by Lora Leigh
“You know, Tey,” Micah drawled, “your choice of friends here is a little immature. Sure you don’t want to come out and play with the big boys and girls again?”
She gave a heavy sigh. “I guess you’re parked here until I leave, right?”
He leaned closer, his expression becoming serious. “It’s like this. I followed you from the house. You had a tail keeping well back for the better part of the way. When you turned in here, they drove off and simply disappeared. Now, what does that suggest to you?”
That she was in a shitload of trouble. That the panic building in her gut wasn’t simply paranoia, it was danger. The kind of danger that had murdered her mother, her friends, and had made her life hell until six years before. It told her she was in over her head here.
“Either his partner is here, or he would have arrived within minutes after I did,” she answered painfully.
He gave a subtle nod. “And I didn’t see anyone come in after you. Did you?”
She shook her head slowly. There were three entrances, impossible for one person to watch unless he were inside. Tehya had been inside and no one had entered after her, except Micah.
“No one came in,” she said softly, painfully. “They’ve been watching me long enough to know my habits, to be able to guess my moves.”
“Long enough to know if you have any weaknesses,” he reminded her.
She swallowed tightly, but forced herself not to look around. She knew everyone here. They were all regulars. That meant whoever was watching her had been here from the beginning. She had run a very thorough background search on everyone here, and they had all been above suspicion.
If Micah was right, someone was backed by a hell of a lot of money and power to be able to pull that off. Those commodities were essential to building a background that would pass a check like the ones Tehya was capable of making.
She let her gaze rove discreetly around the bar once again as regret built inside her.
She had needed to feel a part of something, and she had chosen this place because she had believed it was neutral enough, that it was safe enough. Had she been more wrong than she could have ever imagined? Who here had managed to fool her to that extent?
“The situation is delicate, then,” she murmured as she lifted the beer to her lips. “Explains why you’re in covert mode.”
She had wondered, when she had first seen him, about the slight differences in his cheekbones, the longer hair, the scar slashing down the side of his face that he didn’t really have. If a picture were taken of him, it would show other differences that she wasn’t catching in the dimness of the room. Differences that would disappear once he returned to his wife and children. Enough differences that he would never be mistaken for Micah Sloane, a personal security expert in Atlanta, Georgia.
“Yeah, that explains it,” he agreed as he turned his head and looked back at her. “Doesn’t explain why you’re here rather than safe at home helping everyone come up with the plans, the contingency plans, and countercontingency plans the boss man always requires, though.”
She was almost amused. Jordan definitely believed in contingency plans, and the countercontingencies.
She finally sighed. “All of you need to let me handle this myself.” Though she was beginning to suspect it was far worse than she imagined.
“Aw, darlin’, you know that’s not going to happen, right?” Gentle affection filled his tone. “You’re family, Tey. We don’t turn our backs on family anymore than you slacked on the job when we needed you.”
She had to swallow tightly to hold back her tears.
“I don’t know if I can do this again,” she said when Micah said nothing more. “I don’t know if I can bear losing everything I’ve built here.” She could feel the grief tearing at her chest.
“I think we both know it’s too late to back out. You can run and hide, or you can stand and fight. There’s no in-between, Tey.”
Yeah, she knew there was no in-between. That didn’t mean her choices didn’t suck.
“He told me to warn you that if you run without him, he’ll have your car targeted and disabled,” Micah continued with quiet sincerity. “And I’d help him. It’s too late to run.”
She propped her chin against her hand and stared over at him morosely. Just what she needed, Jordan finding ways to dictate to her and he wasn’t even there.
“That’s just exceptionally wrong,” she muttered. “He knows that’s just exceptionally wrong, Micah. That’s my car. It’s not his any longer.”
He rose slowly from the barstool, his black eyes glinting in the dim light.
He bent down so his lips were close to her ear. “I’m going to fade back into the shadows now,” he said softly. “Head home soon, darlin’. You’re closer than you know to possessing everything you’ve wanted for the past six years. Don’t give up just when you’ve received the chance to enter the fight.”
She almost shook her head at his advice as she watched him stroll casually to the exit, sunlight flooding the darkened bar as he opened the door, then abruptly disappeared as it closed.
If he meant Jordan’s heart, then he was so wrong. Jordan had showed her during that last night at base that, at least where she was concerned, he didn’t possess a heart. Now didn’t count. Jordan felt he had to be there with her. He hadn’t come for her because he had needed her for himself.
What he possessed instead was a sexual appetite that set fire to her own, and only drew her closer to a broken heart.
“Hey, Tey.” Journey sidled up to the stool next to her. “Who was that piece of hot stuff you were talking to?” She flashed Tehya a wicked grin as she waggled her brows suggestively.
“Someone with a complex,” Tehya sighed as she wondered who in the bar could be the enemy. She was a fool, because she couldn’t believe any of them could be a danger to her.
She had learned as a teenager that the enemy could pose as anyone, even a friend. Yet evidently, that lesson hadn’t impressed itself upon her effectively enough.
It could be Casey, it could be Kyle, or even Journey. Tehya had known the other girl was a risk from the beginning, but not the type of risk Micah was watching for.
“Someone with a complex and a seriously nice ass,” Journey laughed.
“More than a seriously nice ass matters, Journey,” Tehya said. “And on that note, it’s time for me to leave.”
She had to get out of the bar, away from whoever was there specifically to watch her, to betray her. To complete Sorrel’s mission and destroy her.
It wasn’t as safe here as she had believed it was. For all her careful surveillance and background checks, somehow she had still managed to fuck up. Still, she had allowed herself to be fooled.
That, or she had been located within those first two months of moving to Hagerstown and was being watched even as she was watching those around her.
That would have allowed whoever was following her to put someone in place and prepare a proper background. Especially if she had been led there, or if her enemy had known her well enough to guess where she would head.
The thought that she was under surveillance for months and had never guessed until the past few weeks, had a chill of terror racing through her.
Looking around, she didn’t catch sight of Micah or anyone else. She felt the eyes on her, though. God, she should have paid attention to her instincts and run that first night she had felt the back of her neck itch.
Two weeks ago.
But if her suspicions were right, if Micah’s were right, it had been too late long before that. But why hadn’t she felt the danger then? Why had she only begun feeling those eyes on her in the last two weeks?
Slipping the small electronic key fob from her jeans, she started the ignition to the car before crossing the street. Once she got to the vehicle, she walked around it, watching the screen on the fob intently for any sign of electronic devices or explosives.
The screen showed clear.
Once insi
de the vehicle she sat still and quiet and stared out the windshield, as she tried to get a grip on the fear building inside her, and the final realization, the acceptance that her father truly was reaching out from the grave to drag her into hell with him.
She wouldn’t get rid of Jordan or the others. If he had pulled the team in before he had showed up on her doorstep—and it appeared he had done exactly that—then he’d intended to learn who was searching for her on his own once he had placed her at base or in a safe house.
She knew Jordan; He didn’t do anything without a carefully thought out plan. He would have shipped her off to the Elite Ops base and then gone after anyone that seemed to be interested in her. He would have attempted to take care of the matter on his own.
What he couldn’t have realized was the moment she disappeared, her shadows would have disappeared as well. And eventually they would have found her again. They always did. And someone always died.
How many times had someone ended up dead because they thought they could fight her battles for her? Because they thought they could save her or her mother, no matter the odds.
However, unlike the others, Jordan had come prepared, and Tehya knew he had. She knew how he worked, how he planned, how he waged war.
Pulling out of the parking lot, Tehya headed home. Watching the rearview and side mirrors carefully, she drove around for a while, hoping to catch sight of anyone that could be tailing her. At least, perhaps she would give Micah a chance to catch sight of them, though she doubted whoever it was would be so careless at this late date.
She knew Micah was most likely behind her somewhere, but she couldn’t catch sight of him, either. Had she lost her edge? There had been a time when her instincts, her ability to draw out a tail had been so much better than this.
By the time Tehya pulled into her garage she was frustrated, irritated, and riding a temperamental edge that she rarely allowed herself to visit. Fear did this to her. It made her crazy with the need to run, to hide, to draw the danger away from friends or acquaintances.
When she was too weak to control the fear, her mother used to tell her that her redheaded temper would get her in more trouble than what they had following them.
She’d had a horrible temper as a child when under stress. She had believed she had conquered it as a teenager, though. Hell, she hadn’t had a choice. It was control her temper or risk her mother, or a protector’s life. But now, she could feel it rising inside her like a storm that couldn’t be stopped. She felt as though she were being infected by the fear. As though it were crawling inside her, burning her guts.
Parking the car in the garage, Tehya got out and walked into the house only to come face-to-face with more people than she had left there.
Jordan and the two couples were waiting, but with him was his nephew, another former Elite Ops agent, Noah Blake. Micah and Nik were slipping through the patio entrance even as she locked the door between the kitchen and the garage.
“Did I give you enough time to catch my tail?” she asked Micah as she leaned against the door.
A grin quirked the hard line of his lips. “Not this time. They followed you in, but they didn’t follow you out. We crisscrossed behind as well as ahead of you and didn’t glimpse anything or anyone suspicious.”
She turned to Jordan. “You didn’t tell me you brought the whole damned team in.” She then glared at his nephew. “Isn’t Sabella close to giving birth?”
Noah’s wife was pregnant with their second child, and she knew from the first pregnancy that he became a temperamental son of a bitch if he even suspected a mission would interfere with his ability to be with his wife during the birth, or in those first weeks afterward.
“I have permission to head home if I need to.” Noah grinned back at her, his dark blue eyes amused yet concerned. “I have an understanding boss this time around.”
The last time Sabella was close to her due date just as a mission had ended. Jordan had found himself sporting a black eye hours later when he had mockingly asked Noah for a written report on the mission before he left for home.
“Did you learn anything while I was gone?” she asked Jordan.
He sat at the kitchen counter in front of John and Travis, and now Micah and Nik. Noah took the seat beside him. The two women were on the living room couch working on several laptops they had set up on her coffee table. Her living room was now a fucking command center.
“We’re working on it,” he stated coolly, but the tension radiating from his body was impossible to miss. He was furious that she had run out as she had.
“Well, I see you made yourselves at home. Should I find a place for all of you to sleep?” She straightened from the door and moved farther into the kitchen. “I hope sleeping bags will do.”
Jordan stood up, his broad shoulders appearing wider. His eyes bluer.
“Are you finished running?” he asked, his voice low, dangerous, and filled with a blatant challenge.
Tehya’s brows lifted and she came to a stop in the middle of the ceramic tile floor, aware that all eyes had turned to her and Jordan.
Surprisingly, the moment she had walked into the house and caught sight of Jordan she had felt a spark of life suddenly flare inside her that hadn’t been there before. A glimmer of hope perhaps.
Adrenaline, anticipation. A flare of hunger, she couldn’t extinguish if she wanted to.
“Probably not,” she said, her tone flippant as she fought the anger she knew she couldn’t hide if she tried. She glanced at Micah. “Or at least not until I can find a way to outrun the Rottweilers you sicced on me.”
A bark of surprised, amused laughter burst from Noah and Micah.
“I think he’s more like a junkyard mutt,” Noah said, laughing at Micah.
“You’ve always said that,” Micah agreed with a grin. “I prefer her description though.”
Tehya felt a tug at her heart. It was almost like those days back at the base. The camaraderie, male-bonding bullshit, and insanity that she had always loved watching.
“They’re all dogs,” Lilly piped up as she tossed her husband a wicked grin. “Aren’t you, darling?”
Travis gave a low, sexy growl. Tehya glanced at Jordan, only to find him looking back at her, and she felt the tension between the two of them rise.
Did he envy the others as well? Was there a part of him, as there was in her, that hungered painfully for that same emotional bonding. A hunger she knew no man could sate with the exception of Jordan.
Sometimes, she felt as though she had been cursed by him. No matter how she had tried in the months since leaving the ops, she couldn’t get him out of her head, or out of her heart. He was a weakness she now knew she had no chance of resisting. Just as she knew he had ruined her for any other man.
“You have your orders,” Jordan stated to the others, his gaze still locked with hers. “Make the necessary contacts and we’ll get this started.”
Jordan used the tone that everyone knew meant business. It made the team jump and head for the nearest safety zone. It just made her hot. It always had. It made her wet and never failed to keep her pussy throbbing in need.
Everyone was leaving except Lilly and Bailey. They rose gracefully to their feet and came into the kitchen while the men gathered files and prepared to leave.
“I contacted Ian and Kira, Tehya,” Lilly told her. “They’ve been in D.C. for months. Kira said she’s been trying to reach you since you left base. I’m certain you’ll be hearing from her soon.”
A heavy breath escaped her and she closed her eyes. She didn’t want anyone else involved in this.
“I wish you hadn’t called them,” she said.
“Darling, Kira would have killed me, and made sure it hurt. Badly,” Lilly told her, clearly amused. “But never fear, we have several excellent plans here that Ian and Kira conferenced with us on. We’re going to have such fun saving your temperamental little hide. You’ll actually thank us later.”
Laughing lightly, L
illy kissed her cheek and then Bailey gave her a quick hug. “Take care dear, and we’ll be seeing each other again soon.”
Tehya remained still, watching them warily now. She’d seen these two play their little high jinks on the men of the unit, but this was the first time she had been a recipient. It wasn’t a pleasant sensation. Now, she almost regretted the plots she had helped them with.
Within minutes, the small crowd had dispersed, slipping silently from the house, and leaving her alone with Jordan and the hunger heating between her thighs again.
Tehya wasn’t used to having neighbors, so the fact that her house was in the middle of a large block had been her opportunity to learn how to live among people. It wasn’t a crowded block, though. The houses were spaced a good distance apart, ensuring privacy. Her house sat in front of a line of sheltering trees and the two neighbors on the left of her were related and currently vacationing together.
Walking into the living room while Jordan locked up, Tehya pulled the heavy drapes carefully over the French doors, ensuring there wasn’t so much as a crack between the material for prying eyes to see into the house.
“So, you have plans C, D, E, and F?” she asked as he turned to her once again.
“G, H, and I, as well,” he informed her coolly. “You can never have too many plans, Tehya.”
Arrogance settled around him like a royal cloak.
“So you say.” She shrugged, crossed her arms over her breasts, cocked her hip and stared back at him, her brow arched.
“Don’t give me that look,” he warned her. “You could have stuck around to contribute to planning your own protection, rather than running off as you did.”
“Well, it was leave or commit murder,” she told him archly “Has anyone told you that you’re damned arrogant Jordan? Or that you could make a saint conspire to murder?
“Only every day you were around,” he snorted. He dropped his arms and stared back at her with a look of pure, hard dominance. “Why did you run, Tehya?”
She hadn’t expected him to question her.
“I’ve all but lived with you for six years, and you can’t guess that one?” she asked with a hint of sarcasm. “Do you have any idea how hard this is for me to accept? Sorrel is supposed to be dead!” she suddenly cried out, surprised by the vehemence that tore from her. “He’s not supposed to haunt me like this.”