Savage Secrets (Titan #6) (2 page)

***

Ay Dios mio
. Caterina Cruz pulled her dark hair into a ponytail. What had she been doing? Instinct told her to help the guy out, and if there was one thing she trusted, it was her gut. But still. Not her smartest move. His eyebrows twitched and his brow furrowed as he half led, half pointed the staggered path to his hotel room. He wasn’t interested in her. Not curious as to why she’d pulled him off the street and helped him into his hotel room. Almost like she wasn’t there.

He wasn’t drunk, and didn’t seem dangerous
to her
, despite his hardened body. His cut muscles were those of a hard soldier. Even in his vulnerable state, he wasn’t one who would be easily taken down. She analyzed people for a living, studied them and made fast decisions. This man wore a knife holstered to his hip. A dark shirt stretched over his mountain of a chest. Sinewy, tanned flesh flexed in his forearms. She knew the type well. He was her people. A trained killer. An operative. Or maybe even a for-hire. For whom? Who knew? Either way, she didn’t question her safety with him.

She checked his pulse then checked his breathing. Elevated, but not enough to concern her. A quick check of his pockets revealed nothing to identify him. An encrypted, burner phone confirmed her suspicions. He was someone who lived off the grid.

Just like me… So why am I still here
?

The man didn’t matter. It was time to go, but the nagging feeling that everything happened for a reason made her look back over her shoulder on the way out. Purely professional. Nothing to do with the honey brown hair. The glance was to reassure her that she wasn’t leaving a man to overdose in a hotel room.
Yeah right
.

Ignoring her training to be a ghost, she changed directions, walked into the bathroom, rubbed her thumb and forefinger together, then wrote an invisible note on the mirror.

She could call it a compulsion—a crazy one—but the need to stay with him weighted her mind and feet. She had too many questions, but her job called, so she looked at the mirror, making sure nothing was visible to the naked eye, then turned and left.

***

Light flooded the hotel room, and Rocco’s stomach twisted. He knew he was running late before he even opened his eyes. He’d ended up in his room? Yeah, not sure how that happened. Last night’s episode was the same as always but hadn’t come with his usual post-hallucination frustration. He’d lost control, but the swirling in his gut smacked more of embarrassment than annoyance, and the vulnerability stung.

A knock rapped on his door. He rolled to his side. Squinting, he let his eyes adjust and rubbed a hand over the stubble on his jaw. “Go away.”

“No can do, buttercup. Get your princess fanny up,” Winters called from the other side of the door.

Rocco heard Cash laugh. “Roc’s still sleeping?”

“First he goes home early. Next he wakes up late.” Winters wasn’t talking to him anymore. Good, they could go somewhere else and talk about him. No skin off his back.

“Slacker.”
Bam, bam
. “I got your crack, Roc. Coffee.”

Magic word. Coffee would be good. He’d get up for that. “Leave it at the door, Cash. Meet you all in ten.”

Rocco pushed up and looked down. Passed out on top of the covers. Still wearing his boots. What was this, the aftermath of a frat party?

“You’re alive. That’s good enough.” Winters smacked the door. “See ya.”

Yeah, see ya
. Go away. Rocco rubbed his temples, testing for aftershocks. His head was clear with no flashing lights or zaps. Nothing remained from his nightmare hallucinations. But something tickled the back of his neck. A thought. A hope. Maybe part of a trippy dream. Something good in the hazy torment.

He stood and dropped his head back to stare at the off-white ceiling. Nothing popped to mind. It was just another perplexing consequence of his psychedelic problem. Rocco rolled his shoulders and shrugged out of his shirt on the way to the bathroom. A hot shower and semi-decent coffee would kick start his day. He slapped the faucet handle as hot as it would go. Steam billowed into the room as he stepped out retrieve the coffee.

Two long pulls of the lackluster brew, and he closed his eyes, trying like all hell to remember the missing piece. After another sip of the coffee, he returned to the bathroom. Bad coffee wasn’t doing him any favors but maybe a burning hot shower would.

He stopped short, set the coffee on the counter, and stared at the steamy mirror.

Hope you feel better, handsome
.

CHAPTER TWO

The team thought they were on their way home, but Jared changed their plans at the last minute. They were already in London, and a special project popped up: new intelligence about a terrorist outpost location.

Fifty miles outside London, Rocco’s team was ready for the danger zone. They arrived at the outpost in stealth mode, assessed the security measures at what looked like a one-man shop, and made an extraction plan: go big, get their mark, then go home after dropping him off for MI6 to work over. Rocco led them forward. He threw the explosive charge. Wood splinters rained down. Smoke stung his eyes. Its acrid taste coated his tongue, and he spit out a charred ember. Heaving a shoulder against the last barrier, he knew brute force would bring him to the target, a lieutenant who worked for El Mateperros, one of the world’s most elusive, up-and-coming terrorist leaders.

El Mateperros hadn’t struck on American soil, but he consistently attacked and threatened their international friends. A terrorist was a terrorist, and if that asswipe was plotting death and destruction for one of the US’s allies, it was only a matter of time before he turned his attention to the red, white, and blue.

The door buckled, and Rocco cleared the threshold. He scanned the dilapidated room. In the corner, a man fitting their target’s description lay on the dirty floor. They
may
have gone a little heavy on the tear gas and flash-bang explosives meant to momentarily paralyze the guy. Despite Rocco barreling through the door, he remained unresponsive. Not good. Nothing about the job mattered if their mark was already dead.

The intelligence loss would be catastrophic. Terrorist chatter after a recent botched Algerian Combat Group—ACG—attack in London said El Mateperros and his minions were plotting something to rival their previous attacks. They wanted to save face among their radical friends.

It was enough to make Rocco sick. The bastard had to live long enough to provide details about future terrorist strikes and hopefully give up El Mateperros. MI6 had only partnered with Titan to bring him in. Very curious but not Rocco’s concern. Next time, maybe Titan would get the interrogation because Roc wanted in on an ACG take down. Nothing like dismantling a terror organization.

Threading his hands into a mess of stringy, greasy hair, Rocco yanked the terrorist’s head back and felt for a pulse. Faint, but there.
At least the dude’s alive. For now
.

With a disgusted push, he let the man’s head drop and wiped his hand across his chest. It wasn’t the grit he wanted to wipe away. He wanted to remove that nasty feeling he got after touching someone who wanted to kill everything that Rocco protected.

“Target acquired.”

Outside, an armored car waited. Rocco secured the terrorist’s hands and dragged him into the night. He looked at the moon fighting to shine through the smoke. The back door of the vehicle popped open, and hands reached forward, grabbing El Mateperros’s lieutenant. Rocco jumped into the passenger seat, and they took off, bumping and lurching through the brush.

“Guess we went a little overboard. He’s still alive?” Roman growled from the dark back seat.

“Alive enough for someone to work him over.”

Rocco gnashed his teeth that this job was nothing more than a grab-and-drop. Did Jared know the hallucinations hadn’t stopped? Too much time had passed since New York City. No one knew he still had the trippy reactions.

“What’s your problem?” Winters eyed him from the driver’s seat.

Besides feeling a little unfulfilled in the terrorist nabbing department, and worrying his boss knew he still randomly hallucinated, his mind was stuck on the message scrawled on his mirror. Must’ve been for whoever stayed in the room prior because it couldn’t have been for him. Housekeeping simply hadn’t cleaned the mirror.

But… how often did someone think to leave an invisible message to be found by shower steam? Even if someone had seen him in a bad state, had been in his room last night—
Knock it off
. Rehashing it would only make him twitchy and paranoid. Well, twitchier and more paranoid.

“We’re two minutes out.” Colby Winters’s foot slammed on the gas pedal. They drove off a rocky, Titan-made path and pushed onto a real road, heading to British intelligence’s nearby ops location.

Each passing mile burned Rocco’s blood. “Piece of shit terrorist.”

Roman and Cash agreed from the back seat.

Winters lurched the vehicle off the road and slammed the gear shift to park. “And we’re here. One MI6 black ops site for your terrorist disposing pleasure.”

“Good. Let’s be done with this already.” Rocco kicked his door open and assessed the building: about as quaint and assuming as the last shack he’d firebombed. The difference was they knew he was coming.

The backseat door opened from the inside, and Roman pushed the barely conscious terrorist forward. Rocco let him hit the pavement then snagged him, moving toward an unassuming door. The tumblers of a high-tech security lock released and opened. Half-dragging, half-carrying the man, Rocco stepped into the facility. Still unassuming. Dirty floor. Unfinished walls. Flickering lights.

“Next room,” an unseen British voice filtered through Bose-quality speakers.

“Roger that.” Somewhere in this place was a top-of-the-line nerve center. How many people worked behind the scenes? How many people watched him at that moment? He’d guess a few.

Another door opened after a quick click of electronic tumblers. Yeah, this facility might look like what he’d just blasted a few miles away, but this one was the real deal. The second room’s light flickered less and cast everything in an orange glow. Two armed men stood next to a blood-stained chair. About what he’d expected.

Rocco dropped his delivery, and the sack of flesh and bones thudded on the concrete floor.

“Signed. Sealed. Delivered.” He dusted his hands together. “He’s your problem now. Adios.”

“
Adios
?” The word danced softly in the air of the calloused room. Sexy and exotic. Accented. And gorgeous. “Fine. Adios, if that’s what you want.”

He turned on the heel of his boot, lasering in on a shadowy, partitioned corner.
A woman
? Behind a screen, a silhouetted figure with a hand on her cocked hip stole his attention. Long legs and a pony tail stood outlined in a magnificent shadow. Holy hell. Nothing about that belonged in this room. This place was violent atrocity. She was a gauzy reflection of soft edges and a smooth voice.

Oh hell
.

He hadn’t even seen her, hadn’t touched her—yet. But that didn’t stop his gut from tightening and his eyes from popping.
Calm it down, dude
. This must have been all the adrenaline from snatching the terrorist not ten minutes before. But damn if he wasn’t wishing he coulda, woulda, shoulda met this girl someplace else. He swallowed against the boulder in this throat. “What I want has nothing to do with mission objectives.”

The metallic clang of tools hitting the cement floor clattered from behind the partition. She let loose a swell of what were probably curses in Spanish, then her sing-song called to him, still hidden behind the screen. “Ah, the American who plays by the rules. How interesting.”

Whoa. Instant hard-on. Her accent had him hooked. What the hell was she saying, anyway? It was a rollercoaster of pissed off words, complete with rolled Rs that swayed over his senses. He wanted her to keep talking. Another step closer and he wanted to see her face. Instinct told him it would do justice to the rockin’ silhouette painted behind the partition. “Says the Brit who speaks like a Spaniard.”
And swears like a
—

“I’m not British.”

What else could he learn about her in the next, oh, minute and a half he was expected to be here? Maybe she would keep talking. He’d jump through all kinds of hoops if that woman let loose her accent again.
Please, say something I can’t understand
. “And I don’t play by the rules. But you—”

She laughed, and the sound slid over his body, winding down his spine. He took in a deep breath, embracing the sensation. Her laugh was better than her words, and he wanted to make it happen again.

“Today.” She was back to work. “It looks like you do.”

“I came bearing a gift.” He looked to the man lying on the floor. “My mission objective is complete, and your invite comes just a bit too late.” He’d left a team of men sitting outside. If he didn’t walk out soon, they’d make an appearance, guns pointed.

“I see.”

No, you don’t. You can’t see anything, and I’m dying to see you
.

It was just a voice. But hell. She was too… something. Rare? Offbeat? Familiar?