Locked and Loaded (7 page)

She had to get away from that look before it crumbled her resolve. No man had ever seen through every layer and barrier she owned to peer directly at her soul and then ask it questions without uttering a word. And it had been so long since anything deep within her had stirred that the strange sensation of being secretly alive was unnerving.

Quickly opening the van door, she refused to theorize about the hundred things that could possibly go wrong. Captain Davis didn’t need to know that; it would only add to his obvious worry. All he had to do was get the information he needed and then help her hunt the bastards they were after. That was all.

“Just don’t die on me, Captain. You seem like a pretty decent guy, even if you did try to kill me.”

Before he could respond, she was out of the vehicle and had slammed the van door behind her.

CHAPTER 4

He watched her walk away and not look back, the globes of her lovely rump a mesmerizing vision undulating beneath the tight white fabric. Her head held high and shoulders back, she strode forward like a Nubian queen. Each loud click of her gold stilettos against the concrete sent a stab into his nervous system. That jarring female-created sound then sent his gaze down the length of her long, shapely legs. His reaction was one born of pure male reflex, something he couldn’t have stopped if his life had depended on it.

Everything professional within him said that he shouldn’t have noticed these things about her. But everything male within him was on the verge of insubordination to his own direct order to stand down.

Sage Wagner was a problem. She wasn’t just talented, capable, sexy, and smart—the woman had integrity. That was a rare quality these days. Plus, wrapped inside all that professional armor was a woman with an injured heart and a deeply wounded soul.

It would have been easier to deal with her if she was just some ice princess with a gun in her hand. She wasn’t a person scratching and clawing her way to the top of a department for the sheer adrenaline rush that came from success … not that he would have cared one way or another if that was her personal bent. But hearing her story, knowing what she’d been through, and maybe more important, knowing how she’d survived it all by putting her entire being on the line, just messed with him. Profoundly so. From what little he knew about her, his gut told him that this woman was just as exquisite on the inside as she was on the outside; a quality rarer still.

And due to a communications glitch and overlapping missions, he’d not only hurt her physically, but he’d also put her in harm’s way. Now he had to fix that, yet couldn’t do a damned thing while some lowlife slapped her around at best, or severely beat and raped her at worst. To make matters absolutely more insane, she couldn’t even protect herself once back inside Salazar’s hostile camp, not without blowing her cover, all because of the marks he’d left on her.

If he’d only known …
damn
.

Anthony wiped his palms down his face and banged his forehead against the steering wheel as she disappeared into a brilliant swath of sunlight. From where he sat in the shadowy garage, it was like watching an angel simply vanish into the bright light. Wearing a smudged white dress and no visible means to protect herself, she was fearlessly walking back into a place where other angels feared to tread.

He had to fix this, had to make this right. The Salazars had to go down hard when he took down Assad. More than anything, however, he had to make sure that Special Agent Sage Wagner came home in one piece.

God help him make this right.

*   *   *

She had to get out of the parking lot, had to get to fresh air. Sage was practically jogging in her heels as she exited the garage and entered the main shopping boulevard.

For a moment the chemistry between her and Captain Davis had been thick enough to cut with a Bowie knife. It was an unexpected jolt to her system, something so off the wall and crazy that she knew it had to be a result of the concussion. Yeah, she’d definitely bumped her head.

She didn’t do men on the job, didn’t lose focus while working a case, and in this circumstance, any deviation from the plan was a great way to get herself killed. Almost happened earlier, underscoring that point, so what the hell was her problem?

Shaking off the attraction, she set her sights on Avant Garde. Hopefully, Jeffrey wouldn’t be in, because if he was, there’d be an inescapable discussion about her bruised arms and slightly puffy cheek. She was more than a fav customer to him; she was a friend. Therefore, he’d undoubtedly stand in front of her fitting room door with his arms folded, giving her all the statistics about domestic violence, and caring about her—and it would break her heart to have to lie to him.

Sage hoisted her shimmering Louis Vuitton shoulder bag up, feeling every body blow that had landed, and squinted against the sun glare, Dolce & Gabbana designer shades be damned. But she had to play this out, finish what she’d started, and she definitely couldn’t afford to lose focus for personal reasons at this juncture.

To even go there mentally was ludicrous. She was living a totally fabricated life, built from the ground up by careful planning and her agency’s stealth. Birth records, phony high school records, false parental death certificates, bogus job records, even a couple of traffic tickets thrown in for good measure to go along with the fake driver’s license she carried in her purse beside the credit cards in her false name. Everything had been established to give her an entirely new history so that when Salazar had her investigated, he’d come up with a vetted mate.

No man with Salazar’s kind of assets and in his line of business was going to risk his empire on casual tail. The woman who got to get inside would have to be thoroughly background-checked after she’d piqued his interest and rebuffed him persistently … until he decided that she was potentially wife material, a trophy with the background of a Dominican nun. And that’s what the DEA had given her, the background of a saint, down to the second-grade teacher’s qualifications and Catholic school foundation.

Hesitating in front of the boutique, Sage stared at her reflection in the plate glass window. There was no room in this equation for how she felt or what she wanted. There was only the case, only the mission. She hadn’t felt her body stir for a man in years. It had been ever longer since she’d been willing to tell someone what had happened to her family. Everything with Salazar was an act, an illusion just like her bogus ID. She hadn’t ever choked up thinking back on it all because someone asked, “What did they do to you?” Captain Anthony Davis was a problem—one that she didn’t have time for right now.

Sage pushed forward and swallowed hard, forcing the wet emotion that stung her eyes to burn away. Being tired didn’t matter, and she didn’t have time to bleed. After the mission was complete and the case file was closed,
then
she could think about what next.

She glanced around the small, airy space, glad that only the counter girl was there on her cell phone, and grabbed a few oversized white blouses off the rack. Her image from earlier in the day would be on the cameras at the mansion. A total wardrobe change was out. That might be a dead giveaway that something was awry. But a gauzy white blouse, put on over the tube dress and belted, could work. If asked, she could say she took it out of her purse when she got a little chilly from the water spray.

Sage held her long-sleeved choices against her body. Yeah, that could work. It would hide the smudges and her arm bruises, and if any dirt on the dress was seen she’d tell the truth—the boat was a bit dirty. Then she could complain about that, too. In fact, she could always say she fell into the boat, having tried to get in it with heels on, and then had to take her shoes off. Blah, blah, blah. A new plan was beginning to hatch in her sore brain.

Her mind was racing as she quickly made her purchase, put on the blouse right in the store, and hurried out of the boutique before Jeffrey returned. Without Avant Garde’s inquiring owner slowing her down, she could quickly binge shop and then get to a table to call Bruno. From there, she’d just have to wing it.

*   *   *

Sage picked at her shrimp Caesar salad without really tasting it. But her glass of chardonnay had been refilled twice. Fatigue clawed at her body and her mind. She didn’t immediately look up when Bruno’s hulking form cast a shadow over her table.

“The boss has been looking for you,” Bruno muttered in a deep rumble. “He’s pissed.”

“Yeah, I bet he is,” Sage replied in a flat tone, not having to feign her indifference.

“Where’ve you been? We’ve been driving all over South Beach looking for you.”

She glanced up at Bruno’s massive frame, but strategically placed a palm against her left cheek while resting her elbow on the table. Her sarcastic expression said, duh—look at the bags in the chair, asshole.

After a moment he shifted his weight and folded his arms over his barrel chest, getting the message. She went back to slowly picking at her salad.

“Listen,” he muttered with strain lacing his voice. “I know it mighta got a little crazy back at the house, but you can’t be running off right now, okay? So, what the boss doesn’t know doesn’t have to hurt anybody … and there’s no need to make a big deal out of anything.”

Feeling the immediate advantage, Sage kept her eyes on her salad as she moved grilled shrimp around on her plate. So Bruno didn’t want her to blow things out of proportion, huh.

“He’s not going to be angry at
me,
you know that, right? Not for removing myself from earshot of you guys talking nasty. So, when I go back home and tell him that—”

“Look,” Bruno said, now taking a seat across from her. “I know it got nuts back there, but he’s not even home, all right. You don’t have to get into the details of who said what … and I’m sorry if anybody offended you. The guys were just joking around … all of us were.”

Sage kept a palm on her face covering the bruised left side of it, using her right hand to push lettuce leaves around in a circle with her fork. “He’s not home yet?”

“No. He had to go to New Orleans, but he’ll be back in a couple days, right after Mardi Gras—and you need to be back and tucked in safe with everything back to normal.”

Now she looked up at Bruno, the gears in her mind turning quickly. This new information had to be communicated to her team and Captain Davis, stat. If the shipment was going down tonight, they needed to know that. Then again, it could have been a logistics dry run with Assad. Either way, it was valuable intel.

“He never told me he was going to New Orleans,” Sage murmured, sounding dejected. “I might have wanted to go, too.”

“Yeah, well, he didn’t take any of us, so don’t go making a big deal out of it. Maybe, if you behave yourself, after he’s finished doing business, he might fly you down to join him, since it’ll be Mardi Gras.”

“Why couldn’t he just take me right from the start?” she said, challenging Bruno with a pout. Inside, her heartbeat had kicked up a notch as panic set in, but she stayed calm on the surface so as not to tip him off.

Bruno leaned forward. “Look … I shouldn’t be telling you anything, all right. Just know that he had serious business to take care of and wants you somewhere safe while he’s away.” Bruno sat back, looked around the restaurant, rubbed his jaw, and then lowered his voice to a plea. “C’mon, Camille. Gimme a break. Just come home.”

“I’m not mad at you now; I’m more pissed at him. I would have loved to visit the Big Easy.” She ate a few more bites of her salad, toying with the strain in the huge security guy who had been sent on a fool’s errand to babysit her. She needed more answers. “He’s probably got some hoochie in a room in New Orleans, that’s why I couldn’t go … probably cheating on me as we speak.”

“No, no, and please don’t go telling him I said anything about New Orleans, all right. It’s not like that, it’s strictly business.”

“Really?” she murmured, looking up at Bruno with sad eyes.

“Really.”

“Then, if it’s not some other woman, why couldn’t he take me this morning?” she whined.

“The man had to go check out his shipping warehouses, all right. That’s all I can tell you. There’s nothing fun going on down there, Camille. Honestly. You know he had a meeting at the airport with a big client … and I guess they wanted to see whatever—then he’ll be back. So, are you coming home or what?”

She released a long sigh and stared at Bruno with the most innocent expression she could muster. “Can’t you just tell him that you found me here and that I want to go to the spa to get a mani-pedi and massage and might even stay at the Ritz Carlton tonight … just so I don’t have to rush home? I mean, what’s to do at the mansion, especially if he’s not there? Maybe I could even go have a drink with one of my girlfriends and go listen to some live music or go to a club, and get myself pretty for when he gets back.”

Bruno briefly closed his eyes and smoothed a palm over his mousse-spiked blond hair. “He said to bring you home.”

There was no way she was getting into any vehicle but the red Mercedes coupe that didn’t have C4 wired under the chassis.

“Look, if you talk to him and tell him you found me … in fact, I’ll even get on the phone while you call him, then he should be all right with that, right?”

“I dunno. He’s got a lot going on right now. He’s not in the frame of mind for trivial—”

“So now I’m trivial? Is that what he said about me?”

“No, no, no, no, no—you are taking things all wrong, Camille. The man wouldn’t have sent a security detail over here looking for you if you were trivial. Think about it.”

Power was in the eye of the beholder. She loved watching panic dance in Bruno’s helpless eyes. The man had killed more people and broken more kneecaps than probably the DEA even knew about, and yet he was twisting in the wind over a recalcitrant woman who didn’t want to get into his car. Priceless.

“Call him and let me talk to him, pleeeaaase?’ Sage cooed. “I promise that I won’t give him any grief about the dogs or what you guys were saying … and you can just have one of the drivers bring me my Mercedes so I can get around South Beach and can come home easy-breezy when I’m ready … You guys can also take the boat back from the marina. I mean, really, what’s the big deal?”