by Lucy Monroe
“Nitro, give an ETA,” Joshua said into the mike of his comm unit.
“Thirty seconds.”
“Good. We’ve got an armed napalm with two sticks and a detonator cap.”
“Shit.”
Joshua’s thoughts precisely.
Nitro jogged up seconds later and dropped to his knees beside Hotwire, immediately beginning to check wires. “This guy is serious about his explosives.”
“Yeah.” He’d been even more serious about killing Lise and anyone with her.
“There’s a bomb?” It wasn’t Josie’s voice coming over the comm unit. It was Lise’s.
And she sounded upset.
“Don’t worry about it, honey. This is Nitro’s specialty.”
“Don’t tell me not to worry. You’re down there at risk while I’m sitting in safety up here, and Nemesis is my problem.”
Didn’t she realize yet that her problems were his? “He’s nobody’s problem anymore.”
What sounded distinctly like a snort came across the Comm unit. “I heard you. You said the bomb is armed.”
Joshua grimaced. Too bad she’d heard that, too. “It is.”
“What kind?” This time it was Josie’s voice, sounding slightly less no-nonsense than usual.
Nitro gave the details through his comm unit while Joshua secured the perp’s wrists and ankles with plastic ties. He wasn’t risking Ed Jones waking up and trying something stupid.
“Is it a simple setup, or complex?” Hotwire asked.
“Looks pretty textbook for someone who’s read The Anarchist’s Cookbook one too many times.” Nitro spoke without looking up. “I like a fastidious nutcase.”
“How long is the timer set for?”
“Don’t know the initial time, but we’ve got less than six minutes…” Nitro’s voice trailed off and then he swore, loudly.
“What’s the problem, buddy?”
“Never trust a man who makes his own napalm. He’s got a trip wire on the timer and the connectors between the detonator and the dynamite.”
“How stable is the big bomb?”
“It’s homemade.” Which meant Nitro didn’t trust it for transport.
He sliced through black tape holding the dynamite to the napalm and carefully set the bomb on the padded snow.
“Check it for a second detonator.” Josie’s voice held all the authority of a woman who knew exactly what she was talking about.
Nitro didn’t answer her, but he did open the bomb. “Shit.”
“There’s a second one, isn’t there?” Josie didn’t sound smug at being right. She sounded worried.
“Yes. It doesn’t have near the explosive capacity of the dynamite, but it’s enough to set the napalm off.” Nitro’s eyes burned with frustration. “The tape had a foil lining. Cutting it started the second timer. Ninety seconds and counting.”
Lise watched on the video cam as Nitro revealed the double bomb threat and then she turned to Josie. The other woman’s eyes were glued to the cam and she was talking to Nitro, but not into the comm unit. “Don’t cut that wire. Damn it, I need to touch it…”
“Do you know something about disarming bombs?”
“Yes.”
“Shouldn’t you be out there helping him?”
“Wolf’s orders were to stay with you inside.”
“The mark of a good recruit is knowing when to ignore your commanding officer.”
Josie laughed. “You’d have had a rough time in the army.”
“Were you military?”
“No.” The expression on Josie’s face said there was a story behind that no, but Lise would have to wait to hear it.
Lise said, “Nemesis is incapacitated. I don’t need your protection, they do. Go.”
Josie was already moving.
Lise put the camera nearest the men on zoom and watched in horrified fascination as real life played out like a movie in front of her.
Josie came sprinting up and then fell on her knees, facing the camera, beside the big bomb. “Let me feel it.”
Lise could hear everything, including each person’s breathing patterns, through the communication units attached to them.
“I’ve been disarming bombs for years without your woo-woo help.” Nitro’s voice vibrated with irritation and what sounded like disgust across the comm unit. “Go back to the house.”
Josie’s face tightened, but she started running her fingertips over the wires, an intent expression on her face.
“I think it’s this one.” Josie’s voice held an odd quality.
Nitro was frowning to beat the band, but he nodded. “I agree.”
Joshua waited silently by. Why didn’t he come up to the house? Because he trusted Nitro so implicitly to disarm the bombs, or because some macho mercenary code said you couldn’t run away from danger, even if there was nothing you could do to fix it? Where was Hotwire?
Something told her he hadn’t done the sensible thing and come back to the house.
She stayed where she was, terrified for them all and determined to do nothing, not even gasp into the comm unit, that might distract Nitro at a crucial moment.
Nitro snipped the wire.
Nothing happened.
But there was no time to rejoice because they’d disarmed the big bomb—Nitro still had to disarm the dynamite. If it went off, everything within a thousand feet would be blown, including the napalm. She wished now that she hadn’t researched some of her books so well.
Josie started touching wires, but before she said anything, Nitro set his snips on one. “This is it.”
His almost imperceptible pause was followed by a clear snip when Josie nodded her agreement. He disconnected the detonator from the dynamite. It was only as Nitro tossed the cap toward a clear area that it sank in to Lise that nothing had happened from snipping the second wire, either.
Her mouth stretched in a huge grin and she laughed out loud. Joshua was okay. Everyone was okay.
No one would pay the ultimate price for helping her.
The relief was enormous and her knees buckled, but she pushed herself up and went running outside.
She skidded to a stop beside Josie. She reached out to hug the other woman. “You were right, both times.”
The female mercenary simply nodded, her eyes holding none of the joy of a job well done. Her body was turned perceptibly away from Nitro.
Lise didn’t have any time to ponder that because Hotwire arrived with a bomb kit and Nitro went to work stabilizing the napalm.
Joshua grabbed her and kissed her, his lips fierce. When he lifted his head, she felt more than weak-kneed—she felt dazed.
“Get back into the house. I don’t want you out here.”
She glared at him. “Why not?”
“The situation isn’t stable yet.”
She rolled her eyes. “The bombs are disarmed.”
“They’re homemade.”
She didn’t respond to that bit of nonsense. If Nitro could disarm a bomb, he could surely handle it without setting it off.
She stood in the frigid cold, feeling the strangest sense of incompletion. She should be elated, jumping around with joy, but all she felt was numb.
“You don’t suppose he had a partner, or anything, do you?”
“No.” Joshua glared at the still-unconscious Ed Jones. “He was a loner.”
She considered the trussed-up man and the two disarmed bombs. “It seems almost too easy.”
Nitro shrugged. “Wolf always gets his man.”
She opened her mouth to say something when a large flash and small explosion came from her left.
Chapter 18
Lise jumped, her heart doing double-time. Joshua wrapped her up against him, hugging her tight, and she leaned into his big body, clinging to his warmth and strength in a way she would not normally allow herself to do.
His hand rubbed up and down her back. “It was just the detonator, honey.”
“I wasn’t expecting it,” she mumble
d into his coat.
“I didn’t feel like risking the odds again when I could let it go off without hurting anyone or anything.”
Nitro’s explanation made sense and she pulled from Joshua’s arms to tell him so, along with giving him her thanks. “You risked your life for me.” Her watery smile encompassed Hotwire, Josie, and Joshua, too. “You all did. Thank you.”
Hotwire shrugged, his blue eyes twinkling with Georgian charm. “It’s all in the job description, ma’am.”
Nitro’s dark face came as close to smiling as she’d ever seen it. “I disarm bombs in my sleep. It was no big deal.”
Lise could not quite tell, but she thought maybe he was actually kidding her. She grinned. “I’m sure you do.”
“No doubt,” Josie drawled, her anger with Nitro as obvious as a Brahma bull in the middle of a herd of Hereford steers. “And you didn’t need my help, either. You don’t need anyone.”
She turned to Joshua. “I’ll go back to the house and call the authorities while you wrap up out here.”
“I’ll go with you. I’ve got buddies in the FBI that we should call. Jones crossed state lines to perpetrate his stalking and attempted bombing and that puts him under federal jurisdiction.”
Joshua nodded. “Good—take Lise with you.”
She wasn’t sure if she was going to argue or not.
He didn’t give her the chance and pulled her to him for another quick but mind-numbing kiss. “It’s cold out here. I want you inside.”
She didn’t argue that he was no more impervious to the cold than she was because in this case it was just possible he was right. She was shivering despite wearing her winter coat, and he didn’t look chilled at all.
“What about him?” She nodded toward Ed Jones, who still had not awakened.
“Nitro and I will bring him in when we’re done.”
“Okay.”
The next few hours were harried ones.
The bombs had to be disposed of.
Afterward, Ed Jones was transported to the hospital because when he finally did wake up, he complained of pain in his chest. It could be bruising from the hits through the Kevlar, but his skin tone had been pasty and she wondered if it was his heart. Lise had learned that he’d made a full confession on the way to the hospital, apparently feeling the authorities would believe he was justified in his hatred of her.
Although Hotwire’s friends helped to deal with the local law enforcement, there was still a lot of red tape and questioning to get through. Joshua had to explain why he hadn’t brought law enforcement in to begin with and from the looks on the officers’ faces, Lise didn’t think they liked his reasoning.
After answering questions for hours for two sets of authorities, she was finally able to relax. She curled up in an armchair in the living room to wait for Joshua and the others to finish, too.
He found her there and scooped her into his arms without a by-your-leave.
“Your caveman tendencies are showing again.”
He smiled down at her. “I’m beginning to think that’s a permanent condition when I’m around you.”
“Hmm…Where are the others?”
“Nitro left with the bomb unit—he’ll be back later. Josie’s packing and Hotwire is still talking with his FBI buddies.”
“I’m glad it’s over.”
“Me, too, sweetheart. I’ve never had a job that stressed me out so much.”
She laughed even as her heart filled with hope. Earlier, he’d said he wanted to discuss their relationship and now he was telling her that protecting her had impacted his emotions. Those were two very good signs. Certainly making it worth sticking around to find out if they had a future.
She floated through the next few days in a strange sort of limbo, not wanting to discuss her future with Joshua until the present was more settled. She and Joshua spoke to the FBI twice more and the prosecutor’s office once. They slept together and made love, but by tacit agreement, they didn’t talk about their feelings or their future.
She finished her book and sent it off to her editor, hoping what she’d been through while she was writing it had made the book stronger, not a jumble of incomprehensible words. That done, she decided the time had come to confront Joshua about their relationship.
She was soaking in the hot springs, celebrating making her deadline, when Joshua walked into the jungle room. “You’re not writing.”
He sounded puzzled and she grinned up at him. She had spent pretty much every daylight hour, and plenty of the dark ones besides, working on her Dana and laptop Hotwire had brought with him when he’d come.
“I finished the book and sent it off to my editor a little while ago.”
“Are you going to take some time off before your next one?”
Was he going to invite her to stay in Vermont with him while she did? “That’s my plan.”
“How long?”
“I usually like to take off a week or so, but this time I want a real break. I’m not starting anything new for a month.”
He started peeling out of his clothes. “That sounds about right.”
For what? Did he think their relationship would have run its course by then? Her thoughts splintered as he finished undressing and she sucked in air at the sight of his naked body.
“I don’t think mercenaries are supposed to blush, but if you keep looking at me that way, I’m going to.”
She laughed softly. “I can’t help it. You’re so sexy.”
He looked down at his body and then at her with a grimace. “I’ve got more scars than a Hollywood stuntman.”
She waited until he’d joined her in the water to answer and then she traced a mark that had obviously been a knife wound. “Call me nuts, but I like it. It’s all part of what brought you to be the man you are.”
He shuddered at her touch, his eyes turning to dark fire. “Whatever turns you on.”
She leaned forward to lick the thin ridge of white flesh she’d been touching, loving the scent and heat of him. “I get a definite charge out of knowing you got these marks defending and saving people.”
He made a sound of pure masculine pleasure and pulled her into his lap, their naked thighs sliding against each other. She felt an immediate response in both her heart and her inner flesh at the sensation.
He leaned down and kissed her.
Slowly and thoroughly.
When he lifted his head, his expression was so serious it would have scared her if the warmth in his eyes wasn’t just as intense. “Will you find a security consultant as sexy as a warrior?”
Her heart tripled its beats per minute. “You’re retiring?”
Joshua’s smile was as gentle as the hand caressing her hip. “Nitro, Hotwire, and I think maybe it’s time.”
She could barely believe what she was hearing. They had to be talking about the future here.
“Security is a much safer profession than being a soldier of fortune,” she said with deep approval.
“There’s still some danger, but nothing like rescue operations.”
“Or catching bomb-wielding stalkers.”
Ed Jones was still in critical condition. His heart had an arrhythmia and the stress of no sleep and eating convenience foods while he stalked her had exacerbated the problem to deadly proportions. Other tests had shown he was suffering from liver cancer, too, most likely linked to inhaling the fumes while making napalm. The advanced stage of the cancer indicated that even if they got his heart stable again, he probably wouldn’t live long enough to go to trial.
To her way of thinking, the most ironic thing about the whole mess was that the Joneses’ daughter had been so concerned about her mother, she’d given her Lise’s book to read. While Mrs. Jones had called one of the crisis numbers in the front, Lise had no doubt that her daughter would have found another way to get through to her mother if Lise’s book had not worked.
Ed Jones had brought about his own demise…in more ways than one.
Lise shive
red. “He could have gotten counseling, been willing to change. He didn’t have to lose his marriage and his family.”
“He made the choice,” Joshua said, proving he knew who she’d been thinking about. “We all do.”
“Like you choosing to retire before you’re maimed,” she said with definite satisfaction.
“It’s not exactly retirement.”
“It’s close enough.” And she kissed him to show how much she liked that.
When she was done, he rubbed his cheek against hers. “I always figured a husband and father should put his family first. A mercenary can’t do that.”
“Husband?” she asked, breathless, her eyes now glued to his while her heart beat a nervous tattoo. “Father?”
“I know I’m not the best investment you could make when it comes to picking out a mate.”
The man really did see things in very primitive terms. Mate indeed.
“I’ve done and seen a lot that I wouldn’t wish on another person, but I need you, Lise, and I don’t think I can let you go. I’m hoping you feel the same way.”
From going full throttle, her heart seemed to stop beating altogether and she could barely breathe. “You want to get married?”
“Yes.”
“But…”
“You said you love me. Did you mean it?”
After all the times she’d said it, she couldn’t believe he had to ask that. “Of course I meant it. What do you think, I go around saying that kind of thing to lots of men?”
Under the circumstances, she could be forgiven a little sarcasm. Her feelings had never been in question.
At least not to her.
“No, but have you considered that it could be gratitude?”
Did he really think she couldn’t tell the difference between sincere thankfulness and love? “If it was, then I’d have a case on Nitro and Hotwire, too, not just you.”
He did not like hearing that, his whole body tensing around her while his eyes burned down at her with censure. “I’m not just talking about the Nemesis mission, but a lot of women think they love the first man they have sex with.”
And he thought their circumstance was the same? Man, he had a lot of insecurity she would never have guessed he was capable of feeling.