Under Fire

by Scarlett Cole

  “G213, that is a negative to reports of break-in at VNP Laboratory,” a voice crackled over the radio. “I also ran checks against the names Vasilii Popov and Ivan Popov and returned nothing.”

  Louisa turned to face him. “Vasilii never reported it. I knew he wanted to save his reputation, but the sample is too dangerous to be ignored.”

  Everything about this had him on edge. And somehow he needed to figure out how to best help her. This was just getting more and more out of hand. Six gripped her hands tightly between his. They were chilled, and he was starting to worry about shock setting in. “We’ll work through this with Officer Meeks, and then I’m going to stay here tonight. We’ll figure this out.”

  Louisa slumped forward in her seat and placed her head in her hands. “I knew this would happen.”

  “I’m sorry, ma’am,” Officer Meeks said. “We can’t find any report of that incident, so why don’t you tell me what you know, starting from the top?”

  Three hours later, they were all gone, leaving behind a buffet of fingerprint powder around the windows, and lines around the blood on the kitchen floor. Job one was to get Louisa into bed. He saw the police officers out of the house and returned to find her slumped on the chair arm, fast asleep. Her bangs had fallen off to the side, and he could see her long eyelashes resting on her cheeks. She reminded him of the riptide he’d been caught in when he was fifteen. The water had been a little energetic, but the waves had looked amazing. Great swell, a little choppy, but he’d been feeling confident. His third ride of the day had gone a little off course, landing him right in the middle of the rip. He’d lain flat out on his board and tried to paddle in, but the tide kept whipping him out. He imagined that that was what every day felt like for her, an exhausting struggle against a tide that was always pulling her in the opposite direction, and he wanted to help her, keep people away from her.

  He carefully slid one arm around her back and his other under her legs and lifted her into the air. She turned her head into his shoulder and wrapped her arms around his neck. “Did everybody leave?” she mumbled.

  “Yeah, sweetheart. They did. What’s your alarm code?”

  “The Fibonacci sequence,” she said through a giant yawn. “… 0-1-1-2-3-5-8-13.”

  As gently as he could, he took the stairs up to her room and quickly decided which bedroom was likeliest to be hers based on which looked most lived in. He laid her down on the bed, and even though she’d pretend to hate him for it in the morning, he slipped her bra off without removing her tank to protect her modesty. It was as important to him as it would be to her that he could look her in the eye and say he hadn’t seen anything she’d be embarrassed about. As much as he wanted to be a gentleman, he couldn’t resist checking her out a little though. He’d forgotten the charm of natural breasts. His type could usually give Barbie a run for her money in the plastic and silicon stakes. But Louisa’s were perfect.

  He slipped the band out of Louisa’s hair so she wouldn’t have a headache when she woke and tugged the comforter from the other side of the bed over her so she wouldn’t get chilled. When he was certain that she was comfortable and sleeping peacefully, he jogged back downstairs and checked every door and window. He found a set of house keys in the hallway and tested them in the front door before he quietly let himself out and ran to his truck, which was thankfully still where he’d left it. With a roar that couldn’t be avoided, he started the truck, turned it around, and then drove back down the street to pull it onto her driveway. It wouldn’t stop a determined assailant, but it might give someone pause if they thought Louisa had company.

  Thankfully his gym bag was always stocked with clothes, as staying in shape was a huge part of his life. At seventeen years old, he’d realized that having a six-pack and biceps ensured he’d spend the summer surrounded by girls in tiny bikinis. Through college, it had been about anything that would give him the fastest swim times. But it was when he’d decided to enlist that he’d gotten serious about complete functional strength. Now he trained every day and felt kind of grumpy if he didn’t. He grabbed his bag, hopped out of the truck, locked it up, and let himself back into the house.

  Once inside, he bolted the door and moved to set the alarm. What the hell was the Fibonacci sequence anyway? He pulled out his phone and looked it up. Typical. Some sort of mathematical formula that appeared a lot in nature. It was actually kind of interesting. While he had his phone in hand, he dropped Cabe a text. The guy was on the hook for pickup of the hostage retrieval, but he’d feel better if at least one more person outside of the police knew what had happened to Louisa.

  With his bag over his shoulder, Six walked back up the stairs. It would be safer for them both if they slept in the same room, just for tonight, but as Louisa hadn’t been awake long enough to ask if she’d be cool with his sleeping on the bed next to her, he decided to set up on the floor by the door. He stripped the bed in the spare room of its bedding and wandered back into Louisa’s room. She was still lying exactly where he’d left her.

  Once the door was locked, he made up his bed. Most people would hate the idea of sleeping on the floor, but Six could quite literally fall asleep anywhere. He’d fallen asleep standing up during Hell Week and on missions when he’d sometimes had no choice other than to catch an hour of sleep with his body on the cold, wet ground. So a spongy carpet, some ridiculously soft bedding, and a couple of thick pillows would be a massive improvement.

  He stripped off his hoodie and put his T-shirt back on. While he was 99.9 percent certain that the men wouldn’t be back tonight, he wasn’t going to risk sleeping without his clothes or boots. Hand-to-hand combat performed while naked was always a miserable experience.

  Six turned off all the lights and looked over to the bed where he could see the comforter rise and fall with Louisa’s breath. There was so much she was going to have to deal with, and he prayed she’d get a good night’s sleep.

  “Good night, Lou,” he said softly, and closed his eyes.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Why had somebody turned the lights on? It was still the middle of the night, and Louisa had been sound asleep until the brightness on the other side of her eyelids had penetrated her slumber.

  She rolled over and pulled the comforter over her head, reveling in the warmth and darkness. With a large yawn, she attempted to open her eyes, but the urge to stay asleep won the battle. Until she remembered that she lived alone, and that men had broken into her house the previous evening. She threw back the comforter and sat up straight. Her head spun at the sudden movement, and she struggled to open her eyes, finding the world to be a blurry mess.

  As her heart pounded in her chest, she tried to make sense of what had happened. The men had broken in, but Six had saved her. If nothing else, she would find a way to thank him. Louisa shook her head one more time to clear the grogginess and looked around the bedroom. The curtains were wide open, letting in a blaze of sunlight. And a pile of neatly folded blankets sat on the floor next to the door, which was slightly ajar. Six must have stayed the night to look after her. The thought sent an excited shiver through her and cut through her panic. He’d protected her. Her own personal hero. It was all kinds of wrong to think of him that way because—she stopped the thought. Maybe his gentle touches were a little more than friendly, but he was a flirtatious kind of guy, and it struck her that he was simply a friend who had decided to help her out.

  She tilted her head to see if she could hear any sounds of him still in the house. Quietly, she got out of bed and wandered to the landing. It sounded like water was running in the guest bathroom, and she wondered what excuse she could concoct to accidentally walk in there. The thought of Six, naked, likely covered in suds, forced her thoughts from fear to arousal.

  Uncertain what to do with the mash-up of feelings coursing through her, she hurried into her own bathroom. She didn’t know whether to be offended or relieved to find out that she hadn’t slept in her bra. The idea that Six might have seen her breast
s was as exciting as it was horrifying. Louisa placed her dirty clothes in the laundry basket and quickly ran through her own morning routine.

  Once she’d showered and dried her hair, she threw on a little mascara and gloss, unusual for her in her day-to-day life. It was a foolish gesture on her part, she knew it, but for some reason it seemed important to convey the fact that she was back in control and not likely to fall apart again like she had the previous evening. Today was about making plans. She wondered if she could hire somebody from Six’s company, Eagle Securities, to go with her for the day. If last night’s break-in and the sample were connected, she wouldn’t feel particularly safe otherwise.

  Details, details, details. She’d have to go through everything in her head and document as much as she could. The lab had very specific security guidelines. Laptops were company property, and had to be left at the lab, which made all of this even more strange. Though Louisa hadn’t given anyone her passwords, she was certain that any half-brained IT person would be able to quickly access the files and information. She’d never been able to bring information home, or even email files to herself. Always one to abide by the rules, she had never once tried to circumnavigate them. So all of her research notes were now property of VNP Laboratories. She needed to spend the day getting down every single thing she could remember. Thankfully, she made personal notes every day when she got home, so she had plenty of reference material. The problem, though, was that her handwritten notes didn’t prove to anybody that the sample actually existed.

  Crap. And church. She’d promised her mom she’d take her to the afternoon service, and get her some groceries.

  She opened the door to her closet and pulled out a turquoise dress, which she cinched with the brown leather belt. She found her favorite brown ankle boots at the bottom of her closet, so she put those on too. Of all the things she was ready to face, Six wasn’t one of them. Science in general had laws, equations that always added up. It was neat and orderly and could always be explained. But biology was a world unto itself. Sure, the anatomy of it all was well understood, but the heart of it, not the physical beating organ but the parts that allowed a human to dream, to experience complex emotions, and to cry at the stupid videos that went viral every second day were still a mystery. If they were fully understood, there would be no use for apps like Tinder. You’d just be able to load in your biological profile to meet somebody who would feel the same way about you as you did him or her, and the rest would be guaranteed. She had no biological explanation for her feelings about Six, but she knew she owed him a thank-you and couldn’t hide away in her bedroom for the rest of the day.

  Louisa cautiously stepped downstairs and braced herself by the kitchen door. There would be cleaning up to do, but for now, for her own mental health, she needed to ignore the bloodstain that she knew covered the tiles on the other side. She pushed the door open and was greeted by the smell of coffee and bacon. And as much as she loved both, neither were a match for the arresting sight of Six wearing nothing but a pair of shorts which rode low on his hips as he cooked. Holy shoulders. Learning the major muscle groups was biology 101, but she had no idea that the latissimus dorsi and rhomboid major could look so freaking—

  “You okay there, Lou?” he asked without turning around.

  There was humor in his voice, and she knew immediately that he’d caught her staring—though she wasn’t sure how.

  “Your footsteps stopped as you walked through the door,” he answered, reading her thoughts. “I didn’t hear the door swing closed, which means you’re still holding it, and to top it off,” he said, turning to look at her, “I could see your reflection in the window. Good morning, Louisa.”

  She immediately let go of the door, letting it swing shut behind her, and looked away, desperate to find something that could take her attention from him and the sexy-as-all-hell tattoo that crept up his back and over his shoulder.

  Her eyes went straight to the shelves, which now hung straight.

  “Hope I put everything back okay,” Six said, waving his hand in the direction of the crockery and glasses that were randomly placed on them. She could fix them later.

  “I appreciate that. Thank you,” she mumbled as she headed over to the coffeepot, still embarrassed at being caught staring. “Can I fix you a cup?”

  As she reached for it, a hand slid over the top of hers. He’d silently beaten her to it. “I was just teasing you, Lou. How did you sleep?” he asked, moving her hand. He pulled a mug out of the cupboard and poured it full of steaming-hot coffee. As he handed it to her, he did that thing, the one where he pushed her bangs from her face, but she couldn’t bring herself to slap his hand away. Instead, she braced herself and looked up at him.

  Louisa forced her shoulders to relax. “Better than I thought I was going to. Did you sleep on the floor?”

  Spitting and hissing from the pan made her jump, and Six hurried back to the pan to scoop the bacon out and place it on paper towels to drain the fat.

  “That’s quite literally the second time you saved my bacon,” Louisa said, and sipped on her coffee to help fight back the grin.

  Six laughed as he put the spatula down. “Did you just crack a joke, Louisa North? Because that felt a lot like a pun.” He began to assemble what looked like BLTs.

  “It’s been known to happen,” she said, grabbing the orange juice from the fridge. She collected two glasses from the open shelves and placed everything by the stools on the opposite side of the island.

  Her mouth watered at the smell of breakfast. Bacon was the one reason she couldn’t call herself vegan. She’d attempted to give up animal protein for health reasons, but the longer she’d deprived herself of bacon, the more she’d thought about eating it, until she’d conceded that a once-a-week treat was really not the end of the world. Six slid a plate in front of her, and they both sat down on the stools. Louisa bit into the sandwich and groaned. He’d used way more mayo substitute than she would have, but that was probably why it tasted so damn good.

  “Thank you,” she mumbled through a mouthful of food.

  Politely, Six waited until he finished chewing. “You’re welcome. Hope you don’t mind me using your food. And to answer your question, yes, I did sleep on the floor, but it was no big deal. I’ve slept in places a lot worse.”

  Louisa managed to swallow. “You didn’t need to do that. You could have slept in one of the spare bedrooms.”

  “Made it easier for me to keep you safe, having both of us in the same place. But you do need to think about what happens next. What are you going to do today?”

  His question drew her eyes to the floor, but the blood was gone, and as she looked around she realized that all the other signs of the break-in were gone too. “Did you clean up?” she asked.

  Six looked at his plate and took another bite of food. He shrugged as he chewed, as if what he’d done was no big deal. “Had some of my guys drive some supplies over this morning. There are some things you should never had to deal with in life, and a huge pile of somebody else’s blood, especially the blood of your enemy, is one of them.”

  Louisa placed her hand on his arm. It was soft and warm and covered in soft blond hair. “Thank you for everything you’ve done for me,” she said.

  When his eyes met hers, she felt a little kick in her stomach. “Anytime, Louisa.”

  * * *

  There were few things that made Six crave the isolation of being perched on a hilltop with his rifle in a Middle Eastern country, but Home Depot on a Sunday was one of them.

  Louisa had headed off to her mom’s to take her to church. While she was showering, he’d inspected her car and his truck for any kind of tracking device, not that he’d told her. She’d clearly been shaken enough by the break-in, and the last thing he wanted to do was make her feel unsafe in her car as well as her home.

  She’d looked pretty as a picture in that turquoise dress, and he’d wanted to tell her as he’d watched her get into her car, but the words h
ad stuck in his throat. If he’d said them, she might have gotten ideas, and if she’d gotten ideas, then he would likely have gotten on board with them. Instead, he’d followed her to the highway, ensuring she had no tail, where she went north to Torrey Pines, and he’d hit Eagle Securities to provide backup to the extraction of the kid in Mexico. Once the plane was wheels up and on its way back to the US, he breathed a huge sigh of relief. Their first major job was over and it had been a success.

  Yet his mind was still on Lou. He pulled another pack of window locks off the shelf. These were a whole heap more effective than the ones she currently had installed, and by all accounts never even used. There were a million other ways he’d rather spend his Sunday than trying to find products in narrow aisles with about ten thousand of his closest friends, but he’d felt unable to just leave her to her own devices. He’d needed to know she was secure. That her damn windows were locked. That she installed CCTV. So here he was, alone, in a hardware store.

  Fuck.

  A loud clattering noise, like semiautomatic gunfire, sounded to his left, and his heartbeat elevated at a dangerous rate. He forced himself to grip the metal shelf and look in the direction of the noise. A kid, messing around with a shelf full of fixtures and fittings, was being told off by his embarrassed father as loose plumbing supplies fell to the floor, the sound of metal hitting concrete resonating down the aisle. Six forced himself to breathe in through his nose and out through his mouth. I’m fine. He repeated it over and over. I’m fine.