Chapter 9
RCMP WILD Headquarters, Interrogation Room Two, Outskirts of Kamloops, British Columbia
Dylan rolled back over Blair, shielding her from the door as the sound of boots pounded down the hallway. His body pressed down on her, solid muscle radiating heat and strength, pinning her safely out of the line of fire.
Silence fell.
Heavy. Absolute.
His breath fanned the side of her neck, his body still shielding hers, the weight of him holding her safely pinned.
He lifted his head, scanning the doorway, every nerve alert. She saw the deadly focus in his eyes, the combat calm, the lethal readiness.
He looked down at her, those gray eyes, dark, charcoal, as if he was burning into ash from the inside.
“You hurt?” he asked, his hand gently pushing away the hair that covered her face, his fingers gentle and warm against her skin.
His touch did buzzy things to her brain, her pulse, and her equilibrium, and Blair somehow managed to control the nearly irresistible urge to run her thumb along that full, tantalizing bottom lip.
“Things turned out okay, right? So forgiven?” He gave her a full, slow smile, and she swore the earth moved.
She recognized the self-reproach in his tone.
Dylan, or whatever his real name was, leaned way too close, and Blair was transfixed by the intensity of his gaze.
For a single charged moment, their eyes held, deepened, the rest of the room falling away.
Something in her reached toward something in him, an instinctive pull she didn’t recognize, couldn’t explain.
Not attraction, not exactly, something unexpected, deeper, startling in its clarity. It left her breathless.
Her throat went tight, her heart beating rapidly.
Reality snapped back so hard it hurt. She had learned a hard lesson when she’d been small, that she was the only one she could depend on to take care of her.
No one was ever going to take care of her, or provide for her, or keep her warm, and because of that, she had acquired a kind of internal toughness.
She couldn’t allow herself to be fragile, overwhelmed, smitten. She wouldn’t have survived if she had.
Then voices.
Two men with rifles emerged from the hall and stopped dead. She went to warn him, but his tone was familiar and warm.
“Took you long enough,” he said with affectionate annoyance. “I heard your boots’ cadence all the way down the hall.”
She looked at their handsome faces beneath the helmets. They gaped, blinking. One guy’s jaw dropped, a sleek, dark-haired man who had a dog on a leash. The other man, big, imposing, and thoroughly amused, reached over and closed his jaw.
“Geezus, Break!”
Blair kicked up with her knee, catching her rescuer just under the ribs. He grunted and rolled off her. Too late, realizing with remorse that he was terribly bruised. She glared at him, then at the guys, working at getting her professional detachment back. It wasn’t easy. His charm was weaponized.
The imposing guy walked over and reached out his hand. “Ma’am,” he said.
He just got up off the floor, turned the weapon around and offered her own weapon to her.
“I believe this belongs to you.”
“Fucking Petty Officer Kelly Gatlin!” A man’s cutting voice roared down the hall. “Where the fuck is he?”
He cut those impossibly gray eyes to her and there was instant recognition, instant respect.
Just as she suspected. He wasn’t a cartel murderer, or some ranch hand drifter, he was special forces.
But she was spot on, he was a definite gunslinger and one badass outlaw.
He was just working for his Uncle Sam. Everything inside her went hot and unsteady.
She jumped when the door hit the back wall and a man walked in. Tall, his features carved like ice, a blond Mohawk bristling like him. He took one look at Dylan…ah…Kelly. Of course, his last name would be Gatlin, a deadly automatic weapon.
The blond man clenched his jaw, taking in Kelly’s appearance, his eyes snapping at the mottled bruises.
“I’m going to kill me a couple of DEA agents,” he growled.
His eyes cut to her, his voice softening just a tad.
“Sorry, Sergeant, for our explosive entrance, but we thought you might need an assist.” He reached out his hand.
“Master Chief Christopher Snow. I will answer to Master Chief, boss and Chris, but most people call me Iceman.”
She shook his hand as she gathered her wits about her. “Sergeant Blair Brown. We appreciate your assistance very much. I’m in the dark here, so it would be fantastic to get a debrief, but…” She turned to Kelly. “What do you go by?”
“Breakneck,” he said. “This is Boomer and Skull.” Oh, God. Seriously. She wondered if he got his callsign from reckless speed or actually breaking necks. She nodded like it was an everyday occurrence that she had operators from the States storm her headquarters.
She headed for the door and those operators moved out of her way. It was carnage everywhere. Beef came up to them, a water bottle in his hand. “Sarge, damn, we were worried.”
“I’m fine, thanks to our prisoner.”
“He was dead to rights, and if we hadn’t been prepared, it would have been bad. No casualties thanks to him.”
“EMTs are here,” Tyler offered.
She turned to Breakneck. “Do you need medical attention?”
“I might need a defibrillator, sweetheart. My heart just stopped.” He put his hand over his chest and winked at her.
“That’s not the way we talk to an RCMP officer, junior.” Iceman clipped him on the back of the skull.
Blair narrowed her eyes, thoroughly charmed and working to keep it hidden. “That’s Sergeant Sweetheart to you.”
“Apologize,” Iceman ordered, his mouth turning up at the corner.
“She should be the one to apologize for being so goddamned competently beautiful.”
His teammates looked at each other with grins and smirks.
Beef choked on his water.
Tyler narrowed his eyes.
“You might want to holster that lethal charm,” Boomer said. “Before you get another beating.”
Breakneck wasn’t sure if Boomer meant that beating would come from Ice or the stunning Mountie.
Sergeant Blair Brown. He leaned his back against the wall, exhausted and hurting, mentally and physically, while she went to each person in the place and spoke to them for a few seconds, gently with genuine concern on her hard-to-look-away-from face.
It wouldn’t be his body that took all those blows.
It would be his heart, because she looked like a heartbreaker.
He was still reeling from the goat fuck of his undercover op, the cartel breathing down his neck, the lack of sleep, the throbbing, aching waves of pain in his torso, the concussion blooming behind his eyes, and the acid burn of what his mother had dropped on him like a grenade.
“Break?” Ice’s voice penetrated the fog surrounding him.
He opened his eyes.
“You all right?”
Breakneck nodded. “I’m a little tired.”
Ice chuckled, then leaned his shoulder against the wall. “I’m fifty shades of pissed. When we found out you’d…” He shook his head. “I’m going to save all that anger for Carver and Jones.”
“Where the hell were they when I was strung up and getting tuned up by Ryker and his goon?”
“It would have been helpful if you’d left Ryker alive.”
“I tried, but he wouldn’t cooperate.”
Ice nodded. “Look, with this development, we have to assume they know your real identity. The Navy is taking your family into protective custody. The cartel will get to you any way they can. Threatening family members is their MO. Maybe you should go back to the States—”
“No,” Breakneck said flat out. To be holed up in a safe house with his mom and stepfather. He let out a hard breath. No goddamned way.
Ice stared at him, his pale blue eyes softer than usual. “What’s going on?”
“She and I are not on good terms right now, and I would go mad if you lock me up with her. Bat-shit crazy mad.” Breakneck wasn’t sure if he could ever forgive her, get past this nightmare of his paternity.
“I might just kill my stepfather. I’ve never been on good terms with him.
” Just the thought of having to be in the same room with Derrick made Breakneck’s fists curl.
He had no idea if his mom had told Derrick that Breakneck knew he was his biological father.
He didn’t give a fuck, and not even this many miles away from them eased any of his turmoil.
“Sergeant Brown is organizing a meeting of the minds. Us, the DEA, and two of her constables, ah Beef and Tyler, and her boss in thirty.” He lingered. “I’ll send Kodiak over once he’s done with mothering this crowd.”
Breakneck laughed. “Too true. But I’m okay.”
“He’ll be the judge of that.” Ice turned away, then looked back. “I’m sorry about your family situation, but the brotherhood…we have your six, always.” Breakneck’s throat tightened, and when Ice offered his fist, Breakneck bumped it.
Blair moved on to a female constable who was righting and rearranging the disarray on her desk.
She was clearly upset. Blair leaned in, hugged her, and spoke to her, making almost constant eye contact.
She wasn’t petite by any stretch of the imagination, tall, he’d guess close to five eleven, that lithe body covered in a navy blue uniform… yeah.
The navy RCMP shirt fit her like it had been tailored, the fabric pulled snug across her shoulders and chest, the sleeves hugging lean, defined arms that didn’t come from gym vanity but from long days in the saddle and nights tracking assholes through the dark.
Her badge glinted above her breast pocket, gold and authoritative, drawing his gaze like a magnet before he could drag it away.