Hidden Agendas (21 page)

"I'm sure you are, sweet." He chuckled. "I have no doubt. Now shower. I'll be back here in twenty minutes."

"Make it forty."

"Try thirty. I'm hungry. Someone used me hard last night and I need to restore my energy."

"Yeah, someone might end up using you hard again tonight," she suggested, her heart racing at the look of remembered pleasure in his expression.

He winked wickedly, picked up his boots and then left her bedroom. Before closing the door he turned the lock on the doorknob then pulled it firmly behind him.

She got the idea. Don't open it for anyone but him.

A smile tugged at her lips as she went into the bathroom and adjusted the water for her shower. They would have to talk soon, she knew that. There were secrets Kell was holding back, she could see them in his eyes sometimes, she heard them in his voice. Whatever those secrets were, they were filled with pain.

As she stepped into the shower she thought again how little she knew about him. She didn't know his past, barely knew his present, but he was becoming more important to her than people she had known her entire life.

She was falling in love with him. Hell, she was in love with him, and that part was scary. He owned a part of her, she admitted. A part of her she would never reclaim if he walked away from her.

Breathing in deeply, she promised herself she would savor every moment she had with him. She didn't want to miss this for the world. This euphoria. The sense of someone knowing her and her body as well, if not better than, she did. The feeling that for the first time in her life, someone understood. Not so much understood her, but understood the need to live.

She needed to live. And she wanted to do it in Kell's arms. But if he left her, if he walked away from her when this was over, then he had still given her a gift she knew no one else had given her. He had looked beyond the daddy's girl, and seen the woman beneath.

An hour later, after breakfast with Emily, before turning her over to her father's and the admiral's care, Kell entered the small room set aside as a meeting place inside the mansion for Reno and his team.

"Hey, lover boy. Reno tells me there's wedding invitations hitting the mail soon." Clint McIntyre, Reno's second in command, snickered as Kell walked in and closed the door behind him.

"In a few weeks or so. I'd like to get Fuentes out of the picture first," Kell answered.

It was worth it to see their expressions. Reno, Clint, and Macey stared back at him in shock. Ian, as always, was harder to read, but he looked more thoughtful than surprised.

"Hell, another good SEAL bites the dust." Macey sighed. "What's with you yahoos? Are you contagious or something?" He looked from Reno to Clint to Kell.

"Could be, Macey. Better not get too close or you'll be looking for your significant other next," Ian's dark, rough voice commented broodingly.

Macey snorted before turning back to the screen of his laptop. "Enough of that crap. Gather round, boys.

As of oh four hundred, Judas made contact again. For one of Diego's bastard skanks, he sure gets around on the Internet."

"Not a nice way to talk about our contact, Macey," Ian pointed out with an edge of amusement.

"Son of a bitch," Macey growled. "I'd like to cut his balls off for not being a little more forthcoming."

Kell moved around the table, staring over Macey's shoulder at the e-mail that had come to the secured account Macey used.

Assassin and/or abductor moving in. Location, D.C. Terms are as follows. Senator and/or
daughter. Contact sent to senator to resign has been ignored. Fuentes contact requires action.

Beware. Once in D.C., contact will be informing tool of foolproof method of capturing or killing
daughter. Kidnapping is highest possibility at this point to use as leverage. Watch your six while
hobnobbing because others are watching it as well.

Kell narrowed his eyes. There was something about that e-mail.

"Sound familiar?" Macey asked them all, staring up at them.

"Watch your six," Kell murmured. "Military term. Not unusual."

"There's something too familiar about this." Macey shook his head as he went back to the screen. "I've been trying to track this SOB for years now. It's damned strange. I can't get a handle on him no matter how hard I try."

"His information has always been factual," Ian pointed out.

"Too damned factual. He knows too fucking much," Macey growled. "The fact that he found this e-mail address to contact me at is the most worrisome."

The e-mail address had been set up years before as an SOS account. They were a team, no matter what.

If one of them was in trouble, then the others would come running.

"You'll find him, Macey. Give it time," Ian said with no small amount of amusement. "My question is why the contact or spy changed his demand that Fuentes murder the girl to kidnapping her instead."

"Kidnapping will give him leverage, just as the e-mail suggests. If he kills her, he has no leverage. Nothing to bargain with."

"Why does he want to bargain?" Kell asked then. "The original idea was to first make the senator pay for his interference by killing his daughter, then to kill Stanton. Why change in midstream?"

"Good ole Diego, I'd guess," Macey bit out sarcastically. "That bastard delights in kidnapping, torture, and breaking men's souls. Not to mention women's. He wants to play."

"Another of his games." Kell's jaw tightened in anger.

"Our main objective is keeping the senator and his daughter alive," Reno said then. "Secondary objectives are catching Diego and/or his spy. I want that fucking spy. Bad. The son of a bitch has been betraying agents right and left in the past year. We lost two Homeland Security agents in California at the first of the year. One in D.C. and three more across the nation. Added to that are four agents outside the U.S."

"He's obviously someone in a position of trust within the government," Clint stated. "Someone with access to our Defense Department and missions around the globe. He could be an elected official, or a private contractor."

"He could be anyone," Kell snarled.

"But he'll be someone at this party tonight." Macey grinned. "This line, 'watch your six while hobnobbing because others are watching it as well.' We're partying tonight, my friends. Right?"

Kell stared at the electronic wizard with narrowed eyes. Macey should have been a linebacker for the Dallas Cowboys. He was tall, wide, and mean. Instead, his long, broad fingers moved over the keyboard of the laptop with the grace and ease of much smaller fingers.

"Here's our guest list." He pulled up the file the senator had supplied days before. "I have these names running through several programs at the moment. It will take time, but there's a chance we could get a hit and a direction to go in."

"Before the party?" Kell asked.

Macey grimaced. "Not hardly."

Kell turned to Reno. "Give me Ian to back me up with Emily."

Reno nodded slowly, though his gaze was piercing.

"Kell, is this getting too personal? Don't risk her life because you have too much on the line here."

Kell stared back at Reno coldly, feeling the hard edge of determination rising inside him.

"She's mine," he stated clearly. "Would anyone else protect Raven for you? Or Morganna for Clint?"

Raven, his wife, was also Clint's sister. A black-haired little minx who drove her husband crazy more often than not. But she still wasn't the handful of dynamite that Reno's sister and Clint's fiancée, Morganna, had turned out to be.

Both men grimaced at the question.

"Ian, keep an eye on his ass." Reno sighed.

"I have it, Commander." Ian leaned back against the wall, watching them all intently, his brown eyes somber, his brow lowered broodingly.

"The senator is arriving at the Dunmores' later than his daughter," Reno announced then. "He has a meeting on Capitol Hill before he can leave. That means you'll be shy of backup other than the two Secret Service agents who will be assigned outside the mansion grounds. I'll contact you as we head toward the Dunmore mansion. You're still undercover. We've not changed the mission parameters on this. Not that I think you'll have a problem with that."

Kell let a grin tug at his lips as the others snickered. As his gaze met Ian's, though, he noticed the somber acknowledgment in the other man's gaze. There were few men who knew the full details of his past. Ian was one of those men.

The other man nodded slowly. A promise. A vow to help Kell protect what meant the most to him.

"The limo is taking Emily, Kell, and Ian to the party. We'll be in the senator's secured SUV when we arrive. Let's keep this short and tight, men, and see if we can ID our spy and make this mission short, sweet, and without complications." Reno's gaze swept the room. "Any questions?"

They shook their heads in reply.

"Good. We'll be heading out with the senator within the hour. I believe he currently has his daughter corralled in the office discussing her recent strip-joint venture and the chances of it happening again. Are we taking bets on who wins this one?"

Clint, Reno, Macey, and Ian put their money on the senator, A former SEAL. A. man who had kept his daughter in line, one way or the other, for twenty-five years.

When all eyes turned to Kell he pulled his wallet from his jeans pocket, extracted the required twenty and handed it over to Macey. "My money's on the lady," he drawled. "You don't tame a vixen, you just travel in her wake."

Emily stared around her father’s office. The pictures of her mother that sat in a place of honor on the mantel. The painting he had commissioned, just after Emily's birth, of her and her mother hung across from his desk.

She looked like her mother, Emily thought. The same vibrant auburn hair, blue eyes, and inquisitive features. She had never paid much attention to it over the years. Her own looks rarely concerned her much. But as she stared at the portrait and waited for her father, she saw it now.

Her mother had been more delicate. Fine boned, slender, and graceful. Her hair was longer, hanging nearly to her waist, where Emily kept hers cut to her shoulders.

Her mother had loved parties. Emily preferred adventure. She wanted to go mountain climbing, skydiving, and playing war games in the mountains.

Her mother had lived for fashion. And Emily preferred jeans to silk, but she understood the need for the silk.

She hadn't known her mother long enough, she thought. She hadn't had a chance to hear her laughter often enough; she could barely remember the songs her father said her mother sang to her each night before bedtime.

"She loved you with all her heart," her father said behind her as he came into the office. "She used to say you had the best parts of both of us. I've always agreed with her."

"Weakness?" she asked as she turned to face him. "I hadn't heard either of you were very weak, Dad."

"Is that how you see it? The need to be careful? My need to protect you? That you're weak to allow me to protect you?"

"To foist your candidates for a son-in-law on me? To tie me up with so many strings of guilt and love that half the time I didn't know what living was?" she countered.

He grimaced at her questions.

"I made you a list of the cost of groceries, utilities, and boarding for your little boys during the past seven years." She nodded to the paper he held in his hand. "I realize it's pretty extensive and may require a few weeks to sort through, but the final amount is really rather low for the trouble I was forced to put up with.

I'd appreciate being reimbursed."

"Take it out of the interest that's acquired on the account your mother and I set up for you," he suggested.

"Sorry, Dad, that money's being saved for a reason. It's the nest egg I'm saving for any children I might one day have myself. Just cut me a check when you have time and send it to me."

His eyes glittered with irritation then. "Why now? You've never said anything before."

"Because you always deposited far more than I required. I don't want more than you owe me, Dad.

That's what you've never understood. I want your respect. Your trust. Not your charity."

"So you thought you'd earn my trust by traipsing through strip joints, bars, and dark alleys after that nonsensical research you harp about? I have yet to see a book, Emily Paige. All I do is hear about it."

She breathed in carefully. She wasn't going to argue with him. "Dad, cut the crap, and while you're at it, just go ahead and cut my check so I can deposit it when I return home."

A frown furrowed his wide forehead. "What crap?"

"The crap where you deliberately start a fight, I get upset and storm out of the office. You know, the crap where you ensure you win whatever fight we're engaged in." She crossed her arms over her breasts and stared back at him in determination. "It's not happening this time."

"Because you're sleeping with Kreiger? Tell me, are you at least going to marry him?" he snarled.

Her brow lifted. "Marriage hasn't been discussed. Why are you so upset? Isn't that the reason you keep sending your top picks to play bodyguard? Hoping one of them will end up in my bed?"

"With a wedding ring would have been nice," he growled. "I should have known when he demanded to be added to your rescue team what the hell was going on. At least tell me he's wearing a condom? The last thing I need is to see you knocked up and dead like the last girl he fell in love with."

Knocked up and dead!

Emily stared back at her father for long, frozen moments, feeling something chill in her soul.

"What are you talking about?"

"He didn't tell you about his first wife and child?" he asked her then, something undefined flashing in his eyes, something almost akin to regret.

"I never knew—" she whispered past numb lips.

"Then ask him about it," he snapped. "And make sure you know what you're doing—"

"Don't you dare lecture me about him." Emily felt her hand raise, her finger pointing back at her father imperiously, as rage began to seethe inside her. "You've been sending men to my bed for years. I finally decided to accept one of them, and you have to try to destroy it?"