Secret Maneuvers (9 page)

As Riley gave the hand signal for the group to leave, I couldn’t help silently giving thanks that we were getting the hell out of there. I didn’t know if we’d overlooked something—or if my instincts were all off—but the hairs standing up on the back of my neck told me we were standing in a trap and Belle was in danger. Either way, I heaved a tremendous sigh of relief when we finally cleared the building.

***

Thirty minutes later, weary EX Ops members filed through the door of Jaxon’s hotel room. Belle was the last one through and I took a second to admire how hot she looked in her ATF gear. Wearing black jeans, a long-sleeve, black t-shirt with a bullet proof vest on top, and her badge and gun holstered to her waist. The whole kick-ass outfit she had going on right now was enough to make me sport an erection that felt seriously uncomfortable since I was in a room filled with other men. Including a couple of guys that were like brothers to me, but that hadn’t stopped the boot stomping I’d promised Declan and Riley if they’d been trying to get an eyeful of Belle while she’d been getting dressed into her work clothes earlier. Frankly, I’d never known that it was possible for a woman to change in less than three minutes in a vehicle without showing a peep of skin through the windows the whole time, but Declan had discreetly promised me that neither he, nor Riley, had seen so much as a toe while she was getting ready. Not that my good ol’ buddy Declan had been trying to take advantage of my sweet, vulnerable woman while she was changing clothes. He’d never do anything that despicable. Riiiiight.

She’d managed to pull her hair back into a loose bun at the nape of her neck, showcasing the almost angelic features of her face. High cheekbones. Her slender neck that I once licked down to her collarbone. Damn, I’d give anything to strip her down right here and now, pull her hair loose, and bend her over the back of a chair while I spread those luscious globes of her ass wide and— “Deputy Miles might have been on to something after all, Agent Roberts.” Jaxon crossed his arms over his chest while considering the young Deputy in question.

Belle nodded her head in agreement. “Looks like tonight wasn’t a complete bust. A couple of crates of M4’s and AK-47’s aren’t quite the load we were told to look for, but it’s a start. My recommendation is to set up shift surveillance on the bar with small teams. That way we can rotate out. Those who aren’t on surveillance duty can help follow any leads we come across. How does that sound to you, Commander Wall?”

Jaxon’s gruff voice answered, “It’s a place to start. We’ll split up into teams tomorrow morning. Everyone should rest up tonight while we can and I’ll expect that call in the morning from you so we can get specifics started.”

Belle shook his hand before sending a general wave to the rest of the occupants in the room. “Everyone sleep tight now. Goodnight.” She left the room with Boyd, Sheriff Jenkins and Deputy Miles right on her heels.

After I finally got back to my own room, I peeled off my black BDUs, weapons and boots, leaving them in a pile on the floor. Wearing nothing but my boxer briefs, I lay in the bed, thinking of Belle. She’d been hard to pin down when we were teenagers, but I’d won her over back then. It had taken a lot of time, a lot of talking in places like our high school cafeteria or in the hallways after class whenever I could track her down. Small moments that had added up, proving to her that she wasn’t some prank I was trying to pull by getting in her pants, or that I thought she was easy. By all means, the girl I’d known back then—and obviously the woman I was coming face to face with now—was the exact opposite of easy.

There were a lot of factors not in my favor this round. I’d hurt her; apparently, much worse than I’d ever dreamed of, and instead of loads of time and plenty of opportunities to wear her guard down, I was working on a short time span. All I could hope was that between the little bit of time I had, a little patience while I sat through what would undoubtedly be one nasty ass-chewing when she finally felt like talking to me again, and laying it all out on the table for her, maybe I could win her back. The first step would be to get her to agree to dinner. I could start off by apologizing. The rest would come after that. Baby steps and careful maneuvering around any emotional landmines I’d left behind when I’d just plain left her. I had no intentions of giving up this time. Belle was my woman. The other half of my soul. An intricate part of me that had felt lost for far too long.

Closing my eyes, my mind drifted back to better days.

Hot afternoons in the Georgia sun where we hid under a gigantic tree in the cooler shade. My larger body pinning her much smaller one beneath me as we lay in the prickly grass. Her soft hands gliding over my body. Fingertips tracing the lines of my chest before traveling down over my abdomen. One of my hands buried in her hair to hold her still for a kiss. My other hand slipping up under her shirt to stroke her breasts over her bra. Warm, sweet breath mingling as tongues entwined. A small extension of the two hearts that constantly sought solace in each other.

My heart constricted painfully at the thought of never getting that back. What would it take to lure the love of my life back into my arms? What were the chances that Belle would forgive me? Also, just what the fuck would I do if she refused to forgive me after all?

God, I hoped I didn’t have to find out.

Chapter Five

Bobby

Four days. How could the woman manage to dodge me for four damn days? If Belle saw me walking towards her, she would turn around and walk away in the other direction. If there was a team meeting, she
made like a ghost the second it was over and disappeared before I could say a word to her afterwards. Now, here I stood, ten o’clock at night, in the breezeway outside of my hotel room staring at the cigarette in my hand like it was the question of life.

To light or not to light?

I hadn’t lit up a smoke in over two years. The irony of the situation wasn’t lost on me, either. I’d started smoking after having Mom and Dad tell me that Belle had disappeared from Sylvania. The stress of not knowing where she was, or if she was safe, had driven me to bumming a cigarette from a buddy in the barracks. The residual pain that centered around my heart the following months after that letter caused me to start buying my own packs of cancer sticks. Every time the phone rang, my hopes rose sky-high that it was my parents telling me she’d come home, but Belle never came home; so the crash of disappointment from those phone calls resulted into trips to the walkway outside of my barrack’s door so I could light one up and puff away some of the pain.

That was fifteen years ago and, since then, I’d quit smoking six times; mainly because Mom would bitch about how it was going to kill me and who would give her grandbabies if I up and croaked from cancer? I’d been free and clear of the little, white sticks of death for the last twenty-seven months, so I’d thought I had the habit kicked for good this time. Yet, here I stood, holding one I’d bummed from Riley in my hand, looking at the damn thing while listening to the internal debate going on in my head on whether I was going to light the son of a bitch or not. All because I couldn’t handle not having her in my life. How lame was that? This lack of control shit made me a pansy of the highest order.

“Don’t do it, Baker,” Jaxon’s gruff voice commanded me. He stepped out of the shadows that blackened out the end of the breezeway on his right. How long had he been standing there? I didn’t know because that motherfucker moved around as if he was made of smoke and shadows, instead of flesh and bone like the rest of us. One minute there, gone the next, without ever making a sound. If I were a lesser man, I would have pissed myself at his sudden appearance. Instead, I chose to lift an inquiring eyebrow in his direction.

“You sound like a negotiator in one of those awful movie scenes where the guy is standing on the ledge of the building, threatening to jump.”

Jaxon grunted in disgust. “It may not be that dire, asshole, but I’d hate to see you throw all your hard work down the drain because you’re letting your emotions get the best of you. You’re a highly trained soldier. It’s a shame you’re not using the brains God gave you and the skills the Army taught you to handle this better.”

My jaw bunched in frustration. “Really? What should I do? Kidnap her and keep her hostage until she agrees to hear me out? I think Uncle Sam would have a problem with that plan because I’d have to go off the grid for a while to do it.”

Shaking his head, he said, “You’re not a pimply-faced, little punk sitting in his boxers at home playing war games on his computer. You spent eleven years in the Army as a Ranger, and you’re telling me they taught you nothing about how to approach a mission? You know nothing about strategy? You have absolutely no understanding of tactics?”

Cocking my head to the side as I considered his words, I thought about what he was trying to say. “You’re telling me to dial down the emotions and analyze Belle as if she’s a target; recon her movements, figure out what makes her tick, then find the best way to break her down so that I can reach my endgame?”

“Isn’t that a better idea than shooting two years of hard work down the shitter by sticking that disgusting thing in your mouth and smoking it?”

Looking back down to the cigarette in my hand, I decided Jaxon was right. Dropping it to the ground, I used the bottom of my boot to crush it to pieces. When I looked back up to Jaxon, it was to see the smallest hint of one side of his mouth tipped up.

That slight grin disappeared, though, when he nodded his head towards the decimated cigarette and then said, “You tell Sullivan that if he gives you another poison stick, I’ll kick his ass.”

Then he disappeared back into the shadows, leaving me alone again. Only this time I wasn’t standing there like a jerk with my thumb up my ass, with no idea what to do. No, now I had motivation again. Belle couldn’t avoid me forever. One way or another, I’d find a way to get her alone to talk to me. Even if I had to grab her and tie her up to keep her in one place long enough to listen to what I had to say. 

Annabelle

Three days later…

Frustrated. Tired. Seriously pissed off. I was feeling all of that and more as I sat at the piece of crap table in Declan Sullivan’s room, holding a hand of playing cards and drinking cheap beer. This was after yet another pointless information and strategy meeting with the EX Ops team. It was a week after our initial undercover surveillance at the Big Bull Bar, and nothing was happening. When I say nothing, I mean nothing. Not one teeny, tiny movement from the bar involving those crates. No chatter from our snitches or undercover officers concerning our investigation. No word from our informant inside the Mexican cartel. No progress whatsoever. I was starting to feel downright itchy to get this case solved. When I got itchy, things got twitchy, like my left eye and my trigger finger.

Of course, I didn’t know who I wanted to shoot more. The assholes behind this black market problem, or Bobby Baker for being a constant pain in my ass. Every time I turned around, there he was. Asking for a minute of my time. Asking to take me out to dinner. Asking me if we could get naked to have hot, angry sex and then I could go back to hating him again after we were done.

Okay, so he hadn’t exactly asked for the hot, angry sex, but I could dream about it, right? I mean, dag-gum. The man had almost doubled in size from when I’d last seen him. He had all of these delicious muscles now that just silently begged for me to explore them. When they rippled as he moved—even if it was just him walking from one side of the room to the other—it was like they were talking to me. Tempting me. If I didn’t know any better, I’d swear his crazy ass was doing it on purpose! Was it possible for a wily man and his rippling muscles to seduce a woman to the dark side? As I considered the possibilities to that answer—absentmindedly grabbing my bottle of beer off the table to take a swig—I realized the room was too quiet. Looking up from my cards, I saw that all eyes were on me.

“What?”

Declan cocked an amused eyebrow. “Did you feel like playing that hand of cards you’re holding, or did you want to have us bronze and memorialize them for something?”

Looking back down to my cards, which were shit, I decided to fold. Putting my cards on the table, I waved for the others to continue with the game. There were just four of us in this room. Declan, Riley, myself, and him. I was still ignoring him, though. The three men had an easy camaraderie that made it obvious that they not only got along, but they spent a lot of time together, too. Somehow, Declan had talked me into staying for drinks and a game of poker after the meeting, only to blindside me with Bobby as the cards were being dealt. I’d been set up. Apparently, you could trust these off-the-grid, special ops-type guys about as far as you could throw them. Sneaky jerks.

Since I didn’t want to flounce out of there like some dramatic prom queen, I chose to sit here quietly, start the process of peeling the label off my second beer, and play poker with half of my mind hatching a plausible escape plan. One minute, I was quietly picking at the corner of the bottle’s label, the next I was staring at the whisky bottle and shot glass that had magically appeared in front of me.

Tada! Hello temptation!

Giving a suspicious, squinty eye to the three men watching me, I asked, “What are y’all up to here?” My finger waved around in a circle to encompass what was probably a terrible idea in a bottle in front of me.