Solid Muscle (Unseen Enemy Book 5) (10 page)

When Sully came home and saw Cordelia out on the patio, he stopped dead. She was standing in full sunlight, her arms raised over her head, in a deep lunge that demanded every muscle in her legs and back fight to keep her upright. She looked unbelievably strong and centered, and so damn
fierce
.

Amazed by her yet again, he just watched as she held the position for several seconds. Her full breasts rose and fell, every curve of every muscle was hugged by those tight pants, her body shone. She was utterly breathtaking, just fucking
spectacular
and he wanted her to be his. He wanted this woman and no more fucking pretending otherwise.

She stood with her feet together now, eyes closed. She seemed to be relaxing and he turned away before she could see him staring at her like some horny creep – which he was in some ways, he supposed. Well, horny, for sure.

A few minutes later, Cordelia came in to the kitchen and saw Hunter busy with the coffee machine. He had already cut up some strawberries and cantaloupe and she grabbed a few slices.

“Hi,” she said.

“Morning.” He flipped the ‘on’ button. “How you doing today?”

“I’m – better.” She hesitated. “Thank you, Hunter. Thank you for all of yesterday.”

He glanced at her, his dark eyes puzzled. “What ‘all’?”

“For talking me down in the car before the meeting, for cooking me an amazing dinner.” She met his heated gaze. “For sleeping with me.”

Her words jolted him. “It was no problem.” He crossed his arms loosely, leaned back against the counter. “I like being there for you.”

Cordelia studied him carefully, saw that he meant it. Nothing about Hunter Sullivan ever struck her as dishonest, though he was defensive and shut down most of the time. She wondered about that – wondered if he’d ever tell her what made him close himself off from real human contact.

“So.” He grabbed her favorite mug from the cabinet and poured her a cup of coffee. “I think that today, I should head out for a few hours on my own.”

“Business meetings?” she teased him as she reached for the proffered cup. “Wheeling and dealing, babe?”

“You know it,” he rejoined. “And maybe I’ll come home from a hard day of work and find a delicious, home-cooked meal?”

“Ooooh.” She popped a strawberry in to her mouth. “You think I can do better than you did last night?”

“Doubtful.” He took a sip of his own coffee. “That was a pretty damn good stir-fry.”

“Oh, yeah? Well, game on, baby.
Challenge accepted
.”

That was when Sully’s burner phone rang.

Chapter Eleven

Dallas sighed and turned off the shower. Goddamn, he’d only been in this hotel for two nights and he was already sick of it. Not that there was a single thing
wrong
with the hotel. No, it was nice; really nice. But he wanted to be with Olivia.

He thought about their approaching wedding day, felt the now-familiar wave of happiness wash over him. If anyone had asked him a year ago if he’d ever get married, he’d have rolled his hard blue eyes and scoffed.
No way
Dallas Foreman, happy-go-lucky womanizer, was settling down. Nuh-uh and no thanks.

But Olivia had changed all of that. Her beauty was astounding, of course, but it was the least-important of her qualities, as far as he was concerned. She blew him away with her bravery, her humor, her strength. She was compassionate and sweet and just so damn kind. The fact that this woman had given herself to him, that she trusted him after everything she’d been through, was a gift that he cherished.
She
was a gift.

And as always when he thought about how close he’d come to losing her, his heart tightened. To this day, Dallas woke up some nights, sweating and gasping from a recurring nightmare where he’d missed that shot. In some of the dreams, he killed Olivia instead of Greg Wallace; in others, he missed completely and Greg slit her throat where she stood.

To his enduring shame, Olivia almost always woke up too and held him close, reassuring him that she was there. He didn’t want her comforting him –
not at all, that’s
my
fucking job, to comfort her
– but he
did
need her warmth and breath on him right after. He needed
her
. She was everything and as long as he had her, Dallas could survive anything.

He’d just pulled on his t-shirt when his burner phone rang. He glanced at the number, answered.

“Hey, Sullivan. What’s up?”

“I got a call on the burner cell this morning.”

Suddenly, Dallas was totally alert. “Go.”

“The guy said that they’d send a car to get us tomorrow and take us to the kids.”

“OK, whoa. Hold up.” Dallas ran a hand over the back of his neck, hating every single thing about this whole idea. “They want to come to the house where you’re staying?”

“Yes.” Sully was grim. “They also cover our eyes so we have no idea where we end up and bring us back home the same way.”

“Holy fuck,” Dallas said softly. “I don’t like this at all.”

“I fucking
hate
this,” Sully said. “I imagine that this is the point where lots of people back out, half-a-mil be damned.”

“I sure as hell would.”

“Well, we’re not going to.”

Dallas paused. “You've discussed this with Cordelia?”

“Of course.”

“And she wants to carry on? Even though from this point on, they’ll know where you live?”

“Yes.”

Dallas sucked in a deep breath. “I don’t know, man. What if they blindfold you, drive you out to the middle of some goddamn field and blow your heads off?”

“That’s why we’re going to have to figure out some way for you to keep track of us.”

“I imagine they take your phones?”

“Yeah. No phones, no bags, they check us for wires and weapons.”

“OK.” Dallas stared out the window. “I think it’s time to make use of some of the stuff King left with me.”

Sully paused; he knew that Matt Kingston’s team had some super-covert shit in their arsenal. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. I need to meet you today. Right now.”

“OK. Where?”

“Can you come to my hotel?”

“Sure thing. Gimme thirty minutes.”

“I’ll be waiting.”

**

Sully stared at the square of wax paper in his palm. “What the hell is it, Foreman?”

“A bio-agent tag.”

“A what?”

Dallas pointed to the tiny sliver of fabric stuck to the paper. “This here? This is the tracker. You peel it off the paper and stick it to your body. It’s so small, it’s absolutely impossible to see. And bonus? It actually starts to eat itself as soon as it hits skin.”

“So it’ll destroy itself over time? Eliminate all the evidence that it was ever there?”

“Yep.”

“How much time?”

“King said around fourteen hours, maybe a bit more. Depends on body temperature – sweat’ll speed up the destruction process.”

“And how do you follow us once we have these on?”

“It’s essentially a GPS so I track you with my laptop. I’ll see exactly where y’all are so long as those tags are still live. I’ll stay close… within five miles, so long as I don’t give myself away.”

“OK.” Sully breathed out hard. “So we stick these on tomorrow morning before they come to get us and you keep eyes on us.”

“I think that’s the best we can do.” Dallas stared at his man, took in the strain around his mouth, the clench in his jaw. “You good?”

“Sure.”

“Bullshit. What’s on your mind?”

“Besides the obvious?”

“Yeah. Besides that.”

Sully looked away from his boss’ intelligent gaze. “It’s – it’s Cordelia.”

“Uh-huh.” Dallas had been waiting for something like this.
Christ
, would these two get it together already? “What about her? Like, specifically?”

“You sure we should be dragging a civilian in to this? I know she’s smart and tough, OK, and the woman can shoot if she can get her hands on a gun. But this is getting dark and dirty, man, and
this
is the kind of situation where shit goes sideways fast. Can we really in good conscience put her in what might be the direct line of fucking fire?”

“I hear you, Sullivan. I do.” Dallas hesitated. “I’ve actually had thoughts about shutting this op down myself.”

“You have?”

“Yeah. I have.”

“What’s stopping you?”

“A gut feeling that it’s all gonna be fine.”

Sully shook his head. Dallas’ gut was incredibly accurate and he’d always trusted it in the past. And if it were just
him
going in to this situation blind tomorrow –
both literally and figuratively
– Sully would be willing to go along with the whole plan. But at this moment, it was also Cordelia’s life in the balance and so Sully wasn’t breaking his neck to trust a gut.

“Yeah?” Sully said. “You got any actual
reasons
to think this? Non-gut-related ones?”

“I called King as soon as I got off the phone with you, told him what was going on. He told me that the guy giving information in exchange for a reduced sentence just coughed up some more intel.”

“Go on.”

“Seems this ring is ambitious and the key players are now looking to expand out of state. And like any growing enterprise, they’re shoring up the cash to do that.”

Sully stared at Dallas. “Urgh. These fuckers are unbelievable.”

“Don’t get me started, I swear. Anyway, King thinks that
this
is why the whole process is on warp-speed right now… they’re trying to get their hands on as much money as possible as fast as possible.”

“So you’re saying that they’re not going to hurt us because they want the last instalment.”

“A million is way better than half-that, you know? Even if you throw in some paperwork, there’s still plenty left over.”

“True.”

“So I think they
need
you to pay them the rest of the money. They ain’t gonna hurt you or Cordelia – they want you to pay up. And the deal is that they don’t get the money until they deliver you the kid, right?”

Sully sighed. “Yeah. Yeah, I get it.”

“OK.”

“You got the rest of the cash?”

“Yeah. It’s in the safe over there. You take it with you today, lock it up in the safe in that home office.”

“Alright. So Cordelia and I will go along with this whole thing tomorrow, get eyes on the kids for real. We’ll ask to see all three places, of course, get the fucking grand tour.”

“Yep. And the thing about these trackers is I’ll see when you get out of the car, and I’ll see when you’re walking. That’ll be my hint that you’re in the place they’re keeping the children. That’s how I can keep eyes on you
and
get the locations of the centers. I’ll pass all that on to the local cops and the feds, once you and Cordelia are home with that baby and these assholes have taken off with the cash.”

“I still fucking hate it.”

“Join the club, Sullivan. You’re my people… the last thing I want is to lose either one of you.”

“Because you care about us so much?” Sully teased.

“Nah.” Dallas shook his dark head. “Because I hate interviewing.”

The men exchanged grins.

“OK, man.” Dallas’ voice was gruff as he fought down his genuine worry. “Let’s go over it again.
All
of it.”

Chapter Twelve

When Sully got back home that evening, he found Cordelia out on the back patio. She was wearing jean shorts and a loose white t-shirt and her feet were bare; she looked relaxed and gorgeous. He leaned against the door to the backyard and watched her flip two steaks.

“So,” he drawled. “You gonna show me how it’s done with the barbecue?”

She flashed him a grin. “Uh-huh. Get ready, babe…I’m a master with fire.”

“I don’t doubt it.”

“Besides? I figured that since we’ll be missing Karen’s barbecue next week, we’d better have one now.” She shut the lid. “You want potatoes with melted cheese with your steak? Or are we going to go with a green salad?”

“Both?” he said hopefully. “And what can I do to help?”

She laughed. “OK. Both it is. And you can grab me a beer from the fridge.”

He paused. “Beer?”

“Yep… all chilled and ready to drink.”

Fuck. Just when I thought that she couldn’t get any sexier and more amazing, she turns up the heat. Jean shorts, bare feet, steaks on the barbecue, cold beer. I need to marry her, I swear
.

“Sure,” he said causally. “I’ll get changed and bring the cook a cold one.”

“Nice. Make yourself useful.”

Cordelia tried to not watch him walk away, but she couldn’t stop herself from sneaking a few quick peeks. Hunter was nothing short of breathtaking, no matter which direction the man was facing. Those shoulders, that back, that ass. She’d been pressed up against that body all night and she bitterly regretted the fact that she’d slept through it.

Ten minutes later, when he came back out in jeans and a tight t-shirt, she almost sighed at the effortless sexiness. It was almost cruel how good he made denim and cotton look.

“So.” He handed her the beer bottle. “How you feeling about tomorrow?”

“Scared.” She took a sip of beer, checked the cheese on the potatoes. “Angry. Powerless.”

“Yeah, that about sums it up, huh?”

“You too?”

“Yeah. But you can also add worried about you to the list.”

She turned to pin him with those dark, x-ray eyes. “Me? You think I’m going to crack under the pressure?”

“God, no. Cordelia. No.”

“So why are you worried?”

“Because.” He shrugged and she knew he was playing at being casual. “I don’t want anything to happen to you.”

“Oh.” She peered up at him, trying to read his expression but that mask was back on. “Well, I don’t want you to get hurt, either.”

Sully sighed. “Dallas has a theory about that, actually.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. I’ll fill you in while we eat.”

“OK. It’ll be five minutes more.”

“Great. I’ll set the table inside… we can’t talk about this out here.”

She nodded.

Over dinner, Sully told her about the ring’s expansion plans and showed her the tracker tag. She put down her fork and examined it closely.

“Wow,” she said and handed it back to him. “Wave of the future, huh?”

“Oh, sweetheart. In the world of black ops, this kind of thing is the wave of the past.”

“Really?”

“Sure. I’ve heard of a spray that can do the same thing.”

“What – the spray is the bio-agent?”

“Yep. Invisible on the person being tracked, easy to conceal, a cinch to distribute. It can even be sprayed in to the air and spread randomly. Send it in to a compound, release it on a bus… every person within a certain radius gets marked.”

She stared at him. “That’s slightly terrifying.”

“In some ways, for sure.”

Cordelia shook her head, stood up, started to clear the dishes. Sully jumped to his feet.

“Hey, you sit.” He snatched the plate from her hand and headed in to the kitchen. “You cooked, I clean.”

“You sure?” She trailed behind him, still thinking that she should help.

“Positive.”

“OK, tough guy.” She grinned up at him and his whole chest caved in with want. “I’m not going to argue if it saves me dishpan hands.”

Sully kissed her. No more words, no more fighting it. He dropped the plate on the island, roughly cupped the back of her head with both hands and pulled her up to his mouth. And God help him, right away she moaned and her hands curled up in his t-shirt. He stroked her full lips, traced their curves, tasted their sweetness. She was pure feminine grace and strength and he pulled her closer, already mindless and almost drunk from her.

When his tongue teased her, taunted her, she opened to him. He groaned, the sound shuddering through her whole body, and he deepened the kiss, his hands sliding to her face now. He was just so –
intense
. All that amazing strength and power and it was all focused on
her
. It was shattering. It was exciting. It was everything she’d ever wanted.

He lifted her right off her feet and she clutched his upper arms, startled.

“Hunter!”

“Shhh, baby.” He lowered her to the island, moved between her thighs. “I got you.”

Oh, he sure as hell did. His hands had moved down her body, over her hips, and now rested under her ass. When he kissed her this time, he pulled her up to him. Without any thought at all, she wrapped her legs around him, trying to get her aching, pulsing sex as close to him as possible.

Sully felt her heat assail him even through their clothes and he stopped dead.
Fuck
, what the hell was he
doing
, kissing her like this? Yeah, OK, he wanted her and she clearly wanted him, too. But they had to have a conversation first.

Goddammit, Sullivan. Way to screw this up, man.

“Cordelia…” He pulled back. “Oh, God, I can’t… not until we talk.”

She stared up at him. At first, she was hurt by his withdrawal but then she saw his face: it was a complicated mixture of lust and love, of want and fear. And something else… something deeper and darker. That was when she saw it, as clear as a summer day and she reached out to him, touched his cheek.

“Why guilt?” she asked softly.

He took a deep breath. “You can see it?”

“All over your face.” She traced his cheekbone, his lips, his strong chin. “Tell me, Hunter.”

“It’s not about you,” he said quickly. “I don’t feel guilty about – about feeling this way for you. About kissing you.”

She gave him a slow smile. “That’s a good start, I think, because I feel no guilt whatsoever about liking it.”

“No?” Despite being petrified about the approaching conversation, Sully managed to tease her a bit. “None?”

“Zip.” She studied his face closely. “So what’s it all about?”

He sighed heavily and then without a word, he moved in for a hug. Startled, she held him, sensing his need for closeness and comfort. Now she started to feel frightened: she never thought she’d see the day that hard-as-nails, cold-as-ice Hunter Sullivan let himself be vulnerable.

He just stood between her legs for a few seconds, his face turned in to her throat, gathering his breath and courage.

OK, tell her. It’s time.

He pulled back and rested his hands on her hips. He needed to touch her when he talked about this.

“It’s about – my wife.”

That surprised the hell out of her. “You’re married?”

“No. Not anymore. She – she died.”

“Oh,” Cordelia said softly. “Oh, Hunter, I’m so sorry.”

“It was a long time ago,” he hastened to add. “Almost twelve years.”

She nodded, ran her fingers over his forearms.

“Her name was Jessica and we met when I was in Iraq. She was a doctor and when one of the guys in my unit lost his leg, she was the one who treated him. She was – she was so kind, you know? Smart as hell, funny, giving. We made it work and we both stayed alive and we got engaged. We came back to the States and got married, and then I went back to Iraq for another tour.”

“She stayed in the States?”

“Yeah. She was done and went back to work at the hospital in Seattle.”

Cordelia paused. “Is that where you’re from?”

“No. I’m from Maine, from a small town called Rockport. Jessica was from Seattle and since her work was based there, that’s where we moved and bought a house together.” The words were tumbling out now, almost like a waterfall. “So I half-finished my tour, came back for a visit. I wanted out from active duty, but it’s not so easy to do that… I agreed to finish my tour and Jessica was thrilled that I’d be close soon. And by the time I left to finish the tour, she was… she was….” His voice trailed off, the words dying in his throat.

Cordelia waited, silent.

“She was pregnant,” Sully finally choked out.

“Oh.” Cordelia felt horror start to wash over her now. “Oh, God.”

His smile was twisted. “So you’re starting to see.”

“Maybe.”

“We stayed in touch while I was away. We talked about four times a week, and I was fucking wrecked that I wasn’t there for her pregnancy. Her Mom picked up the slack, thank God, and Jess was actually fine with it. I mean, she’d have loved me to be there, but she always said it was way more important for me to be there for the birth than the puking, and anyway, she said we had the rest of our lives to be together. As a family.”

He swallowed.

“She was worried about money,” he said quietly. “I made decent money and so did she, but she knew that I’d be unemployed soon enough and she’d be on leave for a while. She started to check the internet for places to buy cheap and used baby clothes and furniture. That’s how she met Amanda Royce.”

“Who was that?” Cordelia asked when Hunter went still and silent.

“The woman who killed my wife and baby.”

“Oh, no,” she whispered. “Hunter…”

“Jessica contacted her about an ad for a changing table and some baby clothes. Amanda responded and Jess and her Mom went to Amanda’s house. Jess bought the table and a few other things, arranged for delivery, sent a follow-up ‘thank you’ e-mail and they became friendly after that. Amanda would write and ask how the pregnancy was going, Jess would reply.” He shrugged. “No big deal, no red flags. Not at first.”

“But there were some?”

“Oh, yeah. As the pregnancy advanced, Amanda became more interested in the baby… started to ask loads of questions about the baby’s health, gender, size. And she started to say shit about me.”

“
You
?” Cordelia was astonished. “You weren’t even there.”

“That was her point. She started attacking me for not being around when Jessica needed me and she told Jess that I was obviously a bad father. She said that I’d never commit fully to her or the baby, that I was exactly the kind of guy who’d fuck anything that moved at some bar.”

“Oh, no.” Cordelia saw where this was all going now, saw it so fucking clearly and she wanted to stop it all from happening.

“Jessica told me all of this, of course, and she cut off all contact with Amanda. And that just made her angrier. She started showing up at the house – she had the address from the furniture delivery – and shouting at Jess that she was a bad mother. That she and I didn’t deserve a baby. That the baby deserved parents who’d love it.”

“Did she call the police?”
Not that it made any difference, in the end.

“Yeah, I told her to and her Mom backed me up, thank Christ. The cops said they couldn’t do anything about a crazy woman over-interested a pregnancy beyond giving her a stern warning.”

Cordelia sighed. “Yeah.”

“And to be honest, I wasn’t as worried as I should have been,” he said softly, finally confessing his deepest regret about what had happened, telling her the unrelenting thought that still kept him up some nights. “I mean,
now
I recognize the signs of a stalker and of an obsessive, ill personality, but back then? I was twenty-eight and a battle-hardened Marine. I knew what insurgents looked like, and ambushes, and I could spot a potential IED minefield at fifty paces. But a woman like Amanda, who just came across as a fucking loon? I thought she was disturbed and an annoyance, for sure, but not a threat.” He stroked her palm, made circles around and around. “I didn’t know – I never thought of a woman as a violent stalker, you know? Not then. I know better now.”

Cordelia touched his chest, felt his heart racing. “I know.”

“All the warning signals were there and nobody heeded them,” he went on. “The harassment went on until Jessica was almost eight months pregnant, then it just stopped.”

Cordelia tensed up; that was always a bad sign, when a stalker went radio silent. That was usually when they had something big planned. Something definitive.

“We were so relieved that she’d stopped. We thought – we thought that she’d just given up… just gotten tired of the whole thing. But she hadn’t. And she wasn’t.”

“Tell me.” She felt him dig his fingers in to her hips and she flinched. “Hunter. Tell me.”

“I was due to come back that weekend, since I had leave for the birth and for a few weeks after.” His voice was mechanical now, numb and emotionless. “I wasn’t there when Jess and my baby needed me. I wasn’t there when Amanda broke in to the house and stabbed Jess twelve times, then sliced her stomach open to take the baby.”

“God. No… oh, no.”

“But she… she screwed it up. Went too deep. She – she killed our son as she tried to take him.”

Sickened, Cordelia waited; she knew there was more.

“Amanda panicked, I guess, and she just ran out of the house. The neighbor saw her leave, covered in blood and came to check on Jess. He found them like that. Dead on the kitchen floor, blood everywhere. My – my son…” His throat closed. “My son was next to Jessica and it was obvious that she hadn’t been dead when Amanda had cut her open. Jess was… was holding our son against her side. Had him all curled up and held close. She died holding him.”

Cordelia felt tears burning her eyes and she couldn’t understand why Hunter wasn’t crying. But then she saw his face and it was the face of a man being tortured, a man so full of hurt and self-loathing that it took her breath away. God, so much
pain
.

“I thought I was coming home to see my son born, to see my wife holding our child. Instead, I ended up planning a funeral. Well, two, really. I wanted to bury Connor with Jessica, but they wouldn’t allow it. So I had them buried in one plot, in two coffins.”