Six looked across at her, his mouth set in a grim line. “There’s nothing solid. Nothing that leads us to any kind of conclusion yet. Anything I told you would be pure speculation.”
Leaning forward, she tapped her pen on the paper. “What are you trying to keep from me?” she asked.
Six closed his laptop and studied her. “I promise I’ll tell you when there is something important. You have enough to worry about already.”
“And you get to decide that?” she asked, hearing her voice go up an octave.
It was clear he noticed the angry hitch too. “Wait, Lou. It’s not like that at all.”
“No. Because it sounded a lot like you were deciding what I get to hear about a case I am actually paying you for.”
“You have to trust us to do our job,” he said, frustration lacing his words. “That’s what you are paying us for. To keep you safe and figure out what’s going on. To make it stop. To deal with the perpetrators.”
“Well, it doesn’t sound like you are doing such a great job of it, seeing as you have zero to update me on.” She threw her notepad down onto the table in anger.
“For fuck’s sake,” Six mumbled. “There’s no need for you to hear all this.”
“I’ll decide that,” she railed. “And I’ll do it based on you telling me everything until such time as I decide I don’t need to hear it.”
“Some things can’t be unheard, Lou, or unseen. And some of it’s classified.”
For a moment, she wondered if he was talking about her or his own experiences. “This involves me. You have no idea what little detail you might have that might trigger something in my head about conversations I’ve had in the past, or people I’ve met, or companies I know. You gather intel, so don’t you realize how stupid not following up with me would be? And finding patterns is my freaking job. A job I am really good at. I could help.”
Tears pricked the corners of eyes, but they weren’t sad ones. They were tears of frustration that she’d always felt when she was marginalized by the male researchers she’d worked with in the past. Louisa stood, and Six jumped to his feet too. The look on his face could only be described as predatory, just like the time when they’d been in his bedroom together.
“I don’t want you to have nightmares about everything after it’s all over. I’m trying to protect you from this, not hide shit from you.”
“I don’t need protecting, Six.”
“Yes, you do. I see you, Louisa. I see the brave face you’re trying to put on this. But then I see the books on my shelves are now alphabetized and that the plants in the window are now in size order. You make your bed and leave the pillows perfectly in line, and everything in the fridge faces forward. And don’t tell me it’s OCD because if it were, you’d be compelled to do that kind of thing all the time. But you don’t. You do it when you are scared. As soon as we sat down at the coffee table, you began to pile the rocks. Look.”
She looked at the pebbles in the center of the wooden table that had formed a centerpiece with a large piece of driftwood. Without thinking, she’d separated them in such a way that they now ran from the palest gray to black, like a monochrome rainbow.
He marched over to her and pressed her back up against the wall, his hands on either side of her head. “So don’t tell me you don’t need protecting, Lou,” he said, thunderously. “I see it even when you don’t. And I want to be that guy for you.”
His lips seared hers as anger and frustration gave way to the one thing that had been building between them. Of all the things he could have said or done, this was the only thing that could disarm her, leave her forgetting what exactly they had been fighting over. It wasn’t resolved, but she was willing to table it until whatever this was was over.
His hands slipped around her waist, pulling her to him, and she slid her hands into his hair, holding on for dear life as his erection pressed against her hip. Dear God, she wanted him to take her. Right here. On the back porch, with the stupid creaking fan cooling them from above.
“Lou,” he gasped just before his tongue entered her, and she groaned in response. He tasted of the mango smoothie he’d bought, and she shivered as his hand slid up inside her T-shirt and along her ribs until his thumb brushed across the lace of her bra.
“Please, Six,” she groaned as he pressed more firmly against her. His phone, which he’d left on, began to ring, but thankfully he ignored it.
He lifted her T-shirt above her head and threw it onto the chair before returning his attention to her breasts. He reached around her back, nuzzling her neck as he did so, and popped the clasp of her bra. The straps fell down her arms, and he lowered his mouth along her clavicle and down her breastbone before sucking her nipple into his mouth. She threaded her hands back into his hair and gripped him to her, silently encouraging him to lick and suck harder, which he did, making her knees weak.
Heat gathered between her legs, and she desperately wanted to relieve the pressure. The phone began to ring again and he looked toward it. She reached between them, slid both her hands into his underwear, and gripped his erection firmly.
“God, Lou. Yes. Don’t stop,” he said, lifting his head to look at her, his blue eyes cooler than an arctic glacier. Heat was building between them, but one that was different from their first time together. This was flammable. She was going to combust if he didn’t take her soon.
Excitement shivered through her as he thrust into her hand. He wanted her as badly as she wanted him. “Not here,” he said. “My bed.” They started to move toward the bedroom, her hand tucked into his, but the phone rang again. “Goddamn,” he shouted, but picked it up anyway. With a cursory glance at the screen he answered it. “What?” he snapped. He ran his thumb over her nipple and winked. Perhaps it was because he was on the phone with someone else, but she suddenly felt exposed and raised her arm to cover her breasts. His hand dropped away, his face losing the desire that had been obvious in his hooded lids and slack jaw. The soldier was back as he bent down to pick up her bra and handed it to her.
“See you there in an hour,” he said, and hung up the phone.
* * *
Sniper school had taught Six the most important lesson of all: how to simultaneously block out everything else around him and focus on the target, yet take in all the changes in the environment. And how to ignore the dull ache in his cock. Pulling away from Louisa had been an impossible task, but he had a mission. Never had it been so difficult to fall back into his role as a SEAL. Boyfriend was starting to have a nicer ring to it, and hopefully he’d make it back to her bed before she fell asleep.
For now, all he needed to do was focus on the job at hand. Their plan was simple: surround, surprise, and drive them to surrender.
Demyan Kovalenko was about to be haunted by ghosts. Thanks to the wireless phone tap that Six had put on the guy’s cell phone, they knew that Kovalenko was pissed that he hadn’t been paid, even though the attempted snatch on Lou had been a bust. In a train wreck that Mac, who’d been listening in on saw coming a mile off, Kovalenko had called someone named Mitty demanding payment and protection.
One way or another, things were unlikely to end well for him.
Six watched from his spot behind the derelict brick wall behind the abandoned building. Bailey and Ryder, who’d decided to accept the offers to join Eagle Securities, weren’t happy to be assigned protection duty for Louisa, but the meeting time and place had been arranged, and Mac, Cabe, Six, Buddha, Lite, and Gaz had spent the afternoon casing the location to ensure that no matter where the action went down, they had eyes on it. They’d also done some serious heavy lifting. The collapsed portions of the wall had stuck together in clumps of seven or eight bricks, and they had carried piles of them into the road to prevent vehicles from passing through in a move designed to limit car use on the cracked concrete road.
“So, I hear you and Louisa are getting tight,” Mac whispered from his hiding spot seven feet away, muting with one hand his mic that kept them a
ll connected through their earpieces.
Six looked toward the main entryway, curious as to whether the two parties were going to arrive by car or on foot. He muted his mic too. “It’s unlike you to be chatty on a job, Mac. You’ve been hanging with Cabe too long.”
“She’s easy on the eyes, I’ll give you that. Reminds me of Delaney that way.”
Despite Mac’s needling him, Six hoped that Mac and Delaney would figure their shit out one day, as highly unlikely as it seemed. She hadn’t spoken to Mac since the day she’d slapped him in front of her brother’s coffin. “If you spend more time looking around for our targets than gossiping about Lou, this night will be so much more productive.”
“Headlights.” Positioned on the third floor of the building where he could see the road leading up to the warehouse, Lite was sparse as ever with his commentary.
“Do we have eyes on how many? Visible weapons?” Six asked.
“Working on it.”
Moments like this always seemed to drag on forever, seconds feeling like minutes, but Six knew the value of taking their time, especially on the shot, until they had all the intel.
“Three. None visible.”
The car pulled around to the back of the warehouse and to the side of the road, just before the bricks. If shit went down, Buddha was going to take out the front tires from his position. Their vehicles were over on the shoulder of a road not easily accessible from the warehouse unless on foot, with a pissed-off Gaz behind the wheel of one of them. He wasn’t happy to be left out of the key action after being left behind from the gig in Mexico, but he hadn’t said a word. Instead, he’d let his driving speak for him. They’d been lucky to have not been pulled over by the police.
“Second vehicle, one driver, no passengers.”
“Wow,” Buddha whispered from his hiding spot. “That was almost a sentence, Lite.”
“Fuck you. How’s that for a sentence? Verb and pronoun included.”
Mac looked over toward Six and grinned.
The second car parked behind the first. Rookie mistake, Six thought. The driver should have turned the car around, left it facing in the direction he needed to exit. Now if he had to run quickly, he’d be faced with the prospect of having to do a three-point turn under pressure, and possibly in a hail of bullets.
A battered and bruised Kovalenko jumped out of his car without killing the engine and recklessly marched toward the other vehicle, a small gun tucked in the back of his jeans. “Where’s my money?”
Six rolled his eyes. It was playing out like a bad scene in a B-list movie. All stilted dialogue and bad acting. The driver of the first vehicle stepped out. Typical meathead. Thick neck and sausages for fingers. Looked the size of a small tank, but would run slower than a turtle. He’d be an easy target to take down.
The driver opened the door to the back of the car, and two men got out, both in jeans and T-shirts and one of them wearing a leather jacket despite the heat, which told Six that he was likely heavily armed.
“Mitkin,” Kovalenko said loudly. “You need to pay me.”
Mitty. The abbreviation made sense.
“And tell me why you think I should do that,” Mitkin said. “Because I most definitely don’t have the girl.”
The driver of the vehicle was slowly sliding his hand behind his back, which was all the confirmation Six needed that at least two of the people they were watching were armed.
Six’s mic clicked in his ear. “Buddha, driver. Cabe, leather jacket. I got the gray T-shirt,” Mac whispered. “Six, Kovalenko.”
“I need to get away. Someone was watching my home,” Kovalenko said. “They came for me. They know who I am and where I live. I need money to get away.”
Mitkin looked between his two henchmen and smiled. “I still don’t understand why you think this has anything to do with me. You screwed up. And there are always consequences.”
“You made it sound like a simple in and out.”
Laughter cracked through the silence. “I offered you a job, you took the job, and you failed on the job. There is nothing to be gained by crying to me about your own inept failings. But you can be of use to me.”
Kovalenko wiped his brow as he looked between the three men nervously. “What do you need?”
Mitkin walked toward Kovalenko, and Six shook his head.
“Bye bye, Kovalenko,” Lite sang quietly through the earpiece.
Six sucked in a breath and waited for the inevitable.
“I want you to be a lesson to those who think they can fail and expect payment.” Mitkin stopped a few steps away from him.
Suddenly sensing what he’d gotten himself into, Kovalenko reached around his back to pull his gun from its holster, but it was too late. Six shook his head as the driver of the vehicle stepped forward and pointed his gun, ready to pull the trigger until the gun was shot out of his hand by Lite. They needed Kovalenko alive. They needed all of them alive.
Mitkin dove for cover, and Kovalenko crumbled to the ground in fear.
“Go!” Mac shouted.
“Put your weapons down,” Six yelled as he tore up the distance between them, gun pointed directly at Mitkin, even though Mac already had him covered. With Kovalenko already down, the focus should be on the boss. Cries instructing the three men to get down on the ground echoed around him.
Capitalizing on the element of surprise and seeing the shock etched on the faces of Mitkin’s men, his men hurried from their hiding places with Lite providing cover from above, hitting the driver squarely in the shoulder as a bullet went whizzing by to the left of Six’s head. Already doubled over from the gunshot wound, the driver was the easiest target. Six saw Buddha charge him, sending him sprawling onto the floor, face-first. With a loud yell, Buddha landed squarely on top of him, placing a knee directly in the small of his back. Roughly, he tugged the driver’s arms behind his back and secured them tightly.
“Cover me,” Mitkin shouted, but there was no one left to do that. The driver was out, and Cabe was in the process of disarming the guy in the leather jacket.
Six focused on Mitkin, who took in the confusion going on around them. Shock was etched across his face. Six held his gun directly at him. “On the ground,” he yelled, but being the ill-informed, weak asshole he was, Mitkin instead made a dash for Kovalenko’s car. Six groaned. “Down on the floor,” he yelled and fired a warning shot that deliberately landed just inches away from Mitkin’s foot. There was no way Six was going to let him get away. He charged over the uneven concrete as if hell was at his heels. He’d shoot the guy before he’d let him get away. With a grunt, he threw himself bodily onto Mitkin and forced him to the ground. Even with Mitkin’s slight frame absorbing the majority of the impact, Six’s knees made contact with the concrete and pain rushed up his legs.
“You have no idea who you are messing with,” Mitkin yelled. “You’ll be dead before morning.”
“Unlikely,” Six said, jamming Mitkin’s head to the floor for good measure.
“Clear,” Cabe shouted.
“Clear,” Buddha echoed.
Six restrained Mitkin’s hands and checked him for weapons. “Clear,” he added finally.
Mac turned off Kovalenko’s car engine. “Let’s take them inside,” he instructed.
Their captives fought for a moment longer, but quickly became subdued when they realized they were outmanned and outarmed.
Six hauled Mitkin to his feet and dragged him bodily to their waiting vehicles. Mac and the others followed suit, and once everyone was in the vehicle, transported them to the San Diego FBI field office as agreed. Unlike in the movies, they made no move to Mirandize them. They wanted the men to talk. “Loose lips sink ships” was a saying for a reason, and he’d take any information he could to help Lou.
In spite of Six’s hopes that they might fight with each other, revealing something crucial to Louisa’s case, Mitkin had done little more than glare at Kovalenko as they’d driven. As soon as they got into the federal buildin
g they were separated. The driver and henchman were put into holding until they could be interviewed. Six and Cabe took Mitkin to an interview room, Mac and Lite took Kovalenko.
There was a fine line between interview, interrogation, and intimidation. The two feebs on the other side of the two-way mirror probably had just as blurred a view of the subtleties as he did. And given what was at stake, he was in no mood to mince his words. So he got the reading of Miranda rights out of the way.
“You’re going to prison, and probably at the end of the sentence, you are going back to Russia,” he said before Mitkin had even had a chance to sit down. “The only thing that will affect your sentence is what you say next.”
Six pulled the chair out, turned it around. “So, what’s it going to be?”
* * *
Once the sun had gone down, Louisa had realized there were too many windows without curtains in Six’s house. Every room had at least two, and suddenly she felt exposed.
Perhaps it was because of the time she’d spent giving her official statement, but she suddenly felt very alone.
She shouldn’t, of course, because Six had left her covered by two of Eagle Securities’ guys who he knew and trusted. She knew she should take his word for it that they were as good as he was, but from her spot on the bed, she pulled the drawer open and checked for the thousandth time that the gun was still there. Earlier, she’d even taken it out and held it in her hand. It was cool to the touch and smoother than she’d imagined it being. Her hand had been shaking as she’d placed a finger on the trigger, but thoughts of pulling it had her quickly placing it back in the drawer and slamming it shut.
Even now, even with everything that was going on in her life, she still couldn’t imagine a scenario when she might actually need a weapon enough to fire it.
Meanwhile, though, Six was out hunting the men who’d attempted to hurt her, and the idea of him doing that unarmed was unthinkable.
Louisa picked up her laptop and scrolled through the agenda of a neurology conference at which she’d been asked to speak the following January. In the past, she’d tended to defer these talks to others because she hated presenting … and people—two elements that were usually a given at large conferences. But she was beginning to think it was possible to push all that to one side and do it anyway for the good of what she was trying to do. She wondered how many potential donors, or, candidly, how much more research, she might have been able to achieve had she spoken more.
Under Fire Page 19