by Dale Mayer
“And I have a lot more of it now, too,” growled Stone.
*
Evan missed the gist of the subject but could see the undercurrents flowing around him. Then he understood. “Going private?”
Levi turned that potent gaze his way. “Yeah, maybe.”
“Not a bad idea at that. Big money in it. Less rules and restrictions.”
“Exactly,” Stone said. “And I need a new job. Apparently, I’m not going to be able to keep the one I have.”
“You will,” Mason said, “but it will be different…”
Stone snorted. “Like hell I’m going to do a damn desk job.” He turned to Levi. “You’re going to hire someone to do that shit I hope.”
“I thought you were interested in that position,” Levi said in a bland tone.
Stone glared at him. “Find me some beautiful chick that digs men with one leg and can do administration shit – now that would be perfect.”
“Women won’t give a damn about your leg,” Ice snapped. “If they do, they fall in the girl category and need to grow up. So do you. No more girls for you.”
“But I can have women? Right?” he asked with a big grin.
She smiled, a gesture filled with such love the men in the room were spellbound. Evan knew he sure was. “Tone that down, Ice, we’re only human,” he said with a teasing smile. “And that smile of yours is potent as hell.”
Immediately that gaze flattened and turned his way. “You’re spoken for so you don’t count.”
“And so are you,” Levi said in a low, hard voice.
She studied him then snorted and walked out, her parting shot, “Like hell.”
Chapter 20
Megan’s eyebrows rose as she watched Ice leave. She turned back to see the other men – except Levi – grinning. “Obviously there is something going on that I don’t know about,” she muttered.
Evan laughed and wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “So what did you want us here for?”
Levi looked at Stone. Stone nodded.
Curious, Megan watched as she was assessed then accepted. Like an invisible tension layer had suddenly eased.
“His name is Pedro Watkins. He lives in San Diego and has ‘connections’ to the yards.”
“Any connection to the US Navy? North Island? Any military?”
“Not that we could find. But his cousin is doing the gun deals. That’s who you need to find.”
“Name?”
“Miguel Watkins.”
“Strange last names.”
Levi nodded. “That’s what we thought. No way to know if he’s on the up and up or not or if he’s dead but he’s the American connection. Find him and you’ll find the rest. Merk will send you the file I collected. See what you can do with it. For all our sakes.”
“You told anyone else yet?”
Levi shook his head. “Wasn’t awake until now.”
Mason nodded. “We’ll find him.”
“Good. Get him and haul him in. Get those damn guns off the street.” His voice deepened with anger. “When I’m back up and running I’ll track the others down myself.”
Mason studied him. “Don’t do anything stupid.”
Levi smiled with a boyishness that could charm anyone. “Don’t you worry about me. I’ve been thinking about this for a long time.”
“Besides our time was coming to an end soon,” Stone added. “Things were changing above us. We were being hamstrung by new rules and regulations, and of course bosses.”
Levi nodded. “Find this guy. We’ll handle the rest.”
Mason nodded. “Good enough.”
They turned to walk out when Levi called back, “Mason? Evan? If anything ever happens and you want to switch to the private sector…”
And he left it hanging. Mason nodded. “Not unless I have to but if that time comes, I’ll look you up.”
Markus protested, “I carried your fat ass out of there and I don’t get an invitation?”
Swede snorted. “Hell, I got the heavy load. You tried to pick Stone up lately?”
Stone chuckled. “I’m a good thirty pounds lighter now.”
“Blued steel, I told you,” Swede said. “That would be sweet.”
Levi said to Mason, his voice deepening, “If I haven’t said it yet…”
“You don’t have to. Just make sure there’s a place for me on the team if I ever need it.”
“In whatever shape you are in when the time comes, you have it,” Levi said. “Just because I can’t go back to active duty here, doesn’t mean my job is done.”
“Our jobs are never done,” Megan said. “Regardless of the direction we go in.” She nodded to the men, turned and walked out.
*
“Ice says she’s a hell of pilot. We’re going to need some of those coming up…” Stone said, only half joking.
How could anyone lock down plans when they were in the middle of a serious health crisis? Evan nodded. “She is and I’ll let her know.”
He said good-bye and walked out to find Mason and Ice in a heavy conversation with Megan.
“What’s going on?”
She shrugged. “I just wondered if that soldier was one of the men I saw at the hangar. From the HVAC company that we watched on the video tape.” She reached up and scratched her temple. “The thing is, there are a lot of Spanish speaking people there so it could be nothing other than that.”
“Security should be able to do facial recognition and see if he’s on the base,” Mason said. “That shooter from Megan’s house snuck onto the base somehow.”
“And yet, what was it that came after us today?” Ice asked smoothly from beside them. “It wasn’t one of ours.”
“And it was old,” Mason said. “Nothing like what the military has now.”
“I know we have a lot of safeguards in place, a lot of security – double the normal amount now, but what if…” Megan stopped there. It sounded preposterous when she said it out loud.
“We’d know about it,” Ice said. “Everyone checks in all the time, you know that.”
Mason and Ice stared at her. “Even if they got one of the helicopters, what’s the point of going after the hospital?’
“Levi and his men.”
“And for what reason?”
“There are usually only a few that are worth killing over – love, money, power and…revenge.”
“So in this case…” Evan had been quiet up to now. “What do you think we’re looking at?”
“Love and revenge,” Megan said. “You heard him. Levi said he made sure he took out those that shot the women and children.” She stared at him. “What’s the chance one was the husband or son of someone important? And this is payback.”
“This is conjecture.” Mason’s voice was low, thoughtful. “But it falls in line with the betrayal of Levi. If we tug these threads then chances are good we’d know soon enough what’s going on.”
Chapter 21
Arms crossed, Megan glared at Evan. “Surely there’s something I can do?”
“No, no and no,” Evan snapped. “You’re going to rest. That’s it.”
This safe house was comfortable enough, but she had no idea where they were or how long they were to stay. Sure they were safe but she was out of sorts. She wanted to do something constructive.
Megan stretched out on the bed in the main bedroom, her sore ankle elevated. She didn’t think it would work, but she was desperate to shut him out and the message he was determined to give her. No. No. And hell no.
Sometimes life sucked. This was one of those times.
And if she looked too tired to move, well it was because she was. They’d come here straight from the hospital, her mind buzzing with ideas. But there was little she could do. And even less he was willing to let her do.
Her damn ankle was also killing her.
Not that she was going to let Evan know.
“Here.”
She opened her eyes to find him standing with a glas
s of water and two of her painkillers. See, she didn’t have to tell him shit. He already knew. She struggled to prop herself up on one elbow then reached for the tablets. She handed the glass back to him when she was done and lay back down again. She never said a word.
She heard his footsteps walk away then return. Her laptop was placed on her belly.
“Ice said you’re great on computers.”
Her eyes flew open. She studied the look on his face. “And?”
“We could use someone doing research.”
“On what?”
“You have access to the flight logs?”
She narrowed her gaze. “Some of them.”
“And maybe you could hunt down your theory as to whether a flight was made off schedule. Ice has higher clearance if we need it.”
She frowned. “This could cost me my job.’
“We don’t want that to happen, so just see if there’s anything within the parameters of what you’re allowed to see.” He studied her face. “If you find anything then Mason or Ice can ask for more information.”
That actually made some sense. “I can take a look. But no promises.”
“Good enough,” he said cheerfully as he walked back into the kitchen.
As she watched him leave, she couldn’t help being suspicious that this was a “make work” project for her to feel useful.
And, it worked.
She was buried in information in a few minutes. She opened up a Word document and started taking notes. The trick was going to be to sort through the logs.
And see what no one else had seen. If that had been one of their helicopters then someone knew something about it.
An hour later, her head boomed, her foot throbbed and she leaned back cursing that she’d ever come up with the theory. How could she find that helicopter when she had no numbers for it? Or did she? No, it had been older, beat up, almost impossible to identify. Except it had been military at one time.
Her eyes flew open. Had it been decommissioned? Sold to the private sector?
That would explain why no one had a flight log for it. It no longer belonged to the military. What about the weapons? Not that it was hard to come up with those in today’s market. She studied the list in front of her. They were the helicopters decommissioned in the last five years. It took much longer to sort through the list but finally she managed to narrow the options to seven older helicopters that had been sold on the private market on the West Coast.
On the scent now, she dug in deep.
*
It was fascinating to watch her. Her single-minded focus was something he admired. Too bad she wouldn’t put that same diligence into making a relationship with him work.
“Why are you staring at me?” She teased him with a quick grin but her eyes were speculative.
“Because you’re beautiful when you are so intent.”
She shook her head. “You are the one that’s beautiful. All the girls love you.”
“Maybe they do,” he said. “But I doubt it. Besides, I don’t love all the girls. I only love you.” And that’s not what he’d planned to say. But the word was out and he was damned if he was going to apologize for being honest. That was something he appreciated above all else. But he didn’t want to push her.
“Love,” she said in a faint voice. Her gaze locked on his. “You’re just saying that to unnerve me again.”
“Interesting, that’s your response,” he said with a light laugh, not sure what to do with the hurt sitting inside just under his heart. He’d have to take it out and deal with it at some time, but surely not now. It wasn’t possible to deal with it now. It would hurt too much.
She studied him longer and he stared back calmly. He shouldn’t have brought it up again. She wasn’t ready. He’d known that but he’d ignored it. To his folly.
“How do you know?” she asked, “that you love me?”
And he realized she was back to feeling insecure and worried that she wasn’t good enough. Couldn’t feel what others felt.
“I know that if you walk out that door, I’ll have lost something precious. That if you leave without me, I’ll have missed a chance I was waiting for years to come around again.”
She shook her head. “I never forgot you. But I always knew you had other things to do and other places to be. I wasn’t going to hold you back. I’d been interested for a long time,” she admitted. “So when we had that weekend together I was all about making the most of it, knowing it wouldn’t happen again.”
“We were different people then. You made a huge impression on me, and I found something I didn’t want to lose. But you were accepted into the program you wanted, you were leaving and before I really understood, you were gone.”
“It happened fast,” she admitted. After a moment she found herself asking, “Had you planned on seeing me again?”
“I went by your place only to find out you weren’t there anymore.”
She laughed, relief and joy coursing through her. “I wasn’t there when I was with you. I’d been staying with friends.”
He frowned then shrugged. “Whatever. The thing is you changed something for me. I did have relationships after you’d left as I had no way of knowing if you were coming back. Yet they didn’t feel the same. They didn’t make me feel the same. I wanted more.”
She shook her head.
“You can deny it all you want but these are my feelings, not yours.”
“No, it’s not that.” She glanced down at her laptop. “Part of the reason I was in the relationship with Peter was that I had found something with you that I hadn’t seen before too. I thought I’d found it again with Peter. I believed I’d found it with Peter. But not only hadn’t I, I didn’t want to let that idea go. And I think that was the problem. I wanted it to be the same. But I knew when I refused to look too deeply at it that I was only fooling myself. But it was easy. It was good. So it was comfortable.”
“And comfortable is deadly,” he said in a serious note. “You don’t change something comfortable until it becomes uncomfortable.”
She nodded. “And that point came to a crunch over the wedding date, and I couldn’t fool myself any longer. I cared about him, but I didn’t care enough to marry him.”
“And so you’re afraid that you will care for me but not enough.”
“No, I’m afraid that you spoiled me for anyone else but that our weekend was just a fantasy and that I made too much of it. That we weren’t living a reality we could ever recapture. That what we had wasn’t real.”
His heart had been running and jumping then hitting the brakes in shock as he listened. But at the end his heart slowed to a heavy strong pace. “You know what the answer is, don’t you?”
She winced but her gaze was steady as she stared at him. “Yes. I do.”
He tilted his head. “And what is that?”
“We need to spend another weekend together.”
And his heart jumped for joy.
Chapter 22
“I’m afraid of disappointing you,” she admitted. “Of being disappointed.”
That smoky smile of his was slow to come but all the more powerful when it did. The magnetic pull was brutal.
“Damn you’re lethal,” she whispered.
His grin flashed. “But you’re still having doubts.”
Was she? Not really. It was a matter of getting past this moment of awkwardness. Somehow. And then she knew. She closed her laptop. There’d been nothing earth shattering there, just something they could ponder over, later. Much later.
Leaning back she slid her hands up his arms and wrapped them around his neck.
“Maybe you should show me how good it was. Maybe my memories are faulty.”
The corner of Evan’s mouth quirked up. “Oh, we can’t have that, can we?”
He shifted beside her and held her close. Then he gently lowered his head.
“Do you remember this?” he asked as he dropped a kiss on her forehead. “Or how about this?�
�� And he kissed her temple. “Maybe this would help.” He slowly massaged the sore muscles on either side of her spine while dropping tiny kisses on her cheekbones, chin and nose.
She clasped a hand on either side of his head and tugged him down. “I might remember those, but I think the best memory…” And she gave him a sweet and smoky kiss.
He returned the kiss with a pent up passion that sizzled in it’s intensity. Then she found herself struggling to think at all. When he lifted his head it was all she could do to open her eyes and stare up at him.
“Is that what you remember?”
Somehow she was now stretched out on the bed, her shirt up above her bra and his hand cupping her breast. She did remember that. The complete loss of her surroundings. The awareness of him and only him. Not only what he was doing but where he also was taking her.
She sighed happily. “Oh yeah, I do remember this.”
When he lowered his head this time it was as if he were branding her. Making sure she’d never forget his touch again. She’d been teasing before but hadn’t made it clear that’s what she’d been doing. Maybe it had bothered him or maybe he just wanted to know she was in this a hundred percent like he was.
She wasn’t sure she was. She wanted to be…
Then thoughts fled as he took her nipple in his mouth and suckled. Shudders wracked down her spine and her back arched into his touch. She couldn’t hold back the little whimpers escaping his pulsing movement.
She had forgotten.
How was that possible?
How could anyone not remember…not crave this joy…this sensation of need and heat and hunger all at the same time? She’d had a good sex life with Peter. It had been caring and loving but had missed the heat and passion of being with Evan.
Evan was like having a piece of brandy filled dark chocolate. A smoothness that promised a great combination then the brandy hit raising the experience to a whole new level. It said – it was okay – just let go. Enjoy the experience. Enjoy the ride. Peter had been milk chocolate all the way. Everyday, common, average.