Madrid, Spain

2030 CET

Linc signaled for them to turn around and they all went back up the stairs into the apartment.

Mick gestured to the couch. “Sit tight.”

He and Linc were in a low-voiced conversation that she couldn’t hear and she looked over at her team. They looked tired and scared. This wasn’t at all how the day should be going. The director had sent these men to protect and escort them, but so far all they’d done was keep them hidden in this apartment.

“I’m going to find out what’s going on,” Kaylee said.

“Uh, you think that’s a good idea?” Jeff said. “He sounded pissed.”

“I’m not feeling so happy either,” Kaylee said.

She walked over to Mick and Linc as the door opened, they both lifted their weapons, and she stopped where she was. She hadn’t realized how serious the situation had gotten. It was Cory, and he had his gun drawn as well, but lowered it as soon as he saw his teammates.

“I got the guy on the stairs, but there are two more watching this place from the park. Cade and Frank had to ditch the vehicle because it was marked,” Cory said.

“They’re doubling back as we speak,” Mick said. “Frank has a Plan C. He’s going to bring us up to speed when he gets here. We’re going silent on comms.”

“Why?” Kaylee asked. “What the hell is going on?”

“Someone tailed us. The vehicle we’d planned to use for transport to the airport was made, so we had to get rid of it. When Frank gets here—he’s our logistics guy—he’ll brief us on how we’re getting out of this place,” Mick said. “Until then, sit down over there.” He jabbed his arm in the direction of the couch.

She crossed her arms over her chest. “I’d rather be part of the solution, than just sitting around waiting to see what’s going to happen. Linc, I need my laptop.”

“Why?”

“So, I can see if there’s any chatter on the black web about this,” Kaylee said.

“How would you do that?” Mick asked.

“She has a hacker alias,” Jeff said, coming over with Ramona. “In fact, we all do. It might be a good idea if we all get online and check out the different hot spots.”

Kaylee liked that idea. She didn’t mind letting the Ares Team take the lead on the actual moving around, but sitting in the apartment was time that her team could be putting to good use. Also, she could reach out to her dad and see if he was the one who was trying to pin her down.

“I don’t know,” Mick said. “Cory?”

“This is a beyond my skills. Is it secure? Can you keep someone from tracking you here?” Cory asked.

Kaylee pursed her lips. “Probably. But they know we’re here already, so what’s the problem if they track us? Right now, we should be taking advantage of the down time.”

“Agreed,” Mick said. “When you put it that way, it’s stupid for you not to be doing that hacking thing.”

She almost smiled at the way he said it. She could tell he was quick to adapt to situations, and she liked that.

Linc shrugged the rucksack off his shoulders and handed it to her. Kaylee, Ramona and Jeff all grabbed their bags and went to the spots in the room where there were outlets. She sat on the floor between the kitchen and living area, plugging in her laptop and logging in. She went to her inbox and sent a message to her dad. It was simple—from her childhood when she’d been addicted to the Disney Channel show Kim Possible.

Call me. Beep me. If you want to reach me.

He’d know it was her. She wasn’t sure what she wanted from him, but she wanted something. Something that would give her an indication if he was the one trying to catch them.

Then she went to her favorite forum and read the boards, looking for something, and it took her about fifteen minutes of reading before she saw a tiny comment on a thread that just said something about having a devilish time and needing help.

She followed the thread, looking at the timestamp. She started tracing the path back to the source. There wasn’t much to go on, but she took her smartphone out, opening it to an app she’d been working on for a little while, and plugged in the source. It slowly started running until it provided a GPS location.

She looked at it, and given her basic knowledge of geography she thought it looked like the request to stop them had come from Chincoteague, Virginia. Uh, that scared her a little bit. She’d thought Diavolos was a foreign national, and had expected to find him in China, or maybe an island in the Pacific where most of the black web servers were located. She jotted the GPS coordinates down on her notepad, cleared the app, and sent it to search again.

It came back with the same location.

That had to be it.

She logged off the black web and put her laptop back in her bag before getting up and walking over to Mick, Linc and Cory. “I think I might have found something.”

“What?” Mick asked.

“Just the location of someone who might have sent the guys who are tailing us.”

“Let’s see it,” Mick said.

She gave them the coordinates just as a knock sounded at the front door. It was the simple code the team used—three short raps in quick succession.

Mick turned to the door, blocking her with his body as a precaution. His hand hovering over his weapon at the same time.

She stood behind him, realizing that despite the fact that she barely knew him, this guy was willing to do whatever he had to in order to protect her. She’d never encountered a man who would do that for her.

She tried to tell herself that it was just his job.

She tried to say he was being paid to protect her.

All of that was true, but that hole deep inside her that she tried to pretend didn’t exist didn’t feel quite as empty as before.

* * *

Mick didn’t analyze why he liked the feel of Kaylee pressed behind his back. He was a red-blooded male—that explanation would do just fine. But that kiss earlier hadn’t been enough. It had only served to whet his appetite. He let his hand fall from his holstered gun as Frank and Cade walked into the room. They looked ticked off.

He let go of Kaylee and felt her hand brush against his back as she stepped to the side.

“Glad you’re here. Frank, Cade, this is Kaylee and that’s Jeff and Ramona,” Mick said by way of introduction.

Cade nodded in everyone’s general direction as Frank came over to the table. “I’ve got two ways out of the city that I think will give us the cover we need to make it back to the plane. I’m so ready to get the hell—sorry, ma’am—heck out of Madrid.”

“She just found the location of the person we think is directing the tail online,” Mick said.

“Let me see it,” Frank said.

Mick stepped back to give them both room to work. He watched Kaylee in a way that he knew was too personal, because he was noticing things like how her hair wasn’t totally black, but had strands of dark-brown and honey-brown mixed in. And when she leaned over the table, he couldn’t help noticing the curve of her hips and how well her faded jeans fit.

Linc punched him in the shoulder and Mick turned to glare at his friend. But Linc just lifted an eyebrow at him. Mick took that to mean he needed to keep his mind on the op and not the girl.

“We can go that way. I’ve plotted out a few routes to take to the airfield,” Frank said.

“Once we get back to Grimaldi HQ I’m going to lean on the director to assign this to us,” Mick said.

“Good, I was hoping you’d say that. I have five bikes for us to use to get out of the city, but our team is bigger and they’re scooters, so they won’t be fast once we double up. The other alternative is walking a few klicks out of town, using some alleyways. If we wait another hour or so, the streets will be crowded, which will provide some cover. Linc, is this place fully stocked?” Frank asked.

“Yeah. I’ve got pretty much everything we need. Why?”

“Got a drone?”

“Yeah,” Linc said.

“Cory, we need you,” Frank said.

Kaylee looked over at Frank. “What are you going to use the drone for?”

“Advanced intel,” he said. “Check out the building’s entrances before we head out.”

Cory, Frank and Linc left to go back to Linc’s boardroom and Cade was sitting on the couch, just vegging out. He knew the other man needed time to cool off after driving through that traffic and left him alone.

“Good job finding that location,” Mick said to Kaylee.

She gave him a smile. “It wasn’t that hard, once I started digging. I wrote some code about six month ago that I’ve been using to track Diavolos. I just turned it on this newest threat.”

“It would be difficult for me. Cory is always bitch—er, complaining about how hard I am on tech,” he said. Then realized he sounded lame. “I mean—”

“I get it,” she said. “When you shoved me behind you as the door opened…I realized we both run on gut instinct. It’s just that yours is different from mine.”

“I think we already established that,” he said. He realized he liked talking to her. He was noticing little things about her that made it clear she played her cards close to her chest.

In a way, he figured that was the way she had survived growing up the way she had. He had always wondered what it would be like to have a different family. To not be the one who had to lie and say he walked into something that caused the bruises on his face or arm. Not be the one who put himself between his brother and his dad—well, maybe not that one. He had never been able to turn away when his brother was in trouble. More than once over the years Mick had gotten into a scrap to prevent Ian from getting laid into. He had taken the hits so Ian didn’t have to. He’d protected and cared for his little brother. Made sure that the old man didn’t affect him the way he had Mick.

Damn.

He realized that he wanted to do that for Kaylee too. Protect her. Not like he did when he was working, but on a different level. Something much more personal. And why? Because he’d kissed her? He shook his head. If it were just sex, he could take what he wanted and walk away. This was something different.

She’d looked at him and seen not the man wrought from violence, but him. She’d seen Mick. She was talking to him like he was just an average dude. That hadn’t happened in a long time…if ever.

He didn’t want to let it mean that much to him, but he knew it did.

* * *

Kaylee looked over to where Ramona and Jeff were still working on their laptops. She needed to check in with them, but she wanted to stay here with Mick. He had initiated this conversation and she wasn’t in any hurry to end it.

“How did you end up doing this for a living?” she asked. She’d heard the rumors, of course, but she didn’t know if they were true. That he’d been drummed out of the military, and then worked as a mercenary before the director had tracked him down and made him some offer that had been too good to resist. What was that?

What would it take to convince Mick O’Halloran to do anything?

“It’s a job,” he said.

Back to the evasive, short answers. She should have left it alone, but she didn’t want to.

“It’s not just a job. You don’t strike me as someone who’s doing this for the money,” she said. Plus she’d met men and women who worked for Grimaldi Global, and the ones who did it because it was “a job” didn’t last that long. “I know for me, I like the fact that I can help people by hacking. When I was growing up, Dad would say that we were Robin Hood, and that sounded cool until I realized that we never gave away the money we stole. Dad got a cut and then we moved to another city and did it again.”

“That sucks,” he said. “How old were you?”

“Old enough. But what I’m saying is that everyone comes to work for Grimaldi for a reason. What’s yours?”

“Mine?” he asked in that cagey way he had. It was almost like he was teasing her.

“Yeah, yours.”

“Truth is, Sam gave me a chance to get something I wanted, and offered me a job when no one else would,” he said, crossing his arms over his chest.

“What did he offer?” she asked.

“A chance to tell my version of certain events to someone who would listen and take action if it was warranted,” he said.

“What was it?” she asked.

“Something between Sam and myself,” he said.

“You know I could just go online and find the information myself.”

He just shrugged.

She wouldn’t, because she wanted to hear the story from him. Wanted to know his past because he’d trusted her with it, not because she’d dug around and found it. “Also, why do you call the director by his first name?”

He arched one eyebrow at her. “It’s his name. I’m not about to call him Mr. Truehart.”

She rolled her eyes. He was trying to be charming. Not just trying. It was working. He looked sweet right now when he smiled over at her. She couldn’t help smiling back. “He intimidates the heck out of me.”

“I get where he’s coming from, so I’m not scared of him.”

She made a face. “I’m not scared of the director.”

“I think you have a problem with authority,” he said.

“I do. You’re right,” she admitted. “That’s probably where my reticence comes from.” She walked around the table and sat down on one of the chairs.

Her problem with authority was one of those things she couldn’t shake. At home, when she was driving and saw a cop car, she immediately slowed down and drove like someone’s granny to avoid being pulled over, though it had been years since she’d had anything to fear from a routine traffic stop.

She had a feeling she’d be eighty-five years old and still reacting like that.

“It’s silly,” she said to Mick as he pulled a chair out, sitting down next to her.

“Hey, who am I to judge? When things don’t go to plan—like today—I like it. Because it confirms to me that the world is messed up. That nothing works out right…”

That broke her heart a little. She hated to think of him just waiting for the other shoe to drop all the time. In a way, he was prepared for anything that happened, but in another way…how did he ever relax?

“Today was an anomaly,” she said. “How did you get the lucky assignment?”

“We were already in Europe,” he said. “I think Sam’s gut said this was going to take more than just simple security. And my team is very good at fighting our way out of situations that demand it.”

She could see that. It was there in the way the guys just kept going. The car won’t work, we’ll run and meet our targets, the targets are attacked, we’ll help them to safety. His mind and the minds of his men were always running to the next answer.

“Why did you pick Ares for your team name? I know he’s a god of war, but he’s got a shady rep.”

“He does, and so do we. It appealed to us, and frankly, I like that about him,” Mick said. “He’s a fighter. But I didn’t pick the team name. Sam did.”

It said a lot to her about the director’s perceptive nature that he’d given this team that name. In mythology, Ares was not the favored child. He fought hard and often. Ares reacted with violence first, which she would have said suited Mick to a tee, but she was coming to realize that while he was comfortable with violence, there was more to him than met the eye.

Linc and the other guys re-entered the room with the drone. “Sorry I didn’t think of using the drone earlier.”

Mick and Cade got up and walked over to their teammates. Jeff and Ramona looked up from their positions, and she noticed that Ramona was still rapidly typing on her keypad.

She wanted to find out what Mick’s team had planned next, but she realized she hadn’t been paying attention to her own team. She walked over to Ramona, who closed her laptop case as she approached.

“Did you find something?” Kaylee asked.

“No,” Ramona said.

“Me either,” Jeff said. He stowed his laptop and stood up, moving over to the other men.

“Why did you close your laptop when I came over here?” Kaylee asked the other woman.

“I was just signing off on a forum. Planted a note to see if anyone had intel on Diavolos.”

“Which forum?” Kaylee asked.

“Hackers Haven,” she said. “One of my friends was asking if I wanted to catch up. I said I couldn’t, that was all.”

There was something about the way Ramona shoved her laptop into her designer bag that made Kaylee feel like she wasn’t being honest. But she knew that they both had high-end clearance. Plus, Kaylee had just contacted her own dad on the sly. Maybe she was projecting her guilt onto Ramona.

“Sorry for the third degree. I’m just on edge,” Kaylee said.

Ramona put her hand on Kaylee’s wrist and squeezed. “I don’t blame you. Let’s go see what they have planned next.”

She got up and followed her over to the rest of the group.