Wild Card (30 page)

She gripped the door handle, pulled it from him, aware that she only did it because he allowed

it, and started the car.

A second later she was pulling out of the parking lot and glancing in the rearview mirror to see

him putting his cell phone to his ear.

She wondered who her babysitter would be.

Noah watched as the little BMW pulled into the parking lot beside the two-story brick house

and Sabella went inside.

Micah Sloane and John Vincent were taking turns keeping an eye on her when she wasn't with

Noah. Noah hadn't intended that she be out of his sight for long. And he didn't like her running

around town without him. There were too many unknowns in this case and not enough

information yet.

Shaking his head, he punched in the speed dial for Micah, let him know to watch her, because

there was no doubt she would catch him tailing her, and went back to the pickup he had been

working on.

Delbert Ransome was Mike Conrad's cousin. He'd brought the truck in when the other two

garages in town couldn't fix the revisions he'd made to the motor to add to its power and to the

traction control.

Delbert liked to take the spiffy little four-by-four into the mountains and act like a damned

fool. He worked for a neighboring rancher, Gaylen Patrick, and liked to brag about how close

he was to the bank president, his cousin and one of the most powerful ranchers in town.

Biting off a curse, he threw an irritated look toward the house again and grabbed a mechanic's

creeper before lying back on it and rolling beneath the engine to see what the hell Delbert had

done to the new motor.

It was clean. Delbert like to keep the motor power-washed and looking nice and pretty. He

hadn't been beneath the motor for long when he found it. The flashlight he was using skimmed

over the odd shadow, then came back. There, lit by the powerful little light, was something he

knew Ransome couldn't have imagined he'd missed in washing the motor. A small clump of

mud, mixed with something darker, and lodged in its underside, a clump of black hair and dried

flesh.

He slid out from under the truck, checked to see if the other mechanics were watching, then

levered himself up and pulled two small vials and a penknife from the toolbox along with

several tools he wouldn't be needing.

He moved back under the vehicle, scraped the samples from the motor into the little plastic

vials, capped them, then pushed them into his jeans pocket until he could get the vials to one of

the other men to take to the bunker.

Gaylen Patrick was on their list of suspects as being involved with, or heading, the Black

Collar Militia. He had the contacts and the cash. And now, one of his main ranch hands would

be implicated in the deaths.

If the DNA matched any of the bodies that had been found, then they had a main player, and

hopefully more information.

And the danger would rise.

Noah checked the underside of the truck again, looking for more samples and finding several

lodged in various areas of the motor, tucked into places Delbert's power washer hadn't been

able to reach.

Stupid bastard.

He stored the samples and let the motor go. Checking into it more deeply for the problem with

the traction or power could lead to complications. If Delbert thought the garage had done no

more than an overall test, then when he was arrested for those samples he wouldn't pin the

blame on Sabella's head. Or Noah's.

Hiding a smug grin, he called over to the mechanic he suspected was a plant, and put him on

the truck instead.

Noah knew for a fact he'd found everything incriminating in there, and what was left, the

sallow-skinned little mechanic working on the truck wouldn't find. It was tucked in too deep.

Just enough left to incriminate Delbert when the truck was taken apart.

Noah went upstairs to the apartment, and recorded the positioning of the remaining evidence,

the areas from which he had scraped the hair and skin samples, folded the paper around the

vials, and wrapped it all together with heavy rubber bands before pushing it into the pocket of

his jeans again and returning to the garage.

It would be a few hours before Nik could safely leave, without being noticed, and head to the

bunker. Going over to Sabella's friend's car, he looked it over carefully, while keeping the

mechanic working on the truck in close view.

If he found anything, Delbert would be there fast to pick up the truck. If he didn't, the mechanic

would keep doing what he was doing now, scratching his head and checking the fuel injection.

Those samples weren't anywhere close to the fuel injection.

Noah saw Sabella pulling out of the driveway to the house, and a few seconds later Micah's car

pulled out of a nearby street and followed behind her. She was covered, but it bit his ass that he

wasn't the one covering her, protecting her.

Shaking his head, he moved back into the garage and grinned back at the mechanic watching

him from Delbert's pickup. In a gesture of friendliness, the man was shaking his head and

grinning.

"She's a fine one." The mechanic. Chuck Leon, grinned and pulled at the dirty blond goatee he

wore. "You could do worse in these parts."

"Yeah, I could," Noah grunted. "'And I could get more mechanics too if you don't want to

work."

Something flickered in the other man's brown eyes. But he nodded slowly before bending to

the motor and going back to work.

Noah wasn't there to make friends with militia members, he was there to identify them and get

their asses behind bars. But he had to admit, Leon was a hell of a mechanic when he wanted to

be.

Noah's eyes met Nik's. The Russian was bent over the hood of the third car in the bay, while

the fourth man was working the counter in the convenience section. Nik wasn't the sociable

type. The big Russian with his white-blond hair and icy blue eyes was more killer material than

checkout.

Glancing back toward the road, Noah clenched his teeth and went back to work. There were

more cars waiting in the parking lot outside. Nik seemed to be pulling in the college girls. They

liked his rough looks evidently. More of Toby's friends were dropping their cars off when they

had to, and more of their parents were coming, stopping by, checking to see how things were

going.

There was a rhythm developing, and Noah was letting it seep into him more and more. Just as

Sabella was taking a firmer hold on his very spirit than she had ever had.

Enough so that he was beginning to wonder, when it was all over and done with, how he would

manage to walk away from her again. The men of the Elite Ops were dead men except the

current members of the former SEAL Team he'd fought with. There was no rebirth. Nathan

Malone could never return. Not to Alpine, not this family, and to Sabella.

But walking away from her was going to be impossible.

"I'm convinced we need a girls' night out." Sienna stretched on the massage table as she,

Sabella, and Kira Richards lay beneath the thin sheets in the massage room while talented

hands worked at the kinks along their bodies.

"Girls' night out?" Sabella mumbled. "I remember those. They were hell. I always had a

hangover after hanging out with you, Sienna."

Her friend snickered. "I'm sick of hanging around the house at night. Rick doesn't come in till

all hours, and when he does come home, he just goes to sleep."

There was something in Sienna's voice, some note of anger that Sabella remembered hearing

several times in the past few years.

"You and Rick still fighting over his schedule?" she asked.

"Same old." Sienna waved her hand indifferently. "But now that you've rejoined the land of the living, I thought a night out would be nice."

Sabella pondered the idea for all of a second.

"My new mechanic needs supervision" she finally said mockingly. "I'm supervising."

Kira snorted. Sienna groaned. "I can't believe you're doing the nasty with your mechanic.

Nathan would have had a fit, Sabella."

There was a tense silence as Sienna's comment struck a raw nerve. Sienna had been friends

with her and Nathan, but she'd had more of a history with Nathan.

"Nathan would have wanted me to be happy.'" she finally said softly.

"With another man just like him?" Sienna asked. "Come on, you're on the rebound. The guy

has eyes that remind you of your husband's and the same attitude. Second best isn't enough for

a man like that. He's going to go ballistic on you soon."

"Then he can go ballistic the other way." Sabella shrugged as though it didn't matter.

But why wasn't she more inclined to want to talk to Sienna about this? To share the knowledge

building in her. She had always told Sienna everything. Shared everything with her friend, until

Nathan's "death."

Now. she didn't want to share this with anyone, though she admitted she had to bite her lip to

keep from grilling Kira about Noah Blake, because she knew, knew to the bottom of her soul,

that Kira knew everything Ian knew.

"I told you, get the sexual crisis out of the way," Kira mumbled from her massage table beside

Sabella's. "Let her get the kink out of her guts. Sienna. She'll feel better for it."

That edge of amusement in the other woman's voice could have meant anything.

"One of these days I'm going to make you pay for that advice," Sabella warned her. "The man is positively possessive. He could make me crazy."

Let her make of that what she would.

"Nathan was so easygoing." Sienna sighed. "He never got jealous."

Oh. that wasn't necessarily true, Sabella admitted to herself. Nathan had been jealous, he just

hid it, even from her. He'd been easygoing, filled with laughter, always polite, but there had

been a core of seething emotion inside her husband that was finally free. And one of those

emotions was jealousy. She had known even years before that Nathan, the man he had once

been, had capped that particular emotion. He had fought it, because he trusted her. Because he

had known there was no way to lock her away while he was on a mission or while he was

home. But that hadn't meant he hadn't felt it, and that she hadn't felt the echoes of it.

"No. He never got jealous," Sabella agreed.

That was something else Sienna didn't know, and Sabella admitted she had no intention of

telling her. Noah was hiding, obviously for a reason. She couldn't risk endangering whatever he

was doing. She refused to risk his life.

"Is he anything like Nathan?" Sienna lifted her head, her gaze direct as she met Sabella's.

Sabella stared back at her friend, hating the suspicion that raged inside her. She didn't trust her

best and dearest friend in the world. And that hurt.

"No," she finally said, and in some ways, it was the truth. "Nathan was easier going. Always smiling. Always loving. Noah is more intense, quieter. More dominant maybe."

"An animal." Kira pretended a shudder. "He looks like he would be wild in the sack."

"Would you shut up," Sabella said, laughing.

"Is he an animal in bed, Belle?" Sienna snickered.

"He's an animal all right. All growls and snapping and snarling around," she said. '"And what he's like in bed has nothing to do with it."

Kira and Sienna both lifted their heads and stared at her in shock.

"Since when?" Kira arched a perfect brow in false surprise.

"After marriage, definitely," Sienna grunted. "It's hump hump, sleep sleep."

Kira and Sabella jerked their gazes to Sienna. She lifted her brows, waggled them then laughed

and laid her head

back to the padded table.

But there was something about her statement, that laugh, that made Sabella wonder if there

wasn't more to her comment than she was letting on.

Conversation eased then. The massage wrapped up, and soon after, Sabella was dressed and

paying her bill. She was waxed and oiled, styled and pedicured. Her nails had been buffed and

trimmed. She felt like a woman again. She hadn't felt like a woman in so many years. It felt like

forever. She felt like a lover, almost like a wife, and excited, exhilarated by the emotions and

the sexuality that flowed freely within her again.

She felt the excitement moving with her. Noah had an edge now, a hard-core, hungry edge that

called to that part of her that she'd always kept a rein on during their previous relationship.

He talked dirty to her. He was naughty and he made her feel naughty. He made her want to

push him, challenge him. He made her want things she would have never asked him for before.

Because he had controlled their sexuality. Because she hadn't had him with her nearly enough

in those two years. The missions he had gone on had been steady; sometimes, she had done

without him for weeks at a time. When he came home, she gave her husband what her husband

needed, though she had known that as the years passed, they would grow into each other. If

they had had those years to share.

As she waved back to Sienna, who had managed to find a parking spot close to the entrance,

Sabella and Kira walked at a slow pace, silent. The tension between them wasn't hostile, but it

was there, thick and heavy.

"How's Noah doing?" Kira tucked her hands in the pockets of her shorts as they walked,

glancing over at her curiously. "His wounds are doing okay?"

"So far." She nodded, swallowing deeply. Kira knew something, as did her husband Ian, and