There wouldn’t be much for a passerby to see. Cort had stowed his truck in the barn after making a swift trip back to his dad’s to get some things two nights ago. There’d be no activity or possessions out front that would peg this as her residence.
A person would have to come closer than the road to be certain of that.
“Now my turn, my turn!” Molly demanded.
“Can I pitch, Mom?”
Emma gladly gave her son the plastic ball and turned again to check on Cort. Found him standing on the back porch, watching them with an enigmatic expression. Her legs feeling leaden, she joined him.
“Same silver Tahoe has gone by three times today,” he murmured, his bright blue gaze steady. “The guy is wearing a ball cap. No way to tell if he’s the one Bridgit described. But his vehicle has rental plates and he slows way down as he passes.”
She nodded, unable to speak. There’d been binoculars on his shopping list a few days ago, and night vision goggles she’d had to find at her one and only trip to an army surplus store. Although he said nothing else, she knew what he was thinking.
Because she was thinking the same thing.
“Do you think he’ll try to get a closer look tonight?”
“I’d be surprised if he didn’t.”
Ice pierced her veins and she stared blindly at her laughing children. “I’m still a fair shot. If he shows up here he’ll have to go through me to get to the kids.”
His arm slipped around her waist and he pulled her against his hard side. And for a moment—just one—she let herself lean into his strength.
“Serve him right if I set you loose on him.” His words drew a smile, as they were meant to. It disappeared in the next moment. “But I have plans for him.”
A chill skated over her skin at the promise in his voice. She knew she hadn’t been mistaken in thinking he was looking forward to the fight. Her stomach clenched. For the first time Emma considered that by accepting Cort’s help, she’d placed him in danger, too.
Chapter Twelve
Vince Baccino squinted through the shadows and considered his options. He wasn’t a man to rush into things, despite demanding clients. He’d already determined that the best way to take the woman would be to wait for her to come out to her mailbox some afternoon and pick up her mail.
Hell of it was, the only way he was going to catch Emma Cunningham at her mailbox was if he set up camp somewhere nearby and waited. He’d been a sniper in Desert Storm before hiring out his skills for a different sort of work back in the States. He could wait for days for the perfect shot.
But the only cover for miles was the barn on her property and its shelter wouldn’t offer a clear shot of the woman. Which left a home invasion as the next best option.
He considered the idea carefully. Kids made the plan slightly messier. There was to be no collateral damage, the client had been clear about that. But he was enough of a realist to know that the unexpected had to be planned for. The woman was going to die and anyone who got in his way was expendable.
He still had the picture of Cunningham in his pocket. It was a shame to kill a fine looking piece like that. Maybe he’d take a little time with her before slitting her throat. Give her a proper send off.
The thought had him hardening and provided the impetus he needed to move. Silently, he picked up his bag of tools and slipped from behind the barn toward the house.
There was little cloud cover but the moon was only a sliver. He wasn’t worried, regardless. There would be no one up at three AM to notice his progress toward the old ranch house.
Baccino had already determined there was no way inside the fence so he continued to the front of the place. His steps up the porch steps were noiseless. He tried the front door because it was dumb not to look for the obvious entry. Wasn’t surprised to find it locked. He turned immediately to the window to its right.
He set his bag down, opened it and retrieved the glasscutter. A few minutes later he’d scored a circle in the glass just above where the lock should be. He took his time. Haste led to mistakes. The cutter was put away and a piece of contact paper affixed to the scored circle. Then he tapped it lightly with the butt of his knife until the circular piece of glass sagged inward. Slowly peeling aside a corner of the paper, he removed the circular piece. It was easy enough then to reach inside and unlock the window. Raise the sash and slip inside.
Adrenaline started pumping. He’d already spent the advance for the job and looked forward to the final payment. Almost as much as he was looking forward to doing the woman. He waited a moment, allowing his eyes to adjust to the dark interior. He caught the slight movement to his right at the same time a voice spoke.
“I’ve been waiting for you.”
Chapter Thirteen
The shadowy figure reacted quicker than Cort had expected, wheeling around with a kick that would have caught him in the chest if he hadn’t moved back. The movement caused him to stumble and the intruder leapt at him, the glitter of a blade discernible in the darkness.
This time he was ready. He brought the crowbar he held crashing down on the wrist of the hand holding the knife, heard a sickening crunch. The weapon clattered to the floor. He kept moving, behind the guy’s elbow now and used his momentum to push the intruder, intent on driving his head into the wall.
But the stranger wasn’t cooperating. He spun away to dive at Cort, toppling him to the floor. The crowbar rolled out of his grasp.
The two men grappled and it quickly became apparent to Cort that his opponent had had some training of his own. The man grabbed Cort’s throat with his uninjured hand, squeezed. Gray dots danced before his eyes as he struggled to breathe. Bringing both hands up, he jabbed his thumbs hard in the intruder’s eyes until his grip loosened. Then, doubling his fist, he swung it with all his might at the man’s temple. Once. Twice. Again.
When the man’s body had gone limp he shoved him off him, bracing his good knee on the man’s back. At the same moment, the lights flipped on in the room. Cort risked a quick glance at Emma, who’d moved into his peripheral vision. The Glock was gripped firmly in her hand, pointed at the stranger.
“I thought I told you to stay downstairs with the kids.” His voice was mild.
“I’m not much good at doing what I’m told.”
Her words had a crazy grin spreading across his face. She wouldn’t be Emma if she took orders worth a damn. He bent the man’s arms behind his back before he could start to stir. “Maybe you can make an exception this once and hand me those zip cords.” When she cooperated he quickly secured the intruder’s hands and feet before turning the guy over again.
“We make a pretty good team,” she said lightly. There was a slight unevenness in her voice that had Cort giving her a quick look. What he saw in her eyes had warmth stealing through his system.
“Yeah. Somehow I’m not surprised.”
It was nearly eight a.m. The sheriff had left a couple hours ago, escorting Emma’s would be assailant off the property. The kids had just fallen back to sleep, but Emma knew sleep would be out of the question for her anytime soon. Cort had mentioned adrenaline crash, but she was still revved up, senses humming.
And the man sitting on the couch beside her was partially responsible for that.
She wrapped both hands more tightly around her coffee mug and sipped from it. “I can’t believe Michelle Cunningham would have even known a man like that.” Baccino hadn’t been carrying ID, nor had any been found in the silver Tahoe parked just down the road. But Sheriff Lasher had called them with the man’s identity when his fingerprints had shown up in the system. Vince Baccino was wanted for questioning in three unsolved murders.
“When you have enough money it just takes knowing someone with connections.” Cort reached for her mug. When she handed it to him, he drank, his gaze meeting hers over the rim. “He doesn’t have a record. It’s possible he’ll take my advice. Giving up the name of his client, and the job she hired him for will make things go ea
sier for him in court.”
“Do you think he will?”
“If there’s a chance he can cut a deal, yeah. I think he’ll take every opportunity offered.”
She wanted, needed to believe that. Emma had seen the knife Cort had taken from the man. Had observed other items in the bag he’d brought in with him that still made her heart pound at her narrow escape. “I need to speak to the county attorney and urge him to offer that deal.” Otherwise Michelle Cunningham would be free to send someone else, and then someone else until she finally found a hired gun who succeeded where Baccino had failed.
Cort leaned forward, placed the mug on the table. Reached over to clasp one of her hands in his. “We’ll tie this attempt to her and I’ll make damn sure she knows it.” She shot him a startled look, but was momentarily distracted by the heat transferring from his touch. “I’m guessing dual threats of a police investigation and selling the story to a tabloid would bear some weight with her.”
“I think the threat of media attention would scare her more than the police,” she said ruefully. Michelle considered law enforcement as tools to be used to her own end. Having her name tied to a scandal however . . . for the first time in the last several days Emma felt the heaviness in her chest dissipate.
And it didn’t escape her attention that Cort’s hand was still on hers. Or that it had turned caressing. “So.” She tried to collect her thoughts, which had abruptly scattered as soon as he touched her. “You’re not too bad at this body guarding thing. You could start a business.”
“Turns out I’m especially adept at it when I’ve a fondness for the body in question. More than a fondness, actually.”
Her breath catching in her chest she turned toward him. Was caught by the light in his wicked blue eyes. “I have absolutely no idea what I want to do with the rest of my life,” she began.
“Me either.”
“Or where I want to live.” They were closer somehow. Had he moved? Or had she? She was near enough to feel the heat he radiated. Like a moth to a flame she was drawn to it. To him.
“We’ll figure it out.” The words were murmured against her lips. “Together.” The first kiss was whisper light. The second one firmer. She laid a hand against his chest as she leaned into him. Opened her lips beneath his and enjoyed the way his taste sent her senses rioting.
Together. The word was imbued with promise. A promise she reciprocated.
And one she had every intention of collecting on.
GOING DARK
Helen Brenna
Chapter One
“Four minutes twenty-five seconds, Griggs. The rest of the team is en route to the Humvee, objectives safe in hand.”
Crouched behind an abandoned shell of a car, Chief Petty Officer Nate Griggs kept his assault rifle trained on the Somali rebel guards as Senior Chief Kyle Turnham’s calm voice came over the wire.
“Any sign of Mohammed Ahmed?”
“Negative,” Nate whispered. Too bad, too. He would’ve liked nothing better than to have nailed the Somali warlord with ties to al-Shabaab. Not only was the bastard one of the top three on the most wanted list, but he was also responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of Somali refugees.
“Alright then,” Turnham said, sighing. “Target is not at this site.”
Basically, that meant their primary mission had failed. Intel had been wrong for the second time in less than ten minutes. The first screw-up had been in indicating that the hostages, the rescue of which was their secondary mission, were being held in one building. Instead, the kidnapped American citizens had been scattered throughout the abandoned village, forcing the SEAL team to split.
“Let’s wrap this up, Griggs. We can’t be here when the sun hits that horizon, and the only hostage we’re missing is Pritchard.”
“Figures,” Nate said softly. The rest of the team had encountered no snafus, but then, by all accounts, their objectives had been lightly guarded. “I got four men between me and our kingpin.” Two in front of what was most likely Pritchard’s location, a small retail shop that had long since been abandoned. A third near an alleyway a couple buildings away. The fourth was apparently on rounds and had stopped for a smoke. “One of ’em will be leaving any second.”
Mr. Cigarette, there was no doubt about it, rubbed Nate wrong. Maybe it was the cocky way he blew smoke into the air, or the way he puffed out his chest when he walked, like a peacock flirting with a peahen on a sunny Sunday afternoon. Didn’t really matter. Nate shouldn’t be trusting his gut these days, anyway. Not after what had happened with a certain redhead last month in Virginia Beach. From now on, he was a by-the-numbers, follow-orders-to-the-letter man.
Sure enough, the smoker flicked his butt to the ground, issued an order to the other men, and then went on his way. Obviously, Mr. Cigarette outranked the others. Could he be Mohammed Ahmed? Nate focused in on the man’s face. Nope. Although there was only one known photograph of Ahmed, that picture clearly indicated a scar, resembling a sliver moon, on the man’s right cheek. Mr. Cigarette’s cheek was somewhat pockmarked and shiny with sweat, but scarless.
“Back down to three, Senior Chief. I got this.” By the light of a fading moon, Nate moved in, passing a couple more abandoned vehicles.
One of Pritchard’s guards, Mr. Smartass, started joking loudly with Corner Guard near the alley. Sounded like they were talking about someone. Pritchard? Another prisoner? Nate translated a word here or there, but couldn’t make sense of the conversation. Whatever was going down was clearly bothering Pritchard’s other guard, Mr. Serious.
A gust of dry, hot wind blew dirt into Nate’s eyes and up his nostrils. He stopped behind a partially demolished concrete wall and waited for his eyes to clear. God, how he hated this place. For that matter, every man he knew hated this country with a passion. Unrelenting sun and heat, one drought and civil war after another, dirt upon dirt upon more dirt. Not to mention a culture that bred some of the most violent extremists on earth.
“Remind me again why we’re doing this?” he whispered to Turnham.
“A little PR goes a long way as far as the Brass is concerned. Maybe next time Pritchard will think twice about bashing the military in his news reports.”
Nate had never paid much attention to Donald Pritchard’s muckraking TV news journal, On Record, until the man made things personal by sending a cold-hearted, red-headed bombshell Nate’s way. Kaley Andrews. She might have smelled as sweet as the cherry blossoms in the backyard of Nate’s childhood home near Richmond, but, in truth, she was more like a man-eating Venus flytrap.
Had he known up front that the only reason she’d been at that Virginia Beach bar was to dig up information about a classified mission here in Somalia that had gone completely FUBAR, that night they’d met would’ve ended differently. Instead, the curious mixture of vulnerability and intensity in her eyes had lured him into a slow, moonlit walk on the beach. One night had led to three weeks of spending every moment of his off-duty hours together. Twenty-one days of heaven he wouldn’t soon forget.
Well, almost heaven. The best of the heavenly part was supposed to have happened on a long weekend they’d planned to spend at his cabin in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Then, the morning they were to leave, he’d gone to her hotel and discovered she’d checked out not fifteen minutes before he’d arrived. No messages. Cell phone disconnected.
He’d been dazed and confused until Pritchard’s On Record had aired on primetime a couple days later and for several long, agonizing minutes the camera had focused on a photojournalist named Carly Danson. Funny, but Ms. Danson had borne a striking resemblance to one Kaley Andrews. A body as curvy as Virginia’s back roads topped by show-stopping red hair as bold as a sailor’s favorite sunset.
Nate hadn’t given the two-faced, lying piece of work any information about the medical team that had been slaughtered by Mohammed Ahmed’s rebels, but Pritchard had made up what he’d needed, singling out Nate and his SEAL team as total losers.
Wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am, had Nate ever been screwed. Good thing Kaley, or Carly, or whatever the hell her name of the week was, hadn’t been on the list of Pritchard’s staff they were here to retrieve, or Nate might not have been accountable for his actions.
A scuffle suddenly broke out between the two guards in front of Pritchard’s location. Mr. Smartass pushed Mr. Serious to the ground and then, taking the only lantern, sauntered toward Corner Guard. Those two then turned down the alley, disappearing out of sight. Didn’t make sense, but it wasn’t going to get any better than this for Nate. While the one remaining guard glanced angrily toward the entrance to the alleyway, Nate nailed him from behind, knocking him on the head with the butt of his rifle. He caught the instantly unconscious man and slipped into the building, dragging the body inside.
Sitting tied to a chair in the middle of the dark room was a man with a hood over his head. Nate had to verify he had Pritchard before heading back to the Humvee. He cut the ropes cinching the hood around the man’s neck and lifted the hood. Yep. Pritchard. Gagged, too.
The man’s bleary eyes widened at the sight of Nate. He mumbled wildly and bounced in his chair, making far too much noise. Nate cut Prichard’s hands free, but held him still, gag intact. “There are two guards down the way,” he whispered in Pritchard’s ear. “Quiet down, or I’ll leave you here. Understand?”
Pritchard nodded vigorously.
Nate removed the gag. “Got Pritchard, Senior Chief,” he whispered. “We’re on our way.”
“One minute forty-five before we have to skedaddle to rendezvous with that Chinook.”
Pritchard cringed. “I need water.” He looked sweaty and dirty, but no worse for wear.
What a pansy-ass. “In a minute. Let’s go.” Signaling for Pritchard to follow, Nate headed toward the door. All was quiet.
SEAL of My Dreams Page 9