The images that flashed through Seth’s mind nearly brought him to his knees. Rick’s mouth. The way he jerked himself off while Seth thrust inside him. “You planning to get your bell rung sometime soon, Your Highness?”
Rick shrugged. “If I am?”
Anger filled Seth’s brain. He had no idea why or how it hit so fast and so hard. But the vision of Rick bent over a desk for someone else made his temperature spike, and not in a good way. “Then I will ring your fucking bell. Because, as you pointed out, you don’t have a problem with me when your pants are down.”
Rick whistled as he shook his head. “There’s nothing wrong with your ego.”
“Play hard to get if you want, but let’s not forget I’ve already been inside you. And that didn’t exactly take a lot of convincing.”
Silence screamed through the room. For a second, neither of them moved.
Rick finally shifted his weight. “I don’t remember you playing hard to get.”
Hell, he’d been all over him. Seth didn’t deny that. Didn’t deny that he wanted a second shot even though it meant career suicide. “I’m not saying I did. I wanted you. I took you.”
“So, under this protection-with-a-side-benefit-of-sex plan you’re going to get naked, we’ll have sex and somehow you’ll still hold on to your gun and keep me safe?”
Damn, that sounded pretty great. “My talents are endless.”
“Good to know.” Rick blew out a long breath before looking down at his desk again. “You’re dismissed.”
Seth watched as Rick shuffled a few folders around.
Asshole.
But something about the reaction had Seth’s temper cooling. The white-hot rage boiling inside him died down. It was as if Rick had issued a silent challenge and Seth was more than ready to engage. “You get to do that this one time because we have a meeting.”
Rick peeked up at Seth over the top of his glasses. “But?”
The shift in the room was subtle, but he knew he had Rick’s attention. Just as Seth wanted. “Try it again and you’ll see.”
Chapter 5
What were the chances? Rick tried to calculate them as he stepped into the secure conference room, but his brain kept misfiring. It had taken all of his control not to make a noise or show any outward sign of shock when he stepped out of his office bathroom to find his sexy stranger standing there.
Now he had a name, at least a fake one. The one the CIA or someone in SAD had picked for him. Seth Lang.
Rick knew that particular name all too well. Helena had handed over the bodyguard assignment without providing any details. Now Rick knew why. He and Seth shared a history, one Helena knew about but Seth actually didn’t because that’s how deep background worked sometimes. You didn’t always meet face-to-face or even trade names. But an assignment years ago had thrown them together. Now fate—or Helena—was working overtime to do it again.
Seth walked around the small table, passed behind Helena, then took the seat next to her. “Where is everyone else?”
A reasonable question. Rick looked around at the two other people willingly trapped in a room without windows or easy access to the outside world. The official term was a SCIF, a sensitive compartmented information facility. That amounted to a fancy way of saying all communications in and out of here were classified and encrypted, and tightly controlled.
The sooner they got out of there, the better, Rick thought as he sat across from Seth. Probably a mistake, but it wouldn’t be his first one as far as this guy was concerned. “We’re it for now.”
“Nathan, a member of Seth’s team, is on his way from London.” Helena leaned back in her chair and turned it slightly to face Rick. “I left his file on your desk along with Seth’s.”
“Mine?” Seth asked. “That would be interesting to read through.”
Helena didn’t even spare him a glance. “No.”
“Then at least tell me why a consul general is being assigned a SAD team. Being that I’m in charge of this particular team, it seems like information I should know.”
Helena did look at Seth then. “Two of your team are on temporary duty here, yes. Some of the usual rules will be suspended. In this case, you’ll report back to me. Directly to me and only to me.”
“About what?” Seth exhaled long and loud. “What the hell is going on?”
If the borderline insubordination impressed or worried Helena, she didn’t show it. “There are reasons to keep this circle tight.”
Generally a good rule, though people did abuse the whole “need to know” thing pretty often. So, Rick actually understood Seth’s frustration. There were reasons to keep the facts quiet. Good reasons. But to do his job, Seth needed to be in this loop.
“Enough, Helena.” Rick faced the man he’d been under just days before and tried to ignore the odd contrast between then and now. “The previous consul general died.”
“Suicide, I know. My file included that much. Plus, I can look things up on the internet like everyone else.”
Rick ignored the sarcasm and snap to Seth’s voice. In his position, Rick guessed he’d have the same reaction. “That’s unclear.”
Seth sat up straighter. “What is?”
“The true cause of death. There’s a concern that Ed Wright was murdered.”
Seth kept on staring. “Who has this concern?”
There was no need to dance around this point, so Rick didn’t try. “Me.”
“Rick has a contact,” Helena added.
“Really?” Seth leaned forward with his elbows on the table. “Do you have a contact, Rick? Please fill me in.”
The sarcasm kicked into overdrive and screeched across Rick’s nerves. Rather than get derailed, he stayed on topic. “It’s stated more specifically in the file in front of you, but I have reason to believe Ed was either involved in something or found out about something and it led to his death.”
“How about you provide some specifics, you know, in person?” There was no amusement or smartass tone now. Seth had morphed to all-business mode.
Just as Rick started to answer, Helena cut him off. “Your job is protection, not intel gathering.”
Actually Rick wasn’t ready to put that limit on Seth. Not while he still needed help sorting this all out. “You should also know that I found a gun in Ed’s private residence.”
“What?” Helena flipped through the file. “That’s not mentioned in here. I have a list of all of the property security found in their search and inventory.”
“It was hidden behind a bookshelf.” Rick exhaled. “The inventory missed it. I discovered it while checking the house out yesterday.”
“Foreign service officer, my ass.” Seth shook his head as he fell against the back of his chair.
“You’re right. Rick is one of us.” Helena waited until Rick nodded before proceeding. “Black ops CIA, embedded in the State Department but answerable to me.”
One secret out. Rick hoped it would stop there, but he doubted it. “Behind-the-scenes strategy is my expertise. I believe you’d call me a desk jockey.”
Seth scoffed. “Not buying it. You’ve been in the field.”
No way was Rick diving into that. They had enough to handle without dredging up a shared past Seth didn’t even know they had. “This is a temporary assignment. The people here believe I’m a fill-in who’s here to settle things and will likely be moving on. I was in the building ten minutes and started hearing whispered questions about why I was assigned here over the more experienced candidates. No one had heard of me or remembered working with me, which is kind of the point of what I do.”
“Which is fine because we want the people operating within the walls of this consulate, if there are any, to feel comfortable talking and continuing to do so,” Helena explained.
For a second Seth just sat there. Acted as if he was weighing his words. “Why murder? Maybe the guilt ate at him until he couldn’t live with it.”
But that got Rick back to the same poin
t—something illegal was happening in Munich and with the help of someone at the consulate. “Possibly.”
“What exactly do you think Ed was involved in?”
Helena shook her head. “We should—”
“Weapons.” The longer he sat there, the more convinced Rick became that he needed Seth on his side in this. He couldn’t be the only one in the building with an agenda other than simply running the consulate. They needed to investigate, ask questions, trace leads, and do it all without one whiff of a problem getting out. “We picked up chatter about an American foreign service officer who was willing to change records and make drops. I started digging—”
Some of the tightness left Seth’s face. Just for a flash. “You, as in you alone?”
“Again, I used my sources. Checked shipping routes. Manufactured excuses for people to count boxes on one end and then on the other, so I could take a look over time at what was missing and what had been added.” And that was only the tip of the clandestine op. “My sources asked questions. Took photos.”
“Look at you putting that Princeton education to work.”
Rick ignored that. If this conversation went on much longer his willingness to clamp down on his control might waver, but not yet. “I suspect legitimate vaccine deliveries are being used as cover for the delivery of weapons. Aid workers and organizations—government and private—believe they are transporting life-saving drugs, and they are. But in some instances, vaccines are being diverted and cargo is being tampered with so that weapons—really scary shit—are mixed in and moved.”
“Fuck me.”
There was a joke in there somewhere, but Rick skipped that, too. The subject was too important, too deadly. “Exactly.”
“I’m going to need to see everything you have.” Anger edged Seth’s tone. “No holding back.”
Helena sighed. “Remember that you’re the bodyguard in this scenario.”
Seth didn’t even try to hide his frustration. It thrummed off him. “That’s not my fucking job, and you know it.”
“Oh, really?”
“You brought me here because hunting weapons is exactly the type of work I do.”
Not wanting to get in the middle of this pissing match but needing Seth’s real expertise on this—not the bodyguard stuff—Rick agreed. He didn’t break eye contact with Seth. “You’ll see everything I have.”
Rick had already made that decision. There was no need to backtrack now. He’d also found the hidden gun and that required answers. Like it or not, he had a new partner on the ground. One who likely could outshoot him, outrun him and possibly out-strategize him.
Normally that sort of thing would make Rick twitchy. He’d worry about lone-wolf vigilante scenarios. But Seth wouldn’t jeopardize the operation to make a point. His history proved he’d do whatever it took, including sacrifice his own body, to get the job done and the innocent out of harm’s way.
“Well.” Helena made a humming noise. “That was an unexpected response. I anticipated more of a power struggle between you two. A testosterone battle of sorts.”
Seth let out a harsh laugh. “You’re not alone.”
“I trust Helena because we’ve known each other for years. I’ll learn to trust you because she said I can. But that’s about the extent of my goodwill right now. Now, this Nathan…” Rick refused to make any promises on that score. “We’ll see.”
“That’s good enough for now,” Seth said. “So, bottom line, you think personnel here at the consulate are in on this.”
Rick didn’t see any other answer. He’d taken the pieces apart and put them back together again and he always came to the same conclusion—someone in the consulate was dirty. They managed to hide the money they pocketed, but that luck would run out.
He decided to spell it out as simply as possible. “At this point I don’t know if Ed was a player in this game or someone who uncovered it and paid the price for being nosy. That means we go slow, take every minute of Ed’s time here apart, investigate everyone even as I act as if I’m here for museum openings and passport renewals.”
A smile slowly spread across Seth’s mouth. “I’m in. Except for that last part. The boredom would kill me.”
That view of his job responsibilities fit with everything else Rick knew about the man. “Did you have a choice in whether or not you stayed on?”
“He likes to pretend he does,” Helena said.
Something about the air in the room changed, the atmosphere became charged. Seth’s staring took on a new edge. The anger and frustration faded.
Rick got hit with a very different emotion across the table. One that had nothing to do with the job. “This should be interesting.”
Seth didn’t look away. “It’s been pretty thrilling so far.”
—
A half hour later Seth left the meeting to check the layout of the offices and security. Rick watched him walk down the hallway more for private reasons than job-related ones, then stepped back into the room.
He didn’t wait to launch into the topic that had been bugging him ever since he saw Seth’s face today and realized what Helena had done. “Why him? You could have picked anyone to act as my bodyguard, although I now know why you didn’t tell me who it was until he walked in the door.”
She didn’t pretend confusion as she got up and pushed her chair in. “He’s the best.”
“Come on.” They’d known each other since Princeton. Hell, she was the reason Rick considered a job in the CIA to begin with, so she could come up with a better response.
“He doesn’t know you two share a past.”
Obviously. “But I do.”
That knowledge would slowly eat away at him. He’d been batting back guilt about Seth for what felt like forever, a man he’d never even met until that club in Berlin. If he’d known that was him back then, with how their lives had already intersected, he would have…hell, he didn’t know what he would have done. He saw Seth and the need gripped him. He hadn’t known how badly he needed to get laid until it happened.
“You need to hear me this time.” Helena marched around the table and met Rick near the door. “You have to move on. Let it go.”
He could hear the concern in her voice. She wasn’t handing down an order, she was talking friend to friend. He appreciated it, but he didn’t deserve to be forgiven or whatever she was suggesting. He’d made the call and designed the strategy that ended with Seth nearly getting killed almost two years ago.
“People died that day.” Three people. Rick knew their names and the names of their family members. Sometimes he’d repeat them before he fell asleep just to ensure he didn’t forget, though he had no idea how he could. He’d read and reread the operation files. Etched images of their faces in his brain.
She frowned at him. “I’m aware of the mission, how it turned out and what happened to Seth before you got him out.”
“Yet, you matched us up on a new job together. What were you thinking?” Anger flashed through Rick. She’d made this decision knowing that it could blow up. It was dangerous but he feared it might also be stupid.
“Listen to me.” She put a hand on his arm. “Seth is the man for this mission. He’s coming off a big operation.”
“Pentasus.” Rick knew about the mission but not the agents involved in it. He was one of the few who knew even that much. He’d worked the connections between the family that ran Pentasus and the people who paid them for their killing crusade. All behind the scenes, of course, but still he knew the danger the SAD team walked into on that mission and how close they came to not walking out.
“My decision has nothing to do with Seth being nearby and available to come to Munich. He’s downplaying his part in the actual Pentasus takedown. He ran it. He dealt with German intelligence and his team and a bunch of unknown factors, all with limited personnel and resources. He kept everyone focused and on track.” Helena’s hand dropped from Rick’s arm. “Despite the odds against him, he didn’t make any mistake
s.”
The words sliced through Rick. Seth didn’t make a mistake, but Rick had. “No wonder he thought this assignment was beneath his skill level.”
“He can be difficult, but you like difficult.” Amusement moved into Helena’s voice. “Most of all, he’ll make sure you don’t take unnecessary risks. He won’t let you get hurt and that matters to me. You matter to me.”
They’d been friends for more than a decade. Him, the undergrad with an aptitude for languages. Her a grad student, or so he thought at the time. She turned out to be an undercover recruiter.
She’d been persuasive. Gave moving speeches about country and commitment. She also knew about his background and how he grew up. She could have played to his need for stability, but she never lied to him about that part. She’d made it clear he was walking into fire.
From the first, they’d been honest with each other. He told her he was gay. She assured him it wouldn’t threaten his job, and she’d kept that promise.
Which was why this assignment felt off. She had another motive here. Maybe she wanted him to get credit for uncovering the murder as some way of redeeming himself. Maybe she trusted Seth that much. But Rick sensed there was another factor at work, and he would ferret that out along with everything else during his stay in Germany.
But, for now, being thrown together with Seth appeared inevitable. Any other time he might talk with her about his great time at the club. He and Helena traded stories now and then. But they wouldn’t be talking about that night.
His shoulders relaxed and he shifted topics. “How’s Max?”
Max Brighton, the man who ran SAD’s most impressive team. He was also second in command of the entire operation and Seth’s immediate boss. He purposely faded into the background, letting someone else attend the hearings and be the official face of SAD because that wasn’t his style.
Max wore khakis and a permanent frown. In his mid-forties, his hair had started to gray but he kept his body in peak physical condition. He could step into the field without trouble, though he preferred to guide from a distance. Rick knew because he’d briefed Max more than once.
Guarding Mr. Fine (Tough Love #2) Page 4