Badass: Deadly Target (Complete): Military Romantic Suspense

by Leslie Johnson

“Who was that?” Tate asks, his voice sharp.

  “Mia Hewitt.”

  “The spy’s still with you?”

  “I’m not a spy!” Mia hissed.

  Tate scoffs. “You sure about that? Jax, do you need me to take her off your hands? I’ve got men—”

  “No, she’s good.” I squeeze her hand. “We’re holding her cat hostage so she’s been very agreeable.”

  “What the fuck, man? A cat?”

  “Long story. I need to get on a plane. There’s a third safe deposit box in Nicaragua, and it will be a long ass flight down south. Bank won’t open until nine in the morning, and I want to be there on the dot. I’m hoping that box contains a map with a big X marking the spot of the testing lab.”

  “What time does the summit start?”

  “Shit, Tate. I don’t know. Wasn’t on the guest list, but I do know Mutko is there now, probably several others. Secure location.”

  “I’ll get my men on it, see if we can tap into some Intel. Then I’ll scramble men and rendezvous in the a.m. You’ll receive details from David Deakins and rights to a personal secure server. Use it.”

  “Thanks, Tate.” Maybe I should give Deakins more credit.

  “No problem. Do you need flight assistance? You said you are on alias docs. Do you have enough money or a credit card on you?”

  “Fifty thousand pesos and forty thousand US.”

  “Not enough. Hold on.”

  I can hear him barking orders, and it’s a beautiful sound.

  “Start heading to the airport. I’ve tagged your phone and am tracking you.”

  Wait, what? “Tate, this is a secure phone.”

  “Not anymore. My lead tech used to be CIA. Get over it.”

  I shake my head. “Consider me over it.” I give him my email address, and the iPad begins to ping. “Confirming receipt of server information.”

  “Good. Send photos of passports, licenses, identity shit, then head for the airport. Deak is working on a flight leaving out in an hour and a half. You’ll get e-tickets soon.”

  Chapter 10 – Mia

  Nine hours on a plane.

  Nine hours!

  Okay. Maybe not officially nine. There was a layover in Mexico City, but I’m still in shock at how long my butt has been either in a car or airplane seat. I’ll probably get a pimple on my hiney from all this sitting around.

  Oh, and we’ve flown into a city with a US travel advisory, meaning US citizens are advised not to travel into Nicaragua due to civil and political unrest. But Jax assured me it was meant mostly for journalists and scientists.

  Mostly.

  I don’t think I like that word very much right now.

  Another thing I don’t like. The cab drivers here. Oh. My. God. They’re crazy. I think my heart is officially a size bigger from pumping so hard.

  On a happy note, our hotel room has a squishy bed and good pillows. It’s lovely. After I spray it down with my disinfectant, I head to the shower while Jax taps away on his laptop researching who knows what.

  Turning the water on hot, I turn my face to the stream, reveling in the cleansing warmth. I’m so glad we made it this far. Out of nowhere, I begin to cry.

  The emotion hits me hard, and it’s totally unexpected because I’d been doing such a good job of being supportive and brave. I’d smiled and squeezed Jax’s hand, listened to him talk and been a good sounding board. I’d asked sound questions, tried to be devil’s advocate and look at our problem from every direction.

  And now I’m sitting on the shower floor, my palms pressed to my face to muffle the anguish and fear ripping its way out of me. My mother. I still can’t believe it, even with all this proof right in front of me. My mom was a Russian spy, and she was holding documents that would have given someone unimaginable power over the world. And my mother, my sweet mom wanted me to finish the job for her.

  I hate her.

  The emotion hits me with the force of a train.

  How could she have done all this? Put me in harm? The world in harm? How could she ever think that giving one country so much control over all the others would be a positive thing?

  Was it the money?

  If so, I’ve never seen any signs of wealth on her part. We always had enough to eat, but Mom was frugal. She used coupons at the grocery store, for goodness sake. Bought our clothes from discount houses. It had surprised me completely to see so much money in the Sacramento bank box yesterday.

  The horror of it all continues to grow in my mind as I lift my face to the shower spray once again.

  What if I’d succeeded? What if I’d known what to do and had gotten those documents without meeting up with Jax and that terrible man? If I’d been able to get into Mexico, then Nicaragua, then somehow made it to Russia, would I have smiled and shaken Sergei Aslanov’s hand as I handed over these documents? Would he have slit my throat after I did? Worse, would I have been able to live with myself knowing I’d been a party to making human zombies? Would I have known? Become a zombie myself?

  Because this shit is real.

  On the trip, Jax let me borrow his laptop to do some research of my own. With a single puff of air, people lose their free will and do whatever their handler tells them to do. People have surrendered their organs to the black market while under this drug. Had sex. Emptied their bank account. Stolen. Probably worse.

  I shudder and press my hands to my mouth, muffling my cries. How can our world be this bad? How can people be so mean to each other? Is it just evil? Have we been conditioned to be so selfish?

  “Sweetheart.”

  I jump at Jax’s voice, then stiffen when the shower door opens. A few seconds later, he’s naked and on the floor with me, pulling me into his lap.

  “Ssshhh,” he soothes, holding me tight against his chest. He doesn’t ask what’s wrong. He doesn’t tell me not to worry. Just holds me until I’m no longer shaking, and the tears have run dry.

  “I hate her,” I finally say, voicing aloud the words that have been clogging my throat for the past twenty-four hours.

  In response, he turns me until I’m facing him, straddling his thighs, and opens the bottle of shampoo. He pours a large measure in his hand. When his fingers are on my scalp, I close my eyes to the pleasure.

  “Do you believe in love at first sight yet?” he asks me and my eyes open again. The dimple is there. The glorious blue eyes. Full lips. My heart hammers in my chest.

  Be brave, Mia.

  “I believe that you’re the best man I’ve ever known.”

  Don’t settle anymore.

  “And I believe that, from the moment I looked up and saw you, there was a pull between us. Like I wanted to lean toward you. Smell you. Touch you.”

  Lifting a hand, I scrape a fingernail down his stubble, loving the prickly feel. I press my nose to it. My cheek. My lips.

  “And I know that my chest feels tight, full, when I think of you. That it hurts when I think of not being with you. I know that I want to know you better. All your likes and dislikes. I want to please you. Give to you. Make you smile.”

  The dimple appears again, and I press my finger in its center.

  “I know I’m wildly attracted to you, that my body burns and aches to be close to yours. That I like hearing you talk. Like the funny things you say. How smart you are. How brave.”

  He tilts my head back and water streams over my hair, rinsing the shampoo down on the shower floor where the bubbles pool around us. Conditioner comes next, and he combs it through with his fingers, gently pulling each tangle out.

  “I love how gentle you are with me.” A memory of me pressed into the wall comes back. “And how rough you can be at times.”

  He grows hard, his erection lifting up in the space between us. Reaching for soap, he rubs the bar down my neck and over my shoulder, lathering my arm down to the fingertips. My other arm. My breasts and stomach. My back. My ass.

  “I don’t want to lose you, Jax. I don’t want this to be a fantasy. I want it to
be real, and true. And forever.”

  He soaps one leg, then the other, working lather between my toes, massaging my arches.

  “So is all of that love?” I ask. “Or strong like? Or lust? Or hope? The promise of something growing that could last?”

  His fingers slip between my legs, the soap slick against my folds.

  Be brave, Mia.

  “I’m calling it love,” I confess.

  A finger slides inside me, then another. I don’t let it distract me from what I need to say next.

  “The seed of new love, baby love, that will grow stronger with time and as we know each other better.”

  He smiles and curls his fingers, touching that spot that makes me moan.

  “So you baby love me?”

  I press down on his hand, grinding my clitoris into his palm.

  “Yes, I baby love you. And if what I feel for you tomorrow or the next day or the next decade is stronger than what I feel for you today, no man will ever be more loved.”

  I kiss him then, a soft touching of lips that quickly grows deeper as our mouths open to each other. His tongue twists around mine, capturing it, mating with it as his fingers lead me to pleasure’s door.

  “I want you inside me,” I murmur against his mouth, stroking his thick cock from tip to base.

  “No condoms in here,” he groans before sucking on my bottom lip.

  The disappointment is sharp. “Could you, you know, pull out in time?”

  He leans back to look at me. “Do you know what they call people who use the pull out method?”

  I shake my head.

  “Parents.”

  I laugh. “When all this is over, and we’re back home, I’ll go on the pill. I want to feel you skin on skin.”

  His thumb brushes across my clitoris before rubbing circles around and around.

  “I like that word. Home.”

  Nuzzling my face in his stubble again, I nod. “It has a nice ring to it.”

  He pushes me back under the falling water, rinsing the conditioner from my hair. Then we’re on our feet, and he’s toweling me off. And I’m on the bed, his weight pressing down on me.

  “This is home,” he says as he enters me. “Wherever you are is home.”

  I wrap my arms and legs around him, pulling him tight, connecting as much skin as humanly possible.

  Yes. Home.

  Chapter 11 – Jax

  We’re standing in front of the bank at exactly nine a.m., waiting for the doors to open. Noticing a crumb on Mia’s lip, I brush it away, a remnant of the breakfast scramble we’d just eaten. Mia had followed hers with a churro donut and a second cup of café con leche with so much sugar it almost gave me diabetes by looking at it.

  Just like in Tijuana, accessing the safe deposit box here was just as easy, even more so. Within minutes, we are in the vault. A few minutes after that, we are in a room, the box’s secrets being spilled.

  Using my iPad, I snap pictures of each page and run it through the translator before sending the images to Tate on the secure server. I was right. There isn’t exactly an X, but a detailed layout of the testing village is laid out before us, in both diagram and satellite view. A blueprint of the lab. Housing for staff. And, holy shit, one hundred small huts where the testing victims lived. All secluded behind a razor wire topped electric fence.

  Tapping the device with her finger, Mia asks, “Is that a graveyard?”

  Expanding the screen, I see that she’s right. Dozens and dozens of small crosses litter the ground of what is most likely an acre of land.

  “The testing victims,” Mia murmurs, her hand over her mouth.

  I nod, then swipe the image to get a better look at the lab, and more importantly, the security around it. They’re fully loaded. Lookout towers with manned machine guns are strategically lined along the fence. The satellite view shows four foot patrols around the lab.

  Mia points again. “Oh my God, Jax. There’re children in there.”

  There are. From babies to the elderly, hundreds of people are standing or sitting outside the huts.

  “There’re studying the effects of the drug on all ages.”

  “Horrible.”

  Skipping past the blueprints, I find the “recipe” for the synthetic version, a chemist’s dream in print. I don’t bother reading the steps, that part doesn’t matter right now.

  “What do we do next?” Mia asks.

  I’ve been dreading the question because she isn’t going to like the answer.

  “I’m putting you on a plane back to the States, then I’ll wait for Tate and company—”

  “No.”

  I bulldoze on. “To arrive. Since we don’t have anything here proving—”

  Her hands slap on the table. “No!”

  I ignore her. “The existence of an imminent plot against the summit or any world leader, I can’t call—”

  “I said no.”

  “The CIA or feds for backup. I’ll go in—”

  “Dammit, Jax. I am not getting on a plane and simply waiting this out.”

  “Yes, you are.”

  “No, I’m not!”

  “Mia, I can’t focus on getting in that lab if I’m worrying about you.”

  She crosses her arms over her chest. “It’s Maya. And you need my help. Haven’t I already proven that I can—”

  “Yes, you’ve proven yourself over and over.” I pull up the compound again. “Do you see this? These are machine guns, Maya. See those foot patrol guards? They’re carrying AK rifles. No offense to you or your mother, but you haven’t been trained to fight against that type of fire power.”

  She opens her mouth, then snaps it closed before opening it again. “I’m not leaving, and if you try to take me to an airport, I’ll scream my bloody head off, do you hear me?”

  I can’t help but smile. “Do you know you sound British when you’re angry?”

  She harrumphs and makes other disgusted sounds.

  My smile fades. “Mia, I’m serious. I cannot go into that compound with half my brain worried about you. It will get us both killed, do you understand?”

  Her face crumples and she covers it with her hands.

  “And I can’t wait on this. If what we’re looking at here has anything to do with that summit, we have only hours to shut it down. Tate’s in the air, bringing in support. Highly skilled and highly armed support. That’s what he does. He blows in and out of countries under the radar, does what needs to be done, and gets out.”

  “Why can’t the CIA help? Why does it have to be you?”

  “Because this is my job, protecting our country and the citizens in it. Don’t blame the CIA for not backing me up. Their back is to the wall because we are in the middle of a well-planned attack.”

  “Because of the distraction,” she offers.

  “Yes. And not just now. For months, we’ve been dealing with attacks across the globe, and they’ve always been pinpointed back to ISIS. Now I’m wondering how many of them were set up to look that way, to keep our focus off what is going on down here.”

  “But ISIS took credit for everything, so—”

  “Yes, they do that. If a cow pisses in the road, they claim credit.”

  “Why?”

  “Why is any fight started, Mia? Because someone thinks they are right. ISIS thinks they are right, that they have the answers and are so convinced they are right they will kill anyone whose mindset doesn’t align with theirs.”

  She looks wistful. “Kind of like why couples fight, but on a larger scale.”

  “Correct. Toilet paper roll goes over or under? Divorce has been caused by that endless debate.”

  She smirks at me. “Over.”

  I give her my fist. She bumps it, does her little nerdy explody thing. “I agree.”

  She wipes fake sweat from her brow. “I think I’m in toddler love now.”

  God, she’s adorable.

  My phone pings and it’s a message from Tate. ETA 1 hour

  I
take her hands in mine. “I need you back in the States. Go to Dave, get your cat. Stay with him until I can come get you. Will you do that for me?”

  Her beautiful gray eyes cloud, then shine, but she quickly blinks all of that away. “Yes, I’ll go. But you have to promise to come back safe so we can explore this thing between us like normal people.”

  “I’ll come back,” I promise and mean it. Hope I can fulfill it.

  She stands up and begins gathering our things, stuffing them in her big bag. Hand in hand, we walk out of the bank and to her side of the rental car we picked up last night. Before opening the door, I kiss her, and she kisses me back. It’s the sweetest, most precious last kiss of my life.

  Kissing Laura for the last time had been gut wrenching because, in that kiss, there was no hope for another.

  But now…

  Pain explodes in my neck, then my ears are ringing with Mia’s screams.

  The world fades, and I pull the dart away from my throat before I’m swallowed by complete darkness.

  Chapter 12 – Mia

  One minute I’m kissing Jax and the next I’m tossed in a van, my ankles and wrists tied, with a gag stuffed in my mouth.

  It was that fast.

  And that terrifying.

  And Jax is so very, very still.

  I try to move closer to him, see if he’s breathing, but am tossed against the side of the van when we take a sharp corner. Jax rolls into the uncushioned metal, but he still doesn’t move. Not even his eyelids flutter.

  “You have caused me great problems, suka. You and your mama. Very great problems indeed.”

  It’s him.

  The man from the bank. He’s turned around in the passenger seat, his cold dark eyes leveled on me. Black, Jax called him. I think he’s still wearing the same suit from two days before. The suit in which he killed my mother. Did he wear it just for me? A two for one?

  “Who are you?” I try to say through my gag, but the words are just one long muffled blah.

  But he understands. And knowing that scares me even more. He’s used to speaking to people who are gagged, just as a dentist can understand a patient while his fingers are in her mouth.

  “Yes, let us be formally introduced. I’m Taras Popov, lead security agent of the village you’ll soon be visiting. There, we’ll be having a little, how do you say … oh yes, chat.”