Chapter 17 #3
“Hell no.” He caught sight of his teammates closing in on the vehicle out of his peripheral vision.
Eva looked at him with pleading eyes. “I messed everything up. Let me fix it.”
Was she out of her mind? He’d never let her go.
“It’s me, or we have no deal,” Luke said firmly.
Eva swooped before him and grabbed hold of his cheek with her free hand.
She stared intently into his eyes and then crushed her mouth to his, kissing him with such a fierce intensity he nearly became dizzy, losing focus on what the hell was going on.
Her mouth found his ear, and she whispered, “I trust you.”
His heart plummeted as she attempted to pull free from his grasp, even offering her other hand to the enemy. “Let go,” she cried.
One of Malik’s men wrapped his arms around her hips as Malik held her other hand, pulling her toward the vehicle.
He had to let go of her hand to get a better hold on her body. But when he did, someone from behind tried to jerk him back.
“What the fuck are you doing?” he roared, betrayal cutting through his tone at the sight of Asher and Knox there.
Luke lurched toward the vehicle, pulling his teammates with him, only to have the door slam shut in his face, and he lost sight of Eva behind the tinted window.
“Get a car and follow her,” he commanded and began to chase the SUV once it was on the move.
He ran as far as he could but stopped once he’d lost sight of the vehicle. He took shallow breaths and whirled around to see Asher and Knox behind him.
He charged at them, punching Asher clean across the jaw. “Why are you here instead of following her? You fucking did this. You let her get taken!”
“They were following my orders,” Jessica said into his ear as Luke’s fist connected with Knox’s cheek next, rage consuming him.
Knox stepped back and surrendered, his palms in the air. “We’ll get her.”
“Get to the room,” Jessica hollered. “I’m sorry about this, but Eva knew what might happen, and I had to make the call. Blame me, not the guys.”
“Eva knew? What do you mean?”
Jessica remained quiet, and so he bolted across the plaza and to the hotel, not wanting to waste time.
The second he was inside the suite, he yelled, “Tell me what you know, and right this goddamn minute.”
“First, get ahold of yourself.” Jessica raised her hands between them.
“Get ahold of myself?” A broken attempt of laughter left his lips. “This is why I have rules. I broke my own fucking rules,” he muttered under his breath, staring at the floor as his eyes burned.
Maybe he was losing his mind.
Jessica’s hand rested on his back, and he heard her whisper to the room, “Can you give us a minute?”
He jerked away from his sister’s grasp and advanced across the room and slammed both palms against the windows, feeling the glass pane vibrate against his hands. “Tell me you have a tracking device in those diamonds you gave her,” he said, his tone gritty and sharp.
“Of course. You know I always have contingency plans.”
He spun around and eyed the computer she now held. “We’re already tracking her location, and I have someone en-route.”
He looked up and expelled a breath. The news didn’t change things, but at least they knew where she was. “I need to go.”
“Do you want them to kill her?”
He circled his sister so he could view the screen. The little blue moving dot held his eye, and his stomach tucked in.
“We have to wait. Besides, Eva didn’t just volunteer to get into his car tonight—it was her idea.”
He stared at his sister. Her eyes were like frosted glass. Where was her emotion? How could she remain so cool when the woman he cared about was with Malik Yilmaz?
“Explain,” he said as he tried to slow his heartbeat.
She moved away from him and set the laptop on the coffee table. “When you were shopping, Eva asked to speak to me alone. She proposed the idea of helping us get the safe without directly breaking Will’s orders.”
He gripped his temples, his stomach growing queasy by the minute.
“Swap her life for the code, then follow him to the safe, like we’ve wanted to do from day one. She asked that if the opportunity arose for her to get taken by Malik—”
“No!” He roared out the word and then blew past her and into the bathroom.
He’d never thrown up on a mission before, but he’d never had feelings like this, and shit . . . His palms bore down on the bathroom counter, and he splashed water on his face, trying to get a grip.
What’s happening to me?
“You okay?” she asked from behind.
“What the hell do you think?” He caught her eyes in the mirror before patting his face dry. “How could you go behind my back like this?”
“We knew you wouldn’t go for it. Besides, we had no idea if the situation would present itself.”
“Are you trying to tell me we lucked out with her being taken tonight?” He pounded his fist onto the granite counter. “Malik doesn’t even want the safe, apparently,” he said, fighting to control the anger inside of him. “So, what in the hell is it he wants?”
“I don’t know, but he hinted that we’ve misunderstood everything.”
“We’re in the dark. Fucking perfect.” He shoved past his sister. “I’m going after her.”
“Not yet. If he doesn’t leave a message with the hotel in two hours, then yeah, we go in for an extract. I have an armed team on standby.”
“Why would she risk her life like this?” His expression softened when he looked at her. “She’s a civilian.”
Her shoulders sagged. “Give her more credit than that. She deserves it.”
“Yeah, and if she dies? What the hell happens then?”
Two hours had dragged by, the minutes on the hotel clock moving excruciatingly slow.
When Luke had checked with the front desk there’d been no message.
Malik had been one minute late. That one minute had felt longer than the two hours.
“I’m in position. I have five heat signatures in total. Two at the exterior of the structure,” Owen reported. “Both men outside are armed. Small handguns. No AKs or M-17s that I can see.”
“He had three men with him. Malik plus Eva makes a total of five,” Knox said.
“It could be the terrorists who were after Odem that are inside, and Malik is handing us over to them on a silver platter,” Luke said as they stopped a block away from the address Malik had provided.
“It matches Eva’s tracker, though,” Knox reminded him. “Unless, of course, Malik made her lose the jewelry, anticipating our move.”
“Thanks for that.” Jessica shifted in the front passenger seat to look at Luke, sitting next to Knox.
“Keeping it real; what can I say?” Knox rested the Sig Sauer P226 on his lap and shrugged.
“If something happens to her, I will kill you.” Luke glared at Knox.
“Sure you will.” He held his palms in the air. “But, we’ll get her out. Relax.”
“Relax?” He leaned in closer, his chin jutting forward. “Tell me to relax when this is all over, and I’m sucking down gin on the beach. Don’t even think about saying that to me now. Got it?”
Knox’s attention swept to Jessica. “Damn. Have you ever seen him like this before?”
“I swear to God . . .” Luke tightened his hand around his own Sig.
“You’re up, Bravo Three,” Jessica announced through her comm.
“Roger that,” Asher said.
“And don’t get killed,” she added.
“You worried about me, Peaches?” Asher was on his way to Malik’s home to make first contact.
Luke had wanted to do it, but if things went sideways and Malik opened fire right away, he wouldn’t be able to save Eva if he wound up with a bullet in his head.
He didn’t want that to happen to Asher, of course, but someone had to do it, and Asher had insisted, probably as his way of apologizing for pulling him off Eva earlier.
Luke’s trigger finger itched, and he sealed his eyes as he prepared himself to face Malik—praying that Eva would be unharmed when he walked into the house.
She had to be okay. He couldn’t handle any other outcome.
“Just do your job,” Jessica shot back.
“Will do, Peaches.”