by Angel Payne
“I know.” She practically choked the words. Her hand clutched at him, forcing him to sit back down.
“You know what, baby?”
She lifted her face. It was twisted with distress, as if she’d just witnessed a murder. “I—I know who Enzo’s working with.”
Guess all the bombs of shock hadn’t been dropped in here yet. “What?” he blurted. “How?”
Between frightened gasps and nervous fidgets, she recounted a phone conversation of Lor’s that she’d overheard the night of the wounded vets benefit. She told about the man’s provoked tone at “Mateo,” likely the elder Aragon brother. There were his references to “keeping one’s enemies close” and accepting nothing less than a hundred percent on their “mission.”
But most terrifying were the comments about Cameron Stock. About the man “handling” things like “relevant specialists” in preparation for a “triumph” that was going to happen on Tuesday night.
Tomorrow night.
“Holy fuck,” Ethan finally muttered. Lightbulbs began popping to life in his mind—only to illuminate new corners of this maze that were maddeningly impenetrable, no matter how hard he tried to see. Important corners.
Next to him, Ava shivered beneath the blanket. “What does it all mean?”
He swallowed and grimaced at the sick acid that churned in his gut. “It means Colton was right,” he grated.
“About what?”
He didn’t look at her for a long second. Damn it, he didn’t want to tell her this part, but silence wasn’t an option anymore. He’d chosen to trust her with the truth. In return, she’d given him the Mack Daddy of all revelations. Excluding her in the name of protecting her wasn’t a goddamn option anymore. “The information we did recover off the first laptop was a map. It detailed hundreds of locations over the whole West Coast, plus parts of Idaho, Nevada, and Arizona. Colton thought it was a target grid.” He shook his head, inwardly flogging himself. “I told him he was a pecan short of a nut bowl.”
“Then you need to call him, right?”
Three minutes later, after locating his street clothes and his cell, he punched in Dan Colton’s number on his speed dial. Ava had dressed and stood next to him in the dungeon’s small kitchen area. She picked at the sandwich he’d swiped from the leftovers in the fridge and shoved in front of her with an order to eat.
The agent didn’t pick up the call.
Ethan growled an oath and called Franzen. The call also dropped into voice mail.
With a silent but fervent prayer, he dialed Colton’s desk line at the Los Angeles CIA offices. Maybe the guy had decided to go in early. Colton was a huge fan of fresh coffee.
Pay dirt. Sort of. After three rings, the line was answered—by a woman. “Yes?”
Ethan quickly shoved back his surprise. “So sorry for bothering you, ma’am.” Some habits from cotillion classes never died. “I think I misdialed.”
“Are you looking for Dan Colton?”
“Yeah.” He didn’t try to hide the wonder this time. “Luna?”
“Bingo. His desk line is being forwarded to me.” The pause from her end denoted her own mental dot connecting. “Archer?”
“Right.” Now that they had the meaningless formalities handled, he hardened his voice back to on-duty mode. “Listen, I need to reach him. Do you know where he is? Can I still get him at home?”
“Negative. Have you tried his cell?”
“That was my first call.” He huffed. “I’ve got fresh intel. Game-changing shit.”
“Then let’s hear it.”
He glanced at Ava, relieved to see she didn’t suspect this agent Luna was the Luna who was still supposed to be in jail back home. “We’ve been running blind about Lor’s partner because I’m pretty damn certain it’s Cameron Stock.”
There was a tense stretch of silence on the line. “Wh-what?” she sputtered at last. “Ethan, are you fucking sure?”
“Affirmative.” He quickly ran down the details Ava had just given him. When he concluded, Luna was eerily silent. “Hey? You still there?” he finally prompted.
“Yes.” Her answer was clipped short by a harsh hiss. “Shit.”
“Shit?” he echoed. “Shit…what?”
“Where are you at?” she demanded, tripling his confusion. “Are you at the hotel? The Hilton?”
“No. I’m—umm—not.”
“That’s where Dan’s going now.” The line burned with the five-alarm fire in her voice now. “Ethan, he’s on his way to an urgent meeting that Stock called for your team. He said it couldn’t wait, that it was a matter of life and death.”
“Fuck!”
“I’ll meet you there. Use the hotel’s loading dock, not the lobby entrance. We both need to keep trying Dan’s cell.”
“Roger.”
He snapped the phone shut then looked at Ava. Goddamn, how he wanted to draw her back next to him, envelop her in his arms, and never let her go. Her rich curls fell around her shoulders in a sexed-up mess. Her neck still bore the burn of his beard. Her cheeks were rosy and her indigo eyes were mesmerizing, even in the midst of the concern she directed at him now. She was his oasis in this suddenly shitty jungle of an op.
“What’s going on? What is it, Ethan?”
“We think Stock’s made a move.” He cupped her nape and kissed her hard. He longed to plunge on her a second time but knew if he did, there’d be no way of dodging the damn doomsday thoughts. No escape from thinking this could be the last time he held her like this, gazing at the evidence of their intimacy on her body, breathing in her incredible scent of jasmine and orange blossoms… Instead, he pecked her forehead and muttered, “I have to go.”
She straightened into a posture that could pass most musters. “You mean we have to go.”
“No.” He threw it at her with the same unshaking resolve. “No way. Ava—”
She grabbed his arm, digging her nails into his skin. When he wrenched up his glare, hers was waiting, shimmering with tears above lips that shook in her attempt at composure. “You want me to come with you, Sergeant, or you want me to simply follow you? Because I’m doing this.” She curled her hold tighter. “You talked to me once about banishing the ghosts of Colin and Flynn. Well, help me do it, right now—because if I lose you to this mission, their ghosts will be cute Halloween props compared to the damage yours will wreak.”
* * * * *
Fifteen minutes later, Ethan made a sharp right to go up the steep hill to the Hilton Universal City, peeling a strip of rubber off the tires of Ava’s Mercedes in the doing. He followed the signs for truck deliveries to the hotel, knowing that would take them to the loading dock. The road led past a hallway that had walls of glass, apparently leading to the property’s meeting rooms. At this hour of the morning, the corridor was filled mostly with uniformed hotel service staff—which made Colton and Franzen even more easy to spot. Even from behind, Ethan knew the two men. Their purposeful strides, as well as the way they elbowed each other trying to slosh one another’s coffee, were defining flags.
“Christ.” He used a loading curb to drive the car up onto the sidewalk and throw it into park. “There they are.”
“Ethan! Anda la osa! What the hell are you—”
“Stay here,” he ordered. “Stay. Here!” But before he got three steps, his nerves clenched at the whump of the car’s passenger door and the patter of her feet behind him. As he yanked open the hotel’s big glass portal, he growled, “For a woman who doesn’t want a military hand in her life, baby, you are fast ensuring my palm and your ass are going to have a party soon.”
“Promises, promises.” She rushed past him then jogged down the hall in which they’d spotted Franz and Colton.
Ethan caught her, impaled her with a glare then whipped her behind him as they rounded a corner and spotted the two men again. Franzen and Colton were already halfway across a foyer that led to a small, glass-domed atrium. He got a glimpse of the rest of the guys through the glass, sitting and s
hooting the shit, everyone thinking they’d been summoned to a meeting with an ally. “Fuck,” he bit out. Garrett and Zeke had Sage and Rayna there, too. The women were wearing beach outfits and looked like they were saying good-byes to their men before a day at the shore.
He and Ava had to move. Now.
Squeezing her hand with command, he sprinted across the foyer. They caught up to Franz and Colton as the men pulled on the glass door to the enclosed garden area. “Hey there, Runway,” Franz offered. After giving a pleasant wave to Ava, he went on, “Sorry for the fuck-of-dawn team call, but Cameron has to be at the set early due to the script changes, and—”
“Cameron’s the reason we’re here.” He hoped his terse interruption, delivered between his heavy breaths, conveyed the urgent subtext clear enough.
Thank God it did. Without veering his stare at Ethan, Franz reached and grabbed Colton’s shoulder. “What’ve you got, Archer?”
Before he could get one syllable out, a defined clack filled the air. The sound of a round being loaded into a pistol.
Ethan pivoted to focus on that gun. It rested in Cameron Stock’s big hand. The man’s smirk was as steady as his grip on the weapon. “What has he ‘got,’ Captain?” said the director. “Think I can supply the answer to that one. How about an offer to join the rest of your team in this nice, cozy atrium?”
Ethan didn’t relent his grasp on Ava and was damn glad Stock didn’t ask him to. After he stepped into the atrium at the end of the man’s gun, he discerned the reason behind Stock’s magnanimity. He was now backed by another ten soldiers who materialized out of the heavy foliage lining three sides of the atrium. Each one of them carried a damn fine firearm and had a face mask parked atop their head.
One of them carried something besides his rifle. A canister the size of a hair spray can. Ethan caught a glimpse of the label—and the skull and crossbones on it. Every drop of his blood went to ice. The shit was not hair product, or even tear gas. Best-case scenario, it would simply make them all go to sleep. But he knew, along with every guy on the team, that “best-case scenario” didn’t always hold true with sleeping gas.
He looked into the grim faces of both Hawkins and Hayes, who clutched their women as tightly as he grabbed Ava. His gut wrenched especially hard for Garrett, who spread one hand across Sage’s extremely swollen belly.
“Fuck,” Zeke spat.
“Ditto,” Garrett choked.
“Get down,” Ethan ordered Ava. After she complied, curling herself into a fetal ball, he draped himself across her, and smiled as he inhaled the jasmine sweetness of her in the seconds before he fell into a black, mindless sleep.
Chapter Twenty
Technically, this didn’t qualify as stalker behavior.
Tait nodded his head, confident with the conclusion, as the sun started to burn off the June mist across the parking lot of the Los Angeles branch of the CIA. He hadn’t followed her home, wherever the hell that was these days. He hadn’t left her a single annoying text and only tried to call her at the desk once a day. All he’d done this morning was borrow the team’s rental van to buy her coffee and a chocolate croissant, then park here for a few to wait for her to roll into work. She’d been working insane hours; he knew that because all the spooks were on an all-hands-on-deck status that didn’t seem to be changing anytime soon. As soon as he gave her the sustenance, said a quick hi, then maybe grabbed a fast kiss, he’d get his ass and the vehicle back to the hotel before Franz poked an eye open.
He kept a close eye on a few people who arrived. Three guys and a couple of women, though none of them was Luna. Everyone appeared like they’d gotten just a few hours of sleep and would be hitting the caffeine IV in a few mikes. After six years in Special Forces, he knew that look well.
While vowing he’d give this stunt only fifteen more minutes, he got out of the van then leaned against it. Not the wisest move in a parking lot where even the trash was likely given X-ray scrutiny, but he was oddly restless and couldn’t keep still.
“Damn it, Luna.” He fought off the disgruntlement with himself once more. How had she drawn him here, standing in line for the Insanity Coaster once again? He knew how this worked. He’d love every twist, turn, and drop of the ride, only to stumble off and puke on his shoes afterward.
But he couldn’t stop himself, and didn’t want to. Crazy Luna. That’s what she’d called herself. The trouble was, he liked crazy. Who on earth was he kidding? He adored crazy, especially when it was working so damn hard to show the world that cray-cray could be okay, too. That crazy didn’t mean it couldn’t atone for its missteps and try to make the world a better place again.
But why the hell was crazy bolting out of the building now, black-and-lavender hair flying, ID badge twisted, knee-high boots clattering in a mad pace on the pavement?
Tait pushed off the van and called to her. “Luna?”
She whipped around with one emotion claiming her face. Fear. “Weasley! Shit! Y-You’re here.”
He held his hands out. “I’m not pulling anything creepy, okay? Just brought you some coffee and—oof!”
A full body check was the last thing he expected from her. His nose tangled in her hair as she pythoned his neck with her elbows. “Thank God,” she uttered. “Thank fucking God.”
If her face was permeated in terror, her voice swam in the stuff. He pulled away to get a good look into her eyes. “What is it?” he demanded. “What do you need?”
“Stock is Lor’s bitch. He double-teamed us. And he’s called an ‘emergency’ meeting for everyone at the hotel, not the studio, apparently for an urgent matter.”
He choked on the ice bucket of shock she’d just dumped on him. “When?”
“Right now.”
“Right now?”
He was genuinely shocked and her gaze narrowed, clearly believing him. “Franzen sent out the text about it an hour ago. Haven’t you been checking your phone?”
“I took the rental van without asking. What do you think?”
Brandishing her second shock of the morning, Luna gave him a hard and fervent kiss. “For the first time, I’m damn glad you bend the rules, buddy.” Alarm sparked anew in her eyes. “We have to get to the hotel. Now!”
He reached back and wrenched the driver’s side door open. Before Luna could get a step off toward the passenger side, he swept her up and threw her onto the bench seat. She’d crawled across and buckled up before he fired up the ignition. That was a good thing, because T-Bomb was in the driver’s seat now.
* * * * *
“What the hell?” Luna blurted it as he guided the van toward the hotel’s loading dock and they noticed a white C-Class Mercedes that’d been driven up a curb and left on one of the hotel’s sidewalks with its hazards blinking.
Tait growled and stated, “You got it about right. That’s Ava Chestain’s car.”
“Shit.” During their fifteen-minute speed ride over here, she’d filled him in on the phone call she’d gotten from Ethan, in which he’d not only cited Ava as his source about Stock but had confirmed many of the details directly with the woman. They could imply she and Ethan had come here together. “That doesn’t look like Archer made it to the loading dock.”
He braced his forearms against the steering wheel and considered his next move. Follow the trail from here, where Runway had obviously entered the building, or stick to the plan Luna had set and proceed on to the loading dock?
When he looked up, his decision got sealed for him.
“Fuck.”
“Wha—” Luna cut herself short when she followed his line of sight and took in the same incongruous thing he did. “What the hell?”
Part of the hotel had been built out with a domed atrium. The top was glass, meaning they should be able to see straight through to the sky on the other side. That wasn’t the case. There was a thick cloud of smoke pushing up against that curved roof.
“That’s a whole lotta hookah,” he muttered in tight suspicion.
“
Get this thing parked where we can get to it fast if we need to.” Luna flashed him a look full of trepidation. “I don’t feel good about this.”
They tucked the van against the back side of the kitchens. Before Tait climbed out, he reached under the seat, and was relieved to feel the reassuring steel of a SIG P226. After checking the chamber and the safety and pocketing the extra round Franz had also left behind, he swung out of the van, tucked the pistol into the middle of his back, and ran to catch up with Luna.
She waited for him at a corner that opened onto a lawn that adjoined the atrium. As he neared, she peeked around the corner. When she pulled back around, it looked as if there’d been a giant rubber stamp waiting for her around the corner—and it’d been dipped in ink made of mortification.
“Oh, my God!” She slumped against the wall.
“Oh, my God.” Tait’s version was different. Lower. Grittier. But resonant with just as much horror.
He looked out again across the lawn—to where his unconscious battalion mates, along with Rayna, Ava, and even the very pregnant Sage, were being carried out of the atrium on stretchers into what looked like a huge medical bus. Cameron Stock, with a grimace on his face, calmly supervised the mass kidnapping. Tait heard someone snarling at the duplicitous bastard and suddenly realized it was him.
“Sleeping gas.” Luna’s grief-stricken whisper came behind him. “Th-they’re not dead, are they?”
He squeezed her hand. “I don’t think so, beautiful.” He watched Stock step over to consult with of his camouflage-wearing minions. “Those dildos are probably the mercenaries Galvaz told us about,” he ventured. “Looks like the one he’s talking to is their captain. Damn it, they’re talking too low for me to hear. I have to get closer.”
Luna yanked him back. “No, you don’t!” she seethed. “Tait, if they see you—Tait!”
He pulled the comfort of her voice, even if it was banded in terror, around him through every step he gained around the perimeter of the lawn. After less than minute, he made significant progress using the pillars and hedges as shields. He was finally close enough to hear the exchange between Stock and camo asshole numero uno.