Navy SEALs Complete Series: 3 Books + 3 Novellas (Tempting Navy SEALs) (84 page)

Her picture had been given to them before a particular mission she was working. She wore one of many disguises; they had been warned to watch out for a woman who never looked the same. Ian had managed to identify the one thing that never changed though. Those pretty ears. That and a wicked, teasing glint in her eyes, no matter their color.

One of these days he was going to have to call her on that tease. He was going to have to fulfill the promise her eyes had made during the weeks they had put in together on a past mission.

He slid past the bathroom door, careful to let the sleeve of his jacket slide across the wall, to alert her to the fact that he was leaving the room.

He let the door open, stepped out, then grimaced and shook his head as the guard glanced toward him, as though he had forgotten something. He held up a finger with abashed embarrassment then stepped back inside. Silently.

The door swished closed. And he waited.

He was patient. She was smart.

He would have smiled, but so much as a twitch would be enough to warn her he was there. She was as smooth as fine whisky, as adept at her job as he was at his.

So he waited. And the patience paid off. The bathroom door edged open, and sure as hell, there she was. Like the sun edging over the mountain. Like a clear breeze easing through the stench he could sometimes feel gathering around him.

When he moved, he realized he was almost too slow. Or she was almost that fast. His hand went over her lips, his
body braced, pushing hers against the wall face-first, his free hand pressing the barrel of his weapon against her neck warningly.

She didn’t make a sound. Damn her. She didn’t even fight him. She relaxed into his body instead. Her rounded buttocks cushioned his hips, her shoulders curved against the wall, and she bared the slender line of her neck as his lips pressed close.

Hair that should have been long and black was cut close and blond. Gray eyes were hazel, clear silky flesh had a coarse appearance. There was nothing of the woman he had seen on his last mission, or the mission he had found her on before that. The Chameleon was as ever-changing as a woman’s emotions.

“I like the black hair better,” he whispered at her ear. “And the gray eyes. Natural, weren’t they, sugar?” He rubbed his nose against the ultrasoft lobe of her ear.

Her tongue flicked against his palm, almost surprising him, almost making him drop his guard. He chuckled softly at her ear instead and felt the smile against his hand.

“You shouldn’t be here.” He laid his forehead against her shoulder. “A man should be able to say goodbye to a buddy without an audience, don’t you think?”

She looked back at him, hazel eyes cool. There was no fear there. No anger. No impatience. But beneath the calculating chill there was a hidden flame. One he never failed to respond to.

“Wrong time, wrong place.” He stared back at her as she watched him over her shoulder. “Wrong life.”

He let himself experience the feel of her for just a few seconds more, long enough to let the regret in his gaze telegraph to hers. Long enough to watch the flicker of indecision in her eyes. That second where he knew she was weighing her options and her escape.

“I’ll miss you,” he breathed against her ear. “I’ll miss you more than you know, Kira.”

A deft move of his hands, just the right pressure, and a second later she slumped against him, thick lashes drifting over her eyes as darkness closed over her mind.

Ian swung her in his arms, lifted her from the floor, and stepped to the chair on the other side of the room. He placed her there, cushioning her head with a spare pillow against the back of the cushions and brushing the blond bangs back from her face with regret.

Wrong place, wrong time, wrong life. Because blood would tell. And this time, the hated blood that ran through his veins was telling in ways he had never imagined possible.

Six months later
Palm Beach, Aruba

H
E WAS ROGUE.

Could there be any other explanation for the dark, avenging force that swept through the night?

The Chameleon scrambled through the warehouse, ducking behind crates and using the heavy support posts of the building to deflect the bullets raining around her.

The small team of highly trained Fuentes soldiers tore into the warehouse where the small cell of terrorists were waiting for the go-ahead that Ian was arriving for a scheduled weapons buy. They were there to kill him. But it was Ian who was killing instead.

She hadn’t managed to learn how they had received that information, or from where the leak had originated. Her work within the cell had gleaned her nothing but a certainty that the determination to assassinate Ian Fuentes was escalating.

The assassins had been on the island less than twenty-four hours. The final two had arrived just hours before with the details of the strike they were to make against the heir to the Fuentes cartel.

None of them had known for certain that they were
striking against Ian until some hours before. Even the Chameleon hadn’t been certain of the plan until the French assasins in charge had arrived, their eyes cold, hard, and outlined the operation.

They had no sooner given the final order than death had swept through the night.

She flinched as a bullet tore across the beam several inches above her crouched form. Ducking and rolling, her weapon ready, she pushed herself deeper into the shadows as she lifted her weapon and aimed at one of the few remaining lights shining overhead.

The bulb shattered, sparks raining down on the assembled crates and packages prepared for shipping the next day.

She moved, sprinting from her hiding place, as bullets tore into the crates around her. Her gaze swept around the room and she grimaced as she saw the black-clad Fuentes soldiers moving through the shadows with stealthy certainty.

They were trained, disciplined. These weren’t the drug soldiers they had been when Ian Fuentes first arrived a year ago. This was a highly trained, effective fighting force. A team of dark, dangerous, SEAL-trained weapons.

Damn. The director of the Department of Homeland Security was going to have a cow when she sent in the report on this one. The rumors that Ian was taking out drug and terrorist forces alike hadn’t been substantiated. Everyone who could talk somehow ended up dead.

She was going to have to make certain she didn’t end up as dead as the rest of them.

Dammit, she had worked hard to get herself into position within the small terrorist cell working out of Aruba. A year of busting her ass and eating dirt with worms to get in place here, and now the team the terrorists had put together was just dead.

Moving quickly, quietly, she skirted the edges of the crudely built warehouse, working her way to the far wall where the loose boards there would allow her an easy exit. She didn’t dare attempt to use the door.

“Not so fast.”

The Chameleon froze as the barrel of the weapon was laid, almost casually, at the back of her neck.

She knew that voice. She knew the feel of that heated body behind her own.

She held her hands out carefully, allowing the Glock to fall from her gloved fingers to the dusty floor as she restrained the impulse to release the lever holding the knife beneath the sleeve of her light jacket.

Her backup was at her ankle; but it was dark, he might not see it.

Before she could do anything she was jerked upright and slammed into the wall hard enough to knock her teeth together. If she hadn’t been anticipating it.

Eyes narrowed, her arms kept carefully at her sides, her head jerked up as powerful fingers locked around her throat and held her in place.

Icy brandy-colored eyes locked on hers in surprise.

He hadn’t known she was here.

The Chameleon smiled and, while surprise held him immobile, she moved.

Her leg kicked up, almost slamming into his balls but barely glancing them instead. He went back, his fingers slackening on her throat as she tore out of his grip.

His hand gripped her wrist as she turned into the hold, her ankle twisting around his, almost taking him down. Once again, she managed to do no more than loosen his hold on her.

A graceful twist and she had an arm’s distance between them as she crouched and stared back at him, eyes narrowed, her breathing heavy now.

Adrenaline coursed through her veins, her heart raced but not from fear.

“Let it go,” she hissed back at him. “I’m no threat to you.”

She would never be a threat to him. Not unless she had to be. She was here for him, and her heart ached because this wasn’t the man she knew, the man she had fallen in love with in Atlanta.

She watched him, pushing back her anger and her fears of what he had become as his eyes narrowed further. His weapon was tucked into the front of his black mission pants, easily accessible. God only knew where hers was. He could take her out so easily, they both knew it. Just as they both knew he wouldn’t. She hoped she knew that.

“Why?” The snarled question was soft, filled with banked fury. “Why are you here?”

Of course he knew who she was. He had always known who she was, no matter where he saw her, no matter her disguise.

“For you.”

“To kill me?” He sneered. “DHS decide they couldn’t handle the shame of having one of their own defeat them?”

She shook her head. “I’m leaving now.”

“The hell you are.” His lips lifted in a warning growl, his savagely honed features reflecting his fury now.

“The hell I am.” She smiled back as his hand gripped the butt of his gun. “Will you shoot me, Ian?”

She backed away from him. Her exit was only a few feet away, the boards loosened just in case of such an emergency, prepared for her esape.

She closed the distance as she watched his face, his eyes. A second later it was her only warning. The gun was jerked from the band of his pants, he aimed for her and fired.

Kira threw herself back, knowing, certain, she was staring death in the face until she stumbled over the body behind her.

Whirling, she had only a moment to glimpse the fallen terrorist before she shoved the loosened board aside and slipped from the warehouse to the inky darkness beyond.

Just that easily he had killed one of his own men. For her.

She ran through the night, careful to stay down, to keep as many obstacles as possible between her and any bullets that might come her way.

The Chameleon had been bested by a Navy SEAL gone rogue. Or had she been rescued by a deep-cover agent now
so immersed in the mission that he was no longer the man he had been a year before?

Something inside her ached at the thought of either answer. Over the years, Ian Richards had managed to see through every disguise she had used in the various operations where they had met up. She had been on the inside, he had always been part of the force sweeping in to clean up the mess her information had helped locate. Once again, he had seen through another disguise, but this time, they might not be on the same side. And the very scary part of that was the fact that she knew she wouldn’t let it stop her. She had come to Aruba to claim what was hers before his father, Diego Fuentes, could steal his soul.

But she was there for another reason as well. If he hadn’t gone rogue, then she was there to make certain that the SEAL didn’t murder either the terrorist Sorrell that he had vowed to identify and capture for his father, or his father, the drug lord Diego Fuentes.

The Chameleon had no answers to the questions she had confronted the director of Homeland Security with. Was Ian operating under mission parameters of DHS? She had asked that question twice. Each time the same answer: DHS doesn’t contract rogue SEAL operatives.

There were no straight answers, there was only supposition and her orders. Reestablish a relationship with Ian and ensure Homeland Security acquired Sorrell should Ian identify him, as they suspected he would. And keep Diego Fuentes alive.

Diego Fuentes was an asset. He was a DHS-contracted informant. And Ian had no idea the lengths the Department of Homeland Security was willing to go to keep him alive.

I
AN SWEPT HIS GAZE ACROSS
the floor of the warehouse as the team of trained soldiers moved in slowly, dragging the bodies of the assassins to the cleared center of the warehouse.

There were a dozen. Their faces were known to him, several had a price on their heads. Too bad he couldn’t collect.

“There’s one missing.” One of his elite bodyguards spoke at his side. “The blonde. We haven’t found her body.”

And they wouldn’t either.

Ian glanced to his head bodyguard, Deke. Deep cover, a ten-year veteran of the Fuentes cartel, his dark eyes reflected the same chill Ian knew his own did.

This world did that to a man. Planted in ice where a heart should be and diluted the guilt over the bloodshed. The bastards now lying in the center of the warehouse were murderers, kidnappers, rapists. They were terrorists who didn’t care who lived or died as long as their fanatical agenda was observed.

He kicked at one lying on its side, knocking the body over until the dead eyes stared up at the heavily beamed ceiling.

“The girl that got away is Algeria Winters,” Deke reported. “There’s no sign of her, boss.”

She didn’t get away. He’d let her go.

Ian stared at the terrorist’s body. He remembered this one from a mission in Russia several years before. Algeria Winters had been there as well. A Russian-born informant who often worked with Antoni Ruissard, the dead terrorist at his feet.

Anger tightened his jaw as his fingers clenched on the Glock he held carefully by his side.

“We have a team in place in Oranjestad as well as Palm Beach,” Trevor stated. “We can get her description out, have her picked up.”

Ian nodded slowly. “Go ahead.”

They wouldn’t find her. The persona Algeria Winters would be discarded before anyone else had a chance to see her. The higher cheekbones would be altered, that sharp chin would disappear, hazel eyes would change, and blond hair would become another color. Her next disguise would be as natural, as smooth as birth, and no one would ever know she was Kira Porter, except him.