“Since I couldn’t get the hospital in France to discuss patient records, I had to hack their systems to access Fatima’s charts.” Liam gave her a lopsided smirk. “You’re a good teacher; what can I say?”
“My teaching helped Ara send messages to her aunt—getting her killed.” She rubbed her forehead, and Liam winced at her words. “Sorry, go on.”
“Fatima didn’t have cancer,” Liam said. “Her scans were clean, so I think she lied to Ara to get her to visit.”
“She lured her out,” Jessica said with a shake of the head. “Samir must’ve put Fatima up to it. Any idea where she is?”
“We may not be on this case, but thankfully, some of our people are keeping us in the loop.” Luke took a breath and looked at Jessica. “A DEVGRU team went to Syria after Berlin to try and locate Samir and his mom.”
“They were gone, weren’t they?” Jessica’s lips pursed, and Luke nodded.
Their team had been working this case for a week, and as much as they still felt in the dark—he couldn’t imagine the way Jessica was feeling right now. Getting slammed with all of the details at once.
Were they overwhelming her?
Then again, she wanted to get more than her toes wet—she was ready to jump in the deep end and swim right away.
Right or wrong, he knew he wouldn’t be able to stop her from going full throttle.
“Without operational authority, it makes what we do on our end tricky.” Asher roped a hand around the back of his neck and squeezed at the mounting tension.
“We need to figure out how Samir was able to afford such a high-priced assassin,” Knox said.
At his last word, Jessica’s hands dropped beneath the table, and she snapped her eyes closed.
“You need a minute?” Asher asked.
“No.” A hard breath later, she looked at everyone. “I’ll be fine. So, uh, did we catch Samir on camera at the hospital with his mom?”
“No. I don’t think he traveled with her. Well, not under his name, anyway,” Liam answered.
“Samir’s been a ghost since his brother died. He didn’t have any ID in Syria. And there are no pictures of him we can run through our facial recognition software to try and get any hits,” Luke explained. “Hell, he’s barely twenty.”
“What about the sketch I gave the Feds in Berlin?” she asked. “My artwork that bad?”
Luke semi-smiled. “Drawing isn’t exactly one of your talents, but that image will help authorities if they ever come face-to-face.”
“I can try again,” she said, and Asher could see a darkness shadow her eyes. The pull of failure attempting to lure her away.
“We’ll run your sketch through the systems again. Maybe we’ll get something.” Luke glanced around the room.
“Samir got to you in Berlin somehow,” Knox interjected. “Must’ve had a fake passport, which means there’s a photo of him out there. We’ll keep checking all the flights around the time you were taken and see if anyone looks similar to the photo you drew.”
Her shoulders slumped. “I’m sorry.”
“Not your fault.” Asher’s brows drew together, and she looked over at him and took what appeared to be a calming breath.
She lightly nodded before focusing on the rest of the team at the table. “What about his mom? How’d she get to Paris?”
“She acquired a visa and passport a few months prior to the trip. It was her first time out of Syria,” Liam told her. “When we pulled the flight manifest and checked the cameras at the airport—she appeared to be alone.”
She shook her head. “Someone must’ve been in Paris waiting to see if Ara would show, though. What about the hospital cameras?”
“Aside from Ara visiting—no one else that we noticed,” Liam replied.
“There has to be someone funding Samir.”
“I think I have an idea how to access Samir’s accounts.” Knox rose from the table, and all eyes went to him. He braced his palms against the back of the chair and swallowed. “My pops is going to be in Austria soon. Some political thing, I don’t know. We’d be in Egon’s territory.”
“What are you getting at?” Luke leaned back in his chair.
“Egon usually gets his jobs by way of a message board. The new age we live in . . .” He lifted his shoulders. “Hitman for hire, ya know?”
“You want to lure him out by requesting a hit on your dad?” Asher asked in surprise. He knew Knox and his dad had had a falling out, but still.
“No. No.” He smiled. “I’ll go with him, and we put the hit on me.”
“First of all, we’re still grounded,” Luke began while slowly rising. “And secondly, we don’t know if he’ll be the one to answer the message.”
“How about a third reason,” Jessica chimed in. “You could get killed.”
Knox shook his head. “This might be our only chance to draw him out, and it wouldn’t raise any questioning brows for him if we put a hit out on the son of a politician. That’s a normal gig.”
He had a point, but there were still a lot of roadblocks.
“You don’t even talk to your old man,” Liam said.
“I’ll do what I have to for the team, and you know that.” He swiped a hand down his jaw. “Could you put an encrypted message up? Ask for a public killing since that’s Egon’s specialty?” Knox briefly closed his eyes. “God, I’m sorry, Jessica. I didn’t—”
She held her hand in the air. “It’s okay. I want to find this bastard, but I don’t want you to risk your neck.”
“You guys won’t let anything happen to me.” Knox semi-smiled.
Luke was quiet for a moment, stroking his jaw. “Put the message out there. If he takes the bait, then I’ll find a way for us to get there.”
“If we catch Egon, we can hopefully trace the transaction from Samir to Egon, and then get a handle on Samir’s accounts,” Luke said. “We need to know who is bankrolling him.”
Asher looked over at Jessica. She was already on the laptop. Back to business, so it seemed. Well, she was trying, at least.
“Any word on the girls?” When she looked up from the screen a moment later, he could see fragments of fear and sadness clouding her eyes. A temporary obstruction.
“They’re in a CIA safe house in Oslo,” Luke answered. “Although getting Rutherford to share that news wasn’t easy.”
“That’s good.” She rolled her lips inward briefly. “When this is over I can’t see them again. Being close to me is too dangerous.”
“Jess.” Owen was on his feet and standing behind her now. He placed a hand over her shoulder.
“You don’t need to say anything,” she said without glancing back at him, her eyes committed to the screen again. “I, uh, should work.”
Owen nodded, but his eyes met Asher’s, and he cocked his head toward the door, motioning to meet him outside.
“What’s up?” Asher asked.
“There’s something you should know,” he began. “When I was recovering all of Jessica’s data from the phone she lost in Berlin”—he scratched at the back of his head—“well, Luke was in the room with me, and he saw her texts. He saw the last message she got before Egon took her.”
Asher cursed under his breath. His damn I miss you text had now become public to his team. Just great.
“When did he see it?” Asher lifted his hands from his pockets, not sure what to do with them.
“Last night.”
“The text . . . it isn’t what it looks like.”
Owen raised his brows, and a slight smile tugged at his mouth. “Sure, man.”
Shit.
“Anyway, I thought you should know.” Owen reached for the knob to go back into the office, but then paused and looked at Asher from over his shoulder. “If there’s something going on between you two, he’ll get over it. You’ll just have to give him time.”
Chapter Twenty
“Harder, Princess.”
“That’s as hard as I can hit. And don’t call me princess.” She took sho
rt gasping breaths and rested her forehead against the black heavy bag.
“You ready to put some gloves on before you mess up your beautiful hands?” He was standing before her with gloves extended. “So damn stubborn.”
“I learned how to be that way from the very best.” She sidestepped the hanging bag and kissed the air, even if some crazy part of her wanted her lips to land on his.
He handed her the puffy gloves, and her gaze lingered on his body as she fastened them. Well, more like attempted to tie them.
A six-foot-four distraction was two steps away.
His broad shoulders arched back, his eight-pack like eye candy on display. Beads of sweat rolled over his tan skin like drops of water had been airbrushed onto him for a beer bottle commercial.
Strings of guilt for wanting him pulled at her to the point where she wondered if she’d fray and unravel—and give in to the pulse of need inside of her.
“Pretty sure you were stubborn long before you met me, Peaches.”
“So, we really are back to the nicknames, aren’t we?”
“Just trying to make you feel at home.” He winked his devilish, panty-melting wink.
“I also think you’re trying to get me to quit training.”
“What? By pushing you so hard?” He grabbed a bottle of water off a nearby bench, and she watched the movement in his throat as he sucked half of it down.
He offered the other half of the water, and she arched a brow and lifted her gloves to remind him she couldn’t hold the bottle. “Torturing me now, huh?”
He rolled his tongue over his bottom lip, a devious look etched into the lines of his face—the look of a man who could do sinful things to her with his tongue.
Maybe training wasn’t the best idea, not if she wanted to maintain her defenses and keep her lust from bursting out of her like one of those jack-in-the-box toys after being wound up.
Fighting with him had helped take her mind off the heavy stuff, but it’d also built up more sexual tension than normal between them. A sword with its double edges and all.
She’d come close to propositioning him for sex with no strings yesterday. Sex as a cure to what happened in Berlin—that’s how off-kilter she’d become.
“Water. Please.” She lifted her chin, and he brought the rim of the bottle to her lips, but she couldn’t take her eyes off him as he gently poured the cool liquid into her mouth. A few drops splashed onto her chest, cooling her breasts.
“Did I quench your thirst?” He pulled the bottle back. “Or do you need more?”
Holy hell. Desire throbbed hot, hard, and fast straight down to her very wet center. I shouldn’t be thinking about this. About you naked. Me pinned beneath you. This is wrong. “We need to focus on training.”
“Ugh, aren’t we doing that?”
Shit, she’d had that conversation in her head and not out loud. Now I sound like an idiot. Great. “Let’s take a break from the bag and practice that kick you showed me yesterday. I couldn’t quite nail it.” She removed and tossed the gloves she’d just managed on.
“Of course you want to nail it.” He playfully waggled his brows before tossing the now-empty water bottle into the recycling.
“Shut up,” she said with a laugh, and the laugh felt good. A nice change from the sorrow constantly trying to entice her back.
Her hand swept down her neck and to the top of her sports bra as she eyed his back while he moved to one of the larger mats off to the side of the ring. “You coming, or what?” He faced her and flicked his wrist.
She blinked out of her stupor. “Yup.” A hard nod followed, more for her benefit. A snap-out-of-it kind of nod. “Okay. So, the part where I sweep my leg up before I spin always gets me messed up. You know, falling-on-my-ass messed up.”
He grinned, his white teeth flashing. “I remember. Enjoyed it, too.”
“Teach me how not to fall, okay?” She wet her lips, doing her best not to allow her eyes to travel down the center of his chest and to the dusting of hair beneath his belly button.
He crouched before her and placed his hand on her thigh, and she startled and almost fell back onto her ass—just the opposite of what she wanted to happen. “What are you doing?”
He looked up at her. “Helping you with the kick. You okay?” A line darted through his forehead. “You wanted to train.”
“And we’re supposed to be working on removing your tension, too,” she sputtered without a filter.
“Yeah, well, that’s not exactly happening.” He urged her leg up and extended it, and her hands swooped to his shoulders, so she didn’t fall.
“Sorry,” she whispered, too softly for him to probably hear. “Your hands, um. I can’t.” Her stomach muscles banded tight when his eyes touched upon hers. “Forget the leg kick. Let’s do something that involves more space between us.”
He released her leg—thank God—and she removed her hands from his slick shoulders. “Works for me,” he said before clearing his throat and turning away.
She knew he was adjusting his pants, and then after he bowed his head and placed his hands on his hips.
They were both in way too deep.
Lust and desire, she could handle. Hell, it was par for the course between the two of them. Days like these were a welcome distraction from the darkness of her situation.
But . . . it was everything else, circling them the way the earth orbits the sun, that had her feeling all screwed up in the head. So out of sorts and conflicted. Feelings she despised.
Working so closely with Asher when Luke had been on paternity leave had done enough damage to her defenses.
But Berlin had been a game-changer, no matter how much she didn’t want to admit it.
The floodgates had opened, and now she needed to figure out a way to snap them closed. And fast.
* * *
Her hands still ached from punching the bag earlier. He’d been right about not using gloves. Maybe I am too stubborn?
She held the ice to her knuckles and stared at her computer screen. Still no response to her post for a hitman.
If the plan didn’t work, they’d have to come up with another way to go after Egon. They needed to track the money trail, but she also wanted him to pay for what he had done to Ara.
Every time her fist had slammed into the bag the past three days, she’d envisioned his face. And then Samir’s.
And then, at times, she’d drawn up an image of herself.
Angry at herself for being taken. For letting Ara die. For becoming weak and confused when she’d returned home.
Her gaze floated up to see Luke in the doorway, and she dropped the ice pack to her lap, but it slipped to the floor.
“You okay?” He sat in the chair in front of her desk and leaned forward, elbows on his thighs.
“Uh, yeah.” She pressed back into her chair, repositioned her glasses to the bridge of her nose and eyed her brother.
He’d been treating her like glass since she’d come back to the office, but he’d witnessed her meltdown, and so now, she’d have to prove to him she was the same old Jessica. Tough as nails.
“The president called.” He dropped the words into the air. “We’re off suspension.”
“Really? So soon? How’d you convince him?”
“I didn’t have to. He needs us on an op.”
Her lids lowered halfway, and she stared at her hand on her lap, a slight tremble there. “When? Where?”
“A quick recon op in Mexico City. Should only take a few days, but I’ll need to bring Bravo with me. I don’t like being gone when we have work to be doing here, but this is our chance to get off suspension, so I had to take it. I’m not sure if you’re ready to come with us, but the idea of you being alone at your place while we’re gone—”
“Samir isn’t going to come after me here.” She still couldn’t wrap her mind around the fact he was behind all of this, capable of such evil.
“Yeah, I don’t think you’re in danger.” He sat upright an
d scratched at the stubble on his jaw. “But after what happened, you should stay with someone while we’re gone.”
There was no way she’d ask to stay with her best friend, Grace. She had two kids and a stepdaughter. Way too much on her plate.
“I’ll be fine.”
“I may not be able to touch base with you while I’m in Mexico. Maybe I should ask Wyatt to come back from Detroit?” He stood, a palpable unease moving through him.
“I don’t need a babysitter.” She shifted to her feet as well but pressed a palm to the desk to stay grounded. “I’ll keep working on tracking Samir. Maybe we’ll get a hit on the message board from Egon while you’re gone.”
He was quiet for a moment. “We’ll be back soon.” He lowered his head and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Are you sure you’ll be okay?”
She circled the desk, and his arm swooshed back to his side. “I’m good.” A half-truth, but she couldn’t risk the team losing focus because they were worrying about her. “This is a good thing. Now that we’re no longer suspended, we might be able to hunt down Egon.”
He lightly nodded. “Yeah, okay.”
“I’ll check in twice a day with Wyatt. That work?”
“Yeah.” He smiled, but it dissolved quickly. “You know, if anything had happened to you back in Berlin I’d never have been able to forgive myself. No more secrets, though. I can’t protect you if I don’t know everything.”
She dragged her hand over her mouth and to the column of her throat before her fingers splayed across her collarbone.
“And now that you’re training with Asher every morning, it has me on edge you’re considering putting yourself at risk again.”
“I’m trying to better protect myself.” While also giving myself a serious case of female blue balls, apparently. “Er, that’s all.” She turned, blocking her face from him, worried he’d read her thoughts. “And I don’t have any more secrets.”
“You’re sure?”
“I promise,” she snapped out maybe too quickly.
He was quiet for a moment. “I should pack and say bye to Eva and Lara before I head out.”
“You don’t need to have her check on me, either,” she said, knowing exactly what he was going to do.
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