Chasing grace a joint ta.., p.18
CHASING GRACE: A Joint Task Team Novel, page 18
Volume steadily increasing, she shouted, “Don’t you dare!”
“You almost died! You want to talk about inches. An inch to the left and you would’ve come home from Jordan in a pine box. You think Jackson cared? He sent you to Kabul three days after you were discharged from the hospital.”
“At least he cared enough to come see me in the hospital,” she shot back.
“Once. He went to see you once. I was there every damn day for the first week and a half. Hell, I rode in the back of the fucking ambulance from Homestead Air Reserve Base to Miami Memorial.”
Her mouth dropped open. “That was you?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, you’re a shitty fucking paramedic!”
Adam threw his hands in the air. “You were hopped up on morphine and out cold three seconds after we loaded you in. How the fuck would you know?” His gray eyes held hers, and she saw the moment they softened. “I will always come for you, squirt. No matter where. No matter when. You know that, right?”
Her vision blurred as the chains around her heart loosened. “How could I possibly know that? I thought you were dead, dickhead.”
“I know, and I’m sorry. I didn’t expect to be undercover this long, or…”
She wiped at a leaky eye. “For me to go off the rails.”
He snorted. “You kidding me? I totally expected you to go off the rails. I just didn’t think you’d go out and get shot in the process.”
Oh God. The bubble of laughter started deep in her belly, shaking her insides until it erupted from her like water through a busted pipe.
Her brother was alive.
Alive and pissed at her for being shot—through no fault of her own.
She doubled over, arms wrapped around her middle. Her laughter bordering on hysterical, her stomach muscles started to spasm. “You think—” Shit. She couldn’t catch her breath. “You think I went out and got shot on purpose? I love you, and I love Mom, but it was an accident, Adam. I didn’t try to off myself in grief.”
“Maybe not.” He waited for her to gain some control. “But you never should have been in Ruwaished. It wasn’t safe.”
“Truth in pictures, Adam. It’s my calling, as much as saving the world is yours. You, of all people, should understand what that means. Jesus, you’re the one who gave me my first camera. You set me on this path, and now you’re mad at me?”
He shook his head. “I’m not mad. I’m terrified I’ll lose you.”
“Well, how do you think I felt all those times you left? You think I wasn’t terrified?” She poked herself in the chest. “You think I didn’t fall apart when you didn’t come home from Iraq? You put me through hell.”
“I know, and I’m sorry I hurt you. Your photographs are amazing. Honestly, I’m so proud of you. The Syrian refugee series totally blew me away, but…”
“But?”
“I want you to be safe. That’s all.”
“So what now?”
“That depends.”
“On?”
“On whether or not you can forgive me.”
“Do you promise not to fake die on me again?”
“Promise.”
“Okay. I’ll consider letting you off the hook.” She nodded and grinned, feeling lighter than she had in years despite the tears still blurring her vision. “I’ll let you know when I decide.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Adam’s head pounded like he’d put it through the wall—repeatedly. As far as family reunions went, he considered himself lucky his had taken place over a video call. In fact, the only place better for Gray to be reunited with her dead brother would have been in the vodka aisle at a liquor mart.
When it was all said and done, though, it hadn’t been as bad as he thought it would be. She hadn’t forgiven him. Not entirely. But they were talking. It was a start. Now all he had to do was keep her safe and out of Bodak’s hands.
The bastard wanted to sink his teeth into her—bad—and earlier, he’d hinted he had something that would make her come to him if Kincaid didn’t catch up to her soon.
Adam hadn’t been able to get any more out of him. Not normal behavior for Bodak. He had a high opinion of himself, and under normal circumstances, he’d be trying to engage Adam in a my-cock’s-bigger-than-your-cock contest.
He threw a handful of capellini into the boiling water as his doorbell rang. He didn’t need to answer to know he had no interest in whoever stood behind it. He’d chosen this building for its top-notch security. If someone knocked on an apartment door unannounced, they were already inside as an invited guest. Just not his.
One floor up in his apartment, Victor Bodak had ten grams of coke and multiple well-paid women keeping him off the streets. Adam had no doubt his boss had sent him a two-thousand-dollar an hour distraction.
Tea towel over his shoulder, he opened up. Yep. The call girl looked like she could milk him dry inside of an hour. Nope. He wasn’t interested. He sent her back upstairs with the muscle that had brought her down.
She left with a pout, suggesting she would have preferred his company to Bodak’s. She had no idea, or maybe she did, and that explained the sexed-up, red-lipsticked, I’d rather fuck and suck you puss. The woman had a body for banging, and Bodak would take notice at some point.
By morning, she’d be twenty grand richer and covered in blacks and blues. A sick prick, Bodak liked to beat on the ladies before he fucked them. Not typically a problem. More than enough women with masochistic preferences were willing to take on the sadistic asshole for the right price.
Under carefully controlled circumstances, the sessions didn’t get out of hand, and Adam’s team had been trained to intervene before any bones got busted. The ones who weren’t arranged for were the ones who were really screwed.
Adam had seen the results of Bodak unleashed only once. The crack addict had become a file with the NYPD’s missing persons unit. For national security reasons, hers was one body that would never be found.
Davis poked a hesitant head around the doorway leading from Adam’s office, and he twitched his head in a come-eat gesture that had the kid bellying up to the counter like it was the last supper.
He tossed the pasta and put a large plate of pesto carbonara under Davis’s chin. Adam didn’t even try to give him a glass of wine. The kid had no taste for it, although the one-eyed grimaces he made when he did give it a whirl were entertaining as hell. Instead, he poured Davis his usual glass of milk on ice and slid it across the kitchen island.
They ate in silence, Adam leaning against the back counter as he studied the teen. A product of foster care, and here because life had knocked him down more than once, Davis couldn’t be classified as a success story or a tragedy. His personal records spotty, his schooling negligible, and his criminal record minor, the kid just seemed—lost.
He also happened to be a menace with guns, knives, and even blunt pencils. Davis had been so unprepared for what he’d gotten himself into, Adam had needed to intervene by separating him from the real losers before he landed facedown in a shallow grave.
He’d meant to send him away with a couple of grand and an order to stay out of trouble. Instead, Davis had ended up as Adam’s personal assistant, running errands for Sam Black while trying to remain as inconspicuous as possible.
“I need you to do something for me,” Adam said.
Davis looked up at him expectantly, a glob of pasta suspended between plate and finish line. “Yes, sir?”
Adam sighed. No matter how often he told the kid not to call him sir, he always did. It made him feel like he should be looking over his shoulder for the colonel. “I need you to find out what’s going on at the warehouse in Savannah. Can you do that?”
He hadn’t been able to reach Drummond or Hood for the last couple of days, and that meant they were up to no good. Bodak had let it slip; he’d ordered the pair to squat at the warehouse in Savannah. The move made no sense.
“Yes, sir.” Overeager to please, Davis would have agreed to eat shit if Adam had asked him to. Not a personal trait that screamed “badass mother with a loaded weapon here.”
“Should I leave now?”
Finding it difficult to keep a straight face, Adam turned his back to pour the last of the wine into his glass. “Finish your dinner first. We’ll go over the details after.”
He planned to give the kid one last job, an envelope of cash, and a one-way ticket. When Davis finished at the warehouse, his final orders would be to take off and not come back.
“Thanks. This is really good. Is there, ah, any more fancy spaghetti?” he asked, hope making him sound even younger than he looked.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
After doing his security rounds, Chase came into the COMMs center to find Jay sitting in the dark. Eyes narrowed and flicking left to right, he absorbed information at a rate that would boggle most minds.
“You’ve been at it too long,” Chase said. “Go knock back a couple of rums with Doc and get some sleep.”
Gaze locked on his computer screen, and chewing on the cuticle of his thumb, a definite sign his goose was cooked, Jay spit out in frustration, “Christ. It’s in here somewhere. I’m just not seeing it.”
Convinced Gray would prove to be Wright’s biggest mistake; he’d given up all other leads and focused his efforts on her. They all knew the connection existed. They just hadn’t figured out what the common denominator was, and she had no idea who Wright might be or why he had a personal interest in her.
It was up to Jay to find the link, and they were running out of time. Wright had made his move, and they were hanging on with little more than hope and a prayer.
“Fuck me.” He rubbed his brows with a thumb and two fingers, his other hand resting on the keyboard as if he communicated from one Intel processor to the other through his fingertips.
“I’m serious, Mann. You’re out of juice. Go get some sleep. You’ll figure this out tomorrow.”
With a string of curses, Jay ran his hands through his hair, curling it away from his head at odd angles. He looked like a black-haired Albert Einstein with a week’s worth of facial scruff. Obsessed was the best way to describe him when he reached the stage at which he didn’t stop to shave. “Is that an order?”
“I can make it one.”
“Asshole.” Jay sprang upright and punched a key.
The screens went black, throwing him into shadow—no fancy screen-saver light show allowed on his hardware. To break into his system, you needed to be sporting Jay Mann’s fingerprints and have a twenty-two-digit alphanumeric code memorized. If you didn’t get it right the first time, you were screwed. His system didn’t give second chances.
“You heading to the crib?” Jay tapped his fingers on the butt of his forty where it sat on his hip.
“Nah. I’m gonna raid the fridge. I’ll catch up with you later.”
They walked out together. “Can you tell Gray to find me when she wakes up? I need to talk to her.”
Chase cocked a brow but didn’t ask why. Wouldn’t matter. Jay wouldn’t tell anyway. “Sure. Go catch Doc before the rum’s gone.” He clapped a hand on his buddy’s shoulder and shoved him out the screen door.
After checking the fridge for leftover pizza, Chase made his way empty handed to the couch in the colonel’s office and stretched out. The armrest felt like a cement block under his head, his boots hanging off the other end by a good two feet.
As small as it was, he would have preferred to be in his bed with Gray’s ass snuggled against him. But recognizing he’d pushed her pretty damn hard today, he wanted to give her some space.
She needed a good night’s sleep. No alcohol. No drama. No demands. And no two-hundred-pound man with a raging hard-on taking up ninety-five percent of the mattress. Chase adjusted himself to relieve his discomfort.
Throwing a boner wearing a fully loaded gun belt took some getting used to. He’d had so many now, he’d lost count. Christ, he wanted up inside of Gray so bad, if he crawled into bed with her right now, Tak would be getting an X-rated eyeful. Privacy and sleep be damned.
For those reasons, he’d volunteered for the first watch, and after kissing her thoroughly, he left her in his bed, Tak guarding her dreams, his forty on the night table between them, his rifle leaning against the headboard within easy reach. If Chase had to leave her with anyone, his choice was Tak, hands down.
God, if anything ever happened to her, Chase wouldn’t survive it.
She belonged to him. Like tumblers falling into place, she’d unlocked something in him his soul recognized. Blood-to-blood and breath-to-breath, he was bound to her.
Yeah, Gray had been reluctant to admit it was more than just sexual attraction between them.
It was more.
A hell of a lot more.
Still might not be enough.
Even though he’d been acting like it, he wasn’t a hormone-driven high school teenager. He understood the impossible odds he faced. An emotional self-preservationist, Gray had some brutally thick walls around her heart.
Pretending indifference, she pushed people away, steering them to the curb with a couple of well-placed f-bombs and a healthy dose of sarcasm. She would try hard, but she wouldn’t be able to push Chase away. Which meant it was a matter of time before she implemented option two—leaving before she got left.
Just because he’d never be able to let her go didn’t mean she wouldn’t find an excuse to run for the hills. He’d said she’d come back. And she would, once—maybe even twice—but what about when he left her? What then? He knew the difference between letting go and leaving. She did not.
Raised in a military family, she’d spent years watching the people she loved leave her. Her father. Her brother. They’d dedicated their lives to the service of their country, and as a result, she’d been left alone when she needed them most.
Shit. Chase could only imagine how painful it must have been for her to lose her mother so quickly after her brother’s fake death. The back-to-back losses would have been devastating for someone with family support. Gray’s father? He’d been with the JTT, and she’d had no one. As a result, her resentment toward the military and its members ran deep.
Chase understood the magnitude of the challenge he faced when it came to overcoming her fears. But God help him, he’d find a way. He’d always considered himself lucky. Knowing what he’d been destined to do and being able to work his ass off and do it was a blessing.
It was also a curse. One that had its claws firmly sunk into JTT flesh.
Of the members who’d been involved in serious relationships before being recruited to the colonel’s unit, Doc’s was the last to survive under the pressure. When it came to the JTT, Cupid was batting one for four in the previous two years.
They all knew work-life balance was a mutually exclusive term when you signed on with a special ops unit. And the simple truth was, most women weren’t cut out for the hardship and loneliness that came with their job descriptions.
But Grace Grayson wasn’t the stay-at-home, waiting-for-her-man type. Photography was her calling as much as the JTT was his. She was passionate in her pursuit of the career that made her happy. He respected that, even though it meant he couldn’t count on finding her where he’d left her.
Yeah, he’d be chasing Grace for the rest of his life. Not that it mattered. His soul hadn’t given him an option, and even if it had, he’d choose her anyway.
He never did take the easy road.
Which is why he’d be sporting boners for a while.
He wanted Gray, body, heart, and soul. More than he’d ever wanted anyone or anything. But taking her now wasn’t the right thing to do. He needed more time. Time to prove she could count on him. To show her that she came first. Always.
The next few days were going to be mission critical. He’d be leaving on his next assignment in less than forty-eight hours. But as soon as he could, he’d be back for her, and he intended to show her exactly what he’d meant when he said she belonged to him.
Chase grinned. Yeah. He was a persistent fucker. He’d find a way to have both Gray and the JTT—because he wasn’t giving up one for the other.
Gray closed the screen door on the main camp quietly. She hadn’t seen her father since their face-off in the boardroom yesterday afternoon, and she hoped to avoid the consequences of pushing his buttons for a few more hours.
She felt better after talking to Adam. Okay. Better was a relative term. She might be slightly less inclined to render him impotent with a swift kick to the nads when she saw him next.
As to the colonel, she wasn’t there yet. Based on their history, she might never be. They were oil and water, always had been, and being stuck with him in a camp about the size of a one-bedroom apartment threatened to drive her crazy.
Or crazier?
Either way, she needed a break. Backpack strapped on, she planned to convince Chase to take her into town so she could get a few things. She hadn’t seen him since he kissed her good night. And Jesus, what a kiss.
If she intended to hang around with Chase Mackenzie, she might have to consider Depends as a new line of lingerie. The man made her seriously wet, even if he did scare the crap out of her.
Persistent fucker.
She’d expected him to make himself at home when his watch ended, practically on top of her by necessity. To say she’d been disappointed when she woke up alone wasn’t stretching the truth. How messed up was that?
He broke her cardinal rule when it came to men. So why was she looking for the married-to-the-military fucker like she needed a fix and he was her drug of choice? As she approached the colonel’s office, she heard his low rumble, and her heart skipped ahead a few beats.
“Adam’s source said her name is Tara Pisani,” Chase said.
The bottom dropping out of her stomach, Gray froze out of sight in the hallway.
“What can you tell us, Jay?”
“She’s a friend of your daughter’s, Colonel. They met at the Mount Sinai Cancer Center. She lives with her parents in Miami Lakes and works part-time as an executive assistant in an insurance firm. She has no record, no partner, and no connections to Wright or Bodak.”
