by Barb Han
Maybe she was being silly, but she expected high-tech equipment, a few couches, and a desk. “This isn’t it, is it? I mean, we’re kind of out in the open, aren’t we?”
Jaden smiled as he guided her toward a floor-to-ceiling cabinet.
Concrete floors were cold but dry. Her gaze landed on a fireplace. And, glory of glories, there was wood cut and neatly stacked beside it just waiting for them. It was probably a prop for a tour guide, but she didn’t care. It looked real enough. “Can we light a fire?”
“This isn’t it. And don’t worry about this location. No matter what, I’ll keep you safe. Your brother needs you.” He opened the cabinet and removed shelving.
If she looked really closely, she could see a small button in the back, which looked like nothing more than a paint splatter.
Jaden pushed the spot, and the back wall of the cabinet opened like a scene out of an Indiana Jones film.
Lauren stepped inside and felt as though she’d been transported to another world. A couple of desks, butted against each other, centered the room. A wall in back was filled with high-tech-looking equipment, none of which Lauren recognized. It looked like the ultimate man cave, complete with a wood-burning fireplace and worn couch.
“This fireplace works.” He brought a thin wire and a hand towel. “No one will see the smoke coming from the chimney in this downpour.”
Crossing to the supplies, he pulled batteries from the radio. Organizing wood into a small teepee, he said, “Grab me that broomstick over there.” He pointed to the corner.
Lauren brought over the small whiskbroom, unsure of what he planned to do with this odd collection of supplies. “No matches?”
“Don’t need any.”
He pulled out a handful of stiff fibers and laced them through the wood. Attaching wire to each battery terminal, he touched the ends of the bare wires together next to the tinder. Sparks ignited the broom fibers on the first try. He blew out breaths in short bursts while fanning the flame.
When the old wood started to crackle and hiss, he leaned back on his heels. His slow smile stretched full lips over beautiful, white teeth. She could stare at him forever when he smiled.
“Is this part of your training?” she asked, wondering if using his charm was also nothing more than a weapon.
“Yes.” If Jaden was being honest, he’d admit how badly he wanted to lay her down right then and there, feel her silky legs wrap around his waist and bury himself inside her.
The moment crashed when he really looked at her. She was dripping wet, her teeth chattering behind a slight smile on her purple lips.
“Maybe these wet clothes will dry out soon.”
Crossing to the couch, he grabbed a dry blanket. “Take ’em off.”
She peeled off her soaked clothes before wrapping the blanket around her. He turned his back to give her privacy.
“Okay, you can look now,” she said before motioning toward the gash on her forehead. “How bad is it?”
“Lay down on the couch,” he instructed. He settled next to her with a bottled water and a handful of paper towels. He poured the water over the cut on her forehead, carefully dabbing it a moment later with the clean towel.
He opened the emergency medical kit they kept stocked at the safe house and located a small packet of Bacitracin. “This antibiotic gel will keep your cut from getting infected.” He placed a thin trail of the gel on her forehead before bandaging her with fresh gauze and medical tape. “Better,” he said, satisfied with himself, battling the urge to lean over and kiss her sweet skin.
“Thank you.”
“Now to see what’s going on.” Jaden hoped someone from ManTech hadn’t tipped off the bad guys off to his location at the condo. The once-laughable idea that there could be a mole in the agency wasn’t funny anymore. Then again, Helena craved revenge so badly she could be making mistakes, leaving a trail that anyone could capitalize on. Camila Menendez was smart. She’d lead Jaden and Smith into an ambush. A woman like her would take advantage of any weakness, any crack in the system.
Jaden needed to signal Gunner again, and they needed to be ready for anything. He returned to the fire a moment later with a small laptop he’d retrieved from one of the desks. This signal was the most secure. It would be scrambled from the safe house, making it even more difficult for the cartel to locate him. If someone from the agency was the problem, Jaden would find out soon enough.
“Are you contacting your boss?” Lauren stretched before tightening the covers around her.
“I need to figure out a way to get you off this island,” he said.
She shook her head furiously. “Not without Max.”
Despite her fears, she looked peaceful and safe, cocooned in the blanket. Another peak of light elbowed into his dark soul.
Jaden pulled out the SIM card he’d taken from Beady Eyes and placed it into the computer. It would take the system a while to hack into it. They might find answers.
Lauren’s hopeful expression dropped, replaced by another that nailed Jaden’s gut. Like she’d come in to contact with men like these a little too often.
“What about your agency? You said people are being targeted? How do you know who you can trust?” she asked.
“There’s only one way to find out and that’s contact my boss. I’ll keep you safe no matter what. You know that, right?” Big eyes stared at him before she nodded.
He typed in the code, sending the signal for a meeting with Gunner. The message would let his boss know Jaden had made it to the safe house. Jaden hoped it wasn’t a mistake to give his location to the man a second time. He closed down the laptop and secured it back into its spot.
He then fanned Lauren’s clothes on the hearth. “These should be dry in no time.”
“It’s nice to be warm and dry again.” She paused before locking gazes with him. “Will your guy come here to meet us?”
“He was probably on his way already.” Jaden cleaned and dried his Glock before moving to a cabinet full of ammunition. “We’ll be ready for whoever walks through that door.”
A flash of fear darkened her features and he had a feeling it was more than just this situation. “Everything okay?”
She stared at the door like a ghost might walk through, or something worse…an abuser. She stood up and moved to the fire.
“I hate being afraid of anything,” she admitted. “But I especially hate watching doors.”
Chapter 14
“What happened?” Looking at Lauren standing next to the fire—her sweet face, the rosy hue to her cheeks, those pink lips—stirred emotions deep in Jaden’s chest. His feelings were running deeper than a fleeting attraction. That made her more dangerous than the storm, or the thugs chasing them through it, or the possibility of someone at ManTech turning.
“When Max and me were little…it might be easier to say what didn’t happen. Neglect? Check. Abuse? Check. Our mother worked late hours when she had a job. There was a man who lived downstairs who used to try to get in the door. Max would push a chair against the knob. One time Max made an anonymous call to the police pretending to be one of our neighbors because the guy got inside and dragged me away from Max. My brother was too quick thinking to let anything too bad happen. But we always had to be on our toes. There were other times when our mother would come home and go on some rampage about the house not being clean enough. I took the brunt of those times,” she said with a shrug. “Bruises heal. The psychological stuff is much worse. Max stopped anyone from violating me but mom was physical. Once she got started hitting us it seemed hard for her to stop.”
Jaden ran his finger along a scar on her forearm. “She did this to you?”
“It’s nothing.” She sounded embarrassed for sharing.
“That’s not true and I’m sorry.” No one had been able to break down Jaden’s iron walls or reach the core of him. But Lauren, beautiful, sweet, innocent Lauren kept hammering at the casing.
Jaden went to the small fridge filled wit
h emergency supplies and brought back more bottled water, pain relievers, and canned fruit.
“These should help with your shoulder,” he said, placing a couple ibuprofen in her hand. He had no such magic for the bruises on her insides. The thought roiled his gut. Was that why she didn’t trust him? Men? His fingers clenched around the water bottle. He forced them to relax. He wouldn’t let another man hurt her. She was safe. Safe and brave and beautiful.
“Why own a flower shop?” he asked.
“I specialize in native and wildflower arrangements. I guess after my childhood I wanted to surround myself with as much beauty as I could.” She looked down. “My mother used to refer to herself as being wild. I always thought of that as a bad thing. That’s what I came from so maybe I was wild, too. And then I stood in front of a field of Bluebonnets in the spring. I must’ve been around sixteen, still in high school. I’d never seen so much beauty. And then I realized they were wild, too.”
Her golden gaze pierced into him.
Jaden’s heart squeezed.
“Your friend back on the beach. Were you two close?” She turned the tables.
“As close as two people can be when they work in this business.” It was a copout. He knew it and hoped she didn’t pick up on it.
He checked progress on the computer. Nothing yet.
Her gaze locked onto his when he glanced up. “You like working alone all the time?”
Damn. She did.
“It never bothered me before. Besides, we don’t completely work alone. We usually have a couple guys on the job at a time. We don’t interface much except for work.”
“Sounds lonely. You don’t know who you’ll work with beforehand? When you’re walking into a situation? How do you separate the good guys from the bad? How do you know not to shoot one of your own?” She clasped her hands together.
“First of all, you don’t walk in shooting unless you have to. Second, you look them in the eyes. Third, sometimes we’re told in advance. We focus on the objective, not each other.” It sounded cold and lonely when he heard himself talk about his work. It used to provide and adrenaline rush but that had been ebbing lately.
“The black in that guy’s eyes back at the condo. I saw pure evil when he looked at me. It was the same with the guy on the beach,” she said.
“You can’t fake true wickedness. And you can’t fake good. It’s either there, or it isn’t.” Did she see black when you looked in his eyes when they’d first met?
With her background, he figured she saw black in most people’s eyes.
“Why do they trust you? Your agency train you how to convince them you’re bad, too?” she continued.
“You can’t train evil. It might be fleeting, but it’s there or it isn’t,” he said.
“Why don’t they make you guys?”
Make? Did her ideas of his work come from the movies? “It’s not like that. Not at all like the movies make it out to be.”
“Then how?” She fisted the knot on her blanket.
“I have to be better at my job than they are at theirs. I have to convince them I’m on their side.” He wanted to open up to her, tell her things he didn’t normally tell anyone. But how could he?
“And your friend on the beach? What about him?” she asked.
“Look. I had history with Bryce running all the way back to our days in the military. We were as close as any two guys can be who work in jobs like ours. He’s dead now. End of story.” He was the closest thing to a friend Jaden had. The two of them had never even been out for a casual beer. It had always been all too easy for Jaden to close himself off from the rest of the world, to use his job as an excuse as to why he did. His excuses seemed flimsy when he talked to Lauren.
“But are you okay?” she asked, her concern bringing out the copper tone in her golden eyes.
There she was, asking that question again. Who was really every okay? What did okay even mean?
“I’ll survive.” He heard the hollowness in his own words. He didn’t like it.
“For how long, Jaden?”
Hell if he knew. He didn’t answer.
“How did you get that bullet hole in your shoulder?” The knot became suddenly interesting to her.
“I trusted the wrong person.”
“Is that why you’re so cautious now?” Her gaze didn’t falter even though his heart did.
A piercing shriek sounded from one of the laptops.
Jaden hopped up and moved to the screen.
“Gunner’s here.”
A thin man, average height, who looked to be early forties with white-streaked hair slipped in.
Jaden stepped forward and offered a handshake. “I’ve been worried about you.”
Green eyes framed by thick black glasses scanned Lauren. He nodded, shaking water from his soaked clothes. “I could say the same.”
“Me? Nah. I seem to have the unique ability to be the only one who walks away from a gunfight. Where the hell have you been?” Jaden asked.
Blood stained Gunner’s overcoat. His expression weary. His head shook. “We lost another soldier today. We were ambushed while trying to get to the condo.”
“What happened?” Jaden asked, concerned he’d done the wrong thing in bringing Lauren here.
“Someone’s been a step behind me everywhere I go.” Gunner glanced around and Jaden realized the implication.
Jaden tucked Lauren further behind him. “Helena’s becoming reckless. She might be leading them to our door.”
“Makes sense.” Gunner’s expression didn’t change. Instead of commenting, he moved to the fire. “May I?”
“Of course. You know about Bryce?”
Gunner’s unfocused gaze started away from the fire as a pained expression dropped his brow. “Yes. I do. We lost another first-rate soldier.”
“He was a good guy,” Jaden agreed.
“You okay?” Gunner asked.
“Right as rain.” What was it with everyone today? Jaden was a big boy. He’d seen other men die on assignment. Right next to him. In his arms. Why did people suddenly look at him with concern?
Gunner frowned. “People like you and me don’t have many real friends, do we?”
Jaden cleared his throat. He didn’t want to focus on the deficiencies in his life right now. He needed information. More than anything, Jaden needed to know if he could protect Lauren. He pointed to the screen. “I took a SIM card off one of them. Maybe we can get photos and figure out where their headquarters is located.”
“Might be difficult to break the encryption, but that could be very helpful if we can,” Gunner admitted.
“What happened to you earlier? You were supposed to be on the beach.” If he had been, Bryce might be sitting here enjoying a beer right now instead of lying dead out there, God knew where.
“Only a select few knew where we were going this morning. I have to believe one of them set us up. I can’t prove anything. There’s only the body count and my suspicion.” Jaden had known it, and still the confirmation from Gunner hit hard.
It was becoming a virus in his agency. He eased his grip on his weapon, tucked it away, and moved to the fire, taking a seat next to Gunner. “What happened to communication? I know Bryce would’ve signaled for help.”
“Someone jammed our frequency. They anticipated our arrival. They led us to what was supposed to be a safe house where we were—”
“Camila Menendez.” Jaden rocked his head. “I’d bet money she’s behind this.”
Gunner nodded. “At one point I had to toss my cell. They must’ve recovered it and hacked into it. I’m sure that’s how they tracked my every move.”
Gunner looked as tired and strained as Jaden felt. “You think they got anything out of Tim while they had him?”
“It would explain how they’re anticipating our every move.” Gunner motioned toward the computer screen. “Maybe we’ll get something off the SIM.”
“I know one thing’s certain, Max might just be the key.
” Was this whole mission doomed to fail from the get-go?
The computer pinged.
Gunner moved toward it. “Looks like we got something.”
Jaden was already standing behind him.
“We can retrace this guy’s steps by pinning the locations he made calls from.” Gunner’s fingers danced across the keyboard, and a map of the island popped up in the left-hand corner.
A cluster of red dots populated the map.
Jaden sighed sharply. “I know the area. It’ll be crawling with Menendez’s people.”
The chance to bust Camila got his blood pumping.
Gunner’s expression tensed. “I got intel yesterday about a safe house they have here. It’s the most logical place to stash Max.” He pointed to a spot on the map. “It’ll be dangerous.”
Lauren dropped to her knees. “Does this mean what I think? Max is here?”
“Most likely,” Jaden supplied.
“Is he…”
“Alive? I believe so. And he’s not far. We have a weather window. We’ll have to move fast. I’ll alert Gabriel.” Gunner pulled a new cell from the cabinet and started punching numbers.
Jaden’s stress factor hit a hard run. Normally, an extraction would get his blood going. In this case, it felt risky.
“On the phone, it sounded like they hit him with a bat or something.” Lauren’s brown-gold eyes were wide.
Gunner’s gaze bounced off the floor and back. “As soon as we extract him, he’ll have the best possible medical care available. We’ll do everything we can to help him heal.”
“You’re not saying…he will survive…won’t he?” Tears flooded her eyes.
Jaden’s heart squeezed at the panic in her voice, the bravery she showed.
“From what we know about Menendez so far, I believe he’ll be okay. They don’t want him dead just yet. They won’t have been easy on him. He’ll have a long road ahead to heal. From everything I hear, he’s a fighter,” Gunner said.
“Thank you for helping my brother. I know he doesn’t deserve it after what he’s become, but thank you,” Lauren said, tiny droplets staining her cheeks.