Chapter 13
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“I thought you were going to try and get some rack time.” Luke checked his watch. “Let us handle things for a bit.”
After what almost happened with Adriana, how the hell could he sleep?
He’d nearly taken her into his arms and let her know how he really felt about her.
His dick was growing hard thinking about it. Sitting on a couch in front of his team leader no less. Damn it.
He grabbed a pillow and brought it to his lap.
“I can’t sleep. I’m doing everything I can to refrain from banging down my dad’s door and telling him to fuck off.” And to keep from banging down Adriana’s door and tackling her onto the bed where he’d rip off those tiny pajama shorts of hers.
But he’d been good for almost twenty very long years.
He’d done his best not to cross the line. Even when she tiptoed along like she was on a tightrope, he carefully kept her from falling.
Maybe if she didn’t skirt that line only after she’d been hitting the hard stuff, he’d give in and tell her how much he wanted to be not just her eighth date, but her final one.
She knew he cared. Didn’t she? He didn’t know too many straight guys willing or able to recite the lines of every Patrick Swayze movie, and yeah, that was all for her. And he had no regrets.
Well, except for his greatest regret of all, the fact he’d kept his true feelings hidden from her.
He’d thought after Adriana had healed from the loss of her mother—maybe when she was eighteen, he’d tell her how he felt.
Then college and the Navy became barriers.
And in his current line of work, how could he start something “more” with her when the lies about his job felt thicker than the phonebook?
How many times had he wanted to say, I’m still a SEAL, but the world doesn’t know it?
When Bravo Three, Marcus, had died and Asher replaced him . . . God, he’d wanted to break down and tell her, but instead, he’d shown up shit-faced at her door with zero explanation.
When Jessica had a bomb strapped to her chest in Berlin last year, he’d been a nervous wreck. Adriana had never met Jessica, which was a good thing because she might have recognized her on the news. And how would he have answered those questions?
And then there was the time when Liam was in a coma, on the verge of death. Knox kept it together for the sake of Emily, Liam’s wife. He’d been her rock when in reality he felt like he was dying on the inside, so desperate to hear Adriana’s voice to get through it.
The list went on and on. All the times, good as well as bad, that he’d wanted to confide in her, tell her everything.
But he hadn’t.
He’d kept the world of cartel leaders, terrorists, and murdering thugs to within the teams.
“What happened?” Luke’s voice startled him. Shit, he’d forgotten where the hell he was.
What had they been talking about?
He regrouped. Remembered. Then whispered, “Political bullshit.”
“You want to talk about it?” Luke set aside his black-rimmed glasses and leaned back in the swivel chair at the desk.
“Not really.” He glanced around the empty suite. “Where’s everyone?”
“Getting rack time like you should.”
“But Bravo One doesn’t need sleep, huh?” He rested his head on the back of the couch and stared at the ceiling. “You ever regret bringing me onto the team? You were worried about my dad before we started.” He shifted upright at his words. “Scratch that. Dumb question. But damn.”
“You know the man I was up until a few years ago isn’t the man I am now.”
True. Luke had been different. Colder. Harder. A no-marriage rule for the guys.
“But Eva changed everything. And Sam for Owen. Emily for Liam.” Am I the last single guy on Bravo? “And well, Asher changed things for Jessica, I suppose.” The guys on Echo would probably be next. “I’m gonna die single and alone.”
“You won’t be alone. You have Adriana, a woman you’ve apparently been holding out on us.”
“Yeah, sorry. I thought if I brought her around, it’d make lying to her more difficult.” The truth flew quickly from his lips because he knew if anyone would understand it’d be Luke.
“It would’ve never worked out with Eva if I’d kept a lie between us.”
“And luckily you didn’t have to—”
“I broke the rules.” His jaw tightened beneath his beard as his brows lowered. “You know that.”
“And you had your reasons. Things were different.” Was Luke giving him unspoken permission to tell Adriana the truth?
Knox rose from the couch and locked his arms across his chest, attempting to decipher his team leader’s message.
“Yeah, Eva got caught up in the middle of a shit show, and the woman is crazy inquisitive, but rules are rules, man.”
And you broke them. But Luke hadn’t lied to Eva for seven years.
Would Adriana forgive him? She said she wanted to be included in his so-called other life, but she didn’t really understand what that meant.
Even if the teams were done after the election, he knew himself and the guys, they’d never stop helping people, as long as they were able to, which would always put a target on them.
“Anyway.” He couldn’t think about this right now.
He’d been off since his dad won the primary and shit had gotten real for the teams. Couple that with spending the last few weeks in D.C.
with the woman he wanted but couldn’t have .
. . well, yeah, wires had been crossed, and he was on the verge of short-circuiting.
“I don’t know if we can trust my dad to do the right thing if elected. ”
“Your father may be the only chance we’ve got, but so we’re clear, if you leave Bravo because of him . . . we all leave. But before we worry about the election, let’s—”
“Find the real shooter.” Knox nodded. “Anything new?”
“No.” Luke reached for his glasses and pulled his laptop closer.
“Harper’s coming up empty in New York. No visuals on Aaron or Sarah since the shooting.
And whoever it was that actually took Sarah out of that hotel yesterday must’ve known where every camera was located because he pulled a Harry Fucking Houdini. ”
“I gotta figure out who hated my dad enough to try and kill him, and who’d have the means to nearly pull it off.”
“Not to be a dick, but based on what I heard, there are a lot of people who’ve threatened your family. That’s a lot of names to go through, and I honestly don’t think our shooter, or whoever hired him, is dumb enough to send a threat.”
“Right.” He placed his hand beneath his chin and cracked his neck. “We need to clear Aaron’s name so we can get the full weight of the government behind us. Aaron must be in the woods somewhere. He’s trained to blend in. Maybe he hunts.”
“No, the guy hates killing animals.” A.J. was in the doorway of the connecting bedroom.
“Thanks for not coming out here in your boxers.” A smile landed on Knox’s face.
“Yeah, well, the damn Brit threatened to cut off my nut sack if I slept in my skivvies in the same room as him.” The man bled Alabama with almost every word he spoke when he was tired.
“So,” Luke began, “you don’t think Aaron would ever hunt? People can change.”
“Nah.” He strode farther into the room. “Terrorists were like cockroaches to him, though. He made a distinction. But maybe his cousin or a friend has a hunting spot he knew about.”
“I’m sure the Feds have checked all that out, but we’ll take a look in case,” Luke said.
“And how’d it go with Wonder Woman?” A.J. plopped onto the couch and yawned.
It hadn’t gone how he’d expected, that was for sure.
He hadn’t intended to see her in her pink panties with her ass cheeks peeking out like a please-bite-me surprise.
“She didn’t tell me anything,” he said with a cough to try and keep his dick from leaping to attention again at the thought of her.
He just got that sucker back down. “But, um, she’s going to take me to Aaron’s girlfriend’s apartment in the morning so I can question her. ”
“Mind if I come with?” A.J. asked. “There’s something I don’t trust about this Chelsea woman.”
“You haven’t even met her,” Luke commented.
“I don’t need to, to know something ain’t right about her,” A.J. said. “She applied to every single job that hotel had available. From reservations to room service.”
“She was new to Charlotte and needed a job,” Knox replied.
“Did she apply anywhere else?” A.J. asked.
“I don’t think we checked,” Luke responded. “We’ve been focused on—”
“Everyone but Chelsea,” A.J. cut him off. “I think she’s another tenth-floor distraction.”
Knox’s spine straightened. “You think she targeted Aaron, not the other way around?”
“Maybe you’re right.” Luke flipped his computer around. “She only applied to that hotel, which seems odd for someone who might be desperate for a job in a new city.”
“I don’t think I want to wait until tomorrow to talk to her. I want answers now.” He moved to their heavy-duty weapons case at the far side of the room, pressed his palm to the scanner, and waited for it to unlock to grab his 45.
“You can’t go knocking on her door at night,” Luke reminded him.
“And shit, she has detail parked outside her apartment, too,” Knox grumbled.
“Let’s stick to the plan of heading to her place in the morning,” Luke said. “I’ll have Harper run Chelsea’s face through our program and find out what she’s been up to lately.”
“If she’s framing Aaron, she could’ve easily typed up that email from his computer, too. Someone, maybe Chelsea, planted the threat to lead the Feds to Aaron. A last-minute email that wasn’t supposed to be found until after the shooter killed my dad.”
“But since the shooter missed, the real gunman couldn’t let Aaron get picked up by the police yet,” Luke added.
“They need him on the run so they can come after my dad again and make it look like it’s Aaron.”
“Still don’t get why they let Aaron live in the first place. But then again they picked a guy without two names to frame. They clearly don’t know their political assassination history,” A.J. said. “Lucky for Aaron.”
“But does this mean what I think it means?” Luke looked at Knox. “That whoever leaked Aaron’s name to the press could be the real shooter, or at least connected somehow?”