Black Ice (Hunters Inc Book 2)

by J M LOWE

  He looked over and saw that Sarah was still out, still in pretty much the same position that she had been in last night, that made him smile, she made him smile.

  “Yeah…” Connor slipped out of the room, leaving her to sleep.

  “We just might have something; how soon can you get your ass in here? And bring her with.” It took less than a nanosecond for his half-asleep brain to register Janson’s words. If he had been half asleep before, he was more than fully awake now, hell yeah, the news he had been waiting for.

  “Spill, you gotta give me something” he walked into the kitchen, putting on a pot of coffee before deciding the mess would have to wait a little while longer, he had some ass to kick.

  “Let’s just say Super Girl came through big time” fuck yeah.

  “Give me thirty minutes, I need coffee and a shower and I need to wake Sarah” he took the stairs two at a time, nervous anticipation building deep within him.

  “Watch your back, there is still a price on her head remember”

  Connor didn’t bother replying.

  Sarah’s head was still spinning.

  She had been woken by the sound of Connor shouting her name as he had burst through the bedroom door.

  He had all but dragged her out of bed, and pulled her into the shower, where he had given her the best wake up orgasm of her life with just his mouth and his hands, his hot kisses making sure she was more than awake as he fucked her hard with his fingers, Sarah doing more than an adequate job of palming him to climax as they both stood beneath the hot water.

  She had finally managed to coax out of him the reason he was so desperate to get them out of the house. And now she was sat in his car in silence as the safety of his home slipped further and further into the distance, quick side glances into the wing mirrors causing the nerves that had been falsely subdued, to come flooding back, back with vengeance.

  Connor knew she would be scared, and as much as he hated to admit it, it was her fear that was spurring him on, feeding his adrenaline, his need.

  She was pushing him to save her and she didn’t even know it. He didn’t speak, just took her hand in his, a soft kiss on her fingers, before he turned his attention back to the road.

  Sometimes you didn’t need words, and this was one of those times, besides, he wasn’t sure she would appreciate hearing what was going through his mind right now, no words of comfort in there.

  Connor was back in war mode and chances were, he wouldn’t be coming out of it any time soon.

  Deep down he knew part of him would always be a soldier, it was in him, it was what he did, it was who he was and now he had his target and he wouldn’t stop until he had taken his target down.

  The drive was fast and short, he pulled up outside the ‘warehouse’, sure they hadn’t been followed, he was careful, besides, it would take a small army to get through the security at the company compound.

  He wasn’t worried.

  He looked across at her, Sarah.

  Connor felt his heart ache and his gut twist, he would walk to the ends of the earth for her, no question.

  He cupped her face in his palms, looking at her face like it was the first time and maybe the last time he would see it, he didn’t know what the next few hours would bring, didn’t know what his team had waiting for them in the Ops room.

  Right now, he didn’t care, she was all that mattered.

  “I need you to know something, need you to understand, I don’t do…this”

  He looked her up and down as he spoke, her eyes filling with silent tears, shit…

  “Ok, I understand…”

  Did she? He wasn’t so sure.

  “What I mean is, I’ve never done this, I am way out of my depth, I don’t know if I’m sinking or I’m… shit, I’m making a fucking mess of this”

  He had been to every corner of the globe on missions even Uncle Sam wouldn’t admit to sanctioning, put bullets and blades in more evil mother fuckers than he cared to remember, and here he was sat in his car with a woman like some punk trying to get past first base.

  Deep breath.

  “I love you Connor” she did?

  “You do?”

  “Yes, I do. I don’t know what’s gonna happen, and if I have learned anything over the past couple of days, it’s this… no point wasting time, mine or yours. I don’t know if I am gonna ever get the chance to say this to you again, so I’m telling you now. I’m in love with you Connor Parry, think I have been since I opened my hotel room door.”

  Connor could count on one hand the times he had been struck dumb in his life.

  And she had just added another, hot damn. Knocked him clean on his proverbial ass.

  “Sarah…I” god, she was beautiful. Just hearing the words come from her mouth made him want to take her there and then and fuck who might have been watching.

  “It’s ok, I don’t expect you to…”

  “Shut it woman, I’m trying to tell you I fucking love you too, have done since you opened your shitty hotel room door…” he didn’t finish his sentence, couldn’t, she had closed the gap between them and climbed onto his lap.

  This kiss was hot and hard, he took her mouth like it was the last chance he would get to taste her.

  Lips and tongues clashing together, fuck, he would never get enough of this, of her.

  Gavin Smith was going down.

  It ended now.

  Connor could hear the impatient ‘tap, tap, tap’ of the thick heavy set boot that adorned Jenson’s foot.

  He nodded to each of his team mates that were sat around the large circular table that dominated the Ops planning room at the Hunter Inc: compound.

  He hadn’t dropped Sarah’s hand when they entered the room, didn’t care who saw it, hell, they were well past playing coy.

  Jenson could bust his balls later, right now, he needed to know how they were gonna take Gavin Smith aka Mr. Crombie aka The American down.

  Connor and Sarah took their seats around the table, he gave short introductions to the guys she hadn’t met, Chris, Dylan and Briggs each gave her an acknowledging nod before turning their attention to the front of the room and to Em, who had walked into the room, her arms full of Manila files.

  Em distributed the paper work before walking to the front of the room and hitting the interactive smart board.

  Multiple images and pieces of text popped up on the screen and Connors eyes darted across it all.

  Em had been busy.

  “Ok, so…don’t ask me to explain how, just be impressed that I can and I did” any other time he would have rolled his eyes, but not this time, this time was different “here we have footage of Sarah entering the ice rink, note, she is carrying a large bag.” Em hit the board a few more times and then the footage changed to Sarah leaving the ice rink, this wasn’t new, he had seen this more times than he cared to remember, hell this was the footage that was all over the news.

  “now we have the real footage, Sarah did indeed enter the ice rink, but didn’t leave fifteen minutes later, try two hours, and the bag, jump in here anytime Sarah…”

  “Skates, shit, how stupid am I?” Connor turned to her as she spoke.

  The color had drained from her face.

  “Skates, hence the shape and weight. Kind of made it easy for Joe Public to buy into the crap they had been fed, plus, the time stamp had been changed and that made it look like you had left a lot sooner than you did. Suddenly, your two-hour training session doesn’t exist” damn, Super Girl was good.

  “So how did they get prints?” Connor watched as Jenson leaned forward as he spoke, the older man’s elbows resting on the table.

  “Well, I managed to (cough) Hack (cough) Smiths phone last night and for someone who thinks he’s clever, he fell shamefully short. Dick should have brought a burner, but his mistake is our gain”

  “You’re Waffling Super Girl…” Jenson now sat back, his arms folded across his chest.

  “Sorry. Ok, well, turns out, when you cl
eared out of the hotel, you left a couple of things behind, competition lanyard, room key card, toothbrush…” shit.

  Connor looked across the room to where Harry was now sitting, Harry looked back, no words were exchanged, but both men had silently acknowledged their error.

  “The key card was conveniently found next to the device, made to look like it had been dropped, prints were lifted off the lanyard and transferred to the outer casing of the bomb, wouldn’t take much to do, any kind of clear tape can do it. DNA from the toothbrush and voila, they had their suspect”

  Sarah sat staring at the screen and the woman that stood in front of it.

  She had handed Gavin Smith everything he needed to frame her, practically gift wrapped it for him.

  But why her? and how would they be able to use what they knew to clear her?

  “Now, here’s where it gets complicated. There was a deposit of five hundred thousand dollars made into Sarah’s account the day after the time stamp on the tape, making it look like she had been paid for planting the device. I’m still working on how someone managed to hack the banking system, its proving a little difficult, but I’ll get there”

  How much?

  “So, that’s the who and the how, do we have anything on the why?” Connor was flicking his eyes between the screen and the papers in the file, his face was hard.

  The soft, gentle giant of a man who had held her in his arms in the car, was long gone.

  “Hate to say it, but it seems it’s a good old fashioned case of wrong place at the wrong time. If you hadn’t been seen in the elevator at the hotel, Gavin Smith would have been none the wiser to the fact that Sarah had even been in the hotel, nothing else connects her”

  Sarah looked around at the men all dressed in tactical pants and boots and black hoodies.

  Seeing Connor dressed like this before they had left the house had made her go all fifty shades of hot between her thighs, but now she saw them all dressed the same, those feelings had been pushed to the back of her mind. This was his team at work, this was his team ready to walk into war for her. They really were something.

  They all looked like they came from the same DNA pool, apart from Jacks and Chris, Connor had assured her that they weren’t related, not in the blood sense, but he had told her there was no mistaking the men and woman in that room were his family and now she understood exactly what he had meant.

  “So how does this help clear me?” it wasn’t like Gavin Smith was just gonna go on TV and confess everything was it?

  “That is where we ask you to leave, sorry sweetheart”

  Sarah turned and looked at Connor, his face deadly serious, he was kicking her out?

  “What do you mean leave? Fuck off. I wanna know…I…”

  “No, I’m sorry, I don’t want you in here for this. Let us do what we do and I promise I will come find you when we are done” she watched as he stood, waiting for her to stand and leave with Em who was at the door.

  “Go fuck yourself Connor”

  Sarah turned away from him and walked towards the door, she had never been so angry, so humiliated in her entire life, he might as well have just tapped her on the head and told her to run along like a good little girl. Bastard.

  She was pissed, he knew she would be, she had every right to be, but he couldn’t worry about that right now. He needed her to have plausible deniability if the shit hit the fan.

  “Em tells me that Smith is currently holed up at his weekend place, it’s in his wife’s name so it’s not in the public records that he owns it, and thanks to the dick jibber jabbering away on his cell, she has managed to triangulate where he is.”

  Connor watched as Jenson took over the use of the smart board like a pro, Boss was becoming tech savvy, well shit, what did they say about teaching an old dog new tricks?

  “From what we know, he has three men with him, what has happened to number four, no idea, not my concern. But I think we all agree Smith is not the top of this particular food chain, he talks too much to be the brains. So, here’s how it’s going down…” Connor turned to Harry who had now taken over at the front of the room.

  Each man sat listening intently as details were discussed in-depth. Each member knew their role, knew what they had to do, and he knew they would execute the op with precision and without hesitation.

  Not one man in that room had even thought to question what was being asked of them.

  He looked around at his team, his brothers, there was nothing he wouldn’t do for these men, and nothing they wouldn’t do for him in return.

  They had gone through so much together, things they had sworn never to speak of, but then there were other things that often provided the drunken banter for the debrief sessions than often turned into an all-nighter.

  Now they were thrashing out ways to bring down a political figure and save his girl, all before the fucking CIA came banging on the door.

  Ems tech skills were good, but she was still new to this game, and the boys at the farm had toys and analysts with major hacking skill, so they would be coming sooner rather than later, there was no doubt about that. He just wasn’t sure yet, why Sarah’s name hadn’t already been cleared, something wasn’t right there.

  If they had found the original footage before it had been doctored, then why hadn’t the authorities?

  Jenson was right, this went higher.

  The question was, how high?

  The meeting was over in less than an hour, she could be pissed at him on the way home, the silent treatment wouldn’t bother him, just so long as she had done sulking by the time he got her naked and in bed, if they managed to get that far.

  Connor felt his dick twitch in his pants, maybe he should be the last one to leave the room, he needed to get himself under control.

  One by one the men left, until only Connor and Jenson remained.

  “The ribs?” the man really needed to work on his bedside manner, Connor thought as Jenson stood in his usual alpha male stance, arms folded across his chest.

  “Fine…” he hadn’t given them much thought, the odd wince if he twisted funny, but nothing that would mean he would need to be benched. Not gonna happen anyway.

  “Well, Jens waiting to give you a quick once over before you leave, so…” Connor was sure he had caught a flash of something across Jenson’s face, but just as fast, it was gone.

  “You do know Jens a vet and not a Doctor, right?”

  Jen was the cousin of Jacks and Chris and owner of a private veterinary practice, and someone they had called upon to help the team when medical treatment was needed under conditions that meant a trip to the ER would have had them all locked up for life.

  She was now the go to girl for anything that might need patching up.

  Probably should add her to the team list as well, Connor thought.

  “Well, yeah. But I want you checking out or you’re not paying Smith a visit, your choice. Don’t worry, it’s not like I'm gonna ask her to shove a god damn thermometer up your ass, now is it?” Connor followed Jenson as they left the room, not sure why his boss would be accompanying him, he was more than capable of finding his way to the warehouse medical room without a damn escort.

  Not unless…Penny dropped.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Sarah still hadn’t calmed down when Connor rounded the corner sometime later. If anything, she was more pissed now than she had been when he unceremoniously kicked her out of the room. Just who the fuck did he think he was.

  Ok, so he had the bedroom skills of a roman god and his ass and abs could have been sculpted out of pure marble, but that didn’t give him the right to just shut her out.

  Em had done her best to keep Sarah company, to reassure her that there were somethings she was better off not knowing, but it did nothing to alleviate how she was feeling right now.

  Two strong cups of coffee hadn’t helped, if anything, they had fueled her building rage and she was about ready to kick his ass for treating her like a petulant ch
ild, throw in all the pent-up energy from not spending hours on the ice and she was practically a ticking time bomb.

  She needed a release or she was gonna lose it, big time, and god help whoever was in the immediate vicinity when she did finally blow all the frustration that had been building over the past few days.

  Sarah watched Connor as he took long forceful strides towards her.

  Man, he really was something, but it didn’t take away from how she was feeling.

  She was still pissed at him.

  “I’m not gonna apologize for making you leave Sarah.” He stood, his thick set arms folded across his broad chest.

  “You didn’t have to treat me like a child Connor. This is my life you’re playing with here remember” she folded her own arms, but she didn’t have the same menacing demeanor that he had projected.

  “So… not playing with anything Sarah, thought you understood that. This is me, this is what I do, and I’m sorry if you don’t like it, but there are some parts of my job I don’t want you to see” Talk about a Mexican standoff, neither one prepared to budge.

  “Then why did you bring me here if you didn’t want me here?” why not just leave at the ‘safe house’?

  He raised his eyebrow, heat ran through her body, shit… every damn time…

  “Because I needed to be here, and god help me, I need you near me ok!” Sarah watched as the man she loved ran his hands through his hair, he looked lost, almost scared for the first time since she had met him.

  Both unaware of the small audience that had formed around them, or both very aware, but not giving a shit about anybody else at that moment, except each other.

  “Then stop shutting me out, use me, let me help” how, she didn’t know, but she couldn’t just sit round and do nothing, it was driving her crazy.

  “I can’t do that, I won’t. and it’s not up for discussion, understand.” Like hell. This was her life that was on the line.

  “Wanna explain to me why the hell not?” one of them needed to give and she was gonna make damn sure it wasn’t her.