Silver Fire (Guardians) (39 page)

“Who else got hit?”
 

Nobody answered. Derek immediately spun her around to him and touched her all over. “You OK, Sophie?” His voice was full of concern.

“I’m fine,” Sophie replied softly.

“Good girl.”

“You guys better hustle,” Edmunds warned through comms. “The whole compound is on our ass, we’ll be needing back up to hold them off.”

“I got the window open,” Cortez said. He really was a lock expert, Sophie thought.

Marissa hefted herself up and went in first. When she gave the all clear, Sophie heaved herself over, getting a boost from Derek. All followed except for the injured commando and Quint. They were remaining outside to help secure the perimeter of the warehouse.

Sophie’s heart was still racing, and she was beginning to hyperventilate.
Great
. What was that Maia taught her in case an anxiety attack seized her? Fortunately, Derek knew the drill.

“Count slowly, one, two, three, four inhale. Count slowly to exhale one, two, three, four,” he whispered into her ear. All Derek did was babysit her. She should toughen it out.
Sheesh
!

“I’m fine,” Sophie said, even as she gulped a deep breath saying it. Derek grinned at her and shifted his focus to take a gander of the area.
 

The warehouse was dimly lit and eerily quiet—a stark contrast to the firefight outside.
 

“Jesus Christ,” Derek muttered under his breath. “There’s enough munitions in here to start a third world war.”
 

Rows and columns of wooden crates lined the wall with sections labeled explosives, artillery, rifles etc. No question of this location being a weapons depot. They trailed Marissa’s lead until they encountered a room outfitted with a sophisticated portal.
 

All of them exchanged grim looks. This was it. Cortez was up. He took out some cool-looking equipment and probes from his backpack. He unscrewed the lid off the electronic lock and fit the probes on to it. After viewing the signal on his sophisticated device, he punched in some codes to reprogram the locks. He cursed a couple of times but finally, after a few attempts, chambers and internal mechanisms whirred and the door jarred open.
 

Cortez and Chen high-fived.

They opened the door further and went inside. The room was illuminated automatically when a sensor detected movement. There, sitting in the center of the space, were the three suitcase-sized zee bombs.

“You’re up, Sophie,” Marissa said and then speaking through comms: “We’ve got ‘silver linings’, we can apprehend Stoltz.”

“Uh, guys,” Manning called out cautiously as he walked toward the ominous looking devices. “The bomb’s timer is counting down. Is it supposed to do that?”

Sophie rushed forward and looked at the blinking digital numbers counting down.

7:59

7:58

7:57

Oh god
.
 

“It’s armed,” Sophie whispered.

***

“What? How?” Marissa demanded, rounding on the other side of Sophie.

“You all need to get out of here,” Sophie stated flatly, as she quickly lowered her backpack, unzipped the top, and pulled out her tools.
 
She tuned out the flurry of arguments that broke out behind her as everyone tried to figure out what do. Getting down on her knees, she loosened the screws of the front panel and said louder, “Get out of here! I can’t work with all of you talking at the same time.”

“Sophie—” Derek began softly.

“Especially you, Derek.” Sophie’s head twisted slightly and stared up at him. “I can’t work when you’re here. Get out. Now!”

“The hell! I’m not leaving you,” Derek growled, his jaw set in a stubborn line.
 

Sophie glanced at Manning. “Get Derek out of here.”
 

“Dr. Leroux—” The big guy was uncertain.

“Ahhhh,
 
just do it, Manning.” Sophie turned back and continued working on the panel. Her message was clear: Derek was a distraction.
 

There was a rustle of movement behind her and a cocking of a pistol.

“You take one step toward me, Manning, I will shoot you!” Derek warned.

“Jesus, Lockwood. Calm down!” Marissa hissed. “Sophie, no one is leaving. Under eight minutes, it’s not enough time to get away, so you suck it up and work to disarm that bomb. You hear me?”

Sophie heard her but did not reply. She finally removed the cover and realized what she had suspected. Damian Stolz had tampered with her design to program a remote detonator.

“Chen!” Sophie called out. “Remove the panel from the rest of the devices. I need to make sure they were not altered for remote triggering. If they were, we have to work on them at the same time.”

The bomb specialist quickly got to work. Sophie returned her attention to the tangle of wires before her. She quickly unscrewed the circuit board to check the wiring beneath. She snipped a wire and checked the timer.
 

6:45

6:44

6:43

Shit. The electronic trigger, once activated, was meant to be failsafe and tamper free. She hoped the backdoor she had planted worked.

Tension was thick in the room. Everyone was deathly quiet.
 

“Done,” Chen said. “Care to take a look?”

Sophie shifted her attention to the other two devices and was relieved that they were not enabled for remote detonation.
 

“Those are fine,” she said tersely. Concentrating on the web of wires underneath the board, she exposed the extra wires she had added. In that moment, it was life or death. If this did not work, they were all dead and that was when she realized she had never told Derek how much she loved him.
 

She paused.

“Derek,” she said, her voice shaky.
 

She felt him crouch silently beside her. Sophie turned her head and stared straight into his worried eyes. It wasn’t worry for himself; it was for her. This man loved her, and he would sacrifice everything for her.
 

“What do you need, baby?”

“You.” Sophie saw the confusion in his eyes, so she added quickly, “I love you, Derek.”

Warmth flooded his eyes, and his lips broke into a wide smile. “You’ve got rotten timing, Angel. Nevertheless, I’m glad you’ve finally figured it out.”

There was a clearing of a throat behind them. “Uh, sorry to interrupt this intimate moment, but sweetheart, you’ve got a bomb to disarm,” Marissa said dryly. The rest of the team broke out in nervous laughter.

Sophie exhaled deeply and centered the rogue wires between some cutters and without hesitation, snipped. The beeping sound stopped. Everyone stopped breathing.

She flipped back the board to look at the digital display: 5:05.
 

It stopped! She did it! The air swooshed out of her lungs, the tension dissipated from her body, leaving her boneless as she collapsed. Strong arms caught her in a tight embrace.
 

The entire room exhaled.

“Thank god, oh thank god —” she mumbled and couldn’t say more because firm, demanding lips crushed her softer ones as Derek gave her a long, deep searching kiss.

Whooping and yelling erupted in the room and on comms after Marissa reported the successful de-activation of the zee bombs.

When the kiss ended, she was cradled on his lap. Derek gazed down at her, his eyes twinkling
 
as he switched off his comms and reached over to turn hers off. He whispered against her lips,“So you love me?”

“Yes, I do. I love you so much, Derek,” Sophie said softly.

“About fucking time.”

***

“Why didn’t you tell anyone you’ve been shot?” Sophie cried when she discovered the bleeding on Derek’s left arm. Derek winced as he wrapped a bandage around his injured limb to stem the bleeding. It was just a scratch, but it still stung.

The firefight was over. After taking out more than half of SASTac’s security personnel, the rest of them surrendered. Technically they were not detainees, all they had to do was allow the AGS/CIA team to take the bombs out of the warehouse. CIA operatives had taken Damian Stoltz into custody after Marissa had given confirmation about the zefinium bombs. They found the remote detonator on him. The profile on him was correct. He was a sociopath, and backed into a corner, he would take everyone down with him, screw the consequences and the casualties.

They were being airlifted by military Black Hawks back to Johannesburg.

“No big deal, Sophie,” Derek assured her loudly enough to be heard over the chopper’s rotors. And it wasn’t. He was feeling euphoric. After days of tension, uncertainty, and running the gamut of raw emotions, there was finally a light at the end of this tunnel. When he saw the bomb ticking down, a strange peace washed over him. He thought it was over. Then Sophie wanted him to leave, and he went a bit crazy. When he heard Sophie’s voice call his name with such desperation, he worried about her, about her state of mind. And when she told him she loved him, Derek knew they were going to be okay. He did not know how he knew it, but he did. And his love for this woman wanted to burst from his chest. He loved her. And she finally loved him. Though Derek suspected as much, he swore to himself that he would wait patiently for Sophie to realize it on her own.
Yeah, fuck that
. After this near-death experience, he doubted if he would have let her out of his condo until she admitted that she loved him and belonged only to him.
 

So this minor wound on his arm was definitely inconsequential. “Come here,” he said roughly, capturing her with his good arm and resting his chin on the top of her head. “Stop making a fuss about a flesh wound. You prevented a catastrophic event, Sophie. Dwell on that. We’re alive. We didn’t suffer any fatalities.”

Half of them though, sustained gunshot wounds. The worse was one of the CIA Black Ops guy. He got shot twice in the leg. Edmunds sustained a GSW to his arm.

“OK,” she mumbled into his chest. “Thank you.”

“For what?” Derek asked gently.

“Do you even need to ask?” Sophie whispered. “You’ve done so much for me, and I’ve been nothing but trouble. I do not deserve you.”

“Hey—no mushy stuff,” Derek teased. “Not until later. You can thank me later.”

Sophie snuggled closer, Derek gathered her to him fiercely, protectively.
 

***

After making sure the injured men were taken care of at the local hospital—the CIA had a discreet contact on staff there—Marissa made her way back to La Belle Epoch. She had not expected Sophie to be in their room, but she was—fast asleep on her bed. Derek was sitting beside her, leaning on the headboard, just stroking her hair.

He got up quietly when she came into the room.

“I didn’t want her to be alone,” Derek whispered. “She had a rough night.”

“We all did,” Marissa replied as they made their way to the common area so as not to disturb Sophie. “How’s your arm?”

“Flesh wound,” Derek shrugged. “Great ops, Ms. Cole, congratulations.”

“Marissa, please.” She smiled. “You still got it, Derek. Anytime you’re up for contract work, let me know.”

“You know why I took this job.”

“I know,” Marissa said ruefully. “Go get some rest. We leave at 2:00 p.m. for the States tomorrow.”

After Derek left, Marissa decided to take advantage of the marble tub at their hotel room, soaking her aching muscles in a mixture of soap bombs and aromatic essential oils.
 

Marissa sloshed the hot soapy water over her arms.
Ahh, that felt good
. She leaned back and tried to let her senses decompress.

Her phone buzzed, interrupting her meditation.

Viktor.

“Cole.”

“You didn’t call me when you were done,” Viktor
 
said.

“Um, we had a couple of post-ops I needed to take care of, plus we had some injuries, you know.” And the whole mission was being monitored by AGS. It was not as if he was being kept in the dark.

“Were you hurt?”

“Watch it Viktor, or I’ll think you care.”

Silence.

“Look,” Marissa said, suddenly feeling guilty for her sarcasm. “I’m tired. I’m just trying to enjoy my bath.”

“Are you saying, Riz, you’re naked right now and all wet?” Viktor asked in that gravelly sexy voice of his. Oh god, she must be more than tired—what possessed her to reveal such information. And what’s with the pet name? The last time he called her “Riz” was eight years ago.

“I’m just trying to explain why I’m so grouchy.”

“Seriously, Marissa, great job,” Viktor said shortly, but there was sincerity in his voice.

“Thanks, it was a team effort.”

“Are the bombs securely in CIA hands now?”

“Yes. They’re already on a military flight back to the US.”

“Good.”
 

More.
 

Uncomfortable.
 

Silence.
 

“You’ll be on the 2:00 p.m. flight tomorrow?”

“Yes.” Of course he already knew that.

“Maybe we can catch up.”

Wait. What?

“We have that debrief,” Viktor reminded her when she failed to respond.

“You’re right.”

“We can have drinks afterwards.”

Wait. What?

“I’ll see you when you get in.”

And then he freaking disconnected.

Damn Viktor. What was he playing at? She had been apprehensive when this assignment threw her back into his world. She had avoided close contact with him for eight years. They had not ended well. He had been too intense for her and she had to break it off. But she was older now, more experienced and in control. She could face him, remain unaffected and hopefully this would be the last assignment they would find themselves working together for a long time.
 

***

Damian Stoltz was never heard from again. It was rumored that he was being held in a maximum security prison and was prosecuted, found guilty, and sentenced by a mythical international court that dealt with crimes committed across several continents. SASTac was dismantled and absorbed by other security companies in South Africa. There was not enough evidence to prosecute Christopher Blackstone for his role in the zefinium bomb debacle, but Silver Fire Research had cut off all ties with Blackstone International and had contracted with a different mining company to procure zefinium. Eric Opperman had managed to secure all his files and data before the CIA could capture them and promptly vanished. He was put on the CIA watchlist. After Stan Morgan was detained by the CIA Clandestine office, he was released a week later. He was not charged for his zefinium bomb involvement, but the buzz down the wire was that he had cut a deal with the agency and could be now working for them.