by Jami Alden
He could feel it, rippling through her in waves. He could feel his own orgasm building at the base of his spine, feel every muscle tense as he struggled to hold on for just a few more strokes.
She clung to him, her fingers digging into the muscles of his back, and that little sting was all it took to send him hurtling over the edge. Her moans echoed his as her body milked him to a climax so intense he felt like he was blown apart into a million pieces.
The pieces came back together, almost in their right places but just slightly off. And as Sean came back to himself, he felt a wave of unease as he realized there was no going back to life as he’d known it.
Chapter 19
Krista buried her face in the naked skin of Sean’s chest. She breathed him in, his scent, his heat flooding her, chasing away the cold that threatened to crystallize every cell in her body. He was still inside her, and she wrapped her leg tighter around his hips, held herself even tighter to him in a last ditch effort to close out the world.
He didn’t seem any more inclined to let her go, with his big hand splayed possessively on her lower back as he held her lower half tightly to his.
Why, she wondered again, couldn’t they have met like two normal people? If things had gone differently, maybe they would have met years ago through Cole, or at a bar, or maybe he would have walked into the courthouse to contest a traffic ticket and made her look past the end of her nose for once.
Anything would be better than this. Clinging to each other as they tried to keep reality at bay for a few more precious seconds. “We could run away,” she said, the words slipping from her lips before the thought had fully formed. But it could work. “Ibarra could get us fake documents. Hell, I bet he could even steal some money from one of Maxwell’s bank accounts, or better yet, from my dad. We could go to an island off the coast of Central America where no one would even think to look for us…” Her voice trailed off as she realized how far gone she was. Was she really talking about living as a fugitive, off stolen money to boot?
And did she really think that just because he was the kind of guy who would hold her patiently while she cried, that Sean Flynn would really consider running off to an island with her?
She felt the press of Sean’s lips on the top of her head. “As much as I love the idea of sipping umbrella drinks on a beach with you, we both know that’s not an option. You’ve come too far, risked too much, to turn tail and let those motherfuckers win now.”
“I know,” she said and sighed. “But what now?”
Be careful what you wish for. She’d gone into this on a quest for truth. Mission accomplished, but so what?
She could practically hear Jack Nicholson screaming in her head. She had the truth, but she wasn’t at all sure she could handle it.
Worse, she didn’t have a goddamn clue what to do now that they’d found it. Maxwell’s fingers were sunk so deep into the fabric of the system, there was no move they could make that would go undetected. If they tried to confront Maxwell in public, they’d be arrested. And if that happened, she didn’t have any hope of either of them making it to the arraignment alive, much less through a hearing.
And if by some miracle either of them made it to trial, Maxwell was sure to use his influence to make sure nothing fell in their favor.
She headed to the bathroom for a quick shower and Sean followed her like it was the most natural thing on earth. It seemed ridiculous to be embarrassed after what they’d just shared, but Krista felt her face heat from more than the water as Sean joined her under the spray.
With the water and soap running in rivulets down his body, Sean was sex personified. However, he seemed all business. And the fact that he didn’t make any overtly sexual moves and seemed so comfortable to share the space with her made the experience somehow more intimate. Almost like they were a couple, easy together, and though wildly sexually attracted, didn’t need to jump each other’s bones every second because each knew the other was going to be around for a good long time.
It was like a glimpse of some impossible future. And Krista felt the burn of tears and the crushing weight of regret at the realization of just how impossible it was, for so many reasons.
I’m falling in love with him. It hit her with such force she felt her legs crumple underneath her.
Sean caught her and kept her from falling. “Careful, it’s slippery in here,” he said and gave her an affectionate kiss on the forehead as he traded places with her to rinse off. He tipped his head back under the spray and a burst of warmth coursed through her.
The touches, the kisses, holding her while she sobbed, and oh God, the sex…
Maybe it wasn’t all so impossible after all.
She forced her brain away from mooning over the gorgeous naked man in the shower with her. There would be no future for them of any kind if they didn’t figure out how to get to Maxwell. Still, she felt the buzz of optimism for the first time in days as she shared her fears with Sean as they dried off and got dressed.
“He’s too well connected,” she said as she ran a brush over her damp hair. “I just don’t see how we get to him—or Karev for that matter—without running into the same walls. Unless maybe we can turn them against each other—”
“Or better yet, turn everybody against them,” Sean said.
Krista shot him a puzzled look.
“Once we figure out what’s in the shipment Maxwell and Karev are waiting for, we use Maxwell’s biggest weapon against him.”
Realization dawned. “Once we get the goods on Maxwell and Karev, we use the recordings as leverage to make sure Maxwell can’t bury it.” Her mouth pulled tight in distaste. “Feels like it’s our own form of blackmail.”
“You’re thinking too much like a prosecutor. But sometimes you need to bend the rules and fight a little dirty.”
Krista cocked an eyebrow at him. “Between the stolen cars, cyber hacking, and breaking and entering, I think I’ve shown I can fight as dirty as I need to.”
“And now you’ll add blackmail to your list,” he said. “You going to be okay with that?”
Krista waited for her moral compass to start spinning out of control, prepared herself to stifle her gut when it screamed that this was wrong, that there had to be a way to work within the law, a way to manipulate the system to turn this around.
But Maxwell had changed the game, capitalized on men’s weakness, and injected the system with his poison. Now they had no choice but to use his own poison against him.
She thought of all the names on the list, all of the videos on that computer. Too many for her and Sean to get to in time.
“We’re going to need more help.”
“Jesus, I’m glad you guys called.” Detective Cole Williams’s voice crackled over the speakerphone. “Sean, your sister is about to kill me, so I hope you have some news I can pass on.”
Sean knew his sister had to be bouncing off the walls with worry, resentful as hell that she’d been dragged into hiding and forced to stand on the sidelines for her own safety. He could only imagine what she was putting poor Cole through. “I’m glad I’m not the one stuck up in a cabin with her,” Sean said with a grim smile. “And yeah, I think you could say we have some news.”
Cole listened quietly as he and Krista laid out everything they’d discovered about Maxwell’s operation and his work with Karev.
“Son of a bitch,” Cole muttered.
“We have just enough time before whatever delivery is scheduled gets all the players on board,” Krista said. “Think you can help us out?”
“Absolutely,” Cole replied. “I can be back in the city in two hours, and I’ll handpick a team to make contact and handle the bust—”
“What about Megan?” Sean broke in. “I don’t want her left alone, and I don’t want her anywhere near this.”
“Of course not,” said Cole. “We’ll have to make arrangements. You know, she thought we were overreacting until my partner called to tell me our house had been broken into. A
ccording to Petersen, whoever did it tore it all to shit.”
Sean’s tension ratcheted up a few more notches. He clenched and unclenched his fists, not knowing what to do with everything swirling around in his brain. Jesus, what would have happened if his sister had been home when Maxwell’s thugs showed up? He struggled not to let his brain spiral out of control and tried to focus on the fact that Megan was totally safe, but he couldn’t keep a lid on the anger and anxiety welling up, threatening to send him over the edge.
From the second he and Krista had left the cocoon of the bedroom, he’d been bombarded on all sides with everything he’d been trying so hard for so long to keep shut out. He wasn’t used to this—to feeling so much, to walking around the world with every one of his senses turned up to eleven. Moments like this, it hit him so hard, so fast, his brain short circuited.
“I’m sure we can figure something out. We need whatever help we can get, Sean,” Krista said.
He whirled on her, her cavalier response to the potential threat to Megan snapping the final thread on his temper. “I could give a fuck what happens to any of us,” he yelled, “but I won’t leave my sister vulnerable.”
“I understand—”
“No, you fucking don’t understand,” he yelled. Krista’s eyes got wide, and even though some logical part of his brain knew she didn’t mean anything by it, he couldn’t stop the fury from spewing out. “All I wanted—all I want—is to be left alone, to pick up what’s left of my life. I never asked to be dragged into any of this, and my sister sure as fuck didn’t either! You almost got her killed once because you locked up the wrong guy. I don’t want her anywhere near this!”
It was like that time when he’d gone after the prison guard, like he’d stepped outside of himself and couldn’t stop what was happening even though he knew it was the wrong thing to say. He could see himself: face dark with rage, the vein pulsing in his forehead, his mouth pulled into a snarl.
And Krista, the woman who had turned to him so trustingly, whose pain he wanted nothing more than to erase, was looking at him, her eyes wide with hurt, and worse, guilt.
The room was dead silent. “We can send Megan to my folks’ place,” Ibarra said, stepping warily between them. “They live right down the road from me outside of Sandpoint.”
Krista retreated to the opposite corner of the room and kept her gaze locked on the floor. His own guilt was a fist in his gut, but he didn’t know where to start to undo the damage. For now, he needed to focus on Megan and keeping her out of this. “She’ll be safe there?”
“Safer than she’d be with us, and no offense, Cole, but safer than she is with you right now. You know they’re looking hard for you but no one knows I’m in on this.” He turned to Sean. “Trust me, Sean. I designed their security system myself, and it’s as bulletproof as my own. She’ll be okay there.”
Sean wasn’t totally sold, but Ibarra did have a point. No doubt Maxwell’s minions were trying to track down Cole to either find out if he was helping them, or worse, get to Megan to use her to flush out Sean. Megan would be safer someplace that no one would even know to look.
“What do you think, Cole?”
“You trust this guy, Sean?”
Sean looked up and caught Ibarra’s stare. Trust. Such a simple word, with so much weight. It could be lost forever in a heartbeat. He dropped his gaze. “He’s helped us stay alive and off the radar so far. That has to count for something.”
Sean listened quietly as Ibarra gave Cole the details on the quickest way to get Megan out there. “My dad will get a huge rush out of this. He was military police before he took over the ranch and he can still kick major ass,” Sean heard Ibarra say. “Megan will be in good hands, I promise.”
Sean looked up and saw that Ibarra was still staring at him and nodded in silent acknowledgment.
“Who else can we count on, Cole?” Krista said in a tight voice.
“With the chief and so many others compromised, we need to play this really close,” Cole said. “My partner, Petersen, is rock solid, no doubt. And Jorgensen too—he’s going to want in on this after the shit they pulled with Jimmy Caparulo’s suicide.”
“Only two people you can trust in the entire department? That’s pathetic,” Krista bit out.
“I’d call Agent Tasso—he’s local FBI, Sean. My gut tells me he’s okay, but I think this Maxwell shit shows us we can’t really be sure about anyone.”
“I can’t argue with that,” Krista said, almost but not quite managing to kill the tremor in her voice. “I say we call Brooks too. He’s a wild card but he gave us Talia Vega, who gave us everything.”
Sean nodded. “And I get the sense he’s still beating himself up over not being able to stop Nate from getting to her. I think he’ll be more than willing to do his part to take these fuckers down.”
They quickly went over the game plan with Cole and then got in touch with Brooks to bring him up to speed. As predicted, Brooks didn’t take much convincing. They went over the list and decided who the primary targets were and how they should make contact, and once Cole confirmed the others on board, Ibarra started to send video clips out over an encrypted network.
As he looked at Krista, tense and fragile as she hovered over Ibarra’s shoulder, Sean’s anxiety ratcheted up a few notches.
I could give a fuck about what happens to any of us. Nothing could be further from the truth. Not when it came to Krista. “You should go with Megan,” he said abruptly.
Both Ibarra and Krista looked at him, confused.
“This could get really ugly. If you go with Megan, you’ll be safe.”
He didn’t even realize how important that was until he had said the words out loud. Feeling protective was nothing new—that was part of his makeup. Added to all the old stuff bubbling to the surface, what he felt for Krista was new, different. Almost too intense to put into words, this bone-deep, terrifying knowledge that if something happened to Krista, if she got hurt, or God, he didn’t even want to think about it, killed on his watch, it might be nearly as bad as losing Megan.
He was starting to care for her. No, scratch that. Was falling—he cut the thought off before it could fully form and he gave himself a mental shake. On top of everything else, it was too much. No way he could go there, not now, if ever. If he even tried to scratch the surface, it was going to send his brain into permanent overdrive.
The best solution was to just get her the hell away where he knew she would be safe.
Krista shook her head. “Absolutely not—”
“It makes the most sense,” Sean said, cutting her off. “Everyone else is a cop or a trained soldier. You’ll just get in the way.”
He knew he’d used the wrong approach even before her mouth pulled tight and her nostrils flared. But it wasn’t like he could tell her the truth—that as impossible as it seemed, the idea of losing her was enough to push him straight over the edge.
“I may not have the training you guys do, but I think I’ve managed to hold my own. You don’t have to worry about me. Like you keep reminding me, I’m the one who dragged you into this mess. So if anything happens, it’s on me, not you.”
“Krista—”
“Shut up. This topic is closed. I started this and I’m going to finish it.”
After a fitful night’s sleep, Krista spent most of the next day doing whatever she could to help carry out their plan to stake out the delivery site and do the bust when the deal went down. Now she listened, stomach in knots, as Cole went over the plan one more time to make sure everyone was crystal clear on every single detail. She was strung tight, like a rubber band stretched so far it would snap at any moment.
“We’ve tapped into the security system monitoring the shipping lot,” Cole said, “and Ibarra has placed additional surveillance equipment around Maxwell’s warehouse.” With Maxwell’s influence so deeply felt in local law enforcement, they knew they needed incontrovertible evidence of what he was up to.
Sean stood ac
ross the room, his mouth grim behind the goatee. He’d barely said two words to her since she’d flat-out refused to join Megan in her mountain hideout. She’d been circling around him like a nervous cat, unwilling to brave the tension emanating off him in waves to try to break through the fortress he’d built around himself.
What good would it do to talk, anyway? Despite the passion, tenderness, even admiration he’d shown in the last few days, fundamentally his feelings hadn’t changed.
Had it been only yesterday that she thought for one fleeting moment that maybe he returned some fraction of the feeling she had for him? Now he’d shut down, cut himself off from her. I could give a fuck what happens to any of us. All I wanted was to be left alone.
It shouldn’t hurt so much, but it did.
How had she, usually so levelheaded and by the book, gotten so carried away over a man who would have happily lived his life never setting eyes on her again?
She didn’t think she’d ever know the answer to that question, and it wouldn’t do her any good to miss details of Cole’s plan because she was moony and distracted over Sean.
She kept quiet, absorbing the intricacies as Cole went through each step. “We should have major backup and a SWAT team involved,” Krista muttered even though she knew that wasn’t possible.
Their plan wouldn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of working if they broadcast through the Seattle PD that they were planning a bust at Maxwell’s shipping lot in the next twenty-four hours.
Instead, it was a team of seven: herself, Sean, Ibarra, Brooks, and the skeleton crew from the Seattle PD homicide department consisting of Cole, Petersen, and Jorgensen against a crew of who knew how many Russian thugs and cutthroat guns for hire.
The odds were so not in their favor, but they didn’t have any choice but to push through.
“Petersen, Jorgensen, what’s happening on your end?”
“Karev’s still at his restaurant,” Jorgensen’s voice said over the speakerphone. He’d been tailing Karev, while Detective Petersen was keeping tabs on Maxwell.