp on Amberly’s face.
Incredibly, color suffused her face. This should be an easy interaction, but for some reason her mouth wasn’t working.
“We haven’t seen each other for a few years,” Devlin interjected smoothly, drawing the woman’s attention back to him. “She’s my ex-wife, but things might be warming up,” he said, grinning as he covered her hand with his own. Amberly felt heat creeping through her cheeks again.
“Stop it, damn it,” she hissed.
The woman tipped her head back and laughed. “You both are twice the fool,” she said, shaking her head as she walked away.
Amberly looked at Devlin as the woman walked away. “Thank you,” she mouthed.
His only response was a wink.
12
Dev hoped he’d played off Amberly’s stumble well enough. He thought he had, but the woman was sharp. Even after she moved back to Zed and the man she’d entered with, she still glanced at their table occasionally. Dev thought she was checking for actual affection, so he made sure to hang onto Amberly’s hand, and when a slow dance came up he dragged her onto the floor.
Amberly protested, of course, but Dev whispered into her ear that they were being watched. Thoroughly. And that she needed to keep up the ruse. After that, they danced a little closer, an
d she made sure to stare into his eyes more.
Dev was thoroughly hooked all over again. Amberly had been fun when they’d been dating, and he could still remember how impressed he’d been with her. Yeah, she’d been wearing a stunning midnight blue cocktail dress at the time, but he remembered thinking that she was the most beautiful, dangerous woman he’d ever met, and he was intrigued. She still struck him that way, which was a good thing because she absolutely loved fighting for her country.
It was so odd, because he’d been given the perfect excuse he needed to do exactly what he wanted to do, hang on her every word and touch.
They eventually sat down, and he waved at the bartender for another round.
“I don’t know if I should,” Amberly said.
“We’ll nurse these ones. If you want, we can go wait outside until the meeting is done.”
She gave him a scathing look. “Not even, buddy.”
Dev chuckled. There was no chance she would have taken him up on that offer. They settled back, nursing their drinks, and even though they were supposed to be working, he was having fun.
And then the Russians got mad.
The woman stood up first, glaring at Zed, and she made some kind of motion with her hands they couldn’t see, because her back was to them. Zed put his hands out, palms up, like he was saying ‘what do you expect me to do?’. The woman leaned in, finger pointed at his face, and whispered something furiously. Then she laid him out with a single, beautiful round house punch.
Zed smashed through stools and went down like a sack of potatoes, stunned. The woman stepped over him, muttered something in Russian and headed toward the door. The man with her looked down at Zed and shook his head, spat on him, and followed after the woman.
Dev and Amberly were both on their feet and moving to ‘help’ Zed. Amberly reached him first, kneeling down to help him sit up. Dev saw her pocket the shopping list as he reached a hand down to help Zed to his feet. The man was rubbing his jaw, but there was desolation in his eyes. Dev thought he might have even seen tears.
Dev motioned for the people that had crowded around to back off.
“Are you okay, buddy? She really walloped you.”
The man shook his head, looking down at the floor. “He’s going to kill me. He’s going to kill me.”
Dev jiggled his arm. “What are you talking about? Who’s going to kill you?”
“Cole,” Zed said shortly, shaking his head. “I’m fucked. I’m fucked,” he whispered.
Zed’s cell-phone beeped with an incoming message, and he jumped, pulling it from his pocket. His hard face seemed to crumple, and Dev saw the message.
2 mins to respond or i call your kid.
Zed backed out of screens and found a phone number. He pressed the green call button and listened to it ring, ring, ring… then a voice picked up, but it was voicemail. Zed immediately called the number again. Same results. Desperate, his hands shaking, he got into the text mode and typed out a message. Put phone int he yard! Right now! ill explain later!!!
“Are you okay, dude?” Dev asked him, trying to be solicitous.
“I’m fine,” Zed snapped, shaking his arm free. “Fuck off.”
He moved a few feet away, obviously going through the call screen again and trying to call his daughter. When there was no response, his face crumpled in fear. They were close enough to see him get into the text screen. His thumb hesitated over a button for several long seconds, then he hit it.
Dev turned to Amberly. “Give me a hundred bucks.”
“What?”
“Just give me a hundred dollar bill.”
Scowling, she dug in her pocket for the money, and handed it over. “You’d better know what you’re doing because I don’t have a lot of cash left.”
Dev turned and slid the hundred dollar bill and a stack of twenties across the bar to the bartender. The man grinned, winked, and slid a phone back across. Dev pocketed the phone without looking at it. Then reached back across and shook the man’s hand. It had been fortuitous to find a fellow former Navy man.
Zed was walking out the door, head down, phone to his ear. They followed along behind, but back a little. They could have been right behind the man, and he probably wouldn’t have noticed because he was pleading with Cole on the other end.
“Do you think the daughter is in danger?” Amberly whispered.
“Definitely. The message he sent her said put the phone in the yard. It seems like an incredibly small explosive device, but if they have it to their ear, I suppose it wouldn’t have to be big.”
“That’s horrific.”
They watched Zed cross the lot to his daughter’s blue car, still talking on the phone. The parking lot lights had come on, sending out weak light, but it was easy enough to see Zed lean against the side of the car. The conversation was mostly quiet, but at one point he burst out, “There was nothing I could do!”
Then they heard him apologize profusely for yelling. There was a beat of silence, then Zed started to plead. “Please, Cole, don’t do this. We’ve known each other a long time and you know I’ll back any play you make, but you can’t hurt my daughter. The Russians didn’t want to deal for the money we offered them. I can’t do anything about that.”
Dev pulled out his phone and found Charley’s number. He typed off a quick text and added Zed’s address as well as their own. He didn’t know if anything could be done, but he would try. An innocent teenage girl had no business dying for her father’s misdeeds.
Then he paged through his phone to find the recording app. He pulled up the last recording, taken nine minutes ago, and hit the white play button on the app. Glancing around the parking lot, he made sure it was quiet, other than Zed pleading a dozen cars away, and he shaded the light of the phone with his hand.
“We have everything you need on your list,” the woman said, her voice heavily accented and tinny from the app. “But the price has gone up. Three million.”
“What,” Zed hissed. “You said two million four days ago. That’s what I have available.”
“Yes, but that was before your boss started drawing attention to himself. He’s supposed to be dead, yet, here you are. There is blood in the water, and we are taking a risk by even talking to you.”
“No one knows what he’s doing yet,” Zed argued.
“That’s not what we heard. There was a meet in Chicago with an informant from your camp.”
“What? Who?”
“That we don’t know. But it was messy. Now the CIA is looking at us again.”
“That’s not my problem. Just because you’re getting greedy...”
That was when the punch happened and the noise went crazy. Dev hit the pause button and put the phone away.
“So, what are we doing?” Amberly hissed, leaning close.
“Obviously, Zed is important to Cole. Zed probably knows exactly where Cole is and what he’s planning. If we could interrogate him, and then stash him somewhere…”
“I can call Brown, see if he can send a team.”
Dev looked at Amberly, and he saw the reservation in her expression. Even she knew that was a reach.
Dev shrugged. “If they know they have a high-value target coming in, it might flush out the ones trying to cover everything up. Somebody has an agenda that agrees with Cole’s. ”
She nodded, looking worried. “Let’s get what we can out of him.”
They turned toward Zed, who was still pleading with Cole. It was pretty humiliating to listen to. Guns in hand, they crouched and began to move in.
That was when the plan went to hell. Out of the darkness, a car revved and tires squealed. Dev thought they were the targets, but when the car suddenly flipped on its lights, he realized Zed was the target. It had to be the Russians. Then they heard the subtle thwop thwop of a silenced weapon. Both of Zed’s arms flung out as he flew back, into the gravel of the lot and disappeared behind a car.
Bracing his own weapon on the top of a truck bed, Dev focused
on the flash of taillights as the driver spun the wheel and gassed it through the lot. It wasn’t his rifle, but the Beretta did the job. He heard the bullets hit the car, and he thought he might have heard someone cry out. Had he gotten the driver?
Dev was racing after the car before he even realized what he was doing, firing constantly, and when the mag emptied, he slammed in the second one. The headlights of the car spun wildly before it slammed into the ass end of a pick-up truck, where it stopped. Dev crouched, using cover to get close to the vehicle. He could hear the man’s accented voice, pleading with someone to get up. “Alina, baby, get up. Alina.”
Dev crept forward, and even from ten feet away, he could see that the woman with the beautiful red hair would not be waking again. The man seemed to recognize this at the same time, because he looked up with fury in his eyes. When he saw Dev standing in front of the car, he immediately lifted a weapon from the seat and fired.
The closest cover was the Russian’s car, so he dove down in front of the car’s front bumper. The Russian continued to fire until the weapon clicked empty, then Dev heard him push the door open.
Fuck… he did not want to have to fight the over-muscled thug. Rolling, he looked beneath the car for the man’s feet, and fired. Crying out, the big man stumbled, but he still managed to reach Dev. With a lunging punch, the guy damn near knocked him out. Dev still had hold of his weapon, though. Angling it up, he pulled the trigger. Then pulled it again and again, until the massive Russian stopped moving.
Shoving his body to the side, Dev allowed himself to breathe for a moment, before sitting up. The world tilted crazily and he gagged, wondering if the fucker had given him a concussion with that single punch. Sparkles spun around him, and he dragged in oxygen.
Amberly was calling for him. He could hear her and he knew he needed to get up.
“Come on, asshole,” he muttered. “Get moving!”
Bracing a hand on the car’s front bumper, he shoved to his feet. Then he had to stand there a minute as the world settled around him. He was nauseated as fuck, but he moved his feet.