Dangerously Hot (A Hostile Operations Team Novel)(#4) (32 page)

“Get up, Lucky,” Kev ordered. “It’s over.”

“Kev?” Her voice broke. And then she was clambering to her feet and backing away from the monster on the floor. He groaned as best he could with a rifle in his mouth. He brought his knees up slowly and tears flowed down his cheeks.

Kev wanted to take Lucky in his arms, but he couldn’t turn his attention from their target.

“You were shot,” she said. “I saw you fall.”

“Down but not out,” he told her, his voice gruff.

Two of his teammates came into the room then. While Matt fed orders to Billy Blake through the comm feed, Hawk and Iceman came over and jerked Al Ahmad from the floor. He didn’t seem to be able to stand, but that didn’t stop them from trussing him up like a goose and putting a sack over his head.
 

Kev turned and stared at Lucky. She blinked back at him, her arms wrapped around her body. He told himself he should grab her and hug her tight, but he was frozen in place. He’d let Al Ahmad take her when he’d sworn he wouldn’t. She’d been in danger because he’d failed to protect her. He’d broken his promise to her and he didn’t know how to say he was sorry for that.

His gaze swept over her torn abaya and back up to her wide-eyed face. That’s when he realized that a small river of blood seeped from a wound in her throat. Worse, blood dripped down her arm and puddled on the floor. He hadn’t seen that at first. Now that he had, his rage went nuclear.

It was the only explanation for what happened inside him then. Rage and fear and adrenaline coalesced into a tight ball in his gut until he thought he would explode with it.
 

“Gonna fucking kill him,” he growled, turning toward the huddled and sobbing form of the world’s most wanted terrorist.

“Kev, no, please.” Lucky grabbed him then, her arms wrapping around him from behind. He winced as she put pressure on his side, but the rage didn’t clear. He brought the rifle up and jammed it against Al Ahmad’s head while Iceman and Hawk jumped back.

“Stand down,” Matt ordered sharply. “Don’t fucking make me shoot you.”

“He needs to die,” Kev snarled without taking his gaze off the man kneeling on the floor. “If he doesn’t die, she’ll never be safe.”

“Kev, please.” Lucky said. She didn’t let go, didn’t back away. “Please. I thought I lost you tonight, but you’re here. After everything, you’re here.” She drew in a breath that sounded like a sob. “If you do this, I’ll lose you again. Please, please don’t.”

There was a buzzing in his ears. “He will never stop hunting you. He’ll do it from behind bars. You won’t be safe.”

She sucked in another breath. “This isn’t what we do to people. It’s what
he
does. And Mendez is going to bury him behind walls so thick he’ll never get out. He won’t piss without permission, and he damn sure won’t talk to anyone. I’m not scared, Kev. I’m not scared.”

Her hand moved to his arm, slid down the length of it until she could grasp the barrel of his rifle. Slowly, she pushed it down, away from Al Ahmad’s head.

Kev blinked. And then he took a step back and sucked in a sharp breath. The buzzing in his ears intensified. His head was light, his vision spotty. The edges were black, the tunnel closing in. Relief, he told himself. Relief that she was alive. He turned to finally take her in his arms the way he should have.

But the blackness rushed over him and everything faded.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

“She had him by the fucking balls!” Iceman howled with laughter. The other guys snorted and giggled. A couple of them clutched their crotches and winced.

Lucky couldn’t help but laugh too. Here were these badass military men, tall and muscled and dangerous as hell, and they were snorting and giggling like a group of high school girls over the fact Lucky had taken down the world’s most wanted man by the balls.

Another HOT unit ranged around the ready room, listening to the tale. One of them shook his head as his gaze drifted over to where she sat. He looked a little surprised and a little in awe all at once.

Lucky dropped her head and studied her lap. It had been a long couple of days. After HOT broke in and captured Al Ahmad, they’d bugged out pretty quick. They’d had to carry Kev to the extraction point, but they’d made it. The C-130 had set down in the desert and was waiting for them to arrive. Soon as they were onboard, it took off in utter darkness and climbed into the sky.

Iceman and Flash had started tending to Kev the minute they were onboard. He wasn’t bleeding, thank God, but his body had been through a lot and he’d been pushing it hard. Iceman had given him painkillers and something to keep him asleep during the ride. Then they’d turned their attention to her.
 

The cut on her neck wasn’t deep, but they’d cleaned it and bandaged it. She’d probably have a scar, but what was new about that? As for the flesh wound he’d given her in the arm, she’d have another beauty of a scar. These weren’t the first scars Al Ahmad had given her, but they were certainly the last.
 

He’d been chained up at the rear of the plane under heavy guard, and it had taken everything she had not to go over and kick the hell out of him. Instead, after she was patched up, she’d sat at Kev’s side for the rest of the flight, her fingers threaded through his. Matt had come over to tell her that the mine was safe and the Freedom Force had been rolled up with the Opposition. They were all going to prison for a long time. She’d thanked him and then laid her head on Kev’s gurney to rest.

A few hours later, they’d set down at an undisclosed air base and transferred to a C-5 that had been fitted with a personal jail cell just for Al Ahmad. Hours of flying later, they’d arrived back in DC. Al Ahmad was currently being held somewhere so secret that she wasn’t even sure Mendez knew the location.

Then again, knowing Mendez, he wasn’t out of the loop on something like that. Hell, the president of the United States would be out of the loop before Mendez would.

Hawk came and sat down beside her. “You okay, babe?”

She ran her hands up and down her arms and nodded. “Yeah, I am.”

And it was true. She’d been so terrified when Al Ahmad—Abdul Halim al-Faizan—had a knife at her throat, but the second the lights went out, she’d reacted without thinking. She’d grabbed his wrist and wrested control of the knife away. They’d fallen to the floor together, a tangle of arms and legs and lethal determination.

And then she’d gotten her hand on his balls. Since she wasn’t an idiot, she’d twisted for all she was worth. She’d continued twisting until someone jammed a gun in Al Ahmad’s mouth.

When she’d realized it was Kev, her heart had nearly burst.

But then everything had gotten weird. It was as if someone had put up a barrier between them that neither could cross. In the instant when they should have been wrapping their arms around each other, they’d simply stared.

Then all hell broke loose, and she’d not had a moment alone with Kev since. When they’d gotten back to DC, they’d been hustled to HOT HQ and put up in the dorms until they could be debriefed. There’d never been a moment to talk to Kev alone. She’d seen him in a group setting, and she’d watched him carefully.

He did not look at her, and her heart slowly cracked open as she realized he wasn’t going to. Something had changed for him out there. She didn’t know what it was, but she knew it affected his feelings for her.

All she wanted now was to escape, but escape wasn’t happening quickly enough.

The door opened and Mendez came in, followed by Matt and Kev. The guys quieted. Lucky tried to keep her attention on Mendez, but her gaze kept straying to Kev. He looked like a block of stone standing there. No emotion crossed his face whatsoever and her heart cracked a little more.

“Sergeant San Ramos,” Mendez barked, and Lucky scraped to attention. All the guys snapped to as well.

“Sir, yes, sir,” she replied.

“The world owes you a huge debt of gratitude. You found him and you stopped him. But no one’s going to acknowledge that publicly, so we’re acknowledging it here.”
 

He lifted his hand in a salute. All the other guys did the same—but to her, not to the bird colonel in their midst. Her eyes felt gritty and misty, but she returned the salute sharply, swallowing the lump in her throat.

“As promised, you are relieved of duty,” Mendez said. The guys shuffled and cleared their throats. Kev looked over the top of her head, his eyes carefully blank.

“Thank you, sir.”

“As you were,” he said to the group at large. Then he turned to go. But he stopped and turned back. “But I should tell you, Sergeant, if you wanted to stay, HOT could use an operator like you. Think about it.”

He spun sharply on his heel and disappeared through the door. The guys all blinked at her. And then Hawk slapped her on the back. It was startling, but she didn’t want to shrink from his touch the way she usually did when anyone but Kev touched her. No, it kind of filled her with warmth. Like she belonged.

These guys were family. She got all misty when that realization hit her, but Hawk just grinned.

“Helluva mission, huh? Just think of all the fun we could have if you hung around.”

Then he filed out the door. The other guys followed.

Except for Kev. He was still standing there like a stone pillar when the last man walked out. The door closed and it was just the two of them.

He wouldn’t look at her.

“Just say it, Kev,” she said. “I can take it.”

For the first time in days, his gaze collided with hers. His eyes were no longer blank. Her heart skipped a beat. No, they weren’t blank—but she didn’t know what emotion that was staring back at her.

“I’m sorry. I let you down. I promised I wouldn’t let him take you, but I did just that. I failed to protect you, and I won’t ever forgive myself.”

Her chest felt oddly hollow at that moment. Because her heart was his, and it hurt to think he was torturing himself over a promise he never should have made in the first place.
 

But she knew why he had, and she knew why he was beating himself up so badly over it.

“Oh, Kev,” she said, and her voice broke just a little. “I don’t care about that. I only care whether or not you still love me.”

It was his turn to blink. His jaw hung open and then he swallowed hard. “Of course I do.”

Her laugh was rusty. “Well, I’ve spent the last couple of days thinking you didn’t, so forgive me if that’s what I care most about. Because I don’t care that you didn’t keep your promise. How the fuck were you ever going to be able to guarantee such a thing anyway? You did your best, and that’s all you were ever going to be able to do.”

His gaze fell to the bandage on her throat. “He cut you again. He nearly killed you. If that had happened…”

“Well, he didn’t,” she said fiercely. “And I took care of myself, thank you very much. So you see, you
did
keep your promise, because you trained me to defend myself. You were there with me, even when you thought you weren’t.”

His head dropped. He clutched the back of one of the chairs and stood there for a long moment, just breathing. “I can’t stop thinking about it. About what could have happened. That cut on your neck…”

She got angry then. They’d come through so much, and no way was she going to let his past dictate the future for them both. To hell with standing back and waiting for the right moment to touch him again.

The right moment was
now
. She surged forward and put her palms on his jaw, turning his head toward her. He shuddered and she knew he felt the same heat and need that she did. Just touching him like this was enough to make her skin itch.
 

“You have to stop,” she said, her voice tight with emotion. “It’s not your fault what your father did to your mother and sister, and it’s not your fault what Al Ahmad did to me. You can’t spend your life blaming yourself for the actions of others. And not only that, but dammit, I’m getting really pissed here because who says I need rescuing, huh? You taught me to rescue myself, and I did it, so be proud of me, okay?”

He turned then, the full force of his gaze hitting her, making her breath catch. So handsome. So lonely and broken. So hers, dammit.

“I am proud of you. You did it, Lucky. You got him. I only hate that you had to do it alone.”

She sucked in a breath. “Well, I don’t.”
 

Hell, yes, she’d been scared. But now she was pretty stoked that she’d survived. She hadn’t just taken whatever Al Ahmad dished out. She hadn’t been broken and helpless and needing rescue. And she wasn’t going to withdraw from the world now that she was free.

Hell, no, she was embracing it.

“I’m strong,” she said. “Stronger than I ever believed possible, and that’s thanks to you. If you’d been there to take care of him for me, I might not know what I could do. I’m glad I know. I’m glad I don’t have to run away and hide ever again. I can face myself in the mirror every day, knowing I was strong. You did that, Kev. So if you want to wallow in self-pity, you go right ahead. But I’m not doing it with you.”

Her heart thumped hard as she waited for him to say something.