She was falling in love with him. Hell, she was in love with him, and that part was scary. He owned a part of her, she admitted. A part of her she would never reclaim if he walked away from her.
Breathing in deeply, she promised herself she would savor every moment she had with him. She didn’t want to miss this for the world. This euphoria. The sense of someone knowing her and her body as well, if not better than, she did. The feeling that for the first time in her life, someone understood. Not so much understood her, but understood the need to live.
She needed to live. And she wanted to do it in Kell’s arms. But if he left her, if he walked away from her when this was over, then he had still given her a gift she knew no one else had given her. He had looked beyond the daddy’s girl, and seen the woman beneath.
An hour later, after breakfast with Emily, before turning her over to her father’s and the admiral’s care, Kell entered the small room set aside as a meeting place inside the mansion for Reno and his team.
“Hey, lover boy. Reno tells me there’s wedding invitations hitting the mail soon.” Clint McIntyre, Reno’s second in command, snickered as Kell walked in and closed the door behind him.
“In a few weeks or so. I’d like to get Fuentes out of the picture first,” Kell answered.
It was worth it to see their expressions. Reno, Clint, and Macey stared back at him in shock. Ian, as always, was harder to read, but he looked more thoughtful than surprised.
“Hell, another good SEAL bites the dust.” Macey sighed. “What’s with you yahoos? Are you contagious or something?” He looked from Reno to Clint to Kell.
“Could be, Macey. Better not get too close or you’ll be looking for your significant other next,” Ian’s dark, rough voice commented broodingly.
Macey snorted before turning back to the screen of his laptop. “Enough of that crap. Gather round, boys. As of oh four hundred, Judas made contact again. For one of Diego’s bastard skanks, he sure gets around on the Internet.”
“Not a nice way to talk about our contact, Macey,” Ian pointed out with an edge of amusement.
“Son of a bitch,” Macey growled. “I’d like to cut his balls off for not being a little more forthcoming.”
Kell moved around the table, staring over Macey’s shoulder at the e-mail that had come to the secured account Macey used.
Assassin and/or abductor moving
in. Location, D.C. Terms are as follows. Senator and/or daughter. Contact sent to senator to resign has been ignored. Fuentes contact requires action. Beware. Once in D.C., contact will be informing tool of foolproof method of capturing or killing daughter. Kidnapping is highest possibility at this point to use as leverage. Watch your six while hobnobbing because others are watching it as well.
Kell narrowed his eyes. There was something about that e-mail.
“Sound familiar?” Macey asked them all, staring up at them.
“Watch your six,” Kell murmured. “Military term. Not unusual.”
“There’s something too familiar about this.” Macey shook his head as he went back to the screen. “I’ve been trying to track this SOB for years now. It’s damned strange. I can’t get a handle on him no matter how hard I try.”
“His information has always been factual,” Ian pointed out.
“Too damned factual. He knows too fucking much,” Macey growled. “The fact that he found this e-mail address to contact me at is the most worrisome.”
The e-mail address had been set up years before as an SOS account. They were a team, no matter what. If one of them was in trouble, then the others would come running.
“You’ll find him, Macey. Give it time,” Ian said with no small amount of amusement. “My question is why the contact or spy changed his demand that Fuentes murder the girl to kidnapping her instead.”
“Kidnapping will give him leverage, just as the e-mail suggests. If he kills her, he has no leverage. Nothing to bargain with.”
“Why does he want to bargain?” Kell asked then. “The original idea was to first make the senator pay for his interference by killing his daughter, then to kill Stanton. Why change in midstream?”
“Good ole Diego, I’d guess,” Macey bit out sarcastically. “That bastard delights in kidnapping, torture, and breaking men’s souls. Not to mention women’s. He wants to play.”
“Another of his games.” Kell’s jaw tightened in anger.
“Our main objective is keeping the senator and his daughter alive,” Reno said then. “Secondary objectives are catching Diego and/or his spy. I want that fucking spy. Bad. The son of a bitch has been betraying agents right and left in the past year. We lost two Homeland Security agents in California at the first of the year. One in D.C. and three more across the nation. Added to that are four agents outside the U.S.”
“He’s obviously someone in a position of trust within the government,” Clint stated. “Someone with access to our Defense Department and missions around the globe. He could be an elected official, or a private contractor.”
“He could be anyone,” Kell snarled.