“I’m Alison Berry,” the slender blonde said, crawling on her knees to look under the bed.
“I’m Eve Canallis,” the taller redhead replied, rubbing her wrists, which were red and raw. She’d obviously tried to pull the ties off. “Please tell me that’s backup.” Eve flinched as another round of gunfire went off above them.
“Hopefully it is. If it isn’t, they are most definitely on their way. I’m going to need you to move. Check the drawers over there,” Amy instructed.
“There are slats supporting the bed,” Alison said. “A couple of them are loose, if we could just lift the mattress.”
Sonya stepped in to help as Amy checked the bathroom. There was a hairdryer on the sink. One of them could swing it, or they could use the cable to tie someone up. They were pathetic weapons choices, household appliances and pieces of wood, but they’d serve a purpose. Plus, looking for them was keeping the women busy and calming them down. Two of the women, she corrected herself as she stepped out of the bathroom. Eve still hadn’t moved, her eyes trained on the ceiling as if the bullets might actually come through the floor.
“Eve, drawers,” Amy said firmly. Panic and urgency were two different things, and all the women needed to show the latter. The gunfire was getting louder, sounding as if it had hit their hallway. “Stay away from the door,” she instructed. The last thing the op needed was a stray bullet taking one of the women out.
“Ames,” Cabe shouted from the hallway. It was faint, but she could hear him.
Thank God.
She raced to the door she’d just told the women to avoid and hammered on it. “Over here!”
“Ames?” His voice was getting louder, as were his footsteps on the wood floor of the corridor.
She pounded her palm against the door, ignoring the sting and pain that flashed along her forearm. “In here, but it’s locked.”
The handle turned as if being rattled on the outside. “Get everybody out of the way. Get back against the wall.”
Amy pushed the three women into the bathroom. They stumbled and tripped over one another, but she had no time to be concerned. “Clear!” she yelled.
The frame of the door began to splinter, as did the area around the lock. The women behind her screamed, holding on to one another. Suddenly, the door burst open, obviously by Cabe having thrown himself at it. He tore into the room, weapon raised. She tried to imagine how the women must feel. What little she could see of Cabe’s face was fierce, his all-black outfit intimidating, and his raised weapon terrifying.
He passed straight by her, and she noticed Six, a flash of blond hair from beneath his uniform giving him away, standing guard.
“Clear!” he shouted as he returned to stand in front of her. Swiftly, he bent and pulled a weapon from his thigh and thrust it into her hands. “Let’s take the women up the stairs at the end of the hallway and—” He pressed his hand to his ear, the one with his earpiece. “Got it, Mac. We aren’t clear over here. Leave Harley and Lite and make your way back over here.” He paused again. “On it.… Sorry,” he said, returning his attention to her. “We’re going to take the stairs at the end of the hall, Jackson has the salon secure. Six’ll give us cover, I’ve got your back.” He pressed his fingertips to her cheek for a millisecond and then yelled for her to go.
“Quick,” she shouted to Eve, Alison, and Sonya, who was now in tears. “We need to go.” She ushered them out of the room and waved them in the direction of the stairs. She briefly wished she could take a moment to thank Cabe, to kiss him, to tell him what he meant to her. But they both had jobs to do, and he needed her to do her thing so he could do his, though her cheek still burned with his touch.
The women ahead of her scrambled up the stairs. Alison tripped at the top, but Eve helped her to her feet.
Woods was seated up against a wall, hands tied behind his back, as were all the men. His eyes were red and his pants were strained. She’d put money on him being the first to flip. Sokolov yelled at one of the other men in Russian, who yelled back.
She encouraged the women to move to the other side of the salon, behind the safety of a low dividing wall. All three of them sat down on a two-seater sofa, clinging to one another for what she imagined was a mix of safety and comfort. “We’ll take your stories down once we get off the boat,” she told them. “I’m not sure what the strategy is yet, whether you’ll be airlifted off or whether the Coast Guard will come out and sail the ship back into the harbor.”
Sonya reached for her hand, squeezing it hard. “Thank you.” She jumped as they heard gunfire again, this time from beneath them.
Icy cold fear trickled down her spine. Six was still down there, and the idea that Cabe’s men could still get hurt froze her to the bone. “You’re welcome.”
Once she was certain the women were at least comfortable if not calm, she headed over to Cabe, who had switched with Jackson to guard the targets. Sokolov looked in her direction and sneered, but she held his gaze.
Yeah, asshole, regardless of what comes next, you’re going away.
He muttered something in Russian.
She leaned over to Cabe. “I wish we knew what they were saying,” she muttered.
“You don’t want to know, Ames,” Cabe whispered, never taking his eyes, or his weapon, off the men. “But if he keeps it up, my finger might just slip on this trigger.”
Despite the fear and worry for Cabe and Six below, Amy raised an eyebrow. “Don’t do anything stupid,” she said, although the words held no heat. She knew he wouldn’t do anything that wasn’t aboveboard. “Words don’t hurt, Cabe. You know that.”
He looked her way for a millisecond, then returned his focus to the targets. “I know. Doesn’t mean I can’t imagine taking the bastard down though, right?”
Footsteps came from outside and she swung around, her weapon aimed at the doors out onto the deck. Mac pushed the doors open, and she let go of a deep breath she’d been holding. He ignored her and Cabe, running straight down the stairs as she assumed Cabe had told him to.
Goddamn, what where they up to? Why hadn’t they locked it down yet?
“Steady, Agent Murray,” Cabe murmured. “They’ve got this.”
He looked so indifferent, so casual, yet she didn’t doubt his focus for a second. He was made for this.
Was she?
She’d gone into this for her mother. To somehow give back, to feel useful, to move on. And she loved her work with the FBI. But was undercover work what she was meant to do with the rest of her life? She watched as Jackson, Six, and Mac brought the remaining men to the main floor. What would it mean for her relationship with Cabe? Huge periods out of contact. Could she do it? Or would it be better to go back to general fieldwork? At least with fieldwork she had contact with the victims, people she could identify with, had empathy with. Like the women on the sofa.
The thought remained with her as they waited for the Coast Guard, as she watched the suspects moved from the other boat to theirs. It didn’t leave her as she saw the casual slap on the back and squeeze of the shoulder between the men on Cabe’s team. They were meant to do this. She could tell that. They’d never panicked. And she’d place money on it that their hands had never shaken.
When Cabe climbed into the Coast Guard helicopter right after her, ditching his military equipment to pull her in his arms, she knew she’d need to talk to him about it at some point. But tonight was not the night.
“Shit, Ames. When the car went north instead of south, I—”
She pressed her lips to his, cutting him off, stopping the overwhelming display of emotion that had him on edge.
“I knew you’d come,” she whispered fiercely. “It’s what got me through. I knew you’d find me.”
“A thousand times over,” he replied, studying her eyes for just a moment. “I’d come for you wherever you were. The ends of the earth if I had to.”
“I love you,” she replied.
He had her back as much as she had his. “I love y
ou too.”
And he didn’t let her go until they were home. In his apartment. In his bed.
Where she knew she belonged.
EPILOGUE
Cabe looked out through the double doors of the Windsor suite of the Hotel del Coronado and took a breath. The water soothed the deepest parts of him, as the desert soothed Amy. In the weeks since the raid on the boat, they’d gotten to Vegas, Amy to spend time with her dad and Uncle Clive, him to celebrate Six’s last days of freedom. It had been more symbolic than a riotous bachelor party. There’d been no strippers or painful hangovers. Just some gambling and relaxing by the pool, where they’d sat shooting shit, just like the day they’d all met in kindergarten.
He wondered what Brock would have made of the three of them. Of where they’d ended up. There would be an empty seat at the long table behind him, just for Brock.
The palms swayed, the waves crashed, the sun shone. It couldn’t have been any more perfect had a rainbow split the garden in half.
Every single person he loved was in the room behind him—except Six and Lou, who were taking their own sweet time driving the classic open-top convertible to the venue. Cabe’s guess was they were driving all the way down Coronado and back.
Hands slipped around his waist, hands that were now familiar and as necessary as the call of the ocean. “You okay?” she asked.
Cabe turned and pulled her close. “Did I tell you how beautiful you look today?” He ran his finger along her shoulder, the strapless black dress that fitted her like a second skin leaving them bare.
“Maybe once or twice,” she replied.
He kissed her lips. “Ow,” he said as his mom slapped him on the arm.
“Behave,” she whispered.
His mom always treated formal events with a reverence they really didn’t require. It wasn’t like they were in church. Six and Lou’s wedding had been a small civil one, with just Six, Lou, and a handful of witnesses, where he’d proudly stood as Six’s best man. But the reception was bigger. Delaney had her arm around Mac’s bicep, leaning her head on his shoulder while Mac spoke to his parents. Six’s parents were chatting with Louisa’s mother, while Six’s sister was instructing her boyfriend to help her move the favors table. Cabe’s mom had just finished fussing over the wedding cake she’d made, while his dad and brother were shooting shit over sports stats. And the guys from Eagle who were in town and off duty sat looking uncomfortable in their suits, while a few of Lou’s friends talked in the corner.
The cake was way too big for their party of twenty-six, and included three layers of cake done in all their favorite flavors.
Six walked up the steps toward them, leading his new bride by the hand. His smile was nearly as bright as the glint of his wedding ring. As always, Louisa’s head was down, and she gripped his hand as though her life depended on it. Cabe knew he’d brought her in through the parking lot and grounds so she didn’t have to deal with all the people milling about the hotel. A new bride was a beautiful thing, and it was only natural for people to want to stop and wish the couple well, something that would make Lou desperately uncomfortable.
“Don’t tell me, Lou,” Cabe said. “He got lost, right?”
Lou laughed, her shoulders shaking. She glanced up at him briefly. “I told him to keep going,” she answered honestly.
Six chuckled. “I told her I wasn’t missing your mom’s cake.”
Everybody cheered as they stepped inside.
The photographer Cabe had picked snapped a photograph of the two of them. She’d been totally behind Amy’s idea of no formal pictures, and Cabe had talked to her at great length about Lou’s shyness. They’d come to an agreement that an almost invisible candid photography approach would be best. “You need to see this,” she said.
She fiddled with her camera for a moment and then showed him a photograph that almost made him choke. At the moment the clerk had said Six could kiss his bride, Lou had put her arms around Six’s neck and looked up at him, the long hair she usually hid behind had all fallen away from her face, leaving a beautifully unobstructed image of the two of them staring into each other’s eyes with so much love and passion that he couldn’t help but sigh.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Amy said.
“It is.”
He took Amy’s hand and led them to their seats at the long table. White and Tiffany blue paper lanterns were clustered above them. Mac had found them after scouring the internet for days. Bizarrely, the tall vases of white flowers with Tiffany-blue ribbons had been his idea. Between the three of them, they’d cobbled together a half-decent party.
He smiled as he watched Lou change the place settings, moving her and Six from the middle of the table to the end nearest the view of the water. And as usual, Six watched and let her do whatever she needed to. It was only right.
Which was exactly why Amy would be taking on another difficult case starting Monday and he wasn’t going to lose his shit over it.
Well, he was. Maybe a little bit when he saw her back in those ugly suits with a sidearm strapped to her shoulder.
But he wasn’t going to tell her.
Because she was better than good.
And she needed to leave the house every day knowing he fully believed she’d come back to him. At least during this next assignment she wasn’t undercover, something Amy had decided on her own.
Ivan Popov had taken a plea deal. In return for information on Lemtov and Sokolov, he faced lesser charges for the theft of the chemical weapon Louisa had developed and his role in her abduction. It had been an outstanding debt at Lucky Seven and his inability to pay it off that set all the wheels in motion.
Between pressure from the Assistant District Attorney and Woods’s fear of life in prison, he’d confirmed nine missing women had been trafficked the exact same way they had planned to traffic Amy, Sonya, Alison, and Eve. The women had been picked for their looks and hospitality training because, as Woods had confessed, American women sold for a premium. While their actions had broken up the trafficking ring, their leads on the locations of the still-missing women were running dry. And Cabe knew just how hard it was for Amy to accept that they might never find them. Which was why Eagle Securities still had resources, at their own cost, looking for them. Harley and Lite were trying to find their trails, but there were days when it seemed unlikely they were ever going to find them. He shook his head, parking the grim thought for another day. Today was for celebrating and he was determined to focus on that.
“You want this, Ames?” he asked quietly. “Wedding, marriage, kids?”
He’d never asked, and suddenly it became imperative that he knew where she stood.
Amy smiled at him and placed her hand around the back of his neck, squeezing and massaging it just how he liked. “Yes. I do. I want to get married on a beach in the middle of nowhere with my toes in the hot sand. And I want to go back there for my ten-year wedding anniversary with two kids in tow and let them build sandcastles in the place I said my vows.”
Her words soothed yet surprised him. “I would have thought you’d want to get married in Vegas.”
She shook her head. “There’s a reason Nevada’s divorce rate exceeds the national average. Plus, it would be a circus. I don’t have the challenges that Lou has, but I want it just to be about me and my husband and the start of our own adventure.”
Just when he thought he couldn’t love her any more, she’d encapsulated his own thoughts exactly. He didn’t want to recreate the wedding he and Jess had planned to have, and if he was honest, it had always been more about what Jess had wanted. But now … he wanted the vision Amy had just laid out. The two of them on sand that was almost as white as Amy’s hair, and the blue coming from the ocean, not paper lanterns or clothes.
He pressed his lips chastely to hers. “Let’s do it,” he murmured.
“Do what?”
“Go get married on a beach. Or at least let’s take a trip and find the beach we want it to happen on. We can spend ho
wever long we need or want scouring the planet for the perfect place. I just want to go, with you … anywhere.”
Amy sighed. “That sounds perfect, but without being the party pooper, we have jobs. I have a new case starting on Monday, and you’re off to South America, right?”
Cabe pressed his forehead to hers. “Fuck. Being a grown-up sucks.”
She cupped his cheek. “It does … but you know that conversation we’ve been putting off about where to spend Christmas?”
“The one I’m going to win?” he said with a wink.
“What if we didn’t go to Vegas or stay here for Christmas? What if we went and found our first beach?”
He could see it. The two of them. Her in a red bikini sipping champagne on Christmas morning, away from the chaos of their jobs and busy lives. A time to get to know each other. That would be the best Christmas present of all. It was less than a month away, but they could pull it off. “You sure you want to do that, Ames? I don’t want Uncle Clive buying a new shovel so he can dig a hole to bury me in.”
Amy laughed. “Uncle Clive wouldn’t dig a hole. He’d pay someone to do it.”
Cabe kissed her softly. “Semantics, Ames.”
“Can we do it?” she asked.
He looked up briefly and saw his mom smile at him. He knew his parents would be cool, that they’d understand his need to disappear, to travel. Then he looked back at Amy, those eyes of hers the very color of the oceans he was thinking about. “Let’s look tonight at where we could go.”
Amy shimmied in her chair, a little victory dance of excitement. “Yes. Costa Rica? Tahiti?”
He shook his head. He didn’t give a shit where they went as long as it was together, but for kicks he responded. “Thailand? Seychelles?”
Deep Cover--A Love Over Duty Novel Page 28