by Becky McGraw
“Hell no!” Slade shouted, pulling her across his chest, knowing that was a mistake when her rough puckered nipples raked his chest and his cock hardened more. She laid her head there and he stroked her hair. “I’m not going to fire you. We’ll just have other cases to work on.”
“I didn’t do much work on this one. I just got in the way, and caused trouble mostly.”
“You kicked ass today, and I’m proud of you. If we hadn’t caught those guys in the woods, we wouldn’t have the answers we need,” he said, and it was the honest truth.
She giggled and it vibrated in his chest. “I did kick ass didn’t I? If I’d have had a pistol, I’d have killed them.”
“And you’d be in jail because you’d have had to talk to the police, and they’d realize you are the woman Homeland Security has been looking for. We wouldn’t have the answers that will end this case tomorrow if that had happened. You did exactly the right thing out there, so stop second guessing yourself and replaying it.”
“Thank you for helping to clear me,” she murmured, then kissed his chest. “Slade?”
“Yeah?” he replied, hoping the slur he heard in her voice was sleepiness.
“I’m glad you’re not firing me and that we’re doing the EMDR therapy together on Tuesday. I think you’re right and I do need it.”
Slade’s body tensed, as worry shot through him. “Is that what happened out there in the woods today? You had an event?”
“I thought it was a panic attack at first, but I’ve never had one before. I think it was something else. It happened after everything was over.” His arms wrapped around her and he hugged her.
“Tell the therapist about it on Tuesday and ask her opinion. I’m glad we’re doing it together too.” Slade hadn’t been on board with the idea at first, but he was now. Because he needed to make sure she got over this shit. He was not about to let her go through what he’d been through for five years.
“Sleep deprivation is a trigger, so relax and let’s get some sleep.” Taylor moved off of him to snuggle into his side. Slade pulled her into his side and it felt so damned good, so right he was asleep within thirty seconds.
What felt like thirty seconds later banging started at the outer door of his apartment, and Slade scrambled out of bed to drag on his jeans and stagger to the door. He opened it and Dexter stood there looking white.
“Foreign accounts, time difference, transferred early,” Dex said, in between gasping breaths, and Slade’s blood ran cold. He looked at the clock on the wall and saw it was six forty-five. The money wasn’t supposed to transfer for another two hours and fifteen minutes.
“The money transferred already?” Slade asked, his voice rusty with sleep as he wondered if this was a bad dream.
Dexter nodded. “Cade said Ahmed’s dead too. Hurry.” He waved as he jogged back toward the front door of the barracks.
Slade spun around and ran for the bedroom ignoring that his thigh muscle protested. He flipped on the bedroom light, and Taylor sat straight up in the bed looking dazed. “Get up, and get dressed—hurry,” he said, slipping on his boots and snapping the closures. “We’ve got a Charlie Foxtrot.” He grabbed his shirt off of the floor and pulled it over his head.
“A Charlie what?” Taylor asked rubbing her eyes.
“A clusterfuck! I can’t wait for you.” He jogged to the table by the door, grabbed his pistol and shoved it into his waistband then took off for the office.
When he got to the office, Gray was waiting for him in the lobby looking grim. “It went at one this morning. I’m sorry man, I should’ve thought about the time difference.”
“Did Mac and Dexter find the hotel?” he asked, but didn’t stop to wait for the answer. Gray followed behind him down the hallway. “Yes, Mac and Cee Cee are there now. They say they’re still in the hotel, and haven’t moved. But Ahmed is dead,” Gray said, sounding sick. It was about damned time the accountant lost his cool, but it was too damned late. “Cade wants you to call him right away.”
“Tell them to hold tight, we’re on the way.” Well wasn’t that ironic, Slade thought as he walked into Dexter’s office. Now, Winters expected him to call him right away when every time Slade needed him, he took his damned sweet time getting back to him? He could just cool his heels this time. Ahmed was dead, and that’s all he needed to know.
“Did you hear me when I said Ahmed is dead?” Gray shrieked.
“I heard you,” Slade replied calmly. “Where are Levi and Caleb? Hawk? We need them, and anyone else you can round up. If they’re not in the barracks, get on the horn, Gray. The time is the same in Grand Cayman as here, so we still have time to save the kid.”
At first Slade thought Tariq’s plan might be to just kill Ahmed and take him back to Saudi with him. But this morning it hit him. There was no way he’d leave that boy alive. He was Ahmed’s heir, he would inherit the sheikdom and title—and most importantly, the money. Tariq’s plan was to kill him if they didn’t get him out of there.
They were just waiting on the money to transfer to The Caymans.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Slade crouched at the corner of the first floor of the seedy motel building and waited. He glanced around to see if everyone was in position, and saw Caleb was still working his way up to the roof of the building on the other side of the parking lot with his rifle. He hoped he didn’t fall through it. Mac had taken a position at the other end of the building. Taylor was in the Hummer, on standby to call the motel manager and the police if there was a firefight. She would also call the FBI as soon as Zami was rescued.
Levi was crouched beside what they believed was the kidnappers vehicle. He’d let the air out of the tires on the right side of the car, so there would be no getaway. Fletch was right above the target room on the second story.
Considering the hotel where Tariq and Ahmed had stayed was five star luxury, the contrast was stark between that and this flamingo pink pit where Tariq put up his nephew and the kidnappers. Because he planned to kill him, and didn’t want to spend the extra money to make him comfortable. Or it could be the hostage-takers didn’t want to spend the money. The other possibility is they could’ve chosen this place because it was such a dump. They thought nobody would ever consider looking here for a royal.
Well, they were wrong. Mackenzie had. Because he had the best damned detective mind in the state, and Deep Six was very lucky to have him. He heard rusty wheels squeaking and raised his pistol, but lowered it when a laundry cart pushed past the corner out of a corridor and turned toward him. Cee Cee looked absolutely ridiculous in the ratty pink maid costume, and he grinned.
There’d almost been a fight between her and Taylor as to which of them would handle this for the team. Slade settled it, but not to Taylor’s satisfaction. She was pretty pissed when he told her it was dangerous, and she’d just had an event. He didn’t want to chance her having another.
What he didn’t tell her was he was also concerned that if there was a gunfight, she could be caught in the crossfire. He knew she’d have had an event then. On him most likely.
Lola nudged his hip, he glanced down at her and she made a sharp whimper.
“Almost party time, my love,” he whispered and felt her fur quiver.
Slade felt a similar quiver inside himself when he said the words he’d used when they did bomb detection together in the sandbox. But they weren’t dealing with a bomb this time thank goodness. This should be pretty cut and dry, and quick hopefully.
Surprise the tangos, take them out, and get the kid out of there quickly. Cee Cee rapped her knuckles on the door, and Slade tensed.
“Housekeeping,” she said in lazy drawl, her tense posture anything but lazy. The fact that she had her pistol right there within reach made him feel better. But the tangos didn’t open the door, she knocked again harder. “Housekeeping!”
Her hand drifted to the doorknob where a Do Not Disturb sign hung. She twisted, but it was evidently locked. Looking at him, she shrugg
ed, then her eyes slid to the window and her face went pale.
“Oh shiiiit,” she hissed, shoving the cart aside to run down the walkway toward him. Slade shot to his feet and pulled her around the corner.
“What?!?” he demanded, his heart pounding in his chest.
“Zami is in there, but...” She sucked in a few quick breaths. “Something’s not right though. He moved the curtain and he looked scared. Awfully heavy for a seven-year-old too. He had on a black tactical vest and the pockets were stuffed.”
“You think he’s wired with an explosive?” Slade asked with sickness curling in his gut. These bastards were all about explosives evidently. Just like their countrymen had been in the sandbox. It was a cowardly approach, and they were good at it.
“Yeah, he may be. I don’t know much about them, but his eyes and that vest...”
“Levi, make your way down here, buddy,” Slade said into the mic near his mouth. He was their explosives expert. Slade and Lola could find them but dismantling and deactivating them or setting them was Levi’s expertise.
“Did you see anyone else in the room with him?” Slade asked.
Cee Cee shook her head. “Would they let him look out the window?” she asked, and her point was good. No, they wouldn’t have.
The fact that these men were connected to the ones who remotely detonated the device at the hotel, gave him pause. If they were using explosives, the kidnappers could very well be the car bombers too. Maybe Tariq had hired them for both tasks, since the prince hadn’t been the target in the car bombing. He’d hired an assassin for that, and the mission had been accomplished.
He knew now why they chose this disposable motel.
Sweat beaded on Slade’s forehead and his breathing became shallow as he scanned the complex for occupied vehicles. He relaxed when he didn’t notice any, and glanced at his watch to see they had twenty five minutes until the transfer. This bomb was probably a timed device, not set for remote detonation, he thought. The only specific target they had this time was strapped with the device in that hotel room.
They were probably watching nearby for both the explosion and the transfer. Once it happened they’d get on a plane back to Saudi.
Not if Slade could help it.
He knew their names, and since the team wasn’t going to be able to take them into custody here like he thought they would, he was going to make sure someone did. Surely their documents were the same ones they used to rent the car. If TSA and Homeland Security knew their names, they could catch them at the airport.
But first, they had to sort out this problem. Slade watched Levi duck-walk around vehicles until he crouched behind the tan sedan parked at the curb across from Slade’s position. He looked around then darted across the walkway.
“Levi that kid is wired, a tactical vest probably with C-4, on a timer most likely.”
“Did you see the timer?” he asked, putting his hands on his hips.
“No, but I’d just about bet it’s set for zero nine hundred,” he replied, and Levi glanced at his watch and groaned. “Yeah, and the door is locked.” Slade held the mic closer to his mouth. “Fletch, I need you to get into that room fast.”
“Roger that,” he replied, and Slade heard his footsteps as he ran for the stairway.
“Cee Cee, I need you to get to the Hummer and have Taylor call Homeland Security and TSA. Give them those names, and tell them they’re terrorists trying to leave the country.”
Slade didn’t give a shit at this point if the feds tracked the cell phone numbers here. They weren’t quick enough to be there immediately, but he could use the backup when this was over. They could take Zami into custody and figure out what to do with him. Mac, Dexter and Gray, who insisted on going with them, should be on their doorstep in just a few minutes when the office opened with the prisoners and the information to clear Taylor, and at least arrest Tariq.
Slade’s phone vibrated in his pocket and he ground his teeth. Cade Winters was persistent, he had to give that to him. But he didn’t have the time at the moment to talk about Ahmed’s assassination. All he needed to know was that the man was dead, and that prong of the situation resolved. Not the way he wanted it to be, but resolved.
Fletch appeared out of the same corridor that Cee Cee had near the center of the row of rooms and crept along the wall to the room. Since this motel was so decrepit, they still used key locks thank God. Putting his pistol under his arm, Fletch reached into his pocket and pulled out a small black case to unzip it. He pulled out a tool, then put the case between this teeth and grabbed the knob. Concentrating, he worked the tool in the lock for a minute then all of a sudden he dropped the tool to grab his pistol and back away from the room. Slade saw the door was open a crack and breathed again.
“Okay, we go on three,” Slade said, and started counting, but the door creaked inward, and Zami appeared on the walkway in only his underwear and that damned vest. Several wires led to the stuffed pockets and Slade saw the red LED counter near the child’s hip. “It is on a timer, and you have ten minutes, Levi.”
Levi stepped around him to study the kid a second, before he searched his pockets and pulled them inside out. “Easy peasy, but I don’t have my wire cutters with me. I didn’t expect to be dismantling a bomb here,” he said, and Slade’s heart stopped, as he ran through what he had in the Humvee.
“I have nail clippers in my purse. Will that work?” Taylor asked, and Slade wanted to kiss her right then. Levi was already, weaving his way to the Humvee.
“That’s perfect, little bit,” he said, then his eyes shot back to Zami who looked terrified. He’d love to tell him everything was going to be okay, but he didn’t speak Farsi and he had a feeling the kid didn’t speak English.
Levi jogged toward the door, and grabbed Zami’s arm. He screamed and pulled away to run down the sidewalk toward Slade. Levi ran after him, and Slade moved out to catch him. The door beside the room opened and a red-eyed man with a long unkempt gray beard stuck his head out the door to frown at them. From the tattoos and black spiked band on his wrist, Slade connected him to the badass chopper motorcycle parked in front of the room. A black haired woman, ducked under his arm to look too and her eyes narrowed. They moved back into the room and the door slammed.
Lola barked, and quivered, then laid flat. Not only was there a bomb here, she’d found the scent he’d put her in the hotel parking lot, Zami’s scent.
Slade swept Zami up and pulled him around the corner. Levi stopped beside them and immediately crouched to run his hands over the wires on the device, but Zami jerked away and dodged both of their attempts to grab him.
God, Slade wished he spoke Farsi. That would make things a helluva lot easier here.
He quickly pulled out his cellphone and hit redial. Cade Winters immediately answered and started blasting him, but Slade cut him off. “I need your help. Zami Khalil is strapped with a bomb and it’s going off in...” Slade’s eyes danced as they tried to find the timer as the kid dodged Levi. “Eight minutes, if we don’t calm Zami down so Levi can disarm it. Talk to him.”
Slade held the phone out to Zami trying to indicate he needed to take it. The child finally stopped, looked uncertain but walked to him to take it. Evidently whatever Winters was telling him calmed him down, because his shoulders slumped and he nodded. Levi had already knelt beside him and was fiddling with the wires.
Sirens whined in the distance, and Slade knew Taylor wouldn’t need to call the police now. The biker evidently wasn’t a Hell’s Angel or on the run from the law, because he’d called them first, and they would be in the middle of this very shortly.
“Hurry up, Levi,” Slade said, glancing to see the timer was down to four minutes.
“Hurrying,” he replied, flinching as he snipped a black wire. The timer still ticked, and the sirens got closer. The fact that Levi was flinching, sweating now, didn’t give Slade comfort at all. Time was running out and he needed to get the rest of the team clear of the area.
&n
bsp; “Fletch—Taylor—y’all clear out.”
“Clear out?” Taylor repeated, her voice concerned.
“Yeah, three minutes now, and Levi’s working on it, but I don’t want you here if it goes off. Call Lola would you?”
“I’m not going anywhere,” she replied, her voice trembling.
“Get your asses out of here—all of you!” Slade growled into the mic.
Taylor yelled for Lola and Slade turned to her to point at the Hummer. “Lola, pass auf!”
Yes, baby—take care of her if this doesn’t work out right.
It was looking less and less likely that it would by the second as Levi cursed and jerked the clippers away from a wire he was about to snip. They were down to ninety seconds when he heard the Humvee crank, and Slade breathed when he saw Cee Cee behind the wheel taking them out of the parking lot.
Taylor watched in the rearview as Cee Cee drove out of the parking lot and Lola watched over the backseat through the back window. She finally breathed again when Slade’s voice came over her headset just as dozens of police cars with screaming sirens whizzed into the parking lot of the motel from every direction.
“We’re clear,” he said, sounding relieved but frustrated too. “Y’all head back to base because we’re going to be tied up a while.”
Relief made her weak and she slumped in her seat as emotion shot to her head to throb at her temples. “Slade, I—” love you.
No—that wouldn’t work with him. And it shouldn’t work for her either.
They hadn’t known each other long enough to justify it. Both of them had been hurt in the most unimaginable ways possible by people who claimed to love them. It wasn’t logical at all, but for her it had been love at first kiss. And considering all they’d been through together in the last week though, logic flew out the window as did the rules.
They knew things about each other that nobody else in the world knew, or would care about even if they did. Slade freaking cared—too much sometimes. About her, about his team, about everyone on this planet. He even cared about her undisciplined, troublesome dog, as much as he cared for Lola. That right there said he was a good man.