by Cindy Gerard
He touched her cheek. “Yeah. Yeah, he did.”
She forced a smile.
The terrace door opened then and B.J. walked in. Her gaze flashed to his, then to his hand covering Stephanie’s, to his palm caressing her cheek.
Her face flamed red. “Sorry,” she said, and turned to go back outside like she’d interrupted a lover’s tryst.
“B.J., wait.” She stopped with her hand on the door when Stephanie called out to her. “It’s way past time I thanked you for what you did yesterday.”
B.J., ever the tough, cool customer, just shrugged and made a beeline for the coffeepot. “We got out of there alive. That’s all that counts.”
“Again, thanks to you.” Stephanie rose and walked over to her. Then before B.J. could figure out a way to escape, Stephanie wrapped her in an embrace and hugged her. “Thank you,” she whispered.
Rafe watched, as touched by Stephanie’s gesture as he was by B.J.’s difficulty accepting it. For the longest moment, she just sort of endured Stephanie’s display of affection and gratitude, standing as stiff as a post, a trapped expression on her face, her body poised to bolt.
Rafe wondered what had happened to make her so distrustful, not only of everyone else’s actions but of her own reaction to them.
Finally Stephanie pulled away. She smiled at B.J., who still looked a little flummoxed and uncertain. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to get all gushy. Can we blame it on the pain medication?”
Looking relieved that the contact was over, B.J. gave her a clipped nod. “We can.”
Jenna and Gabe walked into the kitchen right then.
“The rest of the guys ought to be here any minute,” Gabe said. He’d barely gotten the words out of his mouth when the doorbell rang.
Jenna, who was a toucher by nature, slung an arm around B.J.’s shoulders. “Brace yourself. The A team has just arrived.”
Rafe was too busy watching B.J. stiffen at Jenna’s casual familiarity to take offense to the redhead’s good-natured jab.
Gabe, however, couldn’t let it pass. “Dissed by my own wife. You just lost certain privileges over that remark, darling dear,” he informed her, walking toward the door.
“Empty threats. Always with the empty threats.” Jenna left B.J. and followed her husband to the door. She patted him on the ass on the way, then squealed in delight when the rest of the BOIs walked in the apartment.
Luke “Doc Holliday” Colter, Johnny Reed, Wyatt “Papa Bear” Savage, Mean Joe Green, and finally Nate Black himself crowded into Jenna and Gabe’s apartment.
Jenna hugged each one in turn until Gabe intervened when Reed, always the ladies’ man, lingered a little too long.
“You’ve got your own woman,” Gabe grumbled.
Reed just grinned his slow Texas grin, forked the blond hair back from his eyes, and pulled Jenna closer. “But I like this one, too. You gettin’ tired of that oaf yet, sugar?”
“He is a trial sometimes,” Jenna confessed, “but he has his uses. How’s Crystal?”
Reed’s smile widened at the mention of the woman he’d be marrying in a month. “Amazing. And the only woman who could tear my heart away from her is you. Here’s an idea. Drop that joker and the three of us can move to Utah and make a real big love.”
“You are so full of it,” Doc put in, then sobered when his gaze landed on B.J. A crooked, searching smile tipped up one corner of his mouth. “We’ve met.”
“Caracas,” Rafe supplied before B.J., who looked a little shell-shocked by the sheer number of BOIs, could respond.
“Right,” Doc said with a snap of his fingers. “That’s it. What the—”
“She’s the reason Steph is alive,” Rafe explained.
With that statement, all eyes turned to B.J.
If Rafe read the look in her eyes correctly, right about now B.J. was feeling like a cat in a cage in a zoo. And she didn’t like being the center of attention.
She was literally saved by the bell when the doorbell rang again.
“For the love of Mike,” Gabe said after checking the camera monitoring the hallway and swinging the door open wide. “Sam Lang. If you aren’t a sight for sore eyes.”
“Senator, please. Panic is not the answer.” Alex Brady attempted to calm his client. “Even though things appear to be unraveling a bit, these are minor setbacks. You’ve got to keep a cool head.” Coffee cup in hand, he walked to the window of his fourteenth-floor hotel room and looked out over the beltway traffic, waiting for the diatribe he knew would follow.
“Minor setbacks?” the senator repeated. “What planet are you on? Your man, Loeffler, the man who was supposed to take care of loose ends, is dead. Stephanie Tompkins is missing and her car was at the scene of Loeffler’s shooting. Half a dozen of the best guns my money can buy are scouring the D.C./Fort Meade area, yet fourteen hours after she disappeared, the only clues to her whereabouts—her car and a smashed Jeep—have been confiscated by local law enforcement. Minor setbacks? Don’t insult my intelligence.”
Alex Brady had done work for this client before. The money was good. Almost good enough to make up for the shit he had to take as the point man. “We’re working on finding the owner of the Jeep.” Find the owner, find a trail to the Tompkins woman. “And I’ve spoken with a camper at the park who heard gunshots, then a crash. He watched from the woods while he dialed 911.”
“I trust you were discreet when you questioned him.”
Alex clenched his jaw, let the insult go by. He prided himself on discretion. That and providing results. And doing things his own way, which was why he and the Baltimore PD had parted ways several years ago. Public service was for Boy Scouts and suckers. He was neither.
“He assumed I was a Fed. Anyway, he said there were two women at the scene. A dark blue SUV arrived after the gunfire, two men on board. After some discussion that he couldn’t hear, both women got in the SUV with the men and they made fast tracks out of there.”
“You asked about license plate numbers, right?”
Again, he exercised control. The senator was angry and desperate. He’d make allowances. “We have a partial on the SUV. I’ve got a guy at Motor Vehicle running what we’ve got. I expect to hear from him soon.”
“And I expect a resolution to this soon. Do not let this go on much longer.”
“I’ll be back in touch.”
“Damn right you will!”
The senator slammed down the phone. Alex listened to the dial tone for a moment before flipping his cell phone shut.
Money, he reminded himself as he dialed Jenkins to get an update on the hunt for Stephanie Tompkins. Money was the motivator and the payoff.
In this case, it was too much money to tell the illustrious senator to fuck off.
The senator stared out the window for a moment, then picked up the phone again and made the dreaded call to Colombia. A flunky answered on the third ring and the senator spoke the code word. “Ura.”
“Momento.”
Several long minutes passed before Emilio Garcia came on the line. “Senator. To what do I owe this pleasure?” the head of the Garcia drug cartel inquired in heavily accented English.
There was nothing for it but to come right out with it. The Colombian drug lord would find out soon enough anyway. “A complication has arisen.”
Silence, then a carefully measured question. “What kind of complication?”
“A cryptologist within the NSA appears to have stumbled onto a limited number of the encrypted communications that transpired between us and our Russian counterpart.”
Another silence. This one rang with rage. “I had understood our bases were covered on that front.”
“Yes, well, they were.”
“Define limited.”
“Unknown at this point in time. The cryptologist in question was to have been contained; however, she somehow managed to escape.”
“You assured me there would be no discovery on your end, Senator.” Emilio’s tone had grown clipped.
“I realize that. And the situation will be controlled shortly. I’m calling only as a courtesy as I did not wish to have you come by this information from another source—a source that might not appreciate the lengths being taken to recover and prevent any leakage of information.”
“A courtesy? How very thoughtful of you.” Sarcasm dripped from each word. “I do not, however, want courtesy from you. I want results.”
“Which you will get. In the meantime, what’s the status of the project?”
“For what purpose do you require this information?” Emilio made no effort at all to conceal his contempt.
The gall of the bastard. “I was not aware that I needed a reason to request updates. Further, I will remind you that if all had gone according to schedule on your end, there would be no need for us to have this conversation as the attack would already have taken place and we would be out from under potential scrutiny. Now what is the status of the project?”
“Nearing completion.” While there was still an edge in his voice, Emilio leveled his tone. “The technology is about to be tested. It is a very delicate process. My engineers inform me that everything will be operational within seven days, at which time we’ll be able to turn the device and the sub over to Abdul Azeem.”
Seven days. An eternity. “And Azeem?” The Afghani sheik had the ear and the trust of bin Laden. He would command this attack on the U.S.
“Impatient,” Emilio admitted. “But he will wait. He has no choice.”
None of them had a choice at this juncture. They were all in too deep to change course now.
13
Less than twenty minutes after the BOIs arrived at Gabe and Jenna’s apartment, everyone teed up to move Stephanie to the safe house. Everyone but Gabe, who would drive Jenna to the airport.
“Macho boy thinks I can’t get myself on a plane to West Palm,” Jenna said, the affection in her eyes undercutting her tiny bit of annoyance.
“That’s macho man, dear,” Gabe clarified with an arch look. “And I’m not taking any chances when it comes to getting you out of here safe and sound.”
They weren’t taking chances with anything. The plan was for Jenna to spend a little down time in Florida with friends, Amy and Dallas Garrett and their family, who were close with the entire Black Ops team from the sound of it. Also from the sound of it, Jones felt Jenna would be in good hands with the Garretts in the event some of this mess with Stephanie slopped over on her.
In the meantime, Black was now calling the shots for the team. “Green, you’re in the car with me and Steph. Lang, Colter, and Savage, you’re point car.” He nodded toward Rafe. “You, Reed, and B.J. will cover our six. Everyone good with this?”
They were.
He checked his watch. “Okay. Head out, Rafe. You’ve got twenty minutes.”
Twenty minutes to get to B.J.’s apartment, grab a change of clothes and replenish her ammo, then double back here and join the parade.
“No offense,” B.J. had said when they’d offered to supply her with their ammo, “but you military types carry full metal jackets. I want my hollow-points.”
Reed had whistled. “The lady not only wants to tear a big hole, she wants to let the air out.”
“The lady,” B.J. had clarified, “trusts her own loads. Plain and simple.”
As shooters, they’d understood even though they hadn’t liked it much.
“It’ll take fifteen minutes to get there and back. Twenty tops. That’s all I’m asking.”
And that’s what she’d gotten, thanks to Black. “Good chance to see if they’ve put a tail on B.J.’s apartment. So watch yourselves,” he’d warned.
“Call when you’re back and we’ll head out and meet you in the parking lot,” he said now as B.J. followed Rafe and Reed to the door.
Jenna stopped her with a hand on her arm. “Don’t let ’em push you around,” she told her by way of goodbye.
B.J. acknowledged Jenna’s warning with a nod. “That’s not going to happen.”
Jenna grinned. “My money’s on you.” Then she pressed a chocolate bar into B.J.’s hand.
She glanced at it, then back at Jenna.
“Rafe said you have a thing for chocolate.”
B.J. wasn’t used to warm fuzzies from other women and felt way out of her element fielding one.
“Thanks for the hospitality.” It was the best she could do.
As Jenna closed the door behind her, B.J. realized again that Jenna Jones was a woman she could grow to like. What she couldn’t figure was why Mendoza had been talking to Jenna about her. Or why something about that knowledge didn’t suck as much as it should have.
“What’da ya think?” Reed asked on their second pass around B.J.’s apartment building in one of the rental Suburbans the guys had driven to Gabe’s.
“I think I need my ammo,” B.J. muttered from the shotgun seat beside Rafe.
Rafe didn’t much care that she was impatient. He hadn’t been about to take a chance that some badass with a bad gun was staking out her apartment.
“It’s clear,” he said, which earned him a big sigh of relief from the passenger seat as he pulled into the lot. They’d barely rolled to a stop when she bounded out of the car and sprinted up the building’s steps.
“Damn woman,” he sputtered as he slammed the car into park and tore out after her.
Reed chuckled. “I’ll just man the boat,” he said from the backseat as Rafe jerked open one of the double glass entry doors and followed B.J. inside.
He caught B.J.’s arm and jerked her around to face him just as she opened the stairwell door.
“Will you slow the hell down? You’re not a one-man show here. This is a team effort, remember? Or did you have a change of heart about being a team player?”
She actually looked contrite. “I’m sorry. Really,” she added for emphasis. “Habit, okay? I’m used to calling my own shots.”
“And I’m used to working with a tight team. You don’t go anywhere without backup, got it?”
She nodded. “So can we do this?”
“Go,” he grumbled, and followed her as she sprinted up three flights of stairs, then stopped outside her apartment door.
He put a finger to his lips, mouthed, “Stay back,” and drew his Sig from the shoulder holster he’d strapped on over his T-shirt and covered with a loose cotton shirt. Then he nodded for her to unlock the door.
He shoved it open and, leading with the Sig, checked all the rooms. “It’s clear.”
“I’ll just be a minute.” She shouldered past him and headed for her bedroom.
Rafe locked up behind them, then checked out her apartment while he waited. Small, pin neat, and unexpectedly colorful.
The red leather sofa surprised him. So did the wild splashes of color in her choice of artwork. No pastels for this lady. She liked vibrant, saturated reds and blues and aquamarines. Even her bedroom was decorated with lots of color but in there she’d gone for rich gold, earthy green, and warm burgundy. And about a hundred pillows on her bed.
So she liked her creature comforts. Not that he’d expected her to sleep in a box. Not that he’d expected to be thinking about her and a bed. Her in a bed.
“I’m almost set.” She rushed back out of the bedroom, catching him in full speculation mode.
“I thought you were going to change,” he said when he saw her.
She looked down at herself after she’d tossed an open duffel on the kitchen counter.
“I did.”
Hokay. So her fun with the color wheel was limited to her decorating, because damn if it didn’t look like she’d traded one pair of khaki shorts and a black tank for another.
He watched as she squatted down to access a lower cupboard, drew out several boxes of hollow-point cartridges, and tucked them in the bag with some toiletries and a change of clothes.
“Lotta ammo.”
“You ever met a woman who travels light?” She zipped up the bag and headed for the door. She was ready to
burst back out into the hall when she stopped short and waited for him.
“Quick study.” He shouldered by her and, Sig drawn again, checked the hallway. “We’re clear.”
They didn’t stay that way for long.
“Company?” Rafe asked when they joined Reed in the car and saw he’d dug the HK MP-5 mini sub out of his go bag.
“Maybe. Tan Buick,” Reed said as B.J. retrieved her Glock from under the seat, then dug into her bag for her ammo. “Pulled in right after you went inside.”