by Shanna Bell
His wife blinked. “Surely I’m not… you know.”
“Do you want to have kids?” He’d taken that as a given, and he was surprised by the slight panic on her face.
“I do.” She paused for a second. “Um… what about you? I mean, we never discussed it and I know it’s probably too soon, and…”
Ah. It was his reaction that worried her, not the idea of having his kid. He relaxed.
He shrugged, trying to appear casual. “I like kids.” Honestly, he couldn’t wait until he got her pregnant. Another child would strengthen their bond and would make it harder for her to leave him.
“That’s a relief to hear.”
“Don’t sweat it. Eat your lunch. If you’re knocked up, you’re knocked up, and we’ll deal.” He grinned at her blush.
“Okay.”
“So, this Storm guy,” he started. “What kind of name is that anyway?”
“It’s just a name, I suppose. Why do you ask?”
“Just don’t like pretentious dicks that call themselves Storm.”
She rolled her eyes at him. “You’ve spoken to him all of five words. You can’t know if he’s a dick.”
Except he did. He knew even before they exchanged a single word. The man’s envious look said it all. “He’s a dick.”
“Storm’s not a dick. He has lost his wife and comes to yoga class because he wants to get more in touch with his feelings. He used to be a workaholic and to this day, he regrets not spending more time with his wife. He deserves our sympathy.”
So, the man pretended to be a bleeding heart to get Mary’s attention. Smooth. Real fucking smooth.
“As long as he doesn’t want to get more in touch with you, I’m fine with it.”
She waved her fork at him. “Are you jealous, Mr. Diaz?”
“Of course not. I just don’t like it when another man ogles my wife.” Also, yeah, I’m jealous as fuck, but no way am I admitting that.
“Uh-huh.”
“Keep up the sass, baby. See what it gets you.”
Her lashes fluttered in exaggeration as she swallowed down her food in record time.
“Please, do tell. What will it get me?”
There was a sparkle in her eyes, her pupils had dilated, and a light flush had pinkened her cheeks. Damn, she was perfection.
He leaned back. “Four words. Spread eagle with toys.”
She blinked.
If she hadn’t been sassing him, he might have felt sorry for her. Mary was a novice when it came to sex. All he had to do was name a few kinky words to hush her up. Any second now, she was going to cast down her eyes, softly scold him for suggesting the way he wanted to fuck her in a crowded place where anyone could overhear them and—
“Only if I can return the favor.”
He almost choked on his drink.
Hell. He had unleashed a sex demon.
CHAPTER 28
HECTOR
A week before Halloween, Mary gave him an important mission; to pick up Zoe’s costume. Unfortunately, his mission had run into an unexpected snag.
“What do you mean, you don’t have a Wonder Woman costume left?” Hector looked on his phone once again. Yep, this was the place Mary said she’d reserved Zoe’s outfit.
The guy behind the counter, a teenager with bad skin, clucked his tongue. “I’m sorry, sir, but there’s been some kind of a mix-up. Your costume was given to someone else. I apologize and offer you this coupon. Please pick another costume. There’s plenty to choose from.”
“What about that one? It looks like Wonder Woman to me.” He pointed at the costume behind the counter.
“That one’s reserved for someone else. I already checked the name tag.”
Hector looked around the overly crowded store. Zoe was running around with a plastic sword, doing battle moves in front of a mirror. They still had a week till Halloween. He could go to another store, but he didn’t feel like traipsing around town while there was a perfectly good collection of costumes to choose from right here.
He passed two Spidermans, one Captain America, and a ghost before he found Zoe.
“Zoe, they’re all out of Wonder Woman costumes. Let’s find you another costume, okay?”
She shook her head, her blonde curls swaying from the left to the right. “Nope.”
He stood there waiting, thinking of what to do, when he found her doing the exact same thing.
A woman with a pile of costumes draped over her arm looked at him indulgently. “My boy insisted on becoming Black Panther,” she told him. “I’ve been racing across town all day. This is the third shop we’ve visited. I’m so glad we found this place.”
Zoe gave him a hopeful look. He knew what it meant.
“Fine. Let’s go.” He scooped her up and took her outside.
“I’m going to be Wonder Woman!” she squealed in his ear.
He really hoped she was. He dropped her in the side car and made sure he tucked her in nice and safe.
He sent Mary a message that they were gonna be a bit late, explaining what happened. She wished him luck and sent him a winky emoji. He rolled his eyes. How difficult could it be to find one Halloween costume for a tiny human?
The answer was: fucking difficult, near impossible.
Who knew it would be this difficult to negotiate with a six-year-old? By the time they had left the third store, Hector had promised Zoe all kinds of stuff if she would just pick out another costume. He’d even upped the ante by offering her chocolate caramel cake before dinner, for a whole week. Mary never had to know. It would be their little secret. The little munchkin just shook her head and said, “Nope.”
They were in the fourth store and still no Wonder Woman costume in sight. By now, he was ready to sacrifice a goat to any deity, just to get that costume.
He nudged Zoe toward a rack of pink princess dresses, hoping she’d fall in love with one of them. Instead, she ran off to a section with pirate costumes.
His shoulders slumped. Honestly, he’d reached the point that he didn’t care if she wanted to walk around like a cucumber.
This shop was the largest one so far, but it still felt small and suffocating to him. It was filled with people doing their holiday shopping and he was starting to feel antsy. Waves of heat rolled over his body, and he had to watch his every step. One wrong move and he would step on a kid. He’d almost accidentally bumped into a tiny Hulk just minutes ago. The kid had growled at him and told him he “made Hulk mad.”
Finally, he found a free sales clerk.
“Look, um, Cathy,” he said, after a look at the woman’s nametag. “I really need a Wonder Woman costume for my kid. So, what can you do for me?” He smiled and tried to look non-threatening.
Her eyes went to his scars and then trailed to his tattoos. She practically licked her lips and bent over the counter, showing him cleavage.
“You know, I think I can help you out,” she all but purred.
He leaned over to her. “Do tell.”
She glanced over at Zoe, who was having a sword fight with Aquaman.
“I don’t have a Wonder Woman costume and you won’t find any if you haven’t reserved one. It’s an extremely popular outfit, with the movie out and all. But what if I can convince that little girl to wear a different costume?”
Oh, he liked the sound of that.
“You do that, and I’ll owe you.”
“Oh, I like you owing me,” Cathy said, followed by a wink. “What will you do for me if I get it done?”
“The best date of your life,” he promised, not feeling sorry for misleading her. He could pawn her off to Achilles or Walker. Maybe even Cortez, if his girl had dumped him again.
“Deal.” She sauntered over to Zoe, who was standing next to a pile of tridents.
He caught Zoe from falling on her butt when she tried to pull out a trident that was twice her height. He placed the weapon in her hands and then pointed at Cathy.
“Zoe, this lady wants to talk to you.” Or wai
t. He eyed the trident. Maybe the solution to his problem was right in front of him. “Do you want to become Aquaman?”
Zoe rolled her eyes at him. “Aquaman is a man, silly.”
Of course it wouldn’t be that easy.
Cathy hunched down next to Zoe. “Hi, little girl, I’m Cathy and I’m here to help you with your Halloween costume.”
For some reason, the attention of the sales clerk made Zoe shy. She put an arm around his leg and leaned against him.
“I want to be Wonder Woman. She’s a hero.”
“I’m sorry, but we don’t have that costume anymore. So, what do you think about Catwoman? She’s a hero too.”
“Nope.”
“What about Elsa from Frozen?”
Zoe folded her tiny arms in front of her chest. It took him a sec to realize that she’d taken over his stance.
“Nope,” she repeated. “I can’t fight in a dress.” She gave Cathy a dubious look as if she was debating her mental health.
Cathy came up with a dozen more suggestions, all of which Zoe shut down. The eyes of the clerk got strained and her smile wavered.
Hector knew how she felt.
“Well, it seems like we’re not getting any further here,” Cathy eventually said, admitting defeat.
“Too bad.”
Cathy got up and stepped closer to him. “This doesn’t mean we still can’t go out. How about I give you my number?”
“How about you don’t?”
She blinked, obviously surprised that he was gonna hold them to their deal. He didn’t feel too bad for shutting her down. After all, she’d looked at his ring finger, but dismissed it.
So yeah, he didn’t feel bad at all when he scooped Zoe up and went outside. Sitting back on his bike, Zoe on his lap, he wracked his brain about what else he could do. He came up with nothing.
“Zoe, I’m sorry, but I don’t think we can find your costume.”
Her bottom lip quivered, and he felt a pang in his heart. Ah, hell, not the pout.
“But I have to be Wonder Woman. She’s a hero like you!”
What?
“Zoe, why do you have to be her and not someone else? There are other superheroes.”
“But they don’t have her dark hair.”
“You like dark hair?” He got the feeling she was trying to tell him something, but he was clueless.
Zoe nodded and pointed at his head. “Wonder Woman is a warrior like you. She has dark brown hair like you. I want to look like you, so everybody will know.”
“Will know what, puppet?”
“That I’m your kid,” she whispered.
Ah. “Baby girl, with or without the same color hair, you will still be my kid.”
She looked puzzled. “But Mr. Storm said I couldn’t be your kid because your skin is darker and your hair too. He said you didn’t look like me because you are spanic.”
Hispanic.
Fucking Storm. Hector took a deep breath, trying to calm down.
He had to tread carefully. She was just trying to find her place in his world. He could understand her need for wanting to feel secure, to be a part of a family. He’d gone through the exact same shit.
“Remember how in X-Men, the mutants were being made fun of because they were different?”
She nodded in earnest. “Professor X helped them.”
“Exactly. He opened a school so the kids with special powers could go there. None of them looked alike, but together, they still became a family.”
“So… it doesn’t matter what color my hair is?”
Finally, having to watch all those superhero movies was paying off. “That’s right. Even if you were purple with yellow dots, you’re still stuck with me.”
She giggled and gave him a hug. It was amazing what power she packed inside that tiny frame of hers.
Zoe looked back into the shop they had just left.
“I can wear something else.” She didn’t sound too happy with that prospect, but she was being a champ. For him. “But not a dress. I can’t save the world in a dress.”
He plucked her off his lap and put her in the side car. “We got one more stop first.”
He went back to the first store. The place that had fucked up their order. The same pimpled teenager stood behind the counter. One look behind the kid and he saw that his coveted costume was still there.
Hector pointed at the costume. “I’ll be taking that one.”
“I’m sorry, but—”
He pulled out five hundred-dollar bills and shoved them over the counter. “Like I said, I’ll be taking that one.”
Money had a way of shutting people up. That’s exactly what happened. The costume was wrapped up and handed over to him in no time.
Zoe jumped up, barely able to hold her excitement.
So, yeah, another kid would cry over not becoming Wonder Woman, which probably made him a bastard. But, at least, it wouldn’t be his kid.
CHAPTER 29
HECTOR
The next morning, when Jess led two suits into his office, Hector’s first thought was Storm. More accurately, of his late-night visit to the fucker. The asshole must have gone to the police, after all.
“What can I do for you, gentlemen?” He didn’t bother to get up from his seat, just gestured to the sofas in front of his desk.
“Special Agent Husk,” the one with the gray tie said, pulling out a badge. “And this is my partner, Special Agent Gonzales.”
Hector relaxed. This wasn’t about an—alleged—assault slash attempt to murder charge.
“Can we speak in private?” Husk asked, with a glance at Jess.
“We’d like to talk to Mr. Smith as well,” Gonzales added.
“Jess, get Achilles in here.”
It wasn’t long before his friend showed himself in. After another round of introductions, Hector’s patience was over.
“Tell me what this is about.”
“What can you tell us about John Decker?” Husk asked.
It felt as if the air was sucked from the room. All Hector could see were John’s dead eyes staring up at the sky.
“This isn’t Twenty Questions,” he growled. “You came here to tell us something. I’m not answering shit before you tell me what it is that has the Bureau sending two of its finest to my humble abode.”
Husk turned to Achilles, but his friend shook his head.
“What he said. Don’t make this a guessing game. Everything about what happened overseas has records. We can’t tell you anything more than you already know. Our unit came under fire, John Decker got killed, and we had to leave him behind. We didn’t want to, but those were our orders. We had to leave his body behind.”
“What do you know about his family?” Gonzales asked.
“Decker didn’t have any family, aside from a younger brother.” Hector had tried to reach out to him, to pay his respects, but the kid had been deployed at the time.
“He has a brother, a few years younger. Has served one tour. Got out when he heard about what happened to his brother. No one has seen him since.”
“No one but Decker’s former unit mates,” Gonzales said pointedly. “There were six of you that day, weren’t there?”
Something in his voice made Hector’s head snap up. “Tell me why you’re here.”
Gonzales cleared his throat. “Three of your former unit mates are dead. A fourth barely survived and is currently in the burn unit. Up until him, the deaths of the other three were considered to be accidents. They died within a few months of each other, and no one saw a connection with Decker’s brother. Not until he tried to kill Seth Hawk.”
“He got to Hawk?” Fuck. It was nearly impossible to sneak up on him.
“Decker didn’t hide from him. Apparently, he wanted Hawk to know who it was that was going to kill him. According to what we’ve heard from Hawk, Decker is unhinged. He believes that his brother was murdered by his unit. He thinks it’s one big cover-up. We believe he has mental issues.”
When Gonzales took out a picture, Hector took a sharp breath. He knew that face. Private Decker looked a lot like John. From a distance, it was easy to confuse Decker with his brother. The visions during daylight, when he thought he saw John, started to make sense now. It explained the eyes he had been feeling on him for the past few months. The slashed tire.
I’m not crazy.
I’m not losing my mind.
“You think he’s after us.”
“Yes.”
“Why now?” Achilles asked. “It’s been over a year since John died. Why wait all this time?”
“Because Decker had to finish his tour first. When he got out, the killing started. We believe he first learns everything there is to find about his target, then he swoops in. I believe he chooses his target by level of … domesticity, as odd as that may sound.”
A chill went up Hector’s spine. “Meaning?”
“He chooses them by level of… happiness. He waits until they are with their loved ones. Hawk would have been his easiest target, living the nearest by, but he didn’t go after him first. He took out Sweeney first.”
“Shit. Sweeney. The guy has four kids.”
“Exactly.” Gonzales gave him a look of pity. “I think the reason he hasn’t targeted you two before is because you didn’t have your own family. Smith still doesn’t, but you do.”
For a moment, his limbs became paralyzed, and his tongue turned into stone, too heavy to lift and turn sounds into words. All he could see were Mary and Zoe. Decker had waited in the shadows, biding his time, until he could destroy him when he was finally fucking happy. In a sick, twisted way, it made all the sense in the world.
“What’s his M.O.?” Achilles asked. “What exactly are we up here against?”
“He’s a demolition expert,” Gonzales said.
Fucking great. They were being hunted by a grunt who liked to blow things up. When did his life turn into a bad action flick?
“I need intel on him, now.” Finally, he’d found his voice.
Husk gave him a stern look. “The FBI handles this case. And we advise you not to get any other party involved, such as your recent connections to the Bratva.”