Hot Pursuit

by Julie Ann Walker

  He closed his eyes and envisioned his old drill sergeant. The man had been beer-bellied, bald, and odious at dental hygiene. Not to mention that he’d had a series of unfortunate moles beside each eye, and one rather large one to the left of his nose that had sported a wiry, one-inch hair.

  Keeping the vision firmly fixed in his mind, Christian began to recite the prime numbers. Given it would take more than an hour to drive from Port Isaac to Cornwall Airport at Newquay, he figured it was as good a mental exercise as any.

  He had worked his way up to 1,019 when Emily began to squirm, much to the enjoyment of the very thing he was trying desperately to distract.

  “Bloody hell,” he gritted through clenched teeth. “This drive will be interminable if you keep up with that.”

  Her wet hair dripped close to his face, forcing him to breathe through his mouth lest he get a head-spinning snoot full of the exotic shampoo she used.

  “Sorry,” she said, still squirming. “It’s just that my knees are jammed under the dashboard and— Oh!”

  There was nothing for it. He had to stop that infernal wiggling, so he pulled her tight against his chest. “There. Is that better?”

  For his efforts, he received a mouthful of her soggy hair. Sputtering, he pulled out the sodden strands, then gathered up her hair and swept it forward over her shoulder. His fingers inadvertently brushed the side of her face. The moment they did, he felt burned. Branded. Her skin was so soft and hot and—

  Oh buggering hell.

  She glanced back at him and gifted him with that brilliant, hypnotic smile. “Yes, thanks. Much better, and—whoa! Uh, Christian?”

  “It’s all that blasted squirming about,” he said since there was no way to disguise the length of hard flesh that prodded her bottom. It was all her fault. He was only a man, after all. “Don’t take it personally.”

  “Don’t take what personally?” Ace asked, craning around Rusty to look at Christian.

  “The fact that he’s suddenly packing a pickle in his pocket,” Emily said. The woman was about as subtle as a herd of elephants.

  “Only a pickle?” Ace frowned. “How very disappointing. Are we talking gherkin-sized or…” Ace left the question hanging.

  Emily squirmed again, and Christian’s stupid pecker sang a rousing chorus of hallelujahs. “Knock it off,” he growled.

  “I’m trying to determine the answer to Ace’s question,” she said sweetly. After one more wiggle, she told Ace, “I misspoke. It’s definitely more garden-cucumber-sized.”

  “Oh!” Ace’s eyes widened dramatically, and he turned to regard Christian with mock interest. “You don’t say?”

  Had Christian mentioned that Ace was also as gay as a Sunday tea cake?

  “Can we please stop talking about my…my…” For reasons Christian couldn’t explain, he was unable to spit out the word.

  “Todger?” Ace supplied helpfully.

  “Gentleman sausage?” Emily added, her tone full of devilment.

  “Purple parsnip.” Ace joined her in laughing his bloody fool ass off. “Oh, if there’s one thing I can say about living in England for these last few weeks, it’s that I’ve learned so many interesting euphemisms for a man’s unit.”

  “And last but not least,” Emily said with great enthusiasm, “Tallywhacker!”

  “Haaaa!” Ace mimed wiping a tear from his eye.

  “Tell me, Christian,” Emily mused, “why is it you Englishmen feel the need to come up with silly names for your nether regions?”

  “Because cock and balls are quite boring, darling. And if there’s one thing we English loathe more than cold beer, it’s tedium.”

  “Mmm,” she hummed. It was the sweetest sound he’d ever heard. And it did nothing to dampen the enthusiasm of his…tallywhacker.

  She didn’t miss the insistent throb against her bottom, because she caught her bottom lip between her teeth and glanced back at him. One cheeky eyebrow climbed up her forehead.

  “Like I said before the peanut gallery decided to get in their two cents,” he informed her irritably, “don’t take it personally. You’re a woman with a small but rather plump bottom. I’m a red-blooded male with a sex organ that hasn’t received any attention in weeks.”

  More like months—ever since Emily had arrived on the BKI scene—but who was counting?

  “Ashy dick. That’s what I call it,” Ace said as Angel exited the small lane leading out of Port Isaac and merged onto a narrow country road. They would take the back roads to the airport in Newquay to avoid the myriad CCTV cameras located on the major motorways.

  “I beg your pardon?” Christian blanched.

  “As in, you haven’t gotten it wet in—”

  “Never mind.” Christian was quick to cut Ace off. Was it him, or was the heater in the farm truck working overtime? Steam had formed on the window beside him. He couldn’t decide if it was a drop of rainwater or a bead of sweat that slid down his temple.

  “Why hasn’t your…uh…sex organ”—Emily snorted—“gotten any attention in weeks?”

  He frowned. “You’re not serious.”

  “Sure I am.”

  “I’ve been on this bloody assignment with you lot. And before we had to hole up in my uncle’s cottage, we were all living in a tiny London flat that wasn’t precisely conducive to bringing home birds.”

  Not that he would have, even if he could have. He wasn’t opposed to casual sex. Preferred it, actually. But he drew the line at sleeping with one woman while fantasizing about another. And ever since Emily had crashed into his life like a wrecking ball, he hadn’t fantasized about anyone else.

  “Speaking of dicks,” Ace said.

  “Must we circle back to that topic?” Angel piped up for the first time since they’d piled into the truck. “I would love to talk about something else. Anything else. How about we phone the pilot of the charter plane to tell him we are running a half hour late? Or how about we all simply sit here in silence? I would love that. Lord, how I would love that.”

  Every person in the truck was stunned into silence. For long moments, the only sounds in the cab were the whir of the tires over the blacktop and the rhythmic whip-whop-whip-whop of the windscreen wipers working overtime.

  Naturally, Emily was the first to find her voice. “Holy hell. I think that’s more words than I’ve heard you speak the entire time I’ve known you, Angel.”

  “That’s more words than I’ve heard him speak the entire time I’ve known him,” Ace said.

  Rusty’s addition to the conversation was, “I wasn’t convinced he actually knew that many words.”

  Christian agreed with all of them, but he kept his mouth shut, reveling that the topic of conversation having moved on from the subject of his wedding tackle. Then Emily started squirming again.

  He was about to demand she knock it off when he realized she was reaching into her jacket pocket to extract her mobile. He didn’t have a chance to ask who she was ringing before her call connected and he had his answer.

  “Hey, Boss,” she said. “I need you to put in a call to that pilot friend of yours and tell him we’re going to be thirty minutes late to the airport.”

  Christian couldn’t hear their estimable leader’s reply, but it must have been a question about what had caused the delay because Emily quickly explained. Christian squeezed his eyes shut when she got to the part about the press and his role in the Kirkuk Police Station Incident. Not that he didn’t think about what had happened in Iraq—and the beastly consequences of that rescue—because he did. Far too often for peace of mind. But he wasn’t used to talking about it, or hearing someone else talk about it.

  I want to get home, he thought, realizing with a start that Chicago was home. The best home he’d ever known, filled with the best people he’d ever known. He hated that he’d put Emily, Ace, and Angel’s covers in je
opardy, and he had known there were reasons beyond his past in Her Majesty’s Special Air Service and his toxic familial ties that had kept him from returning to English soil. Now he was living those reasons—and dragging his coworkers with him.

  “So now the question is,” Emily continued, “can we use any of this to find out who Spider is? Is it possible to figure out who gave Christian’s name to the press?”

  Emily was quiet as Boss responded, the air whining from the vents too loud for Christian to hear anything more than the rumble of Boss’s bass voice.

  “Right.” Emily nodded. “That’s what I was hoping you’d say. Start making some calls. Shake some trees. See what rotten fruit falls out.”

  Indeed. Because if anyone could figure out how this cockup got started, it was the Black Knights. After years of doing the jobs too dirty or too diplomatically challenging for regular special forces or intelligence groups to take on, they had built a range of contacts the world over.

  It was going to be a great tragedy when BKI finally shut its clandestine doors. Bringing down Spider was their final mission. As soon as the underworld crime lord and his vast network of criminal activity were put to bed, the Black Knights, Christian included, would all go back to being civilians.

  Some of the guys at BKI were looking forward to the time when they could set aside their assault weapons and pick up their wrenches, trade in their percussion grenades for grease guns. Christian, on the other hand…not so much. Like he’d told everyone back at the cottage, he’d tried his hand at the Joe Bloggs gig. It hadn’t worked for him before. He was fairly certain it wouldn’t work for him now.

  He’d heard a saying once that had struck a chord. It was something like, “if you keep your eyes on the battle ahead, you won’t have to fight the battle behind.”

  That had definitely been his problem after the SAS let him go. He’d been sucked back into the life he’d had before. Fighting the battles he’d thought he’d left behind when he’d joined the army and—

  His thoughts cut off when Emily ended her call and settled more comfortably against him. For a moment there, when his mind had been elsewhere, his flag had withered to half-staff. But now, with her back snuggled against his chest, her sweet-smelling hair in his face, and her ass…yeah, you guessed it, bouncing atop his cods, he was back to being locked, stocked, and fully cocked.

  He let his head fall against the back window, squeezed his eyes shut, and once again began quietly reciting his primes.

  Chapter 4

  Rock Road, Southbound…

  “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, what happened back there?” Ben asked as they followed far behind the rattling, green farm truck.

  They’d been tailing the vehicle for over an hour on old country roads with high hedgerows and the occasional bucolic-looking cottage, but this was the first time Ben had spoken. Perhaps he had been in shock. Or perhaps he’d simply been mulling the events over for that long.

  No one would ever accuse Ben of being the sharpest knife in the drawer. Lawrence couldn’t help but think that if it weren’t for his and their older brother’s influence, Ben would likely be working at the local fry shop instead of the local police station.

  Lawrence glanced over at his younger brother, not attempting to hide the derision on his face. “Please tell me you know a distraction when you see one.”

  They had barely had time to park on the seafront road behind the reporter-clogged cottage before a great explosion rocked the little village of Port Isaac. As a constable, and lacking a good deal of common sense, Ben’s first instinct had been to run and investigate. But Lawrence had stayed him with a hand and kept his eyes glued to the cottage’s garden door.

  Lawrence’s instincts had proved correct. Not two minutes after the initial blast, the door opened and four people made their way down the gravel path toward where Lawrence and Ben were parked. Lawrence hadn’t paid three of them any mind. All his attention had been focused on Christian Watson.

  He might have ducked down, had he not had the windows on his new Peugeot SUV deeply tinted. Instead, he had watched, heart thundering, blood boiling, while the foursome loaded into the truck to join a fifth.

  “What are you doing?” Ben had asked, slouched low in the passenger seat despite the blacked-out windows. “Aren’t you gonna go out to confront him? Isn’t that why we came here?”

  “You mean, aren’t we gonna go out to confront him?” Lawrence had corrected.

  That explosion had hit a nerve. Made Lawrence think he might not need to confront Watson. He might need to follow the wanker to find out what nefarious doings Watson had going. Then, once Lawrence had confirmed those nefarious doings, he’d be within his right to arrest the murderous tosser. Or to slot him.

  Lawrence really wanted an excuse to kill the bastard. Had dreamed of it for years, in fact. A few times, those dreams had gotten him in trouble. All his unquenched rage tended to rear its ugly head when his adrenaline started pumping. He had been called on the floor twice for using excessive force on someone he’d arrested. Three times, he’d started a brawl at his local pub—always taunting his victim so that the bugger would toss the first fist and Lawrence could claim self-defense, but still.

  Now, Christian Watson had fallen into his lap, and the taste of bloodlust on Lawrence’s tongue was as tart and as coppery as a new penny.

  Watson was responsible for what had happened to the Michelson family. With each furtive swivel of Watson’s head or covert dart of his eyes, Lawrence’s certainty—and his fury—had grown.

  Innocent men didn’t blow shit up to escape the press. They didn’t move the way Watson moved. They didn’t have that odd, dark knowledge in their eyes.

  And speaking of Watson’s eyes…

  They were strange. Too light for his coloring. Made him look feral. Like a jungle cat waiting for some unsuspecting prey to stumble across his path.

  The idea of finding a reason—not an excuse, a reason—to end the bastard was enough to have the skin on Lawrence’s scalp itching with anticipation.

  He could see the headline now. “Local Constable Takes Out Undesirable and Finds Justice for His Murdered Brother.”

  It had a certain ring to it. And even though Lawrence’s older brother had talked loftily about them choosing lives of service for the guts and not the glory, Lawrence couldn’t help but think there was nothing wrong with grabbing a bit of glory too. Especially if it was handed to him on a silver platter.

  “You think that’s what it was?” Ben asked now. “A distraction?”

  Lawrence grunted. “What else would it have been?”

  “Don’t know.” Ben shook his head.

  Lawrence noticed Ben’s eyes were too wide. His face too pale. “You’re not getting cold feet, are you?”

  “No.” Ben seemed to cave in on himself. Since Ben was built like a stevedore—thanks to the good genetics their pop had passed down to all the Michelson boys—he resembled an old, worn-down mountain in the passenger seat. “I just…I just don’t know what the hell we’re doing, Lawrence. We had a chance to confront him, and we didn’t. Now, we’re ghosting him all over bloody Cornwall. Why?”

  “Because we might catch him doing something he shouldn’t be doing,” Lawrence snarled. “Because if he really is the one responsible, I don’t wanna confront him, I wanna make sure he pays. Because I bloody well deserve to make him pay, and so do you. Or have you forgotten?”

  “I haven’t forgotten.” Ben’s jaw sawed back and forth. “But we might have trouble making him pay. At least if he’s headed where I think he’s headed.”

  “And where’s that, pray tell?”

  Ben pointed out the windscreen at the sign directing motorists toward the local airport.

  Buggering fuck!

  “Get your weapon ready,” he told Ben. “We need to hit ’em in the car park before they go inside.”

 
* * *

  Colby “Ace” Ventura’s heart pounded a mile a minute.

  Not because they’d gone and blown up one car, stolen another, and were trying to get the holy fucking guacamole out of England in case the world’s most deadly crime lord had somehow found them and was currently on his way to have them fitted with extra holes in their heads. That was all pretty much SOP for a man in his line of work. In fact, he’d go so far as to say it was a fairly uneventful day, all things considered.

  What was making his heart go pitter-pat was Rusty.

  Rusty, the biggest, most beautiful redhead he had ever had the pleasure of meeting. Rusty, the man he had been not-so-secretly pining for since he first set eyes on the guy five days ago. Rusty, the man who’d had an arm around his shoulders for the last hour.

  It’s just to give us all more space, Ace assured himself and his silly heart.

  The latter didn’t bother to listen. It kept thundering away, especially when—

  Did he give me a squeeze?

  It certainly felt like Rusty’s arm had tightened. Then again, Ace could be imagining things, building sexy little sand castles in the sky. It’d been a really long time since he’d been attracted to a man. Even longer since he’d been this close to a man he was attracted to.

  “Okay, I give. Why have you been mumbling under your breath this entire time?” Emily turned to glower at Christian.

  “I’m reciting my prime numbers.” Christian’s head was pressed against the back window, as far away from Emily as he could possibly get in the cramped space.

  “What the fuck for?” Bless her, the woman had a filthy mouth.

  “Mental exercise.”

  For once, Ace was glad for the distraction Christian and Emily provided. It would take his mind off being able to feel every one of Rusty’s fingertips where they pressed into his shoulder.

  Did his thumb rub back and forth?

  Or perhaps that small caress was simply a product of the truck’s bad shocks.

  Emily looked fiendish as she smirked at Christian. “You can’t fool me. Your brain is as sharp as a tack.”