Surrendering To Her Sergeant (48 page)

Priceless seconds. God, it wasn’t
enough. Not the hours he needed to look at Ava and tell her
everything she’d come to mean to him, all the ways she now filled
his life, his heart. Not even enough to utter the three words that
now resonated in his soul for her. All he had time to do was try
and save her from the venom and fire they were about to unleash on
this crackpot crew.

“Listen to me.” He
whispered it without moving his lips. “When we move, you
move.
Far
away.
Do
not
disobey
me.”

Franzen nodded another time. Then
another.

Before he got his head down
the third time, Nichols bellowed again in fury. “This is
sick!
You’re
sick,
Lor! I’ll order my soldiers to kill me first. I won’t participate
in this!”

Lor rocked back on his
heels and rolled his eyes. “I really loathe the word
won’t
.”

“Really? And I really loathe guys who
drink like fish at my bar, gawk at my tits for hours, then only tip
me a buck.”

The terse silence that followed was
broken by two words. They came from Tait and they were thick with
fear. “Fuck. No.”

Lor’s face contorted with confusion.
He almost laughed as he took a few steps toward the darkness
between the set flats. “Laudia?”

He reappeared a second later, blown
back by six feet with a rifle hole in his chest.

The woman who followed him reloaded
the weapon in don’t-fuck-with-me determination. “The name’s Luna,
you crazy anus, and that’ll teach you to mess with the FBI.” She
rotated her bright purple gaze around to the rest of Lor’s guys,
including Stock. “Anyone else want a sample of my specialty
cocktail for the day?”

In seconds, the assholes scattered.
Franzen motioned everyone on the team to stay put just as the
foam-covered walls let in a faint peal of sirens from outside.
“They’re not going to get far. LAPD’s already on alert.”

Even if that wasn’t the case, chasing
minions wasn’t their immediate priority. Getting the president out
of here and averting nuclear disaster across six states? That was
the clear top on everyone’s to-do List right now.

“Bogeys have officially bugged,”
Franzen announced.

Colton threw a fast grin at Luna.
“Excellent work, Agent Lawrence.”

“Right,” Tait added with a snort,
“Though it earned your ass a few kisses from my palm once we’re out
of here.”

Franzen’s forehead tightened. He
looked over to the launch console, where Nichols was now surrounded
by three of his own men. “Hey, guys,” he called to the agents,
“Coast is clear. We’re good to go.”

The riposte to that came from Nichols
himself. “No, we’re not.”

The president’s men stepped back to
reveal Nichols hadn’t moved from his knees. More troubling was the
position of his hand, still flattened to the electronic recognition
pad—because it had been tightly cuffed into place there.

“Fuck.” Ethan led the stampede over to
the console. Rhett was his wingman, though Ava formed a reassuring
presence on his other side.

“Oh, my God,” she blurted. “There’s
four minutes left.” Like he needed a reminder.

“What the hell?” Rebel
queried.

“Everyone hold your panties,” Franzen
ordered. “It’s an altered smart pad, right? We saw Stock click it
in there, so just pull it back out.”

“No!”

The protest came in tandem from Rhett
and one of the Secret Service guys.

“It was our first thought, too,” the
agent explained, “but the second we started to budge the brick,
their failsafe lit up the whole damn screen.”

“Yeah,” Rhett muttered. “Why the fuck
do bad guys have to be so brilliant, too?”

Ethan moved another step closer. His
chance to observe Craig Nichols in a huge variety of situations
today, including the rare pistol-jammed-at-the-skull conundrum, had
knocked his protectiveness about the guy into something more than
just duty. Now, Rhett’s stress officially prodded his. “What the
hell kind of failsafe?”

Rhett grimaced. “If the unit gets
pulled, it’ll blow up inside ninety seconds.”

“Sons of smack house bitches.”
Franzen’s lips took on a malicious curl. Several of the guys chimed
in with their creative titles on the situation.

“Three minutes,” Ava said on a
sob.

Ethan wasn’t surprised when the most
composed voice in the crowd came from the kneeling man in front of
them. “Well, we have a couple of options.” Nichols raised his
steady gray gaze. “I stay locked to this thing, which launches the
missiles and kills millions across six states.”

Colton crouched in front of the
president. “With all due respect, sir, removing the football isn’t
an option, either. If you’re blown up at the hands of maniacal
terrorists, Lor still gets his way. Fear and insecurity will
balloon into distrust and paranoia. The country will still implode
from the inside out.”

Nichols scowled but nodded. “I
reluctantly agree.” He dragged in a long breath to precede his next
assertion. “So we can do this another way.”

Colton tilted his head.
“Sir?”

Nichols firmed his jaw. As soon as he
did, the answer nearly wrote itself for Ethan across the rest of
the man’s face. The stony set of his mouth, the harsh hollows of
his cheeks, the resigned terror in his eyes…

“Awwww, shit.” Ethan muttered. When
Nichols looked up to him, the color draining from his face in
confirmation, the oath spilled out again.

Franzen sprang toward Ava. “Bolt
cutters. Sheez, why didn’t I think—” He clutched Ava by the
shoulders. “They have bolt cutters for all kinds of stuff here,
right hon? Where can we find them?”

“Engineering,” she answered. “They’re
next to the Wardrobe department.”

Franzen looked to Rebel. “Moonstormer,
you’re our fastest runner. Go now!”

“Strike that,” Nichols countermanded.
“There’s not enough time.”

Ethan pivoted toward his captain,
starting to unbutton his jacket with its fresh sergeant stripe now
added. His every movement was defined by the eerie calm he now
felt. The surety of knowing his choice was completely right, and
that his commander-in-chief had his six on it. “He’s shooting true
on this one, Franz.” He looked from his leader to his battalion
mates. “Somebody’s packing a Bowie knife, right?”

As if choreographed, they all dropped
their jaws and narrowed their eyes. “Runway, what the fuck are
you—”

“He’s going to take the goddamn hand.”
Nichols channeled the God boom better than Colton. “Now one of you
highly trained warriors has to grow a pair fast and give him the
damn knife. We have a minute and a half!”

Kellan, who’d come downstairs after
Luna took out Lor, stepped forward and unsheathed his knife. He
quietly locked his stare to Ethan’s as he pushed the weapon into
his grip. “Don’t hesitate once you know it’s right. And follow
through to the end.”

Ethan gave him a brief nod. As he did,
Ava and Luna hurried forward. “We’re going to be your OR nurses.”
Ava didn’t phrase it as a question. “Luna’s the best thing we have
for medical staff right now because she studied anatomy in her art
classes.”

He arched a questioning brow at her.
“And you…?”

“Refuse to let you go through this
alone.”

He let the brow fall. Stared at her
with intensity. “In my mind, I’m ramming my tongue down your throat
right now.”

Ava’s gaze, strong and bold and
beautiful as the woman behind it, glistened for just a moment. “I
love you, too.”

It was worse than she’d thought it
would be. Much worse.

By the time the three of them rushed
over to President Nichols, only forty-five seconds remained on the
launch clock. It was barely enough time for Ethan to mumble an
apology, try to angle the man’s hand for a clean cut, then let out
a battle cry to power him through the massive slice.

Until the day Ava died, she’d never
forget the sound of Craig Nichols’ agonized scream.

Until hell froze over, she wouldn’t
feel this sick again. Probably not even then.

“Ava.
Ava
!”

Luna’s command drilled into her brain,
jarring her back. She gawked at the woman’s blood-spattered face.
How the hell did Luna keep her shit together like this? And was she
willing to share the training video?

“Wh-what’s up?” she
managed.

Luna shoved something into
her hands. It was warm, wet, and wrapped in a big cloth. “Take this
over there and give it to Franzen. Walk
carefully
. The cops are here and he
had them call for an ambulance. Tell him that Ethan’s working on
stabilizing the president as best as he can and—”

“Ay dios
mio
!”

Luna had given her the president’s
hand. It looked powerful, stately. A circle of patterned gold was
still lodged on the ring finger.

She made sure to follow the woman’s
order to the letter. “Walk carefully,” she muttered. “Walk
carefully. Walk carefully.”

Seeing Franzen stomp back in was
almost as good as the moment Luna had cleared the bees from her
side. “Ava,” he boomed, “the paramedics and ambulance are
here.”

“As Ethan would say,” she said on a
dark laugh, “thank fuck.”

After gratefully letting the
paramedics take possession of President Nichols’s hand, she
followed Franzen back toward the set. Along the way, they ran into
Tait and Ethan. She rushed to her sergeant, needing to feel him
against her like the magnet who matched her poles. His arms
engulfed her, one hand clamped to the back of her head, his face
pressed into her neck. “Is the president going to be
okay?”

“I’d lay a certain bet on it.” His
baritone, filled with the same steady strength as his massive arms,
made her feel even more locked into him. More completed by
him.

She tugged away so she could take in
his incredible cobalt eyes. They were surrounded by blood smears,
sweat streaks, and grooves of exhaustion, but they’d never been
more stunning to her. Or more brilliant with the soul she wanted to
take care of for the rest of their lives.

“Ethan,” she whispered, “I love you so
much.”

He kissed her tenderly. “As I’ve loved
you since the second I laid eyes on you.”

“Egghhh.” Tait’s open
sarcasm was delivered with a smirk. “You two want to wait
until
everyone
here can eat at that table?” He peered around. “Where the
hell
is
Luna,
anyhow?”

As if cued to be the answer to his
question, all hell broke loose.

Ava joined her gasp to
Ethan’s bite on the F
-
word as the paramedics bolted from the set as fast as they’d
stormed toward it. This time they had the president on a rolling
stretcher—and raw panic in their eyes.

“Everybody clear out!” they yelled.
“Clear out; clear out!”

“What the hell?” Tait snapped before
jogging toward the set. Though the paramedics’ reaction made her
blood pulse with fear, Ava let Ethan tug her along as he followed
his friend.

They skidded to a stop when
they saw Luna again. Though her back was to them, everything seemed
completely normal.
She
seemed completely normal. But that was the problem. Luna and
“normal” were a kinkster and a minister. A match meant for
fiasco.

Tait had obviously gotten that memo,
too. He walked toward her, reaching for her. “Luna? Hey, Flower?
What’s going—”

She cut him off by finally turning
around.

With the missile launch unit in her
hand.

“I had to.” Her voice shook as she
stared at Tait, who’d instinctively backed up at seeing what was
now a live bomb in her grip. “I’m sorry, Weasley. I had
to.”