Surrendering To Her Sergeant (22 page)

Garrett emitted an admiring groan.
“That was impressive, man. Shit, I may need to borrow
that.”

“No,” Zeke interceded, “you
will
not
.”

“Toss out that shirt and I’ll consider
it.”

As the friends grunted into a truce,
Tait directed his attention back to Colton. “What’s going on? And
what can we do to help you, Agent Colton?”

If it were possible, the agent’s
posture went more stiff. Everyone pressed in by another
inch.

“The takedown on the truck got…messy,”
he muttered. “Dark and messy. The guards had heat. We expected
that, of course, but it was serious heat. High-end semiautomatics
and a shitload of handguns. They were well-trained to use it all,
too.” He jutted his jaw and huffed. “Just listening to it on the
radios was a nightmare. It was like a goddamn Michael Bay movie.
There must have been ten or twelve of them, too. We caught eight.
The rest took off into the desert.”

“Probably maggot food by now,” Rebel
commented in his Louisiana drawl. “In one way or
another.”

“But ten or twelve?” Kellan added.
“For a basic heroin shipment and a handful of innocents? Doesn’t
add up.”

Garrett dragged a hand across the
blond mess atop his head. Tait could practically predict what the
soon-to-be new father would ask. “Casualties?”

“Only one,” Colton supplied. “A
passenger in the truck.”

“Shit.”

“An adult,” the agent
clarified. “And
not
an innocent.” In response to their puzzled frowns, he
explained, “A courier.”

After they digested that in perplexed
silence, Ethan asked, “A courier for what?”

Colton laced his fingers. “We don’t
have the answer to that yet. It’s the blank in the middle of the
crossword puzzle, missing all the key letters. I can sure as hell
tell you want the feeder words are, though.”

“Lay ’em down,” Franzen
encouraged.

“Secrets. Layers. Lies. And
danger.”

Rebel had the guts to spit
out the laugh they were all feeling. “You stirrin’ gumbo up in that
gray matter, Colton?
Maudit
. Sounds like a bad movie
ad.”

The agent shrugged. “Agreed. But the
guy had himself handcuffed to a laptop.”

Franz’s brows jumped.
“Handcuffed?”

Colton nodded. “With no key on him to
unlock it.”

“What’s on the thing?” Ethan
asked.

“That’s the billion-dollar question,”
Colton replied. “Everything on the computer has been encrypted
behind the nine cyber-circles of Hell. That’s why we reached out to
the Bureau here in LA for a helping hand.”

Rhett gave that an approving nod. “The
LA-based FBI guys are some of the best. A lot of them helped
implement the city PD’s RACR war room, which is goddamned
impressive. A bunch more have been drafted from the security teams
at high-list terrorist targets like Disneyland and the Hollywood
hub. Their people know some good shit.”

Colton turned a cryptic look at him.
“Yeah. Their team is an interesting melting pot.”

Garrett grinned. “Something tells me
this plot’s about to thicken.”

Zeke snorted. “You forgot your flappy
hat, Arthur Conan Doyle.”

“Holy shit,” his friend returned. “You
read that book I gave you!”

Tait threw an evil eye at them both.
“You two clowns wanna let the guy finish?”

“The courier also had a cell phone on
him,” Colton continued. “There were a number of California-based
numbers stored on it, though none with any names attached. One was
definitely the guy’s favorite.”

“And you tried calling it?” Rhett
questioned.

“Fifteen minutes after we confiscated
the thing.” Colton shook his head. “No answer; no voice
mail.”

“Which means his calls to the bastard
at the other end were set for prearranged times.” Rhett’s mouth
went tight. “I’d bet both nuts it was disconnected the next time
you tried calling.”

“Your gonads are safe, amigo.” Colton
tapped his folded hands atop the table. “Which brings me to the
reason why the LA bureau was a gift from the gods.”

Rhett smiled. “They knew the
number?”

“Instantly.” The agent took a deep
breath. Tait watched the guy, and the tension that still laced his
posture, with even more care. “It belonged to a target they’ve been
watching with increasing interest. His name is Ephraim Lor. But
he’s better known as Enzo Lemare.”

For a group of guys trained
to remember everything from license plate numbers to GPS
coordinates in a single mission, summoning the man’s name from
three hours ago, when Magneto ninja invoked it in Bella’s living
room, wasn’t a hard jump. Still, Tait clarified, “The producer
of
Dress Blues
?”

“And the guy who played hoochie target
practice with Bella Lanza last night?”

Kellan stole his follow-up
but Tait was grateful. It let him focus on Ethan’s reaction. Wasn’t
every day that a guy discovered his college girlfriend had grown
into a knockout TV star with a Malibu villa—and Bella had made no
secret about her desire to rekindle a connection with Ethan. Had
they done that tonight? If so, how would he feel about knowing the
man who’d been between Bella’s sheets
last
night was now connected to a
mysterious courier with the Aragon crime cartel?

“Yes and yes,” Colton answered to the
queries. “And now that we know a great deal about Lor, thanks to
the agent who’s stuck to him like moss on a cypress, we’re ready to
start connecting dots.”

Nobody said anything. Ironically,
Archer himself finally spoke up. “All right, I’ll bite. The dots to
what?”

Colton pulled out a tablet.
He woke it up then opened a slide show containing pictures of a
sophisticated man with black hair, eyes that were too pretty for a
dude, and a lean but rugged build. The first shots were clearly
from the man’s younger years, showing him in ornate European
settings. “Lor was born and raised in Rome. His father was
Palestinian, his mother one hundred percent a
Roma
girl. She was a devout Catholic
who worked as a cleaning lady at the Vatican. It seemed a love
match until daddy had to return to his motherland, where he
apparently reconnected with Allah. When he returned to Rome a year
later, he became deeply involved with the Red Brigade
paramilitarists. He was in charge of a secret plot to take down
Vatican City from the inside out.”

Zeke emitted a low whistle.
Other than that, everyone was quiet as Colton advanced to more
photographs, grainier shots depicting Lor as a boy of ten or
eleven, outfitted in soldier gear with a rifle over his shoulder.
“According to our source, the guy grew up idolizing these rebels.
They were his Avengers, his Luke Skywalkers, his Jack Reachers. But
when the Brigade dismantled in the eighties, he was lost. His
parents divorced, and though he remained with
Mamma
in Italy, he kept close contact
with his father. He ran away on the day he was supposed to go to
his First Communion, and quickly found his way to Cairo, where he
hooked up with his father. Near as our bureau contact can figure,
he was fully radicalized by the time he hit his fifteenth
birthday.”

As newer pictures lit up the tablet,
now showing Lor as a teenager in militant regalia, Rebel spoke up
again. “After all those years of goin’ to Mass in Saint Peter’s
Square?”

“Time can change a lot of things,
Master Sergeant Stafford.”

The bottom fell out of
Tait’s gut before he finished looking toward the source of the
interjection. Sweet God. That voice. Silken enough for fantasies
but rough enough to say
don’t fuck with
me
. Or other things, like
Stay where you are, Weasley. I don’t want to hurt
you.

“Holy crap.” Garrett spat it as Luna
planted herself in front of the table, flipping her long ponytail
and bracing her hands on hips that looked poured into dark red
denim pants. Hugging her torso was a short-sleeved black T-shirt, a
fitting visual lead to the tattoo of angels and demons that ran
down the length of her left arm. On her feet were black combat
boots that were caked with beach sand.

Zeke looked like he’d been
strangled in barbed wire, and sounded like it, too. “What
the
hell
is
she—”

“Calm down, Zsycho.” Franzen issued it
in a growl. “That’s an order.”

“She’s supposed to be in
prison!”

“I feel you, okay? I was there for all
the reasons why.”

“Oh yeah? You sure about
that? Maybe you need to be kidnapped, drugged, then abandoned in
Vegas again as a refresher. Or watch me almost die because of the
neurotoxin unleashed in my blood by the monster she aided and
abetted. You remember
those
reasons, Franz?”

“Yeah. And I also remember
that Rayna would be some foreign asshole’s sex toy by now if this
woman hadn’t stepped up and done the
right
thing in the end.”

Zeke slammed back against
the leather seat with a glare the temperature of an inferno. “This
is bullshit. Unbelievable, unorthodox, un
fucking
real bullshit.”

Tait leaned forward. He balled his
hands to prevent himself from doing two things. One was reaching
for Z’s strained neck. The other? Grabbing Luna, hauling her next
to him, and announcing to everyone that the next dickwad who
contributed to the Luna Lawrence slur campaign could do so with his
fist in their mouth. That helped get him gain enough control to
say, “Z, maybe it’s a good idea to hear her out. If the bureau has
trusted her—”

“Then the bureau’s a bigger bunch of
imbeciles than I thought.”

He slid his hands off the table. Atop
his thighs, they shook in rage. Z’s hands were still steady as an
idiot preacher who’d sentenced an adultress to hell. It wasn’t
fair. Yeah, Luna’s crush on Z had been a tad zealous and hadn’t
wound up how she’d wanted after their intense scene in the Bastille
dungeon all those months ago, but the woman had owned up to her
misstep. She’d come clean and been responsible for saving Rayna’s
life because of that. Had Zeke just tuned that part out from Franz?
Didn’t that matter?

A glance up at Luna said
the answer to that might be an ironic
no
. She dipped her head at Z in
contemplative scrutiny. “To be honest, Sergeant Hayes, I don’t give
a shit what you think anymore. Our heads can’t be there right now.
Our job is bigger than that. Way bigger.”

Even through the vacation scruff on
his face, Zeke’s jaw turned the texture of a granite wall. “Isn’t
your ‘job’ supposed to be washing orange jumpsuits?”

Screw it. Tait shoved his
elbows backward and prepared to lunge. “That’s
more
than enough,
asshole.”

The only thing that held him back from
Z now was Luna’s hand, cream skin accented with lavender nail
polish, pressed against his bicep. “Chill. It’s okay.” Her profile
was regal and gorgeous, even in the bar’s crappy lighting and even
as she continued to endure Zeke’s glower. “Your panties are in a
wad, Zeke. It’s understandable. Hopefully, the episode recap on
this will hold you for now.”

Zeke grunted. “This should be
entertaining.”

She pulled her hand back from Tait and
folded her arms. “The night we dropped the net on Mua, my arresting
officers were sweet about noticing what they saw as slick crisis
management skills. Guess I’m a natural-born fast thinker. Imagine
that.

“Fate helped me out a little the next
day. A girl locked up with me in the prisoner processing cell
flipped out, managed to get a gun off one of the guards, and
threatened to kill everyone in the room.” She shrugged, almost as
if confused. “I talked her off the ledge. Didn’t think it was a big
deal, when the alternative was two dozen people getting bullets
through their brains. Apparently, the bureau didn’t agree. They’d
taken a look at my case, along with a bunch of personality tests I
thought were a part of normal prisoner processing, and determined I
might be a good choice for joining the field team on tracking our
friend Lor. And since the government owns my ass for another year
and a half, I’m free labor.”

Though Z no longer looked like the
walking Grand Canyon, he cocked his brows and murmured, “A ‘good
choice,’ huh? And the thinking behind that was…what
again?”

She waved a hand at the room like a
game show model unveiling a car. “Behold Enzo Lemare’s regular late
night stomping grounds. You know any normal spook that’d fit in
here?”

Tait answered that one with dawning
comprehension. “You work here. You’re the missing
bartender.”

She tilted her head with just enough
of an impish grin to make his chest tighten—and his cock surge.
“You thirsty, soldier?”

Oh fuck, yes.

But the next moment she was
all business again, turning to the rest of the guys. “We caught a
break tonight. Lemare is attending the TV Critics Association gala.
Normally, I’d be nursing Enzo through his third gin and tonic,
listening to another rant about how the capitalist assholes of
America are ruining the universe.” She patted the third earring up
on her multi-pierced lobe. “And my homey Walter, somewhere in that
big-ass building over on Wilshire, is getting every word of it. Hi,
Wally!” She tossed a shrug at Zeke. “See? I’m free
and
fun. Maybe now the
bureau can give Colton a raise. He needs the flow for a decent
haircut.”