Surrendering To Her Sergeant (40 page)

“In a way. She’s FBI special task
force.”

He decided she didn’t need to know
that the “bee girl” was also the woman who’d collaborated with the
lunatic who’d attempted to kidnap Ava’s cousin back to Thailand.
Besides, at the moment, silence was a friend. The enormity of what
he’d just disclosed hadn’t lessened its weight on his mind. “A lot
of people have been working for months on this intel,” he asserted,
letting her see his gravely serious side again. “Lor doesn’t just
cover his tracks. He erases the damn things from the face of the
earth. In short, he’s a sneaky fuck.” His voice dipped into a growl
and he didn’t care. “Needless to say, watching him set his radar on
you has been a goddamn torture session.”

Ava’s face crumpled in adoration and
admonishment in the same sweep. She crawled closer and twined her
fingers into his. “So did the stick unlock anything on the
laptop?”

He scowled. “Only another code, which
we’ve only nicked the surface on decoding. On top of that, we
learned there was a second laptop that the Aragons sent, only we
haven’t been able to locate the damn thing. We’ve kept a constant
vigil on the fucker, and he hasn’t received any shipments except
vitamin supplements and a couple of new ties from Italy.” He
squeezed her hand harder while using the other to scrub his face in
frustration. “The asshat has to be working with someone. We just
can’t figure out who the hell it is.”

A palpable wave of energy
flowed off Ava. It was accompanied by her tighter grip in his,
along with the total drain of color from her face. “Sunshine?” He
leaned and gripped her by the elbow.
Damn
it
. He’d been a hawk about watching her for
signs of sub drop—except for the last ten minutes, in which he’d
drop-kicked a wall of stunning new information on her. “Come here.”
He added to his command by thrusting a bottle of water at her.
“Drink. Now. Let me see if the toy cabinet has any candy in it.
Your blood sugar is likely whacked, and—”

“I know.” She practically choked the
words. Her hand clutched at him, forcing him to sit back
down.

“You know what, baby?”

She lifted her face. It was twisted
with distress, as if she’d just witnessed a murder. “I—I know who
Enzo’s working with.”

Guess all the bombs of shock hadn’t
been dropped in here yet. “What?” he blurted. “How?”

Between frightened gasps and nervous
fidgets, she recounted a phone conversation of Lor’s that she’d
overheard the night of the wounded vets benefit. She told about the
man’s provoked tone at “Mateo,” likely the elder Aragon brother.
There were his references to “keeping one’s enemies close” and
accepting nothing less than a hundred percent on their
“mission.”

But most terrifying were the comments
about Cameron Stock. About the man “handling” things like “relevant
specialists” in preparation for a “triumph” that was going to
happen on Tuesday night.

Tomorrow night.

“Holy fuck,” Ethan finally muttered.
Lightbulbs began popping to life in his mind—only to illuminate new
corners of this maze that were maddeningly impenetrable, no matter
how hard he tried to see. Important corners.

Next to him, Ava shivered beneath the
blanket. “What does it all mean?”

He swallowed and grimaced at the sick
acid that churned in his gut. “It means Colton was right,” he
grated.

“About what?”

He didn’t look at her for a long
second. Damn it, he didn’t want to tell her this part, but silence
wasn’t an option anymore. He’d chosen to trust her with the truth.
In return, she’d given him the Mack Daddy of all revelations.
Excluding her in the name of protecting her wasn’t a goddamn option
anymore. “The information we did recover off the first laptop was a
map. It detailed hundreds of locations over the whole West Coast,
plus parts of Idaho, Nevada, and Arizona. Colton thought it was a
target grid.” He shook his head, inwardly flogging himself. “I told
him he was a pecan short of a nut bowl.”

“Then you need to call him,
right?”

Three minutes later, after locating
his street clothes and his cell, he punched in Dan Colton’s number
on his speed dial. Ava had dressed and stood next to him in the
dungeon’s small kitchen area. She picked at the sandwich he’d
swiped from the leftovers in the fridge and shoved in front of her
with an order to eat.

The agent didn’t pick up the
call.

Ethan growled an oath and called
Franzen. The call also dropped into voice mail.

With a silent but fervent prayer, he
dialed Colton’s desk line at the Los Angeles CIA offices. Maybe the
guy had decided to go in early. Colton was a huge fan of fresh
coffee.

Pay dirt. Sort of. After three rings,
the line was answered—by a woman. “Yes?”

Ethan quickly shoved back his
surprise. “So sorry for bothering you, ma’am.” Some habits from
cotillion classes never died. “I think I misdialed.”

“Are you looking for Dan
Colton?”

“Yeah.” He didn’t try to hide the
wonder this time. “Luna?”

“Bingo. His desk line is being
forwarded to me.” The pause from her end denoted her own mental dot
connecting. “Archer?”

“Right.” Now that they had the
meaningless formalities handled, he hardened his voice back to
on-duty mode. “Listen, I need to reach him. Do you know where he
is? Can I still get him at home?”

“Negative. Have you tried his
cell?”

“That was my first call.” He huffed.
“I’ve got fresh intel. Game-changing shit.”

“Then let’s hear it.”

He glanced at Ava, relieved
to see she didn’t suspect this agent Luna was
the
Luna who was still supposed to be
in jail back home. “We’ve been running blind about Lor’s partner
because I’m pretty damn certain it’s Cameron Stock.”

There was a tense stretch of silence
on the line. “Wh-what?” she sputtered at last. “Ethan, are you
fucking sure?”

“Affirmative.” He quickly ran down the
details Ava had just given him. When he concluded, Luna was eerily
silent. “Hey? You still there?” he finally prompted.

“Yes.” Her answer was
clipped short by a harsh hiss. “
Shit
.”

“Shit?” he echoed.
“Shit…what?”

“Where are you at?” she demanded,
tripling his confusion. “Are you at the hotel? The
Hilton?”

“No. I’m—umm—not.”

“That’s where Dan’s going now.” The
line burned with the five-alarm fire in her voice now. “Ethan, he’s
on his way to an urgent meeting that Stock called for your team. He
said it couldn’t wait, that it was a matter of life and
death.”

“Fuck!”

“I’ll meet you there. Use the hotel’s
loading dock, not the lobby entrance. We both need to keep trying
Dan’s cell.”

“Roger.”

He snapped the phone shut then looked
at Ava. Goddamn, how he wanted to draw her back next to him,
envelop her in his arms, and never let her go. Her rich curls fell
around her shoulders in a sexed-up mess. Her neck still bore the
burn of his beard. Her cheeks were rosy and her indigo eyes were
mesmerizing, even in the midst of the concern she directed at him
now. She was his oasis in this suddenly shitty jungle of an
op.

“What’s going on? What is it,
Ethan?”

“We think Stock’s made a move.” He
cupped her nape and kissed her hard. He longed to plunge on her a
second time but knew if he did, there’d be no way of dodging the
damn doomsday thoughts. No escape from thinking this could be the
last time he held her like this, gazing at the evidence of their
intimacy on her body, breathing in her incredible scent of jasmine
and orange blossoms… Instead, he pecked her forehead and muttered,
“I have to go.”

She straightened into a
posture that could pass most musters. “You mean
we
have to go.”

“No.” He threw it at her with the same
unshaking resolve. “No way. Ava—”

She grabbed his arm, digging her nails
into his skin. When he wrenched up his glare, hers was waiting,
shimmering with tears above lips that shook in her attempt at
composure. “You want me to come with you, Sergeant, or you want me
to simply follow you? Because I’m doing this.” She curled her hold
tighter. “You talked to me once about banishing the ghosts of Colin
and Flynn. Well, help me do it, right now—because if I lose you to
this mission, their ghosts will be cute Halloween props compared to
the damage yours will wreak.”

* * * * *

Fifteen minutes later, Ethan made a
sharp right to go up the steep hill to the Hilton Universal City,
peeling a strip of rubber off the tires of Ava’s Mercedes in the
doing. He followed the signs for truck deliveries to the hotel,
knowing that would take them to the loading dock. The road led past
a hallway that had walls of glass, apparently leading to the
property’s meeting rooms. At this hour of the morning, the corridor
was filled mostly with uniformed hotel service staff—which made
Colton and Franzen even more easy to spot. Even from behind, Ethan
knew the two men. Their purposeful strides, as well as the way they
elbowed each other trying to slosh one another’s coffee, were
defining flags.

“Christ.” He used a loading curb to
drive the car up onto the sidewalk and throw it into park. “There
they are.”

“Ethan!
Anda la osa
! What the hell are
you—”

“Stay here,” he ordered.
“Stay. Here!” But before he got three steps, his nerves clenched at
the
whump
of the
car’s passenger door and the patter of her feet behind him. As he
yanked open the hotel’s big glass portal, he growled, “For a woman
who doesn’t want a military hand in her life, baby, you are fast
ensuring my palm and your ass are going to have a party
soon.”

“Promises, promises.” She rushed past
him then jogged down the hall in which they’d spotted Franz and
Colton.

Ethan caught her, impaled her with a
glare then whipped her behind him as they rounded a corner and
spotted the two men again. Franzen and Colton were already halfway
across a foyer that led to a small, glass-domed atrium. He got a
glimpse of the rest of the guys through the glass, sitting and
shooting the shit, everyone thinking they’d been summoned to a
meeting with an ally. “Fuck,” he bit out. Garrett and Zeke had Sage
and Rayna there, too. The women were wearing beach outfits and
looked like they were saying good-byes to their men before a day at
the shore.

He and Ava had to
move.
Now
.

Squeezing her hand with command, he
sprinted across the foyer. They caught up to Franz and Colton as
the men pulled on the glass door to the enclosed garden area. “Hey
there, Runway,” Franz offered. After giving a pleasant wave to Ava,
he went on, “Sorry for the fuck-of-dawn team call, but Cameron has
to be at the set early due to the script changes, and—”

“Cameron’s the reason we’re here.” He
hoped his terse interruption, delivered between his heavy breaths,
conveyed the urgent subtext clear enough.

Thank God it did. Without veering his
stare at Ethan, Franz reached and grabbed Colton’s shoulder.
“What’ve you got, Archer?”

Before he could get one
syllable out, a defined
clack
filled the air. The sound of a round being loaded
into a pistol.

Ethan pivoted to focus on that gun. It
rested in Cameron Stock’s big hand. The man’s smirk was as steady
as his grip on the weapon. “What has he ‘got,’ Captain?” said the
director. “Think I can supply the answer to that one. How about an
offer to join the rest of your team in this nice, cozy
atrium?”

Ethan didn’t relent his grasp on Ava
and was damn glad Stock didn’t ask him to. After he stepped into
the atrium at the end of the man’s gun, he discerned the reason
behind Stock’s magnanimity. He was now backed by another ten
soldiers who materialized out of the heavy foliage lining three
sides of the atrium. Each one of them carried a damn fine firearm
and had a face mask parked atop their head.

One of them carried
something besides his rifle. A canister the size of a hair spray
can. Ethan caught a glimpse of the label—and the skull and
crossbones on it. Every drop of his blood went to ice. The shit
was
not
hair
product, or even tear gas. Best-case scenario, it would simply make
them all go to sleep. But he knew, along with every guy on the
team, that “best-case scenario” didn’t always hold true with
sleeping gas.

He looked into the grim faces of both
Hawkins and Hayes, who clutched their women as tightly as he
grabbed Ava. His gut wrenched especially hard for Garrett, who
spread one hand across Sage’s extremely swollen belly.

“Fuck,” Zeke spat.

“Ditto,” Garrett choked.

“Get down,” Ethan ordered Ava. After
she complied, curling herself into a fetal ball, he draped himself
across her, and smiled as he inhaled the jasmine sweetness of her
in the seconds before he fell into a black, mindless
sleep.