Watching From The Shadows: Trident Security Book 5 (11 page)

Move?
Hell, he almost dropped to the ground and kissed it. He didn’t realize how tense he’d been until he sighed in relief and every muscle in his body screeched in pain as they tried to relax. From behind him, someone grabbed his shoulder and squeezed. Turning, he found Brody standing in the doorway, grinning at him.

“Glad you made it,” the geek teased. “Because I’m still planning my revenge for the whole ‘trunk-junk’ thing, and it would really suck if you weren’t around for it.”

Marco held out his hand and when his friend shook it, he pulled him in for a man hug with lots of back slapping. “Can you wait a week before you spring it on me? Not sure my nerves could handle anything before then.”

Stepping back, the man snorted. “No problem. In the meantime, we need to head back to the war-room and check out the video feeds. Hopefully, we got our bomber on film.”

As Ian hung up his cell, the two teammates joined the others at the bottom of the porch steps while Boomer, Knight, and Mendoza crawled out from under it, all covered in dirt and cobwebs. Even though the bomb had been deactivated, they all moved a little further down the driveway. Marco endured some more back slapping, as he tried to get his heart rate back to normal and his knees to stop shaking. He raised a questioning eyebrow at Ian who nodded. “They’re all safe and secure. I told Foster to tell Harper you’re okay and her house is still in one piece.”

Well, he wasn’t exactly okay, since he was now going through a massive adrenaline crash, and the shaking in his knees started to spread throughout his body. But it was far better than being dead, so he’d take it. “Thanks.”

“I’m going to go talk to Doc Dunbar and see if she’s come across any wife-beaters through Friends of Patty, who know a thing or two about explosives. I’ll try to get some names from her if it doesn’t violate the organization’s rules.”

Devon exited through the front door, side-stepping the planks that the explosives were still attached to, and declared, “House is clear, inside and out.”

Brushing himself off, Boomer added, “I’ll stay and help dispose of this thing. Once we pull it out, we’ll take a better look at it and see if we can find any signatures, but I’m not counting on it. It was pretty crudely made. A sixth grader could have made it as a science project.”

Most experienced bombers styled their explosives a certain way, creating their own ‘signature’ into the design. However, with bomb making ‘how-to’ sites all over the internet, wannabe bombers could easily transition to actual bombers. But they weren’t usually as intelligent as the experts, so signatures were sometimes absent nowadays.

Marco lifted the bottom of his sweat-soaked shirt and wiped his face with it. Brody smacked his upper arm and pointed to his truck in the street. “Come on. I’ll give you a lift to your place so you can shower and change, then we’ll head to the compound.”

“No, let’s go straight there. I’ve got clothes in my go-bag in my truck. I’ll take a shower in one of the bunkrooms.” He had to reassure himself that Harper and Mara were okay. After thanking his team and the others one more time, he followed his best friend down the driveway. A butterfly came out of nowhere and fluttered around his head before taking off again. Nina had mentioned once that if a butterfly did that, it was a loved one in the afterlife letting you know that everything was going to be all right.
Hmmpf
. Their roles were now reversed and she was watching over him. Rubbing the remembrance tattoo on his left upper arm, he glanced skyward and said a silent prayer of thanks.

C
HAPTER 9

Pacing back and forth in the compound’s parking lot, Harper tried to hold it together. He was safe. Ian had called and said Marco was alive and out of danger, but she wouldn’t believe it until she saw him again.

Nearby, Kristen and Ian’s fiancée, Angie, kept a close eye on her from the grassy ‘backyard’ which had been created between the last two warehouses in the complex. The building to her right, she was told, housed the gym, training rooms, indoor gun range, and storage. The one to her left had been transformed into four huge apartments. Angie and Ian had the bottom one on this end, with Kristen and Devon’s unit above them. The units on the other end mirrored those, and Ian’s goddaughter, Jenn, had the bottom, while the youngest Sawyer brother, Nick, had the top one, with his partner, Jake. She was happy for the two men. Though she’d only met Nick once, she thought he was the perfect mate for Jake. While Marco’s teammate was a Dom, she’d always gotten the feeling he needed someone as Alpha as himself outside of the bedroom.

Angie had come out of her apartment and introduced herself when Harper had arrived under guard, a short time after her mother and Mara. She had gotten the older woman and baby settled in her spare bedroom, but Harper declined the invite to rest inside. Upon Kristen’s arrival, the two women did their best to ease Harper’s growing anxiety. Her last panic attack had been shortly before Nina’s death and thankfully hadn’t been in her dying friend’s presence. She’d had them a lot in her teens, but had never been able to pinpoint the reasons for them. They usually popped up when she was stressed, but not always. With the help of a counselor in college, she’d been able to ward them off by concentrating on something or someone she loved. Right now, she kept images of Mara laughing and playing in her mind, and hopefully, it would be enough for her not to break down and start to hyperventilate.

The compound had been sealed after her arrival, only letting in Kristen and several contract agents from Blackhawk Security. Armed men now had the gates and surrounding fence line covered. Someone was inside the offices monitoring the many cameras, and even Beau was on alert, his ears and nose twitching in search of danger to his humans.

“Miss Harper? Can I get you anything?”

She glanced up at the mountainous man, who was surprisingly quiet for someone six feet and eight inches tall. She’d never heard him approach. “Thanks, Tiny, but I’m okay for now. I just need to see that Marco is okay for myself.”

Travis ‘Tiny’ Daultry had, at one time, been a professional football player. But after an injury ended his career, he became a bodyguard. When he wasn’t doing that for Trident, he was the head of security at The Covenant. Harper had never been inside the BDSM club at the other end of the compound, but she had heard it was the nicest kink club in the southeast. She’d met Tiny several times during Nina’s battle with cancer, and both women had agreed he was one big teddy bear.

The sound of a vehicle approaching had them turning in the direction of the front gate, but her hopes of seeing Marco vanished with Tiny’s declaration. “It’s Miss Jenn.”

Harper watched as the red Volkswagen Jetta was allowed entry through the far gate, then made its way past the interior one and parked a few feet away from her. Jenn barely shut off the engine before jumping out and throwing her arms around Harper. If someone who didn’t know them was observing, they’d be surprised to hear the two women hadn’t seen each other in over a year, the way Jenn squeezed her tight. “Oh my God! Are you okay? Uncle Ian called and told me to come straight here after my class. That something happened at your place and he’d explain when I got here.”

She returned the younger woman’s hug, then took a step back as Kristen and Angie joined them. “I’m fine. And according to Ian, everyone else is okay, too. They should be here soon. I’m sorry if we scared you.”

“
Pfft
,” Jenn scoffed. “You kind of get used to it around here after a while.” They all chuckled because it did seem that trouble followed the men of Trident, along with their women. “Where’s Kat?”

Harper hadn’t met Boomer’s girlfriend yet, but Marco had filled her in on the new relationships at Trident which had started in her absence. She was glad the men were settling down because everyone deserved their own happily-ever-after. Maybe she would find hers someday soon—with or without Marco.

“She’s still at work,” Angie informed her. “She can’t be much safer than at the state police headquarters, training their new K9’s, but we called and gave her a head’s up after Ian gave the all clear. We didn’t want her worrying about the bomb since Boomer was the one taking it apart.”

“Bomb?” The word came out on a screech filled with disbelief.

“
Shhh
.” Angie grimaced as she put her arm around the younger woman. “Sorry. I forgot they didn’t tell you yet. There was a bomb at Harper’s and Marco stepped on it, but it didn’t go off. Boomer was able to deactivate it.”

Her eyes wide, Jenn gaped at them. “Holy shit! A freaking bomb! Where do these weirdos come from? I swear, Kristen, sometimes it feels like I’m living in your book series.
Jeez
.”

The author laughed. “Where do you think I got the story line for
Velvet Vixen
? My life has been a romance/suspense story ever since I met Devon.”

After a few minutes of catching up with Harper, Jenn followed Angie to her apartment to check on Karen and Mara. Glancing around to be sure everyone else was out of ear-shot, Harper leaned closer to Kristen and whispered, “If you don’t want anyone to know you’re pregnant yet, you might want to stop touching your abdomen. I know it’s hard to do, though.”

Kristen gasped as she yanked her hands away from her body, her eyes darting around to see if anyone else had noticed. “Oh shit! Is it that obvious?”

Despite her worry, she couldn’t help but giggle. “Only to someone who’s been there before. Congratulations.”

The relief on the other woman’s face was palpable. “Thanks. I actually just found out this morning and haven’t even told Devon yet.”

“Then your secret is safe with me. I won’t tell a soul. But after you tell him, feel free to come over to my place and take all the
What To Expect When You’re Expecting
books from my shelves. I have over a dozen of them.”

“Thanks, I will.” Kristen paused. “Actually, I do have something I need to talk to you about later after all the excitement dies down. I have a legal problem. My bastard ex-husband is suing me for half my earnings as an author. This is the same man who laughed, calling it my ‘little hobby’, and was surprised anyone bought my books.”

It was a tale Harper had heard several times in her practice, but each one usually had its own twist. “I take it he’s now claiming that he’s entitled since your first books were published while you were still married to him.”

The other woman rolled her eyes. “Something like that. I really didn’t have a chance to read the whole subpoena and don’t really understand all the legal mumbo-jumbo. I was served two minutes before I was scheduled at a book signing and then I came home to this, so…”

Feeling guilty about her problems being forced on everyone else, Harper needed to apologize. “I’m sorry. This is all my fault.”

“No, it’s not.” Kristen actually shook a finger at her like she was scolding a child. “And don’t let Marco hear you say that. Doms get bossy when women try to put the blame on themselves where it doesn’t belong. Trust me. I know from experience, and my ass has paid the price.”

Harper was about to say something in response, but the sounds of several vehicles approaching had them looking up in anticipation. She recognized they belonged to Ian and Brody.
Thank God
. The vehicles parked next to the Trident office building, and when Marco emerged from the Ford F-150, she couldn’t stop herself from running into his arms and hugging him. “Thank God, you’re okay! Don’t ever do that to me again!”

He held her tight and laughed quietly. “It was never my intention to do it the first time, baby, but I’ll try not to scare you in the future.”

Despite his shirt being soaked with sweat, she couldn’t let go of him. She had been terrified from the moment he’d told her he had stepped on a land-mine. As much as she’d hated to leave him, she knew her being there would be a distraction to him and everyone else, so she’d obeyed his orders without hesitation. It had almost killed her to do so.

His hands began to slide up and down her back in comfort, but her body decided to react differently. Now that the terror was gone, the need for comfort was being pushed aside by the need for something else. A stirring began low in her abdomen and her nipples responded to the feeling of being crushed against his muscular chest. Worried he would notice, she tried to step back, but he refused to let her go.

“Please, not yet.” His voice was hoarse and filled with emotion. “I need to feel your heart beat with mine, just for a few minutes. I’ve never been so scared in my life…and it wasn’t for me, but for you.”

“And I was scared for you.” Swallowing hard, Harper relaxed against him and buried her face in his neck. “Hold me as long as you want.” She wanted him to hold her forever, but since that was improbable, she’d take the next few minutes and treasure them.

* * *

Marco toweled off from his shower in one of the spare bunk rooms above the offices, and pulled on a pair of cargo pants, commando style. Apparently, clean underwear was something he’d forgotten to throw into his go-bag, but it wasn’t a big deal. He’d gone without it during many missions since the start of his military career and gotten used to it quickly. Besides, he no longer needed to worry about the hard-on he’d been sporting earlier. He’d jacked off in the shower, since his body had still been reacting to a combination of adrenaline and Harper’s body flush against his. He wasn’t sure how long they stood there holding each other, but when they finally separated, everyone else had disappeared into the buildings or backyard. The armed guards had been walking the compound’s perimeter and were focused on keeping them all safe.

For now, the women were keeping Harper and her mother company in Angie’s apartment while the baby slept, so the men could plan their next steps. Pulling on a clean T-shirt, he headed downstairs to the conference room, where most of his and the Omega team had gathered, along with Tiny. The head of security would need to be aware of what was happening, just in case it affected the club. Boomer and Knight were still at Harper’s house with the police and would stay there until relief showed up. In addition to the security measures which had already been put in place, there would now be two armed guards watching the house at all times. Taking an empty seat, Marco grabbed one of the bottled waters Colleen had placed in the middle of the long table, and guzzled half of it.