“Sorry, what?” he said, attempting to clear Delaney’s naked body and her cries as she clamored for release from his thoughts. Shit. He’d never had an issue with focus before.
“They could save funds by having outbound and inbound ships hand off security teams before they enter the hot zone here.” Cabe pointed to the arc they’d drawn around the African coast. It was one of their cost-saving ideas. If security was only needed once they entered the zone where all the piracy incidents had taken place, why waste money having them sit on every ship from the South American coast out to the hot spot?
“Agreed,” he said, forcing himself back into the game. “Cost overrun for security traded off against insurance premiums is a huge deal for them. And we’re still waiting for a list of their policies of what they will and won’t ship across borders.”
Shipping. It made him think about the extent of the weapons trade that Delaney had filled them in on. He’d known it existed and that it was lucrative, and he’d even found himself staring down the barrel of one of those illegally moved weapons a time or two, but he’d been unaware of just how many Western governments were complicit in the trade when it suited them.
“Mac!”
He looked up again and found Cabe looking at him. “What?”
“I asked when we can expect to see it.”
“See what?”
“The shipping list,” Cabe huffed. “You know what? Take a break everyone.”
Sherlock slapped Mac on the back as he went over to the coffeepot.
“Mac, a word.” Cabe marched toward the medical bay at the back of Eagle Securities’ large training center. Mac followed him inside, and Cabe slammed the door shut.
“What’s up, bro?” he said. “Where the hell are you today?”
Mac rubbed his hands on either side of his face. “I know. I’m sorry. I don’t know what’s going on with my head right now.”
“Or who?” Cabe added and sat down on the side of one of the beds that doubled as a dorm and infirmary. “This is like Six and Lou all over again.”
Mac shook his head and sat down on the bed opposite. “It’s not. Delaney isn’t our client.”
“Like hell she isn’t.” Cabe leaned forward, rested his elbows on his knees. “We’re putting a lot of resources into someone who isn’t our client.”
“It’s Delaney.” Mac jumped to his feet. “We owe it to Brock to protect her.”
“I know we do,” Cabe said. “Just sit back down and let me finish.”
Mac did, though not because Cabe was in any position of power over him or could take him in a fight. He sat because he just wanted the whole conversation over and Cabe wouldn’t relent until he had said everything he needed to say. Compliance was the quickest route to getting back out there, finishing their strategy session, and then getting home to finish his own conversation with Delaney.
“I know shit between you, and her, and Brock is…”
“A fucking mess?” Mac offered, filling in what his friend was too thoughtful to say.
“Yeah. That,” Cabe said with a sad smile. “She’s back, she’s in trouble, and I know you. I know you see this as some holy path of redemption or some shit, and I’m not asking you to not help her.”
Mac let out a deep sigh. “So what are you saying?”
“Why don’t you take some time out? Figure out how real and permanent this threat is. Aitken gave us his approval this morning, so anything we do is aboveboard. And if you need Eagle’s help to fix it beyond the intel we’re already doing, let us know because we’ll be there for you in a heartbeat.… Well, at least as quickly as we can get from wherever we are to wherever you need us to be. Anyone who is beached can help when they aren’t planning for their next engagement. But you … I think you should check out of here for a little while.”
Mac looked down at his boots. He’d always been the one to give the orders. The de facto leader, just because he’d ranked higher than the other two, thanks to that military-ingrained respect of authority. But Cabe’s tone suggested he wasn’t asking Mac to take time out. He was telling him.
“Now’s a shit time for me to do that,” he said, looking his old friend in the eye. “With Six away, and two big jobs coming up…”
Cabe shrugged. “I’ve got big shoulders. And it’s not like you aren’t around if any of the jobs go to shit. Plus, if it makes you feel better, you can deal with all the admin around this place. Hire us an office manager so I don’t have to go to Staples every time someone needs a goddamn pen.”
“I’m going to be there for all comms with Six. He needs to see me, to hear from me. I don’t want him to know what’s going on back here. He’ll only worry, and it sounds like the job is enough of a handful as it is. Heck, we might need to send more people out.”
“Which is why you can also add resume screening and interviewing to your to-do list if it helps you sleep at night. Look, why don’t you and Delaney set up office here?” he said, pointing in the direction of one of the conference rooms. That way, you can help her and get some shit done here.”
Mac shook his head. “My head is split. I’m half here working on this but thinking of her. When I’m helping Delaney, I’m thinking about here. What if I can’t get my head in the game for Delaney?”
Cabe stood and slapped him on the shoulder. “That I can’t answer for you. But I think you owe it to Delaney, and Brock, to try.”
A couple of hours later, after finalizing the handoff as lead of the shipping company portfolio to Sherlock, positioning it as helping Delaney, and reminding the rest of the men that this was not for discussion with the guys in Syria, Mac headed into his office.
He sat down in his chair and folded his arms across his chest. Never had he felt so torn about his responsibilities. It sucked that Six, who had gone through this with Louisa, was away. He was the one person who might have understood what he was thinking.
But now he had to commit. Sherlock was leading up the team in South America, and he’d do a kick-ass job of it. The guy was a natural in the field, and the rest of the team going with him respected him. He needed to get his brain in gear now and focus on what was happening with Delaney.
Which reminded him … Quickly he flipped open his laptop and looked through their client folders.
Louisa North
He opened Louisa’s files. They’d amassed significant information about Lemtov and his associates during their intel collection, and what might have seemed trivial or irrelevant back then might mean more now in light of the information Delaney had provided.
It was time to go back to doing what he did best: collecting intel for the mission he’d been given, securing his target, and building a plan.
A fucking watertight plan.
Because his ability to return to his duties at Eagle depended on knowing that Delaney was safe. It was impossible to separate the need he had to do both.
His duty and his love, two sides of the same coin.
* * *
What would a fourteen-year-old girl need that she could throw together in under four minutes?
Delaney’s heart raced from the call she’d just taken. She needed to help, even though it landed her smack-dab on the line between right and wrong.
Delaney ran around the apartment, a CVS bag in one hand, picking up things that might be useful. One of her old hoodies, a change of underwear, an unopened bar of soap. Towels? She threw a couple in anyway and made a mental note to give Mac some money for them. Frantically, she ran into the kitchen and threw snack bars, water, and the contents of Mac’s pristinely stacked fruit bowl into a second bag from the drawer.
Yes, she’d promised Mac that she would stay home all day, safe in the ivory tower of his apartment, to enable all of his team to carry on with their day jobs without having to worry about protecting her. And she knew he’d found it hard to leave that morning, even though he’d not said a word. His jaw twitched as he grabbed his keys and walked to the door. She knew he wanted to stay with her,
to help her, to talk about things that were best left alone, but she was relieved that he’d gone. She didn’t usually crave time to think, but today she’d needed some space. Not least because when he was around her, she couldn’t stop thinking about how he’d looked, every perfect naked inch of him, standing before her.
So when he’d pleaded with her to stay inside, to stay in a building with security cameras on every floor, a security guard and doorman, and a triple-thickness metal door that apparently even an antitank missile couldn’t get through (which she hadn’t totally believed), she’d agreed because she was grateful to be left alone and felt she owed him something after the way she’d behaved.
Until the call.
It had come from an unlisted number with a hint of information that she couldn’t resist and a story so horrific that she knew she needed to act. Not just to save her story, but to see if she couldn’t convince her contact to leave his sister in her care.
Now, as she jammed the elevator button with her finger over and over, she prayed that Mac wouldn’t be in it. That he hadn’t popped back to check on her. Because she knew he wouldn’t let her go.
She’d have no choice then but to face him. Before the call, sex had been on her mind all day. The kind of sex she apparently could have only with Mac. The kind of sex that came with orgasms, and connection, and a feeling of … damn. She couldn’t bring herself to say “love.” It was too … gah. Nor did she want to consider how he’d gotten so freaking skilled in the bedroom department.
Years of practice.
Apparently, she didn’t want to think about a lot of things.
All she wanted to focus on now was saving at least one life. To help her escape with her brother from the life he’d dragged her into. The information her informant had promised her was just gravy. Proof of a new weapon, he’d said. Could she meet him at the Amtrak station? If she didn’t get there in time, he was boarding the train.
The elevator opened, thankfully empty, and she stepped inside. Her contact had said he only had a half hour before he and his sister had to go. “Go” as in disappear into the ether if they wanted to stand a chance of staying alive. She’d used him before, a guy with limited funds, a sly tongue, and a Russian surname who’d finagled his way into useful service as a runner for the mob. He was the guy who faded into the background. The person people forgot was in the room. The kind of guy who knew how to be helpful to the right people. Until one of those people had started to make lewd suggestions about the guy’s sister, how young girls had the tightest … God, Delaney shuddered at the thought.
That was the reason behind his helping Delaney the first time he’d contacted her. She’d known it was a small spiteful act to cause problems for the man who’d been too interested in the anatomy of a young girl. But this time was different. She could hear it in his voice, in his inflection. He’d called her in a panic, saying the guy had moved on his sister and they were fleeing town in the clothes they were wearing. The least she could do was give them some supplies for the journey.
Delaney hurried out of the apartment out to the street and flagged a cab. It wasn’t a long walk to the station, but it would take more minutes than she had. Quickly, she jumped inside. “Santa Fe station,” she said. “As fast as you can, please.”
“Late for your train?” the driver asked, thankfully stepping on the gas.
“Something like that,” she replied, looking down at the time on her phone. Three p.m. Too early for rush hour, but the city was never clear of traffic. Relief hit her when she spotted the large hotel at Sixth and Broadway. It meant she was halfway there. Weaving in and out of traffic, beating lights—perhaps a little too closely to truly be legal—her driver sheared the ten-minute trip she’d been expecting down to eight. When she saw the large white Spanish Colonial–style architecture of the train station, her heart skipped a beat.
Now she needed to stay calm. Be cool.
She threw the driver a twenty, told him to keep the change, then got out and hurried across the street as best she could. Everybody had to pass through the white building to get to the tracks.
Tucked into one of the archways, exactly where he’d said he’d be, was her contact, Grigory. He’d asked her to call him Greg.
“What happened?” she asked.
His sister stepped out from his shadow. Her face was bruised and there was a bloody cut by her lip.
“Dear God, Greg. What did they do?”
The tall, lanky man dropped his head. “What they said they’d do.”
“You need to take her to the ER. You need—”
“No.” Greg put his hand on hers. “Don’t make me tell you what I had to do to rescue her. We are both dead if they find us. We must go. Here. Take this.” He shoved an envelope into her hand.
“What is it?” Delaney asked.
“It’s a weapon. A chemical weapon. It is what they are about to start shipping. I stole it from the man who did this.” He glanced back at his sister who was gray and in shock.
“Let me run to the drugstore,” she said. “Here. Take this. It was all I could grab.”
Greg shook his head. “Our train leaves in”—he looked down at his phone—“eleven minutes.”
“I’ll be quick,” she said. “But if for some reason I’m not, be safe, Greg.”
Delaney ran as fast as her ankle would carry her to the drugstore a block over. She grabbed a basket and began throwing things in: antiseptic cream, Band-Aids, painkillers, toothbrushes, toothpaste. Even a pregnancy test kit, a box of tampons, and some pads. Quickly, she scanned them through self-checkout, paid, and ran back to the train station.
When she arrived at the arch, Greg was no longer there. Neither was his sister. Maybe she’d been longer than she thought. She hurried into the tiled atrium and raced through the building to the outdoor platforms, then found them in line waiting for the station employee to allow them to cross the tracks for the train.
“Here,” she said, handing the bag to Greg’s sister just as the guard removed the chain and allowed them to go.
“Thank you,” Greg said as they passed her. “Take care of that.” He tipped his chin in the direction of the envelope.
What had happened to her of late was an anomaly, not the kind of thing that normally happened to a woman who had grown up in Encinitas. But for Greg, this kind of hustle for survival had been his whole life. And now, because of his actions, his sister’s life would be the same way. She deliberately didn’t look where the train was headed. She didn’t want to know. It was safer for everyone that way. But she hoped somewhere along the line Greg would find some help for his sister. She was too young—too fragile—to go through what she’d gone through and then have to deal with it on her own.
She looked down at the large white envelope Greg had handed her but decided the best thing to do would be to get back to the apartment, back to safety, and then read it. As the train pulled away with Greg and his sister safely on it, she headed back through the atrium, favoring her ankle. It had been a little over three weeks since she’d been taken, and her ankle had been showing progress, but now she was certain she’d busted it again. She bent down to press either side of her Achilles to see if she could massage some blood into the damn thing to get some range of motion back.
Loud voices shouting things she couldn’t quite catch hurried through the station, followed by a woman cursing in Spanish.
From her crouched position, she saw two pairs of feet hurry by. A chill crept along her spine, what her mother used to describe as someone walking over her grave.
Slowly, she stood but kept low enough to be concealed by the people sitting around her. A group of women stood by the door complaining to what looked like a station employee. They were pointing in the direction the feet had sped, and she looked toward the tracks.
It was him. The man who had tried to break into her apartment. There was another man with him that she didn’t recognize. They ran outside to the track side of the station at a pace that mat
ched the pounding of her heart. While a part of her wanted to sit tight and stay exactly where she was, she also knew that when they didn’t find Greg on the platform, they would search the station to make sure he wasn’t there. And in doing so, they’d find her.
A group of young women passed by, obviously having just disembarked one of the many trains, and she quickly jumped up and joined them, crouching low so as not to draw attention to herself. She followed them outside the station and then looked around for a cab or a place to hide. Plaza station was right across the street. She could run in there and grab a trolley. It didn’t matter where it was headed—just away from the train station. As she ran across the road, a cab appeared, heading north on Kettner. Frantically, she jumped up and down in the middle of the street. She didn’t care if she looked idiotic. She just wanted the cabbie to see her and stop.
As the reassuring indicator begin to flash that the driver was pulling over, the two men ran out scanning up and down the street, and the man she’d been trying to avoid suddenly looked straight at her.
The taxi was pulling to a stop, but the man was already running across the road. A car coming in the opposite direction screeched to a halt as he recklessly ran straight toward her.
Finally, the taxi stopped, and she sprinted to the door, yanking it open. She dove into the cab and shouted at the driver, “Just go, please. Now. Head north while I find an address.”
As she spun in the seat, she could see the man running up the street toward the cab. He was within reach of the trunk as the taxi pulled out onto the road. A wave of nausea hit her. Not now, Delaney. Not now. Thankfully, the road ahead was clear. “Get onto Pacific as soon as you can,” she told him. There were fewer cross streets there, fewer reasons to stop.
She knew Mac was going to be pissed, but she pulled out her phone and dialed him. Come on. Come on! The phone rang four times before he picked up.
“Hey, Buttons, what’s up?”
“Where are you?” she said, her voice rough with tears that threatened to spill.
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