by KaLyn Cooper
He gave her his half-grin because he couldn’t see her and not smile. “Yeah. ATF had reliable intelligence that someone was targeting the nuclear shipments.” He chuckled. “I guess they were right.” His gaze trailed off toward the bus as the last of the terrorists were being loaded. “But as usual, we were behind the power curve. I was along for the ride to see what security measures were in place and to suggest enhancements.”
For a long second he studied her perfect face. Dark skin, far from black, closer to the color of a cream-rich latte, he wondered about her heritage. When they had started to rebuild his face, they asked him if he wanted to change his appearance, and if so, what nationality he preferred. Since then, he had spent hours studying facial features.
She had high cheekbones like those of Native Americans, yet her eyes were very large and oval in shape. Her nose was slightly squatty as though she had some African mixed in but her flawlessly bowed lips spoke of northern Europeans. He supposed she was a conglomeration, like most Americans. Being the melting pot, she was likely to have a little bit of everything in her genealogy. However, the Greek goddess Aphrodite must have blessed her with the gift of beauty. As Tori stood regally in front of him, almost at eye level, he couldn’t believe she was actually talking to him. Yes. It was work related. He touched his most recent scar next to the outside of his left eye where they were rebuilding the socket.
Refocusing on their surroundings, he asked, “So, is this what your team does? Security for the Department of Energy? Protecting loads of uranium?”
Her sideways glance and hesitation gave him his answer.
Tori returned her gaze to him. “That’s what we did tonight.” She gave him a halfhearted smile. “We’re all still active duty military. We do whatever the hell they tell us to do.”
“But you’re still with Homeland Security, right?” Marcus stared as the last prisoner was loaded onto the bus. “I guess I can see how SV-16 could be considered a terrorist group, or are you working with immigration?”
Tori burst out laughing. “I’m the last person who knows who the fuck I’m working for tonight. They just tell us where to go, who to meet, and what’s our goal.” She threw her hands in the air. “Tonight, this was it. Tomorrow night we could be wearing ball gowns and dancing with congressional staffers at a state dinner.”
Marcus knew how stunning Tori was in a full-length gown. When he was homebound in Katlin’s condo, Tori had been assigned a job at a White House function. Sore, aching, and drugged with postsurgical painkillers, he still managed to get hard when she had walked into the condo asking for someone to zip up the dress. Lounging on the couch, most of his face wrapped in bandages, he was thankful for his one good eye. He touched the softest skin as he pulled up the zipper, dodging sequins. She’d smelled like heaven. All he’d wanted to do was brush his lips over every inch of skin exposed by the low back.
Jokingly, Marcus wiggled his fingers. “If you need help getting into, or out of a dress, I’m more than happy to help.”
She held his gaze as a slow sensual smile crossed her face. “That can be dangerous.”
“Yes, it could.” Marcus had been good at flirting…before…but he knew what he looked like now. He hadn’t been movie star handsome, but he’d had a Latin lover look about him that seemed to attract women. The fact that he loved to dance, especially in the salsa style he’d grown up with, never hurt his chances in leaving a nightclub with a woman.
But all that was in his past. He still faced several more surgeries, each with the caveat that they would do their best but there were no guarantees.
He stepped back into the shadows so Tori didn’t have to see his face.
“Do you have to go?” Tori tilted her head to where the driver and Dash stood talking quietly.
He should go before things got awkward between the two of them. Not that he liked the friend zone, but he knew she was comfortable with him in that box.
Nodding, he said, “Yeah. I should get back to them.”
“You’re unarmed.” Tori tilted her head toward her rifle. “I’ll walk you back.”
He wasn’t about to argue if it meant spending even a few more seconds with her.
Tori touched her ear then said quietly, “I’m escorting ATF Special Agent Marcus Hernandez back to the driver.”
As they approached the other two men, Dash’s phone rang. He didn’t bother stepping away. “Lawson.” There was a long silence while the Department of Energy agent simply listened. “You’re fucking with me?” He closed his eyes and tilted his face toward the starless night. “Who knows about this?” Dash dropped his head and held Tori’s gaze. “I’ll handle informing the other agencies.”
Thumbing the off button, Dash glanced between Tori and Marcus. “You’re not fucking going to believe this.” His arm shot out, finger-pointing at the trailer. “This was a decoy. There are no nuclear weapons in that trailer. Some fucking genius in the Transportation Department decided to send out two loads tonight. We got the decoy. The real rods were only twenty miles from the Navy base when they were hijacked.” He rolled in his lips and glanced away.
After a few deep breaths, Dash seemed to have his emotions under control. “The driver and…” He cleared his throat. “Both the driver and the DOE agent were found dead in the truck. The trailer is gone.” He looked at Marcus. “And so is the nuclear material.”
“How accurate is your source?” Tori took a step toward Dash, fury in her large brown eyes.
“Completely.” Daschle swallowed hard. “When the driver didn’t report in within five minutes of his ETA, protocol is to make contact. When nobody answered their phones, transportation has to contact the state police. My boss is on the scene.”
“General Lyon, we have a situation.” Tori’s report was brief and accurate. The roar on the other end of the line forced her to pull her communications unit out of her ear. She glared at Daschle. “I don’t know how to break this to you, but USSOCOM doesn’t like to be lied to. The idiot who made that decision won’t have a job tomorrow.” She screwed the earpiece back in.
She started walking away but after two steps spun around and got into Daschle’s face. “I need you to open the back of that trailer. I have been ordered by the President of the United States to verify that there are no nuclear materials in that trailer.” She poked his chest. “I’m sure you have a portable Geiger counter somewhere in that truck. Get it.”
Twenty minutes later, both Tori and Katlin had walked up and down the aisle between the boxes verifying the lack of fissionable materials. Their cargo was new, unarmed missiles to be loaded onto a submarine and armed with the nuclear rods on the other truck.
“General Lyon is pissed.” Katlin wasn’t telling the group anything they didn’t already know.
Marcus glanced around the makeshift circle taking in the reactions. The eight men in black reacted as though the situation was nothing new for them. All five of his female friends looked disgusted.
“What a fucking waste of time.” Nita shook her head.
Marcus hadn’t considered it a complete waste. He learned several things about the women he’d known for over a year, including their codenames or handles. Nita Banks Callahan, who had recently married Katlin’s brother, Daniel, and gained a little boy and an infant girl in the process, went by Lady Harrier when on an op. The newly engaged Grace Hall was Lady Eagle, Lei Lu Sorensen was Lady Kite, and Tori’s code name was Lady Falcon. She looked like the bird of prey with her talons extended, anger seething beneath the well-controlled emotions.
All at once, everyone else started moving. The quiet men in black headed toward the vehicles they’d arrived in after mumbling quietly, obviously talking to someone in their headsets. Daschle’s phone rang and after looking at the caller ID, he stepped aside. The driver’s phone rang a second later and he wandered around his truck as though inspecting its condition.
All five women surrounded Marcus with smiles, tapping something next to their ears, probably turning off
audio. The conversation was going to be private.
“Thanks for handling this well and not giving away that you know us.” Katlin looked at the retreating backs of the special operators. “We try to keep our private lives just that, private.” She let out a heavy breath. “Now that we cleared that up, we’ve been ordered to leave. We’ll see you back in D.C.”
With goodbyes and thank-yous from the other women, they all turned and walked away…except Tori. She stepped closer.
“We haven’t seen you in weeks.” Her voice was filled with concern. She touched his bicep and gave it a light squeeze. “Don’t be such a stranger. You know you’re welcome anytime. You have my number. Call. Text. Let me know how you’re doing. Please.” She squeezed his upper arm a little harder and held it longer before releasing her grasp and walking away.
He hadn’t missed the change from we to me. Marcus smiled as he touched his arm where the heat from her body was already cooling. Did she really want him to call her? Just her? Was she worried about his physical condition? Or maybe even about his mental state? Or did Tori want him to call her so they could talk?
The vibration of his ringing phone in his pocket startled him out of thoughts. Looked like his next orders were coming through.
He hesitated as the luscious female form of Tori Denton disappeared into the darkness.
“Hernandez.”
Chapter 3
Tori left the door open to her three-bedroom condo and walked barefoot down the hallway with a cup of coffee in one hand, stifling a yawn with the other. Seeing the next door open to Harper and Rafe’s, she stuck her head in and called their names.
Lei Lu popped out from across the hall, closer to the elevator. “Everyone’s in here.” Katlin’s five-bedroom condo took up the entire right side of the top floor. Since there were only three condos on the top level, and they were all good friends, they had established an open-door policy as soon as they had moved in nearly three years ago; if the door was open you were welcome to enter.
Tori was instantly hit with the smell of breakfast. Katlin, who cooked like a professional chef, had prepared Belgian waffles with real maple syrup, crispy bacon, small sausage links, and her favorite concoction of eggs mixed with onions, colorful peppers, and lots of cheese. For anyone who felt the need to eat fresh fruits and vegetables, a large bowl overflowed at the end of the counter.
“Great timing,” Katlin said as she pulled a cookie sheet covered with bacon out of the oven.
Lei Lu poured more batter into a deep waffle maker, closed the lid and flipped the whole thing over before she extracted a perfectly baked waffle from the other machine.
“We’re almost ready to serve.” Katlin added the bacon to a plate already stacked two inches high she’d taken from the warming oven. “Would you check the coffee supply, please? We might need some from your place.”
“I have a whole fresh pot. Let me go grab it.” When Tori awoke about thirty minutes ago, the first thing she did was start a fresh pot. She was pretty sure she was going to need it. They hadn’t left the scene in Georgia until after three o’clock in the morning. It took more than two hours to drive to Warner Robins Air Force Base, but they had to wait another hour for an airplane to take the Ladies of Black Swan and the CIA SOG men back to Washington D.C.. It was just before noon when she crawled into her soft bed and pulled the covers up to her chin. Not for the first time, she was thankful for blackout drapes in the dark gray walls in her bedroom.
Grabbing the nearly full glass pot, Tori headed down the hall, almost to Katlin’s when the elevator opened at the end.
“Katlin’s cooking breakfast for supper.” Alex Wolf grinned as he stepped through the sliding doors.
“Thank Christ, it looks like we’re invited.” Rafe Silva’s gaze traveled to the open door to the two-bedroom apartment he shared with Harper. “I love my fiancé, but yours cooks a hell of a lot better than mine.”
Alex looked at the coffee pot in Tori’s hand. “I’m ready for a beer, but it looks like you women just woke up,” he said by way of greeting.
“Yep. We didn’t get in till noon after a long, fucked-up night,” she explained.
The men slid each other a glance then grimaced.
“You heading back out tonight?” Alex asked, stopping in the hallway next to Katlin’s door.
Tori shrugged. “Not that I know of.” She was never sure how much information Katlin shared with Alex about their missions. “Guess I’ll find out in there.”
Being gentlemen, they allowed her to enter first. Heading straight for the kitchen, she wanted to ask her team leader if they’d received orders, but with Alex on her heels ready to welcome Katlin home, Tori decided it could wait.
Within minutes, everyone was seated around the table. Even Nita and Daniel with baby Bella and little Simon had driven into the city from their house in the Virginia suburbs. The conversation was guaranteed to be PG-rated.
“Knock, knock.”
At the familiar male voice, Tori had to hold in her smile.
“I heard this was the best place in town to eat breakfast at seven o’clock at night.” Marcus held up a bottle of good wine, one of Tori’s favorites. “I’m terrible at wine pairings, but I’m not sure there is a wine that specifically goes with breakfast.” He held the label so everyone could see. “I’ve seen you ladies drink this before so if we don’t open it now, consider it a gift in exchange for that delicious-smelling food.”
Katlin, always the hostess-with-the-mostness, motioned to an empty chair that happened to be next to Tori at the large table that could easily seat twelve. There were even extensions for holidays so twenty could fit. “We’re serving buffet style tonight from the kitchen. Not your first time here so none of us are going to serve you.”
He gave the crowd his cute half-smile that was so endearing. “I’m not shy when it comes to food. Anyone need anything while I’m in there?”
“Could you please bring back a banana for Bella?” Nita asked as the baby turned her head when offered a tiny spoon of green glop.
“Most certainly.” Marcus disappeared into the kitchen but returned almost immediately with the banana and handed it to Nita. He smiled down at the little girl in the high chair. “You’re not ready for bacon and spicy eggs, are you, princess?” He distracted the child while her mother peeled and cut the banana into small pieces. He was the sweetest, most thoughtful man Tori had ever met. And he liked kids. As soon as Bella started fisting chunks of banana into her mouth, he headed for the kitchen.
A few minutes later Marcus joined them, his plate piled high like everyone else’s at the table. It took a lot of calories to maintain their level of training and missions. The previous night, they had all gone balls to the wall for sixteen hours straight with nothing more than electrolyte-enriched drinks and power bars. They all needed solid food upon the return, but exhaustion won out. Marcus looked to be in the same condition as the women.
“So, what happened after we left?” Tori asked quietly.
“I finished the trip with the driver and Daschle. The agency wanted me to see the complete process.” Marcus shoved a large piece of waffle into his mouth and closed his eyes as he chewed, moaning in delight with nearly every bite. “Damn, that woman can cook.” He took a deep slug of coffee before he continued. “I caught a ride back to D.C. with one of the admirals in a small jet. Sweet ride.”
Tori wondered what he would think of their sleek black jet, a Gulfstream 550. The Ladies of Black Swan were the only ones allowed to use the top-secret luxury airplane. It was a matter of convenience since they could be called out on a mission half-a-world away within hours. Besides, the drug runner they had taken down on one of their first missions had given the plane to them in exchange for sanctuary for his family. It didn’t exist on any official Table of Equipment so no other Department of Homeland Security team could claim it.
“Did you get any sleep?” She tried to keep the questioning as innocent as possible. Only four other people at th
e gathering knew about last night’s mission.
“Yeah. I caught about an hours’ worth on the plane.” Up close, his half grin was so sexy. “The seats aren’t anything like in a commercial airplane, or the single engine aircraft we end up using at the ATF. The seats were like a small version of the recliner I have in my living room. I kicked back and fell asleep within minutes.” He downed another bite of eggs. “I had to stop in at work for about an hour but then got to go home and sleep. I got about five hours in before Katlin texted me.” He glanced down at his plate now half-empty. “This is so much better than scrounging through my refrigerator for last week’s leftovers.”
“You got that right,” Tori agreed and dug in.
An hour later, the kitchen cleaned and the dishwasher running, everyone lounged on the U-shaped sofa in a food coma. Tori sat in one corner feeding Bella a bottle, giving Nita and Daniel some cuddle time. The little girl was almost asleep. Her beautiful blue eyes drooped in that sweet round face as she drained the formula. Tori wanted children, and in a strange way, felt her biological clock ticking. She was one of the youngest Black Swans at only twenty-six years old. She figured she had another three to four years before she was ready for babies but had always believed she would have a man in her life by now.
She glanced around the room at the couples. Even though Alex and Katlin had been good friends since high school, they had only reconnected about two years ago. Now engaged, although no wedding date had been set, they were together as much as possible whenever the team was stateside. Sometimes, USSOCOM contracted Alex’s team as backup on their missions.
Grace was on her tablet Skyping with her fiancé, Griffin Mitchell, who ran Guardian Security’s Miami office. Depending on their next assignment, she had plans to fly to Florida and spend the weekend with him.
Harper and Rafe seemed to be having a serious discussion, both glancing around the room suspiciously. Tori planned to pull her friend and next-door neighbor aside as soon as feasible. She was acting weird.