Hot Pursuit

by Julie Ann Walker

  “In response to my capture,” Christian continued, “Ten members of the 22nd SAS Regiment along with a whole platoon of paratroopers from special forces flew in from Baghdad to retrieve me. They stormed the police station and got me out, killing three police officers on top of the two I’d taken out at the roadblock and leaving one SAS soldier…”

  His voice trailed off, and the look that came over his face was one Emily hadn’t seen before. Sadness. Not surface-level sadness, but deep, abiding, fabric-of-his-being sadness. The episode in Iraq haunted him to this day.

  Her heart clenched in sympathy.

  “It caused a huge international outcry, if memory serves,” Ace said, picking up the thread Christian had dropped.

  “The Iraqis wanted blood, revenge, recompense.” Christian’s voice was softer now. “Newspapers in the UK sided with them, calling the SAS trigger-happy.” There was disbelief and more than a hint of derision in his face. “It didn’t matter that had I been left in that police station, the Iraqis would have killed me. It didn’t matter that I was under bloody direct orders to take any and all action necessary to avoid capture. And it didn’t matter that the policemen in question were as crooked as a country lane. For all intents and purposes, the war was over. It was meant to be peacetime. We were meant to be allies. The news agencies said that because of the SAS officer who had opened fire at the roadblock, five Iraqi policemen were dead and the tentative peace between our countries was put at risk.”

  “They blamed you,” Angel said, his dark eyes intense. As always.

  Besides the vocal-cord scouring, Angel had undergone extensive plastic surgery to change his appearance. To say his surgeon had been a genius was an understatement. Angel was…well…angelic. So beautiful he was hard to look at.

  But the surgeon hadn’t been able to alter his eyes. There was a world of dark knowledge in Angel’s eyes. When Emily combined that with the fact that his records had been redacted out the wazoo and she had no idea what hellish catastrophe or fuckup had caused him to leave Israel and undergo all that surgery in the first place, she had to admit he creeped her out. Just a little.

  Okay, maybe a lot.

  “That they did.” Christian nodded. “Well, not me precisely. The press didn’t know my name. They only knew that one of Her Majesty’s Special Air Service members was the cause of the mess. And since the SAS prides itself on keeping the egg off its face, the brass were only too pleased to jump on the bandwagon. They assured the press that I, the officer responsible, would be decommissioned.”

  The muscle beneath his right eye was twitching again. “True to their word, two months after the incident, to throw any investigators off the trail of a man being let go so soon after, they pushed me out. I was told if I went quietly, if I didn’t make a fuss, my official records would show I’d left the Service in good standing and with all due honors. No one but those with access to my classified files would ever know I was the one involved in the police station fiasco.” He snorted. “I suppose it was the brass’s idea of offering me an olive branch for all the good work I’d done.”

  Emily finally understood why he no longer thought of England as his home. He’d risked everything for his country, had nearly given his life, and when he’d needed her protection and support the most, Mother England had—

  Bam! Bam! Bam! A loud fist landed on the door. The woman in the yellow pantsuit yelled, “Corporal Watson! Why did you open fire at the roadblock that day?”

  “We need to get out of here, and fast,” Ace muttered, glancing around the modest living area. Like any good English cottage, the place was a study in whimsy, decorated with antiques and plush, well-lived-in upholstered furniture. There was even the requisite painting of a partridge over the fireplace. “We can’t afford to have our faces splashed all over the BBC.”

  “Like I can?” Christian thundered. “I’m a covert operator too, in case you’ve forgotten. Not to mention that my identity and involvement in Kirkuk were meant to be top secret.”

  “Well, I hate to break it to you, bro.” Ace placed a sympathetic hand on Christian’s shoulder. “But the secret’s out.”

  “Now we concentrate on protecting our covers,” Angel said.

  Emily’s eyes widened. “You have a plan to do that?”

  Angel pointed toward the ceiling. “Create a distraction.”

  She glanced up, expecting to be enlightened. She wasn’t. There was nothing up there but off-white paint, a silver light fixture, and a dusty cobweb in the corner.

  “By doing what?” she asked. “Setting the roof on fire?”

  Angel smiled. Or, at the very least, one corner of his mouth twitched. Which was as close to smiling as Angel ever came. “Be ready to run when the time is right.”

  Without any further discussion, he headed for the stairs. She watched him go with equal parts curiosity and incredulity.

  “Am I the only one who feels like her ass is hanging in the breeze here?” she asked. “When will the time be right? How will we know?”

  Christian grabbed her arm and gave it a squeeze. Okay, what? He never touched her. Not voluntarily anyway.

  “Don’t worry.” He ducked his dimpled chin until they were eye to eye. He really did have the prettiest eyes, like molten glass, so bright and hot. “It’ll be fine. I won’t let anything bad happen to you.”

  Oh-kay. Well, that was just… It was just…

  She was so off-balance that someone could have knocked her over with a feather. In fact, she staggered when Christian released her and jogged toward the stairs, taking them two at a time.

  Oh, and on the topic of things that were pretty…

  Get a load of dat ass! It was all tight and firm and covered in jeans that probably cost more than she made in a week.

  Not to put too fine a point on it, but he looked good in those jeans. They fit him like a glove in the back and the front.

  Before she could stop the thought in its tracks, she found herself wondering if he was a lefty or a righty when it came to what he was packing. A quick glance before he disappeared onto the second-floor landing confirmed he was a righty, and whoa, momma, what a righty he was.

  How the hell had she missed that?

  Oh yeah. Because she’d studiously avoided looking. Because once bitten, twice shy, baby. Because she didn’t mix business with pleasure. She didn’t!

  “That’s a good way to catch flies.” Ace closed her gaping mouth by pressing a finger beneath her chin.

  Chapter 2

  Pendoggett, Cornwall, England

  “I’m standing outside a cottage in Port Isaac, Cornwall, where Corporal Christian Watson is holed up with the shutters drawn and the doors locked. It is rumored Corporal Watson is the man responsible for the Kirkuk Police Station Incident.”

  Lawrence Michelson’s boots dropped from the coffee table to the floor with a loud thump. His breath caught in his chest like it came with a set of hooks.

  “Ben!” he shouted. “Get your smelly ass in here!”

  “I’m taking a shit!” his younger brother yelled from down the hall.

  “Well, pinch it off! You gotta see what’s on the telly!”

  Lawrence snatched the remote and thumbed up the volume. The reporter on the screen was redheaded and pretty. She tried to hide her well-padded figure beneath a yellow pantsuit, but it didn’t work. On any other occasion, Lawrence would have taken a mental picture to use in private later, but considering the subject matter she was reporting on, the last thing on his mind was his cock.

  “Fecking hell, Lawrence.” Ben was doing up his jeans as he walked into the room. “What’s so important I had to—”

  “Shhh.” Lawrence waved a hand, blood pounding in his ears. “Listen.” He pointed to the telly.

  “Corporal Watson has yet to confirm or deny these allegations,” the pretty reporter continued, “but we are hoping he
will pop out soon and give us a statement.”

  A recorded video bloomed on the screen. It showed a cheerily painted red door swinging open. A tall bloke with dark hair appeared on the threshold, where a microphone was promptly shoved in his face.

  Lawrence vaguely registered that Yellow Pantsuit Chickadee yelled a question at Watson. He didn’t hear what it was, however, because he was too busy memorizing the man’s every feature.

  Corporal Christian Watson had a stone-hewn jaw and the cheekbones to match, a hawkish nose, a five-o’clock shadow, and eerily light eyes. He struck Lawrence as the kind of bastard other men wanted to be and most women wanted to shag silly. The kind of bastard who breezed through life, unaware of the carnage he left in his wake.

  The black anger Lawrence had struggled with his whole life bubbled up and filled him to the brim. He used to be able to control it. When he was younger, he’d fought and fucked, and both things seemed to quiet the turmoil inside him. But ever since his family’s tragedy, control had become an issue. And now, looking at Watson’s face, darkness crowded Lawrence’s vision, and the urge to beat the living shit out of something—or someone—had his hands curling into tight fists.

  “Stay tuned for more on this developing story,” the reporter said before the video cut off. Then the screen flipped to an ad for toothpaste.

  “Jesus.” Ben stared at him with wide, blinking eyes. “You think it’s true? You think he’s the one?”

  If there is a God in heaven, please let it be so.

  “Let’s find out, shall we?” Lawrence pushed up from the sofa, the muscles in his back twitching, the buzzing between his ears growing louder with each passing second. “It’s only twenty minutes to Port Isaac. Get your sidearm.”

  Ben’s chin drew back. “Now hold on, Lawrence. You can’t mean to murder the bloke.”

  “I don’t wanna murder him.” Although that wasn’t exactly true. For years he’d fantasized about killing the twat responsible for all the pain in his life. “I simply wanna talk to him.”

  “Then why do we need our weapons?”

  “Because if we shove the business ends of our heaters in his face, he’ll be more keen to tell us the truth.”

  “I don’t know.” Ben swallowed, and the sound was sticky. Then again, cowardly was perhaps a better word for it.

  Of the three Michelson brothers, Ben had always been the anxious one, afraid of rocking the boat, of getting into trouble. Lawrence had always been the hothead, the one who liked to rock the boat, looked for trouble. And their older brother? Well, he had been the best of them. It was for his sake that Lawrence did this now. At least that’s what he told himself as he walked to the coatrack by the front door and took down his cagoule.

  “For fuck’s sake, Ben. This is our chance. After all these years, we’ve a face and a name. Don’t go pigeonhearted on me now.”

  “If the sergeant finds out we been bringing our sidearms home, he’ll put our bollocks in a vise and have our jobs.”

  Lawrence gritted his jaw until his back teeth squeaked. There were times he felt he’d been born on the wrong side of the Atlantic. Unlike the Americans, who armed their police forces, the good people of England preferred their law enforcement personnel to remain weaponless pansies. And even though he and Ben had both done the extra training, passed the exams, and made it into a specialized unit that did allow them to carry, they were required to leave their weapons inside their ARVs—armed response vehicles—when they weren’t on duty.

  It was a travesty. As a constable, Lawrence felt he should bloody well be able to defend himself. And as a member of his regional firearms unit, he should certainly be trusted to take home his own damn weapon.

  Which is why he did.

  “What the sergeant don’t know won’t hurt him,” he said. It was the same line he used anytime Ben got cold feet about breaking protocol.

  “I don’t know,” Ben said again.

  Lawrence loved his younger brother. He truly did. Ben was the only family he had left. But right at that moment, he would happily have pounded the sad sap’s face.

  “I know,” Lawrence insisted. “Grab your coat. Grab your gun. And let’s go get some answers from this bastard.”

  * * *

  “Why can’t we all climb over the rooftops to escape?” Emily asked.

  She stood beside the lone attic window as weak spring sunlight tried to break through the rolling cloud cover outside. A storm moved quickly across the bay, headed inland with all the threatening malevolence Mother Nature could muster. Lightning cleaved the sky, masking the sound of Angel throwing open the cranky old window. He did a quick scan of the roofline and area below.

  “Because, darling, while some of us might be skilled at running stealthily across rooftops, others of us are not.” Christian pulled himself through the hole in the attic floor and quickly picked his way over the uneven pieces of plywood laid haphazardly atop the joists. He handed Angel an aerosol can of something that looked like it might be deodorant.

  It annoyed her to no end that he seemed not to inhabit a room so much as fill it. A moment ago, the place had been floor-to-ceiling boxes, plus Ace, Angel, Rusty, and her. Now, it was floor-to-ceiling Christian. Which struck her as particularly odd since Rusty was the one who was built like a tank.

  “I’m assuming you’re referring to me.” She cut Christian a look she hoped clearly conveyed her thoughts. Which was that he’d sprouted a bunch of new assholes, and if he wasn’t careful, he was in danger of becoming one giant asshole.

  “I am,” he admitted. “But besides that, it’s much easier for one person to escape the prying eyes of the press than five people.” When he shrugged, it was the physical equivalent of duh.

  Deciding he was probably right, she changed the subject. “What’s with the deodorant?”

  “Not deodorant,” Angel said. He opened his backpack to add the can to the assortment of other items he had already taken from beneath the bathroom sink.

  Reading the label on the aerosol can, she begged to differ. “Yes, it is. See?” She pointed to the big, bold letters that read: Beckham Instinct Deodorant Spray.

  David Beckham was the undisputed pride of the Land of Hope and Glory. His name or mug was on just about everything.

  “For our purposes,” Angel clarified, “it is a bomb.”

  “A bomb!” She blinked around the dimly lit attic, dismayed to find all four men staring back at her impassively.

  “The ignition for a bomb anyway,” Angel added as if that made everything better.

  “And what exactly do you plan to blow up?”

  “A car.” Angel slipped the straps of his full backpack over his shoulders.

  “A car. Right.” She nodded, then quickly shook her head. “Are you nuts?”

  “The explosion has to be big enough to draw the reporters away from the cottage,” Ace explained, proving everyone was on the same page except for her. She was convinced she hadn’t even been given a copy of the damn book.

  “Yes,” Angel added. If she wasn’t mistaken, the look on his enigmatic face also said duh.

  She was getting real tired of that word. Whether it was implied or not.

  “Fine. Whatever. Just…make sure the owner has insurance, if you can,” she said at the same time Christian blurted, “Check for proof of insurance, mate.”

  Having grown up dirt poor, Emily knew what the lack of a vehicle could mean. An inability to get to work meant the loss of a job. The loss of a job meant the loss of a roof over your head, food on your table, and clothes on your back. But Christian? How did he know?

  It occurred to her then that, even after the months they’d been living and working together, she knew hardly anything about his past, about who he was and where he’d been before joining BKI. She wasn’t sure if she should be sad about that, or proud of herself. After all, getting to know him,
the real him, would skate precariously close to mixing business with pleasure.

  Still, that didn’t stop her from asking, Who are you, Christian?

  She didn’t voice the question aloud. Instead, she let her eyes do the talking for her. She and Christian had been doing that a lot lately. Saying with their eyes and their expressions all the things they refused to speak aloud.

  It was disconcerting. But she didn’t know how to stop it, short of refusing to look at him. And considering he was two kilos of uncut joy to look at, she knew that wasn’t going to happen anytime soon.

  He lifted a dark, sleek eyebrow that asked, Do you really want to know?

  Yes, she really did. But fear held her back. It was the fear that if she really got to know him, if she crossed over the line that tiny bit, then all the walls she’d built against him would come crumbling down.

  She shook her head no.

  That’s what I thought, his twitching lips responded.

  Angel glanced back and forth between them, trying to interpret their silent conversation. Eventually, he shrugged and threw his leg over the windowsill. In a flash he was gone, leaving the rest of them to make their way downstairs and wait for his distraction.

  Emily took a seat on the sofa, her palms itching with adrenaline, her toes tapping out a nervous beat on the polished wood floor. Patience had never been one of her virtues. Neither had sitting around waiting for something portentous to happen. She prided herself on being a woman of action, a woman who took charge and—

  A thought suddenly occurred, and she flicked Christian a considering look.

  “What?” he demanded.

  “That’s why you came to work for BKI, isn’t it?”

  “What is?” He looked genuinely confused.

  “Because you were kicked out of the SAS.”

  “We call it decommissioned.”

  “Same difference.” She waved a hand through the air.

  “To coin a ridiculously overused American phrase.”

  “Cut the crap.”