Chapter Six
C lay looked over the top of Ivy’s head as she tunneled into his arms, ignoring Dev’s quirked eyebrow.
Damn, she felt so right, even when everything was so wrong.
He gave her a full-body squeeze, sparking every single nerve in his body, and then held her at arm’s-length.
“You okay?”
She nodded, but it wasn’t with her usual panache, and he knew she’d been shaken.
“C’mon. Jordan took the Gremlin back to your place and left us the SUV.” She'd laughed when he'd asked, said it'd be a pleasure to drive such a classic, even if she was afraid to go over forty.
He didn’t say that he felt a ton safer driving the big, solid vehicle than her sixty-plus year-old tin can. Plus, she had an attachment to it, and he didn’t want it to be hurt in any way, shape or form.
Ivy looked at him gratefully and they walked out of the precinct house and into the furnace blast of Vegas heat.
He guided her to the white SUV and put the air conditioning on high.
Ivy sat back in the seat and blew out a long breath. “Can we just sit for a minute?” she asked.
Clay got comfy in the seat. “Absolutely.”
She sat in quiet for a few moments, then turned to him. “What the hell was all that?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know. Dev has his suspicions and is working through them right now. We should have something to tell you later today.”
She looked at him through those clear hazel eyes as if judging his sincerity and then gave a sharp nod. “Okay, then. Home James,” she ordered with a wave of her fingers, as if he were a high-end chauffeur.
He couldn’t help the smile that bloomed on his face. Found that he didn’t really want to. She was so damned resilient. That was something he’d do well to remember.
They pulled out of the parking lot and into the flow of thickening traffic, as afternoon wound into early evening.
Despite everything that had happened today, it felt ordinary, like they were a couple heading home after a day at work. It was a feeling he was going to have to shake, for both the job and his own mental health.
Once they found Katie McAlister, he and Ivy would go their separate ways, and in the here and now, he needed to protect her. That they still didn’t know what she needed protecting from was a huge sore point for him. But he’d do his best.
The itching started at the back of his neck as they pulled off the main thoroughfare and into more retail-centric strip malls. His phone going off didn’t help his concentration. Especially when he didn’t recognize the number. He answered using the console while he consciously put his head in swivel-mode.
“Andrews,” he said as he drove around a particularly slow sedan driven by someone who looked to be at least two hundred years old.
“Clay, my boy,” the voice slurred, and Clay’s stomach dropped. Why now, of all days. Of all times. “Don’t you have a hello for dear old Dad?”
Clay slid a look toward Ivy, who was watching him avidly, curiosity etched across her features.
“Now’s not a good time,” he said, his voice clipped. The old man had been calling more lately, usually asking for money. Clay knew the sound of someone hitting rock bottom.
“Is that any way to talk to your father?” Connor asked, his voice rising, turning from slurred to just short of mean.
Clay very specifically looked at the road, at the surrounding businesses, at anything but Ivy. So when the car rocketed out of the alley and sideswiped them, he actually saw it coming. He braced, threw out an arm to stop Ivy’s body from being thrown forward, and started using the defensive driving tactics Jordan had forced them to learn.
The car, a black hunk of seventies Detroit steel, pushed them relentlessly across the lanes and into inbound traffic, the contact making a shrieking noise that pierced his eardrums. Clay gunned it, and even with the torrent of noise, in the background he could hear his old man yammering on about being grateful for him putting a roof over his head and goddamned food in his belly.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” he said, a mantra as he whipped the steering wheel left, slid into another alley, then punched the gas and flew.
He disconnected Connor and opened another line. “Call Dev,” he said, and the nav center dialed.
“They fucking tossed the place,” Dev began, practically snarling. “While we were with Ivy they invaded our space.”
“We’re a little busy here,” Ivy said, her voice remarkably strong.
Now Clay hazarded a glance.
She grasped the oh-shit handle above her head and was looking behind them at the vehicle giving pursuit.
“Miss Foster?” Dev asked, some of the anger leaking out of his voice.
“We were just assaulted by a 1972 Plymouth Valiant, black on black, tinted windows, good rims,” she said. “No front plate, which is totally against the law,” she said, her voice almost prim.
Clay barked out a laugh and slowed as he approached a cross street. “They sideswiped us. Good strong engine, shitty body work. Looks like something a banger would use for enforcement.” He turned right, slipping into traffic again, and watched as the Valiant followed them. “Still on our tail, but we’re on a bigger artery now, lots of people around.”
“Lose him and head to the address I’m programming into the nav,” Dev ordered, and Clay happily complied. “It’s a big box store, lots of cameras in the parking lot. I’ve got Undersheriff Jones on the other line and a squad car will meet you there.”
Clay breathed out a sigh of relief, watched as the black car faded back, and then disappeared from view. “They’re gone,” he told Dev.
“Rendezvous with the squad car anyway,” Dev said, “And then I’m sending you to a safe house until we figure it out. Ms. Foster, please make a list of the things you need. Jordan or Cali will stop by and put together a bag and I’ll have it couriered to you.”
Ivy started to protest but stopped when Clay shot her a look. “Ivy, this wasn’t a harassing call, or a heavy breather. This was assault. When you combine it with the fake warrant, it becomes a hell of a lot bigger than we initially thought. We need to lay low until we figure out what’s going on.”
She sighed. “Okay. I’ll give Clay the list,” she promised, and then leaned back, as if deflated.
Clay hated to see it, but this situation had entered a whole different level of weird. What the hell was Katie McAlister mixed up in?
~
Ivy hated every square inch of the high-rise penthouse. Apparently, Devin Beck’s idea of a place to lay low was at the top of one of the ritziest hotels on the strip. It was extravagant, with hardwood running throughout, plush area rugs strategically placed where your feet needed the cushioning. Subtly gorgeous chandeliers that sparkled in the early evening sunlight. A balcony speared off the main area, overlooking the city and promising a stunning night-time view of the Strip.
Now, as evening pushed into twilight, the horizon had gone golden, the mountains casting long purple shadows, the lights of the city beneath beginning to twinkle like stars. The distinctive pyramid shape of the Luxor loomed to the south and across the street the Bellagio’s fountains were beginning their choreographed dance.
She hated it because she loved it. It was unattainable, much like the man walking toward her.
Clay had just completed a walk-through of the penthouse and strode toward her with a quiet competency that was as frustrating as it was comforting. Because she’d learned—already—that when he had this face on, he was all business.
Which of course she wanted, needed, right now. But she needed the safety of his arms just as much. Maybe more.
As much as she craved his touch, though, she smiled. “I just forwarded my list to your phone.”
He gave a short nod. “Place is clean. Do you want something to drink?”
She shook her head and padded across the obscenely soft area rug to the sofa. Sank into it. Took a long, deep breath.
“I hate to repeat myself, but what the hell, Clay?”
He joined her in the seating area, selecting a club chair so he could face her. “Warren is flying out to South Carolina in a few minutes. We need boots on the ground to get intel on Katie’s last few months there.”
She looked at him skeptically. “That was years ago, what could he possibly find out?”
“Warren has a way about him,” was all Clay said, and she supposed she had to take his word for it. “Your friend is into something deep.” He looked her straight in the eye. “Can you think of anything, anything at all that might explain this escalation?”
Escalation was a good word for it, she thought, and shook her head. “Nothing we haven’t already talked about. I honestly don’t get it. Katie has always been so low profile. Even as a kid she was the quiet one. Kept me out of trouble most of the time,” she said with a smile.
Clay’s lips curved in response. “I can see that,” he replied, then became serious again. “Listen, we don’t know how long we’re going to be here. Do you want to grab a nap or a shower?”
She shook her head, settled into the couch. “I’m fine.” She cocked her head. “Since we’re stuck here, I’d like to know more about SMS.”
He shrugged, as if it was no big deal. “There’s four of us, six if you count Cali and Jordan, but they're part-timers when their schedules allow since they still work. We’re all prior Air Force, or attached somehow, and in Cali’s case, still active duty. You’ll probably meet her soon. She's a trip.” A true smile lit his face and took her breath away.
It made the years fall away, the gravity, the seriousness, and showed her who Clay had been before whatever had taken the light out of his life. It also sparked just the tiniest bit of jealousy, that she brushed away as quickly as it formed.
“So how do you become SMS?” she asked. “I doubt you put a help wanted ad in the newspaper.”
His smile faded, and she felt the loss immediately. Was sorry her question had made him lose that light.
He considered what she’d asked, then pushed out of the chair and walked into the kitchen. She wondered if he’d answer, wondered if she’d pushed too far without meaning to. She did that sometimes.
He returned, his expression still pensive, two bottles of water in his hand. “C’mon,” he said, and opened the balcony doors.
She followed, breathing in the warm air, looking out over The Strip and all its charged gaiety. Clay leaned against the iron railing, staring out into the night.
Yeah, she’d screwed up, and there was nothing she could do to make it better, so she kept her mouth shut and joined him at the railing.
“I was a loadmaster when I was active duty,” he said without looking at her. “I was really good, good enough to be put on special assignments. So was my best friend, Dylan. We were assigned a flight with sensitive cargo. Nothing really different about that for us. But the cops on board the plane were. Jordan and another Phoenix Raven. The Ravens are the pinnacle of Security Forces. So you have the best loadmasters handling one tiny little pallet of cargo and the Air Force’s best cops. We were flying through contested territory and were shot down.”
Ivy barely held back her gasp of dismay. Of horror. But she wanted him to keep talking and he seemed to be a million miles away, back there on that plane, and she didn’t want to interrupt the flow.
“Dylan died on impact, or at least that’s what I choose to believe. The co-pilot lived for a little while, but I stopped hearing her after a while. I thought I’d been the only one to survive, didn’t find out about Jordan until we were strapped inside the rescue chopper. I was trapped in the wreckage, knew I was probably going to die, either from my injuries or from the insurgents who’d shot us down.” He turned, looked her square in the eye. “I wouldn’t have allowed myself to be taken.”
She nodded slowly, understanding what he hadn’t said. Was horrified by it but understood on a gut level.
He looked back over Sin City, and she knew he’d traveled back, to that other desert, where he was under attack yet again.
“Cali and Benny were the ones who rescued Jordan and me. They were both pararescue and got us home safely. I’ll leave it to Dev and the others to tell their stories, if they choose. The bottom line is that Dev is stupid rich and decided to bankroll SMS as a kind of atonement. It was something we all needed, so now this is what we do. Some clients have the money to help subsidize the business, and those that don’t,” he shrugged, “we take on pro-bono or at a rate they can afford. We lost Benny a little over six months ago to distracted driving. It brought us all back together and SMS was born the day of his funeral."
She stood beside him, silent, absorbing his words. She had the feeling he’d never told a civilian about them before. Felt honored that he’d chosen to share with her. Understood that when he was talking about SMS, he was talking about family. She had no idea what the hell the story was with his father and the call today, but at least she understood why these were the people he'd gravitated to at the worst moment of his life.
“I told you this because I need you to understand that Dev isn’t the only one looking to atone. It’s why I won’t touch you when while I’m on the job, even though everything inside me wants to.”
Ivy went statue-still as he continued to look out over the city. His words were simple, but the tone was molten-hot and brought their kiss back in vivid detail.
He turned to face her, and his expression was carved from granite. “I’m not some white knight, Ivy.” His voice was perfectly even, perfectly earnest.
She almost smiled, because she’d never met a man more suited to rescuing damsels in distress than Clay Andrews.
Instead, she went on instinct and stepped to him, looping her arms around his back, laying her head against his chest, and just hugged him.
He stood stiff for a long moment, and she listened to his heart thumping ever so steadily in his chest, wondering if he was going to push her away. Just like she’d never met more of a white knight, she’d also never met someone in such dire need of simple affection.
The drunken voice of his father rang in her ears again and she hugged him even tighter.
Sure, she wanted to sleep with him, but even more than that, she wanted to bring him peace.
His posture shifted as he began to return the embrace, as he pulled her impossibly tighter against his body. She burrowed in, just as she’d wanted to a few minutes ago.
“Don’t worry,” she murmured. “I won’t ask you to split your attention.”
He jerked the slightest bit at that, and she felt the urge to soothe again.
“You seem to forget I grew up in the Air Force. I played with cops’ kids, and one summer with the daughter of a special forces guy who never came back.” She continued to hold him tight. “I’ve never faced the kind of loss you did with Dylan, but I’ve been around it. Seen it unfold. Felt as much of that kind of pain as I could understand at the time. So I won’t split your focus. But after we find Katie, we’re going to talk again.”
That made him go pliant in her arms again, or at least as pliant as Clay ever got. She pulled away, noted with a small smile that he lingered, taking his time in reentering his own space.
“Now let’s order something extravagant from the room service menu since sex is off the table,” she shot a smile over her shoulder as she entered the penthouse.
Clay groaned. “You’re going to make me pay for this, aren’t you?”
She laughed. “Oh yeah. Not enough for you to lose your concentration, but just enough to torture you. Think hours of yoga. I’m very, very bendy.”
Clay let out a bark of laughter and she felt triumph unfurl within.
~
Clay called Ivy’s bluff about the excessive dinner, not so surprised when she ordered a salad with grilled salmon. He chose the same, wanting to stay light on his feet, but ordered an extra filet for the protein.
They ate on the balcony, since it wasn’t as if there was a sniper hunting Ivy and enjoyed the cooling night and the sounds of The Strip so far below.
When his phone pinged with a text, he was slow to read it.
He liked being here with her, chatting about nothing, almost as if they were on a date.
But they weren’t. He was protecting her and trying to find her best friend. So he did his job, even as something quickened inside him. When they found Katie…
He scrutinized the text. It was from a private number, but was unquestionably from Dev. There were very few people in the world with Dev’s kind of privilege. And he’d invoked Dylan’s name and the tail number of the aircraft that’d been shot down. Yeah, it was Dev.
So he dialed, put the phone on speaker. If Dev wanted him to go private, he could, but unless this involved a new client, there was no reason to keep anything a secret from her.
“Fuckers cracked my vault,” Dev opened, pure anger in his voice.
“You’re on speaker,” Clay warned.
“Yeah, whatever. Ivy needs to hear this as well. I was hacked.”
Oh shit. Clay remembered Dev saying something about HQ being trashed, but they’d been in the middle of a car chase at the time.
“How is that even possible?” Clay asked. Dev was shockingly good at security, had picked up a lot from his time in the CIA and had contracted out anything he didn’t know to different vendors so no one person—besides him—knew how everything worked.
“Doesn’t matter right now. There’s a safe in the office down the hall.” He rattled off a string of numbers. “Got that?”
“I do,” Ivy said, her lips twisting into the semblance of a smile. “I have an affinity for numbers. It’s an art thing.”
“There’s a stack of burners in there preprogramed with contact numbers. I’m destroying this one as soon as we hang up, which we’re doing right now, so they can’t trace your location. Power down your phone, put it in a plastic baggie and bury it in the freezer. It’s likely been corrupted by spyware if they were able to get into my systems and that's a good enough solution until I've had a chance to look at it. They might be able to track it to the building, but no further than that if it’s buffered that much.” Dev hung up.
Ivy was already heading to the office. “I’ll be right back,” she said, her voice steady.
He wasn’t sure what he’d expected her to do or say after this little bombshell, but her easy acceptance wasn’t it. He followed Dev's instructions while she was gone, wrapping the phone in tinfoil as well for good measure before burying it in the icemaker.
Ivy walked back in and dropped a smartphone on the table. “There’s another eleven of them in there,” she said. Her voice was calm, but her eyes were troubled. “I’m really out of my depth here, Clay.”
“You don’t seem like it,” he replied. “You’re taking all of this remarkably well.”
She snorted, and just like that she was back to the Ivy he’d been getting to know. Been getting to like more than he should. Because he could deal with base attraction, could understand it. But within three days he’d formed a bond with Ivy he’d never shared with another woman, and it bothered him on a scale that bordered on uncomfortable.
So he said nothing and turned on the phone, saw it had enough charge to make a call, then plugged it in, punched the preprogrammed number and put it on speaker.
“Are we compromised here?” he asked before Dev said anything.
“No,” Dev replied, and in the background Clay heard Cali say, “What the hell, Devin?”
He imagined her storming into HQ like she was taking the beach at Normandy.
“You’re staying in a condo I bought as an investment property back in the day,” he said. “When we started SMS I outfitted it as a safe house. Seemed like a good idea at the time.”
Clay blew out a breath. “Okay, what do you need from us? And does this hack have anything to do with Katie and Ivy and our altercations this afternoon?”
“Not us getting hacked,” Dev answered, “which is why I’m not concerned about Ivy’s phone. This is about SMS, not her, and her phone’s never been in this building or connected to our network in any way. All of our personal and work phones, though, were probably compromised.”
Ivy let out a huge whoosh of air in response. It almost made Clay smile. Almost.
“As for everything else that happened? That’s why I was trying to get in touch earlier, when you were attacked. We know who put the warrant into the system. Greg Hamilton.”
Ivy let out a sound that might have been a gasp, might have been a growl. “Katie’s ex?”
“The one and only,” Dev replied. “We got that information from LVMPD. Warren just touched down and will head over to the sheriff’s office tomorrow to get the lay of the land. I want to keep us off-grid as much as possible until I figure out who made it into my system. Everyone will be bunking down here for the night and running shifts on guard, including Cali and Jordan. I need you two to do the same until Warren checks in tomorrow. You should be secure there while I figure out how compromised we are. Jordan had already grabbed your things, but I want everyone under one roof, so they should be arriving via a trusted courier at the front desk in about half an hour.”
“That makes sense. Accountability check at 0700?”
“Affirm,” Dev said. "Your new phone has the same features as the old one. Install our tracker on Ivy's phone tonight. We need to know where both of you are at all times."
He disconnected and Clay felt Ivy staring at him, and it wasn’t in shock or fright.
He looked at her and saw she was smiling, that expression that seemed to light up the whole room. And right now it was sunshine personified with just a hint of naughty.
“Guess this means we don’t have to be super vigilant tonight, right?”
Heat shot through every pore of his body as he got her gist. Then she was shaking her head, laughing at his expression. Not deriding him but asking him to join in on a very private joke.
“Do I scare you, Clay?”
“You fucking petrify me,” he said honestly, and then laughed along with her.
And when he laid down in his very lonely bed on luxurious sheets that felt like silk against his bare skin, he cursed his scruples.