Chapter 28
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
A.J. reached his arm out to the side as he lay on his back in bed, only to find Ana’s place next to him empty.
He’d slept like a log all night and had no idea what time it was, but as far as he was concerned, there was still too much sunlight in the bedroom of the two-story cabin they were using as a safe house.
He sat up in bed slowly, kicked the covers off him since they’d slept with the A/C blasting, and lifted his watch from the bedside table. “Ten?” Holy hell. When was the last time he’d slept until ten?
Memories of making love with Ana at Grant’s house flew back to mind as he dropped his bare feet to the wood floors. He’d planned on a round two and three, but then his brother had shown up and everything changed.
When they arrived at the new safe house last night, he and Ana were emotionally and physically spent, so they’d crawled into bed. He’d wrapped her in his arms, waited for her to sleep, then allowed himself to pass out.
But where was she now?
He grabbed the sidearm he’d stowed just beneath the bed for emergencies and left the bedroom. The aroma of coffee hit his nose as he neared the stairs. The smell of eggs and burnt toast, too. When did Ana get food?
He went down the steps two at a time and halted in the entryway to the kitchen at the sight of Ana, Chris, and Finn sitting at the small round table in the breakfast nook that overlooked the forest behind the house.
“So nice of you to join us,” Finn said, catching A.J.’s eyes first. Finn’s greeting had Ana turning in her seat to peer at him.
She had on a pair of jeans and a loose-fitting black top. Her hair was down and wavy, still damp from a shower, and her cheeks had a healthy glow now that she’d had some sleep. “I didn’t want to wake you.”
Chris stood and stretched his back, coffee mug in hand. Then reached into his pocket, pulled out a twenty-dollar bill, and slapped it into Finn’s extended palm.
“Told you he’d join us in his skivvies and holding a gun,” Finn said with a laugh, accepting the payout.
A.J. dropped his eyes to his red cotton boxers as he strode farther in, then set his gun on the kitchen counter off to the side. “When did y’all get in? I didn’t hear you.”
Finn winked and stood, going for a refill of coffee. “Stealthy like that, bro.”
A.J. opened his mouth to crack a wise-ass comment, but he lost his train of thought when Ana padded his way.
“Good morning.” He wanted to pull her against him, but he had Echo Three and Five watching his every move. There was probably another bet about whether he’d already hooked up with Ana.
Just wait until you fall in . . . He cleared his throat and blinked a few times. “Where’s Roman and Harper?”
“On the phone with Jessica in one of the rooms down the hall. That or making out.” Chris walked by Ana, then shoulder-checked A.J. as he made his way to the coffee pot as well.
“Yeah, right,” Finn said. “That man will never get his head out of his head for that to happen.”
“His ‘head out of his head’?” Chris glared at him with an amused expression. “I swear, brother, you’re way more John Krasinski The Office than you are John Krasinski Jack Ryan.”
“You left the pot empty,” Chris said, his tone light. “Rule number, like, fifteen or something, no leaving the coffee pot empty.”
When both the guys had their backs turned to A.J., he took a quick second to step in and sneak a kiss on Ana’s cheek. Yeah, he could be stealthy, too. As long as his mom wasn’t around. Or Beckett, apparently.
“Smart picking up groceries before you got here.” A.J. leaned his back against the counter in the wide-open kitchen and folded his arms, in no rush to go put on clothes.
“Better than MREs,” Finn commented casually, facing him again. Though his words said otherwise, A.J. knew Finn was in recon-mode, gathering as much intel as he could by observing Ana and A.J. while Chris brewed a new pot of coffee, and it was unnerving as hell.
Ana stood beside A.J., her eyes fixated on the view outside the window, seemingly lost in thought.
“Is it twin day?” A.J. joked, eying Chris and Finn’s matching outfits. Jeans and an army green V-neck tee.
Chris looked over his shoulder and winked. “We can be triplets if you go and cover up all that manliness.”
A.J. brought his hands to his six-pack and grinned. “You’re just jealous you have to work out twice as hard to keep up with this bod.”
“You guys really do use humor as a survival tool.” Ana’s focus returned to the guys. “I like it. Makes all of this easier.”
All of this. Yeah, there was a hell of a lot of “this” they still had to unpack over the next few days to wrap up the case and clear Ana’s name.
“No other way to handle it,” Chris said as Roman and Harper joined them in the kitchen.
“You’re finally up.” Harper went straight to the coffee pot, and Chris stepped aside to allow her first dibs.
“Any updates from Jessica?” Ana pinned her shoulders back as though entering “work-mode.”
Harper filled the mug but handed it off to Roman, who thanked her and took a seat in the breakfast nook. “Director Mendez is being tight-lipped about whatever he may know, which means we might have to pull him in.”
“That’d be a big step,” Chris commented. “I don’t like the idea of him knowing about us.”
“And what’s there to know?” Ana challenged, her lips tipping into a cute, knowing smile.
The woman already knew the answer. She got the read on them a long time ago.
“Superhero.” Chris shot her a lazy grin as A.J. repositioned himself to view everyone in the kitchen.
Ana blew a strand of hair from her face. “You really are all the same.”
“You have no idea.” Harper filled another mug, offered it to Chris, then poured her own cup.
“I really don’t want Mendez read in on what we actually do.” Finn sat across from Roman at the table.
That made two of them. Well, probably all of Echo and Bravo would agree. He’d prefer Director Mendez continue to believe they were only private military contractors at Scott & Scott.
“Does this mean you don’t yet have the unredacted report from the night my parents died?” Ana asked, her voice more serious.
“Not yet, and the FBI director fifteen years ago is retired, so he won’t be able to comment on any classified cases he oversaw while at the Bureau.
” Harper went to the four-person round table and sat between Roman and Finn.
She set her coffee down and tightened the knot of her ponytail.
Today she’d gone with a surprisingly plain white tee to pair with her jeans.
And maybe he should get clothes on? The coffee could wait.
“Gonna get dressed before we talk about stuff that might make my head spin.” He reached for Ana’s elbow, feeling the urge to kiss her before going off to get dressed, but then he caught himself and pulled away, given they had an audience. “Yeah, um, be back.”
He grabbed his gun and went upstairs to his room. Opting not to be a triplet, he threw on a pair of jeans and a red tee before powering up his phone. More missed calls from his family. More messages.
He didn’t have the heart to listen to any of them. That problem would have to wait until after the Volkov and SVR threats were put to bed. Ana’s safety and national security were his priorities.
After turning off his phone and tucking his guilt away, he hurried back down the stairs to join the team.
“You’re shitting me. Count Dracula isn’t real,” Chris was saying as A.J. returned to the kitchen, and how the hell had they gone from redacted case files to vampires in the time it took him to get dressed? “I know you’re like an encyclopedia of random facts, but no, you’re not gonna—”
“Dracula is based on a real man,” Roman said. “Vlad the Impaler. Look it up.”
Ana was sitting at the table, too, and Finn remained standing, his back to the window off to the side of the table, mug in hand. “You missed a lot, buddy,” he told A.J.
“So it would seem.” A.J. grabbed a coffee and set his palm to the L-shaped counter that served as the divide between the breakfast nook and where he stood. “How did Dracula get brought up?”
“It all started when Roman asked me about the two times I was in Budapest. The first time was three months before the shooting at the movie theater, and the second time was a week before the shooting,” she reminded him. Her matter-of-fact voice was empty of emotion.
A.J. would have been more worried by her tone, but he recognized what she was doing. She’d distanced herself from the tragic event, and it was like she was telling the story of someone else’s life. That it hadn’t been her parents who’d died.
He did his best to keep his feet planted firmly in place even though he wanted to take her in his arms and comfort her. “And how does that involve Dracula?”
“Vlad the Impaler, aka Count Dracula, was allegedly tortured and imprisoned down in the labyrinth where Ana visited both times she was in Hungary. The place was once a prison and torture chamber—”
“Don’t forget a Turkish harem,” Finn interrupted.
“Sex and torture,” Chris said with a laugh. “Sounds about right.”
“Sounds like you’ve been doing it wrong,” Finn teased.
“Define ‘it,’” Chris shot back, and the boys would keep at this forever if Harper didn’t stop them soon.
“Boys,” Ana said at the exact moment Harper clapped twice, grinning that Ana had quickly caught on to their antics and brought them to heel like she was one of them now (and in his mind, she was).