Chapter Two Ryder
Chapter Two
Ryder
Just before
I lit the Italian Toscano cigar I had on me, the vanilla aroma hitting my nose as I pocketed the lighter. I needed an excuse to stand outside the party while I waited for my teammate, Alex, to join me. Also, I needed to cool off after my confrontation with the woman in red.
I held the smoke in my mouth for a moment, allowing the flavor to spread, then exhaled while slowly turning around. The reason I was now in need of a smoke—and I wasn’t even a smoker—was staring down at me from the balcony.
Who the hell are you? I puffed on the cigar, trying to recalibrate. I had to remember why I was at the party, and it wasn’t for her, even if I now wanted it to be.
I couldn’t wrap my head around how she’d wound up entangled with a man like Ezra Sokolov.
She doesn’t want my help. I had to keep beating that reminder into my brain so I wouldn’t take control of what felt like a dire situation for her and storm the house. Steal her away from a corrupt man.
I’d been up on the balcony to get a better aerial view of the property while waiting on my team’s target to arrive, and out she’d come. The woman of my dreams.
My three teammates had been in my ear, heckling me over the wireless comm. I’d been so taken aback by her, I’d forgotten they could hear us. I’d muted my comm a few seconds too late into my conversation.
Thirty-eight rotations around the sun. That was how long I’d been on this floating rock of a planet, and not once in all that time had I ever felt such a strong connection to anyone, let alone a stranger.
Fuck, I’d even broken protocol and given her my name, ignoring the fact she knowingly worked for a criminal. It’d taken all my energy to walk away from her, to not resort to my basest instincts to throw her over my shoulder and save her anyway.
She doesn’t want my help. There it was again. Not landing. Not fucking sticking. Not with those brown eyes still laser focused down on me, just begging for me to go back inside and do something insane. At the least, taste her lips. Then, if she’d let me, take away her problems.
When she backed away, breaking contact, it felt like I’d been sucker punched. If it wasn’t for realizing Alex was en route to me, I’d have gone inside to find her. Ask her one more time to walk away with a total stranger. You know, because why fucking not?
“You good, boss?” Alex circled me, placing both the $10 million house and myself in his line of sight.
“Stop with the boss shit,” I muttered, both joking and also serious.
“Just getting used to how it sounds. Rolls right off the tongue, doesn’t it?” His cocky wink would’ve ground the gears of our former team leader, who quit two weeks ago.
I returned his obvious razzing in a very mature way—by rolling my eyes.
“You didn’t answer me, though.” For a man who could intimidate most people into submission with just one scolding look, you’d never know he had the biggest fucking heart of us all.
And that made him a serious pain in my ass, caring too much about me, right along with shit I didn’t want to talk about.
Two women I didn’t want to discuss with him now dominated my thoughts: the one he’d heard me speaking to upstairs before I’d muted him and the one who’d put me in a bad mood before the op started tonight.
I looked around the patio by the rectangular infinity pool, ensuring we were still alone. Checked the balcony again. No sight of her.
“And of course I’m fine.” Despite the fact I had walked away from the woman in red upstairs and would probably never see her again.
Lightning never strikes the same place twice. My mother’s words about extraordinary things never happening more than once weren’t metaphorical for me right now. Because I’d felt a bolt of something shoot straight through my veins, and it lit me the fuck up. And I wanted to be hit again and again.
I undid the top two buttons of my dress shirt, unsure if there was any air in my lungs left after that woman had quite literally stolen my breath.
“Why wouldn’t I be good?” I hissed, agitated that I was agitated. Make it make sense. I grimaced at the realization he’d answer my rhetorical question.
“Our comms are muted this time.” He winked again, the fucker. “It’s safe to talk.”
I didn’t need the reminder he’d eavesdropped on the start of a conversation that centered around a zipper, which had somehow morphed into me remembering my days in the army. Real wars and battles that hadn’t lost their hold on me, not even two years after I’d left the military.
“The target is still a no-show, so we have time. Go ahead, take advantage of that four-year psych degree my mother forced me to get before I joined the army.” He opened his palm, requesting a cigar, and I gave him the other one I had for the sake of our cover stories, along with the lighter.
“You worried I can’t handle this new role of mine?” Maybe you should worry. Hell, maybe I should. I thought back to the mystery woman upstairs. The woman with the most seductive and tantalizing mouth of all fucking time. A mouth I still wanted to claim.
“You popping your Delta One cherry tonight isn’t why I’m asking if you’re okay,” he said dismissively while handing me back the lighter. “You also know I’d follow you anywhere, brother. Reed feels the same.”
Reed was Delta Three, and he was more the quiet, doom-and-gloom fucker on our team.
Alex, on the other hand, was a glass-half-full kind of guy who could also cut through any situation with whatever tool needed to get the job done, whether it be humor or a machete.
As for me? I didn’t know how to define myself anymore.
“Not so sure what I think about Leo, though,” he continued when I kept quiet, pointing the conversation in a new direction that I’d much rather go than continue to dance around his concerns about my headspace.
Tonight may have been my first op spearheading our unit as Delta One for our security company, but to me, we were equals.
Hell, most of us had left the army with the same rank anyway.
But as for our new teammate, Delta Four, we didn’t vibe, which didn’t bode well for our future in operating together.
Leo had joined a week before our team leader quit. He’d hired him as a favor to a general without consulting any of us first. So that’d been quite the fuck-you before walking out on us to work for a bunch of war profiteers. His new agency was far different from our company, Delta Shield Security.
We weren’t beholden to anyone, not even the private and wealthy do-gooders funding us.
We were also small and tight knit. Currently, it was just the four of us.
We were a precision strike team. Mostly hostage rescue and tracking targets.
Quick in-and-out jobs, usually for Homeland Security, paid for by their “discretionary” budget, without anyone knowing we’d been on the ground. Case in point, now.
“If Leo doesn’t fit in,” I finally began, fine with sharing my thoughts on this since our comms were muted, “we’ll find a replacement for him.”
“And fuck the general’s wishes?” Alex smirked.
“Without a second thought.” Turning to the side, I eyed the floor-to-ceiling glass windows that gave us a clear view of the guests, hoping to catch sight of the woman in red.
On that note, I really needed to wrap up thoughts of her. I still had a mission to complete, and she wasn’t it. I also had three guys I was in charge of, which meant I couldn’t lose focus like I’d done on that balcony.
Reed and Leo were still on overwatch, safely from view, keeping an eye on the guards to ensure a clean exfil when it was time.
While Alex and I had arrived using aliases and walked through the front door, Reed and Leo had come by way of a Zodiac. They currently had the inflatable motorboat hidden by the boathouse near the far edge of the property.
“This is Four,” Leo announced over our wireless comms. “Property sweep is complete. We have thirty more minutes until they check again.”
Based on our recon before the mission, there were eight armed guards who swept the one-and-a-half-acre property every thirty minutes to ensure it was clear.
That gave us a generous half-hour window to exfil if we wanted to minimize the chance of engaging in direct combat, which meant tonight’s op was low risk.
After responding to Leo, Alex grumbled, “I hate being in here unarmed, even if it’s just a party. I’d rather be in a mirror maze with clowns popping out at the end than here with these fuckers.”
I laughed. “I swear, man, you and clowns.”
“What can I say, It did a motherfucking number on me as a kid.” He puffed on the cigar around a smile. “So that’s saying a lot if I’d rather deal with clowns than these assholes.”
He was a genius at trying to divert my attention from my problems. If only I could think of clowns right now.
Not about the woman upstairs. Or the fact I’d learned this morning my ex-girlfriend was four months pregnant by a close friend of mine.
I hadn’t even known they’d been dating until today, for fuck’s sake.
But talk about a way to start my Saturday, waking up to notifications on my phone from my buddies texting to see if I was good.
You know, considering Lainey and I had only broken up three months ago.
I’d always wrapped up, so I doubted the baby was mine. Still, I’d had to make an awkward call today and ask her to promise me I wasn’t the father. She’d provided the details about her unfaithfulness, which I regretted hearing—and led me to believe I wasn’t the dad.
“All these rich pricks playing dress-up as businesspeople.” Alex jutted his chin toward the house, talking rather skillfully with a cigar between his teeth. “They’re the real clowns, I suppose.”
“Nothing I hate more than two-faced people.” I showed my cards with that remark, letting the truth out that I hadn’t successfully hit control-override on my thoughts like I needed to do.
“Too bad we can’t take all of these pricks down tonight.” Alex with an attempt to redirect again, and I appreciated it. Maybe he ought to have been Delta One tonight. “But we’re on American soil, and these guys are alleged businessmen, so I guess we have to be on our best behavior.”
Businessmen, my ass. The house was full of finance bros who used their day jobs as a cover to launder money—not to mention the much uglier sin they helped with, which was drug trafficking.
And she, the mystery woman, worked for Ezra. Why? After learning that, now more than ever, I was on the same page as Alex, wishing we could at least take down Ezra. But since we were there on behalf of Homeland Security, we couldn’t.
We’d accepted an assignment to find an individual who helped move money for a terrorist cell, and we’d tracked him to Florida.
He was supposed to be attending this party as a guest. Without legally acquired evidence, the government couldn’t arrest him for questioning, which was where we came in. If he ever shows up.
I looked inside the house again, checking for our mark, and when I didn’t see him among the crowd, I let my thoughts drift back to her. The her who refused to leave my head.
The storm may have ended an hour ago, but I peered up at the dark sky, waiting and hoping for lightning to strike again, preferably in the form of the woman in red coming outside to find me.
I put out my cigar, continuing to reel from my encounter with her.
Upstairs, those deep-brown eyes had me feeling like I’d been in quicksand.
Sucked in to the point of no return, and I’d about lost control.
I nearly forgot I spoke multiple languages, and it took time to remember a word in any of them.
Stunning was an oversimplification for her in that fitted red dress. A gorgeous body, and legs for fucking days.
When I’d set a hand on her golden-tan skin, inhaling her sweet perfume, it was the first time my pulse had raced in recent years when it wasn’t mission-related from adrenaline.
I had the feeling if I were to peel back a few more layers, I’d find out she was just as beautiful on the inside, too. Gut feeling, at least. Then again, maybe I wasn’t the best judge of character. My girlfriend did cheat on me with my friend, so there was that to think about.
“You good, boss?” Alex sent a wrecking ball through my thoughts, as he should’ve.
“You already asked me that,” I reminded him.
“Well, the target arrived. I see him inside, so I’m just making sure you’re—”
“I’m fine.” I unmuted my comm and let the other two know we had eyes on the package.
“Ready to be gift wrapped and delivered to you,” Alex said, since he’d be the one to go in and snatch and grab the mark without anyone ever knowing we were there. Then we’d take our hostage to our safe house nearby to be interrogated.
“This is Three. We still have twenty-five minutes to exfil before security makes their rounds on the perimeter again.”
That was more than manageable. I faced Alex, nodding at him with silent orders to move on the target and complete his part of the mission.
It was time I put the ex who’d destroyed my faith in relationships out of my mind, right along with the one woman who oddly had me feeling as though somehow she could be the one to restore it.