Cade pulled out a seat for her and she sat. “I’ve got to go to another area for a little bit, angel. You’ll be fine here. Airman Reynolds will be with you until I return.”
Her heart jumped in protest, but then the door opened and a woman in uniform walked in. Her hair was neatly contained in a bun at the base of her neck and her smile was friendly.
“You’ll be back?”
He dropped a quick kiss on her lips. “I’ll be back. Promise. Can you show Miss Sullivan the organizational film, Airman?” he said to the young woman standing just inside the door.
“Absolutely, sir. Be happy to.” She gazed at him with something more than professional courtesy. A pinprick of jealousy stabbed into Brooke.
Mine. Hands off. Even mental hands.
Cade grinned at the woman, and Brooke’s jealousy throbbed. “I’m a sergeant, not a sir.”
“Yes, Sergeant.”
He strode from the room and Brooke tried to breathe normally. Not because she was scared, but because he made her insides churn and her breath shorten whenever he was near. Especially when he kissed her. He made her feel like she’d gotten on a roller coaster, but she didn’t want off.
Now that he was gone, the room seemed emptier. Did Grace feel terrified whenever Garrett was preparing to go into badass mode? Brooke had never asked. She felt somewhat guilty for it now. Grace was her friend and Brooke cared, but it was as if she’d put on blinders to everything Garrett did after her kidnapping.
His kidnapping too, because he’d been there, though not as long as she’d been. And he’d never looked scared. She remembered that. There’d been utter fury on his face. His gaze had been a lethal promise to the men holding them.
She didn’t know what had happened that night, because they’d kept her in the van when they took him out to their meeting, but she’d been free shortly after that. There’d been men in wetsuits who smelled like vegetation and mud as they dripped water onto the ground beside her. One had thrown her over his shoulder and carried her. She’d tossed those pajamas rather than wash them, though that had more to do with the men who’d held her captive than with the one who’d gotten her wet and dirty when he’d rescued her.
Airman Reynolds tapped some keys on one of the consoles and a film came up. “It’s not as exciting as anything Hollywood puts out about Special Ops, but this will give you an idea what our scope is. Though not all of it since much of the mission is classified. Feel free to ask questions during the presentation. If I can answer, I will. And if I can’t, it’s probably classified.”
* * *
“Why did they take the security guard’s daughter?” Cade asked the solemn crew gathered in the squad ready room. He’d come in late to the briefing, but he was catching up.
Ghost and Viper were both there too. Ghost was taking lead on this one, so Viper mostly sat silent, arms crossed, frown intact. For a man who’d so recently gotten married, it sure hadn’t softened him at all. Oh, whenever Kat was around, there was a notable dulling of his sharp edges, but the man was still as intense as ever.
Then again, his wife wasn’t exactly a pussycat. She might be pregnant, but you never forgot who you were dealing with when she spoke to you. The Russian operative was almost as scary as her husband. Together, they were a force to be reckoned with. If they ever decided to go into private contracting, it would be a huge loss for HOT. Not that Kat was part of the organization. So far as he knew, she was out of the business.
Ghost sighed and raked his fingers through his hair. “You want to guess, or you want me to lay it out for you?”
Cade didn’t like where this was leading. “Bert’s the one who let the cartel’s man in. And erased the footage.”
Ghost nodded. “That’s right.”
Anger twisted in his gut. Brooke liked Bert. Hell, he’d liked Bert. But he was trained to expect the worst out of people. Brooke, however—well, she wasn’t going to take it very easily that her favorite security guard was involved.
“Why?”
Ghost shook his head, and Cade knew it was something he wasn’t going to like.
“His wife was recently diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. He’s facing crushing medical bills. So when Scott Lloyd asked him to let some men in a few times off the record—which meant doctoring the footage as well—he did. Because Lloyd paid him to look the other way. But then the visitors started making payments too, asking for information. You might say Bert Lewis made a deal with the devil. Once it started, he was powerless to stop it. So he kept taking the money, doctoring the footage, and looking the other way. When Lloyd was killed, he knew he’d gotten in too deep, but he didn’t come forward because they’d threatened his family if he did. So far as we can tell, he didn’t know that Andreas Lopez was there to kill Lloyd that night. He only figured it out once a neighbor called the front desk when Brooke’s dog kept barking.”
“Jesus,” Cade said. “So what happened to make them take his kid anyway? Did he talk?” Except if he had, the cartel would have killed him and his family. Their bodies would be at the bottom of the Chesapeake by now.
“No, he didn’t talk. But Scott Lloyd apparently didn’t deliver on the last shipment. The cartel wants to know where those weapons are, and they’re leaning hard on anyone with a connection to Lloyd.”
“How the hell would Bert know what Lloyd did with the shipment?”
“He doesn’t,” Mendez interjected. “Lloyd kept records, but they’re missing. He erased everything from his computers, but there was a copy made before he did that.”
Cade didn’t even have to ask how they knew. He glanced at Hacker, who winked.
“And they think Bert has the copy?”
“I think they know he doesn’t by now. But they wanted to give him incentive to get it, so they took his daughter.”
“I guess someone has a theory about who has the copy,” Cade said, though the stone in his gut told him he knew the name they were all looking for.
“Scott Lloyd was obsessed with Brooke Sullivan,” Ghost said, bringing up a file on the computer that displayed on the screen at the front of the room. “He planned to marry her. He had an entire file that was all about her—photos, details about her life, details about their dates. He kept a journal, and in it he wrote how he knew she wasn’t in love with him but he was convinced it would all change if he could offer her a new life.”
There were pictures of Brooke that she couldn’t have known were taken. Her striding out of the building with Max, her blond hair in a ponytail. Her in a nice dress, sitting on Scott Lloyd’s couch, drink in hand. Scott was there beside her, holding his own drink. The picture was taken in such a way she wouldn’t have known he’d been snapping photos with a remote camera.
She was beautiful and vulnerable, and Cade wanted to sweep her into his arms and hold her close. His anger glowed hot at the invasion of her privacy, and also at the fact Scott had used her to excuse his criminal activities. “So he blamed Brooke for his bad choices?”
“He certainly used her to justify them. But I think we all know he would have done those things anyway. Clearly he went to work for Black Eagle and started fudging the books pretty quickly. He didn’t work alone though. The ATF has been investigating irregularities at Black Eagle for quite some time. They have an informant there, and he claims that Lloyd was only following orders. But Lloyd tried to make his own deals outside of channels, so he was pissing off both the Espinoza Cartel and his bosses at Black Eagle. The last shipment he was supposed to deliver never arrived. It’s not in BE’s Brazilian warehouses either, which is where the guns were manufactured.”
“How many guns?”
“Ten thousand.”
Somebody whistled.
“You can’t just hide ten thousand guns. They’d make a pretty big pile somewhere.”
“They would indeed,” Mendez interjected. “And we’re going to find them. Last thing we need is that many weapons in the hands of the Espinozas so they can sell them on the black market.�
�� He stood upright from where he’d been leaning against a table, arms and legs crossed. “Either we find them the easy way, which is by finding the copy Scott Lloyd made of his records, or we find them the hard way.”
Cade knew what that meant. They all did. A team—probably Echo Squad—in Brazil, tracing the shipment to the last known point.
“Since I’m sure we all want the easy way,” Ghost continued, “we’re going to need to talk to Miss Sullivan. So how about we take this little party to her and find out what she knows?”
Chapter 19
“I… I don’t have anything,” Brooke said, breathing evenly as she gazed up at the big men standing over her in the conference room. “Scott never gave me anything to hold for him.”
She’d been watching the film that Airman Reynolds put on for her when the doors had opened and a group of men came striding in. They were big. Lethal. She knew them all, however, because she’d either met them at Grace’s or she’d seen them at Buddy’s Bar & Grill on the rare occasions she’d gone there at Grace’s request.
Yes, they were big and scary—but she wasn’t as scared as she’d expected. She glanced at Cade, and her heart felt happy instead of anxious. He gave her strength. She knew that now. She smiled to let him know she was fine. Because she could see the hint of worry on his features, and she wanted him to know it was okay. She was okay.
“He hasn’t given you anything in the past few days? Did you get any unexpected mail?” Lieutenant Colonel Bishop asked. Ghost, she thought. They call him Ghost.
She pictured her desk and all the packages from clients and companies. She had a ton of unopened sample boxes she’d been meaning to get to—but they weren’t from Scott.
“Nothing unexpected, no.” The last thing she’d gotten had been a package the day she’d found Scott’s body. She hadn’t opened it, but it was from a company she’d been expecting stuff from. She’d gotten a call from the front desk, she’d gone downstairs—and come back to find Scott in front of her door. “Wait, yes, he gave me something. But it was just some books I loaned to him a while back. It was, uh, the day I found him.”
The men exchanged glances.
“Did you happen to look inside those books at all, Miss Sullivan?” Ghost asked.
“No. I put the bag on the bookshelf, I think. I didn’t take the books out. I would have put them away that evening, but I never got around to it because I found Scott on the floor. They should still be on the shelf. Or by the chair. Maybe.” She thought about Scott handing her the bag, her walking inside her condo, Max whirling… “Wait, no, they’re still on the entry table. I never got the chance to put them away.”
“What kind of bag?”
“A white plastic bag.”
“Titles?”
She had to think about it. “I only remember two of them.” She rattled them off. That seemed to be good enough for the colonel.
“I’m going to need to send someone to your apartment to retrieve those books, Miss Sullivan. Is that okay with you?”
She nodded. “Yes, of course. Do you think he put something in one of the books?”
“It’s hard to say for certain, but it’s possible.” He said a few more things, things that were hard to process about Scott and his feelings for her. Obsessed was the word that stuck in her head. Brooke couldn’t process it. Not right now.
“What about Amy?” she asked, because she couldn’t forget that Bert’s little girl was being held somewhere by bad men who would hurt her if they didn’t get what they wanted. “When will you rescue her?”
“We have to find where they’re holding her, but as soon as we know that, we’ll get her.”
Anxiety flared in her belly. “You can’t let them keep her. She’s probably scared out of her mind. And then there are her parents. They must be beside themselves.”
“We’re working on it, Miss Sullivan,” Ghost said. “I promise you, we’ll get her just as quickly as we can. If you’ll excuse us now, we have a lot of work to do.”
Brooke knew when she’d been dismissed. She wanted to tell this arrogant man where to shove it, but she also knew that he wouldn’t react. And that would be more infuriating than his dismissal.
Cade winked as he walked out with the others. She was annoyed at everything, and yet happiness glowed inside her at his look. Oh yeah, she was so gone over that man. But how did he feel?
* * *
Brooke attacked the dough with a vengeance. Grace sat at the kitchen island and watched her, a slightly bemused look on her face.
“You planning to kill the dough or make biscuits?”
Brooke blew out a breath, ruffling the hair that had fallen into her face. “I’m making biscuits.”
“You’re angry.”
“Not angry. Worried. Frustrated. Feeling itchy and edgy and all kinds of things I don’t even understand.”
“So…,” Grace said, lifting an eyebrow. “You and Saint, huh?”
The surge of warmth and happiness she’d grown used to feeling at the thought of Cade flooded her as usual. She smiled at her friend. Cade had brought her over to Grace’s and dropped her off over an hour ago. She’d wanted to climb him and kiss him and fuck his brains out all at the same time.
“Yeah. Silly, right?”
Grace shook her head. “Not at all. I told you these guys are lethal to our resistance. But honey, are you sure you’re ready for this?”
There was a pinprick of annoyance in her soul. But she understood where her bestie was coming from. “Even if I’m not, it’s too late. I’m in love with him.”
Grace’s eyebrows rose. “You’re sure? You haven’t known him all that long.”
Brooke rolled out the dough and gave her friend a significant look. “Seriously? You were with Garrett for how long before you fell for him?”
“About forty-eight hours,” Grace mumbled.
“Exactly.”
Grace ran her finger around the rim of her glass. She drank grape juice while Brooke had a barely touched glass of wine sitting nearby. “But honey… do you know how he feels?”
Brooke frowned because that right there was the fly in her soup. She had no idea how Cade felt. He hadn’t said. To be fair, she hadn’t told him either. They’d said things to each other about how this was different from anything they’d felt before, but they hadn’t quite taken the leap to actually declaring their love.
So maybe he didn’t love her at all. Maybe he felt responsible for her in a way. Maybe he was giving her what she wanted in the hopes of healing her, but his feelings weren’t engaged the same as hers.
She had no idea. Maybe she should have said something to him when he’d kissed her in his truck before delivering her to Grace.
“I know he cares,” she said and then felt like an idiot. It was such a nonanswer. The kind a lovestruck girl gave when she had no idea if the man she was obsessed with felt one-tenth the same.
“That’s good,” Grace said softly, and Brooke knew her friend was trying not to say what she really wanted to say.
“Just say it, Gracie,” Brooke told her.
“There’s nothing to say. I just hope he feels the same as you do. Because you deserve a man who’s crazy for you and treats you right.”
As opposed to a man who was just crazy for her but didn’t care what she wanted. She was still reeling from the revelation that Scott had been obsessed with her. Obsessed was the word Ghost had used, and she’d been turning it over in her head ever since. Cade hadn’t contradicted it when she’d looked to him for reassurance. On the ride over here, she’d asked him what Ghost had meant.
“Scott Lloyd was convinced you were his soul mate, I think. He was planning to ask you to marry him at some point.”
Brooke hadn’t understood it at all. She’d never given Scott any hints she felt anything for him. But she had gone on more than one date, though she’d known after the first one that nothing was going to happen. When she’d said that to Cade, he’d told her to stop.
“It�
��s not your fault, Brooke. None of this is your fault. He made bad choices, and he made choices that he tried to justify to himself by using you as an object to be acquired—but he was wrong, and you can’t let yourself feel bad for that.”
So she was working out her frustrations on this dough and trying not to feel guilty because Scott had done bad things while using her as a justification for it. She still didn’t understand why the men in the cartel had taken Bert’s daughter though. Cade’s face had grown blank when she’d asked.
“I’ll explain it when this is over. For now, you just hang out with Grace and I’ll let you know what’s happening when I can.”
She hadn’t liked that answer at all, but there was no arguing with her badass Special Operator boyfriend.
Boyfriend? Yeah, she kinda liked that. Though a small part of her thought it wasn’t a strong enough word.
“Cade has treated me right,” she said to Grace as her friend watched her over the marble expanse of the island. “More than right.”
“Have you slept with him yet?”
So many emotions in that question. Slept? That was not at all the word to describe what they’d done—multiple times—just last night and this morning. But this was her best friend in the world, and she wasn’t going to withhold information. Grace hadn’t done that to her once since she’d fallen for Garrett.
“Yes. And it was magnificent,” she said, unable to contain the broad smile that broke out over her face.
Grace’s eyebrows lifted again. “Wow. I didn’t think… You haven’t been with anyone that I know of in two years. Have you?”
Brooke felt guilty that she’d kept so much from her friend. She shook her head. “There were things I didn’t tell you about that night when I was taken.” Grace’s face fell, and Brooke rushed over to put an arm around her and squeeze her tight, all while trying not to get flour all over her. “It’s okay, sweetie. None of it was your fault, and that’s why I never told you. Because I knew you would think it was. One of the men—he didn’t rape me in the conventional sense, but he put his fingers inside me and threatened me. It’s not your fault and it’s not Garrett’s fault and I’m going to be pissed as hell if you start thinking it is.”
HOT Angel Page 15