Chapter 26
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Rory knelt on the gray stone pavers and wrapped her arms around Bear. She’d grown attached to him after their week together. When she leaned back to find Bear’s eyes, he ran his tongue up her cheek, leaving a trail of slobber behind.
“Got her nice and good, didn’t ya, boy?” Chris crouched and scratched Bear behind the ears, and Bear loved every second of the attention.
Jessica had arrived with Bear only a minute or two ago. Once the decision was made that it was safe, her husband had picked her up where she’d been waiting a mile away.
“Still can’t believe they all showed up.
” Rory peeked at Chris as they both rose.
He’d changed into a new pair of darker denim jeans and a black, short-sleeved shirt he’d grabbed from the original guest room he’d been locked up in.
And he had on his Red Sox ball cap A.J. had given him, the bill facing backward.
A.J. said he’d grabbed it from Chris’s house in case Bear would need to try and track Chris’s scent.
“Of course, we all came,” A.J. said, catching her by surprise since she hadn’t realized he was behind her. “We weren’t about to lose anyone else.”
Rory reached for a mug on the table in the outdoor dining area, the very spot where she’d learned Jolie was Rebecca, and poured herself a cup of java, not sharing their concerns about poison.
A.J. scrutinized her coffee with narrowed eyes as if toying with the idea of stealing her cup and tossing it or possibly drinking it himself. “How’d you sleep?”
She opened her mouth to reply, but then realized the question was for Roman, who was now at her six.
“Harper wouldn’t let me sleep on the floor, so I slept horribly.” Yeah, Roman’s words made absolutely no sense unless . . .
Ohhhh. Was sleeping next to Harper hard because she made him hard?
And did she really just think those thoughts?
Rory took a big gulp of coffee, desperate for her brain to wake up.
She’d taken a five-minute shower and changed into jeans and a white, short-sleeved tee before joining everyone for a breakfast no one had any intention of eating.
Chris had stolen a few minutes of that shower to “relax” her, which had resulted in her brain becoming mush. And maybe she’d purposefully stripped out of her clothes and let her hips sway with extra emphasis while padding to the shower in front of him.
She’d looked over her shoulder to find him tossing his clothes like they were on fire, then heading for her with decisive steps. He’d dropped to his knees on the tiled floor in front of her, parted her thighs with his strong hands, and then proceeded to relax her with his tongue.
Her shower had been mostly spent having an incredible orgasm while bucking wildly against his mouth beneath the spray.
She owed him some relaxation time later, too.
Maybe they were insane for having those kinds of moments given everything that had gone down, or maybe they were the perfect amount of crazy for each other.
They both loved thrills and action. And shouldn’t intense, dramatic moments in life be interspersed with love and passion?
Chills raced over her skin and made her shiver as she remembered watching the water sluice down his muscular frame while his tongue slid up and down her seam this morning.
Chris must’ve read her thoughts because when she looked his way, the smirk on his face said it all.
Dirty, dirty boy. “We need to focus,” she mouthed to him, assuming his thoughts were where hers had gone.
“Yes, ma’am,” Chris mouthed right back, then wet his lips, making her body flare with desire once again.
What you deserve is payback. At some point, when she finally got her mouth around him, she’d be merciless.
Chris maneuvered his way between where Roman and A.J. stood and poured himself a cup of coffee. Rory chuckled as the rest of the team fell in line, obviously deciding their need for coffee was worth taking the chance of being poisoned.
Chris stood off to the side of the table near Rory and set a hand to the small of her back, his large palm dangerously close to curving over her ass. “Bad guys. How can I think of bad guys when all I can think about is kissing your sweet—”
“We’re crazy,” she whispered, cutting him off.
“For each other, yeah.” He peeked at her and smiled. “Too cheesy?”
“Maybe a little bit.” But if he was cheesy, so was she because she’d thought the same thing seconds ago.
Rory pulled her focus from Chris when Finn approached them. “This home is a little too ‘say hello to my little friend,’ don’t you think?” he asked in an accent, making a laughable impression of Al Pacino.
Rory viewed the three-story home, where two armed guards looked down at them from a second-floor balcony. The main difference between this home and the one in the movie was the pool was on the other side of the house instead of directly below the balcony. “Yeah, total Scarface vibe, for sure.”
Finn grinned and looked to Chris. “She’s a keeper. And speaking of houses, what gives? Didn’t Carter leave the Agency? How is he pulling this off?” he asked, sweeping his hand toward the estate.
“Well, first of all, it’s probably rented,” Rory answered for Chris. “But according to Harper, he and his wife inherited money, and they’re ‘Kennedy rich,’ which would make this just another Tuesday for him,” she said, using her fingers for the air quotes.
Finn scratched the back of his head as if a stretch of unease had suddenly filled him, a contrast to the playful moment just before.
“I’m, uh, really sorry it took us so long to get to you.
” Humor to concern in a blink of an eye.
These guys had switches they were able to flip so quickly.
She supposed she could relate given her line of work before she’d changed gears to train canines.
And wow, her transition to training had resulted in her being with one of the men who helped take down Alvin Santiago.
What would have happened had she not said yes to training Bear?
Would the bad guys have found her in New Orleans?
She would have been all alone in this, and as bad as she felt for getting Chris and the others involved, it appeared they were together for a reason, and somehow, Elaina had known that needed to happen.
“It’s only Monday, and we’re a long way from D.C.
I’d say you found us incredibly fast,” Rory exclaimed when Chris had yet to speak.
He was probably beating himself up that they were grabbed twice that weekend.
Technically three times if she included Carter.
But it was insane for Chris to berate himself for any of it.
“And this genius, well, she’s the reason we found you,” Finn said after clearing his throat, pointing to Jessica heading their way.
Jessica smiled and pushed her sunglasses to the top of her head, her blonde hair framing her face.
She looked part CIA, part mom of twins, standing in jeans and a long-sleeved, white shirt.
A faded stain on her shirt pocket as if spit-up had been strategically placed by her twins in the spot one too many times.
“There are some surveillance photos I’d like to show you two before Carter comes out here. ”
“Of course,” Rory replied and followed Jessica away from the dining area.
“These are from the hotel security cams.” Jessica handed her phone to Rory. “Recognize anyone?”
Chris looked on as Rory slowly swiped through the images.
“She looks familiar.” Rory paused on a brunette and showed the photo to Jessica.
“She led us to the island, actually,” Jessica replied.
“There weren’t any women on the yacht, though,” Chris noted. “But I remember that woman having a word with Cutter while we were talking to him at the gala.”
“She was also seen in the driver’s seat of an ambulance, the one that the three fake firefighters loaded you all into Friday night,” Jessica explained.
So, Harper’s theory had been correct. “Then, with my facial recognition software, I located her here yesterday on the island, and we hopped the first flight down once we made sure our families were protected. That woman and two men chartered a boat yesterday afternoon. But then we overheard an interesting conversation from a fisherman at the port about two ‘hot women’ and two ‘studs’ that had been shipwrecked, who his boss sold for a fortune.”
Yeah, that wasn’t a real fisherman.
“We pushed for information,” Jessica went on, “and we got Carter’s name as the buyer. After, we did some digging and finally found your location early this morning.”
Impressive. “And more proof Andrew’s involved.”
“Cutter’s on a salvage vessel thirty minutes from the coast searching for some new treasure find,” Jessica said. “He also arrived yesterday. We haven’t made contact because we learned of your whereabouts, and you guys were the priority.”
Andrew’s that close? She swiped through a few more photos before landing on the guy with the green mamba neck tattoo and a scar resembling a seven near his eye.
“That’s Jensen Fitzpatrick.” She showed Jessica the image.
“He was on the yacht, and now he’s dead.
But his cousin, Danny, we need to find him.
” She quickly explained Danny’s involvement, along with Jensen’s, while she checked the rest of Jessica’s photos.
“I’ll see what I can pull up on him. Thankfully, we’re not in a Mission Impossible film where people can just buy themselves a whole new face.
Plastic surgery might fool some facial recognition software programs, but I have a few tricks up my sleeve,” Jessica said with a grin.
“Carter was probably working with old tech from the Agency when he ran Danny’s face. ”