Chapter 11
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“Wow. You’re good.” She didn’t wait for an invite and brushed past him into his bedroom.
“You keep showing up after I take a shower.” He tightened the towel around his hips.
She whirled around and stabbed a finger in the air, a scowl marring her lips. “You tricked me. You distracted me with the kiss, so I’d forget about my questions.”
“That wasn’t my . . .” He allowed his voice to trail off as amusement pinned him still. With a lift of the chin, she edged closer as if she could intimidate. Good try, Hollywood.
“Is that a SEAL tactic?”
“Yeah, we go around making out with terrorists to get them to—” Did I just admit I was a SEAL? He cleared his throat and sidestepped her to go to the bathroom and get dressed. This wasn’t a conversation he planned on having wearing only a towel.
“You’re frustrating.” Her voice dangled along the fine line between exasperated and defeated.
He stopped outside the bathroom, and his arms swooped up.
His palms landed on the exterior frame of the door.
“I’m the frustrating one, huh?” Her eye contact was on point when he faced her again, but he could tell she wanted to lower her gaze, and it made his cock twitch.
“You’re the one who has been a thorn in my ass ever since you broke the deal and showed up at the cabin. ”
“They’re my cabins!”
He stabbed a finger at his chest. “And I paid for them.”
“That’s semantics.” She waved a dismissive hand.
“Not really,” he grumbled before retreating to the bathroom.
“You’re not walking away from this conversation. I want my questions answered.”
“You can join me in here, but I plan on dropping this towel in a second to get dressed.” With his back to the vanity, he folded his arms.
“Go ahead,” she said, but heat stained her cheeks.
Oh, he would. Did she not realize that? But he also knew he’d have to give her mouth-to-mouth and resuscitate her after. Maybe that’d be a hardship he was willing to endure.
“No more deception. I want answers.”
He scoffed and crossed an ankle over his foot, and he could tell his casual stance further pissed her off. “I’m not deceiving you.”
“I need to know what I’m up against.” She dropped her eyes to the checkered tiles. “What partial code will these assholes try and torture out of me?”
“I won’t let them get to you.”
“You can’t know that for sure.”
“Listen.” He took a breath, trying to steady his emotions. “It’s my job to keep civilians from knowing about all of the evil in the world. You’d never be able to sleep at night if you knew the news barely scratches the surface of the kind of shit I’ve seen . . . and stopped.”
“I’m not just anyone,” she said softly. “I’m in this with you now, whether I want to be or not.”
He stepped forward and placed a fist beneath her chin so his gaze could meet her eyes. “And this isn’t a story. You can’t write yourself out of it. This is real life, and real life is messy.”
“That’s not fair. Don’t try and make me out to be some na?ve girl,” she whispered, her bottom lip trembling.
His jaw locked tight at her slip of emotion. “It’s hard for me to figure out whether you’re scared, and your walls are on the verge of crumbling, or if you really are strong enough to get through this.”
She kept her eyes on him, her lips tightening. Maybe she didn’t know either.
“What good will come from you knowing?” he asked when she kept quiet.
Her eyes became damp, and his arm dropped heavy at his side.
“If I have to die, I want to know why. I want to know what I’m dying for.”
He lightly gripped her shoulders. He’d never made this promise before, but he couldn’t get himself to say anything else. To believe anything else to be true. “You’re not going to die. How many times do I have to tell you that?”
“Please,” she murmured, the sound like the first prick of a tattoo needle—it pierced his flesh.
His stomach dropped knowing he was about to break protocol.
He was the king of rules and regulations, a stickler for policy.
His men fell in line behind him, so why was he going to be the first to let a civilian in on a mission?
But she already knew so much at this point.
Did it even matter? “Can I at least get clothes on first?”
She softly nodded and wiped at the tear on her cheek.
He took his time getting dressed in the bathroom once she’d left.
A million thoughts and objections raced through his mind like a derailed freight train—everything becoming jumbled in a sudden crash.
When he entered the room, he found her sitting on the bed, denim-clad legs stretched out in front of her. Her gaze slowly drifted his way.
“Where do you want me to start?”
“How about from the beginning,” she said, not skipping a beat.
“I’ll tell you what I can without too many specifics, but I can’t give you details about me. Okay?”
She nodded.
He tucked his hands beneath his armpits. “Five weeks ago, a man called the U.S. government and asked for protection.”
“He was in danger?”
“Yeah. He worked with criminals around the world if it paid well. He didn’t care about a cause, only financial gain.
” His words were like a slap of betrayal toward his superiors for sharing the information and unease continued to fill him.
“His name had been on Interpol’s list for years, but he never stayed in one place long, and because he was more of an intermediary between terror groups, it proved harder to catch him. ”
“So, who’d he need protection from?”
“The guy had stockpiled intel on all of the groups he’d ever made deals with—his own insurance policy if shit ever got hairy.”
“But it backfired?”
“Someone,” he said while waving a hand in the air, “maybe even more than one organization discovered he’d been holding intel that could be damaging.”
“Why not just blackmail them like he planned?”
“You’re quick.” He shifted his weight to one leg and pressed a palm to one of the four bedposts. “He never got a chance to. He was shot but managed to escape, and that’s when he called the U.S. for help.”
She looked up in thought. “In exchange for protection he’d provide the U.S. with the intel he had on every terrorist organization he’d ever worked for?”
“Yup.”
“That could be really useful. What happened?”
He thought about the failed exchange four weeks ago between the CIA operative Reggie Deeks and Odem Yilmaz, but he couldn’t share that much with her, even if the info was on the tip of his tongue.
“One access code to the safe was provided, but he mentioned he also had a silent partner in all of this, and that partner had a code as well. To access the safe, both codes must be entered at the same time or else all the data will be lost.”
“Really? Sounds like a script I wrote last year and pitched to Hollywood. They turned it down, saying it wasn’t realistic enough.” Her lips twitched into a smile but quickly faded. “What happened next?” She sat up taller.
“That silent partner was his brother—Malik.”
He allowed the name to sit with her for a moment, so she could connect the dots. “That’s why Malik’s after you?”
“Yeah. Malik’s brother—Ender’s father—was killed before he could provide that information. The assumption is that Malik had him murdered to get the code.”
“The man who had me strip, it was his dad who’d made the deal and died?” She arched a brow.
“Yeah.”
“Why would he work with his uncle then? That seems strange to me.”
You and me both.
“How’d you get a hold of this guy’s code if he died?”
He heaved out a deep breath. “I managed to obtain it three weeks ago from the guy who killed him.”
“I assume our government still wants the contents of the safe. So, you need Malik, and he needs you.”
“Precisely.” He nodded, slightly baffled by the conversation he was having—with a civilian, of all people. A gorgeous woman from Hollywood.
“You used yourself as bait to try and get Malik to come for you so you could get his code.” She pressed her fingertips to her forehead. “Why would Malik have his brother killed? Wouldn’t he need protection, too, for the same reason his brother did?”
“The story we’re working with is that Malik and Ender saw him as a traitor for making a deal with the U.S. even if his reasons were to stay alive—which is why he probably never gave his son the code.”
She dropped her hand and stood. “Sounds like you don’t believe that.”
He gave a half-hearted shrug.
“Hm. Well, was this Malik also on Interpol’s radar before all of this?”
His stomach tightened with regret. “No one knew about him.”
“That’s hard to believe.” She took a few tentative steps his way, focusing on his eyes as if searching for answers.
“Yeah, well, he’s a diplomat and has been living under our goddamn noses in Manhattan.”
“Oh, God.”
The reality was sinking in for her, and he scratched at his jaw, not sure what else to say.
“I can see why you’re so angry with me.”
“I’m just angry. Period,” he said in a low voice.
“I guess I really did screw everything up.” She dropped back onto the bed, and her palms covered her face.
He sat next to her. “We’ll make it work out. Don’t worry.” He’d get his target, but he wasn’t sure what the hell would happen to Eva once the dust settled. “Do you regret knowing all of this?”
“No, I don’t think so.” She rose and hooked her thumbs into her back pockets.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” He clasped his hands together, resting his elbows on his thighs as he observed her, worried about the terror that clung to her face, wishing he could take back his words and keep her safe from the ugly world once more.
“I’ll fake it until I make it. That’s what I used to do when I was Everly.”
He stood. “And how’d that work out for you?”
Her lip briefly caught between her teeth. “Not so great, I suppose.”
“I’ll get you through this.”
She nodded and headed for the door, her normal confident stride off.
“Don’t go,” he found himself sputtering unexpectedly, and a pair of hazel eyes met his.
After a deep breath, he shook loose the swirl of desire that became hard and greedy in the pit of his stomach. Bad timing to want a woman after dropping such a bomb, but in his line of work, when was it a good time? “Let me help take your mind off everything.”
She pivoted all the way around. “You can wipe that cocky smile off your face.”
He laughed. “I was thinking maybe we could play a game.”
A chill must’ve swept down her spine because he noticed the slightest tremble in her shoulders at his words.
“I’m talking chess, not strip poker.” Although he wouldn’t mind so much putting all of his cards on the table and making a couple of loose wagers that could end with his tongue in her sweet mouth again.
“Of course you’d want to play a game that involves strategy.”
“What’s wrong with that?” He smiled again, probably the “cocky smile” she’d called him out on moments ago.
Another step had his hand landing on his chest, the feel of his own heart pounding against his palm like the moment before he’d fast-rope out of a helo. “You want to play something a little friendlier? We can check out the office and see what they have.”
God, was he really offering to play a board game when all he wanted was to spend the next couple of hours making out like bad guys didn’t exist?
How’d he go from talking about terrorists to imagining himself deep inside of her? Being away from his team and out of the driver’s seat on an op—it was throwing him off.
“I guess I could use a distraction. I doubt I’m up for writing, anyway.”
“A distraction it is, then.” He just had to remind himself that sex could not be the distraction, even if it’d be the best possible one.