Chapter 6
What. The. Hell!” Jax leapt to his feet, glaring at his team.
Serge sighed. “Yeah, boss man, thought you might say that.”
Brent Peters sidled up next to Jax, concern deepening the furrows on his troubled brow. “Tell you what, Jax, how about we head to our suite? The rest of the guys are waiting for us there. While I always have sound blockers in place wherever we are, we don’t want to take any chances.” He groaned. “Not that the fucking cartel would believe what they heard if they could bug our suite. Christ, I’m still in shock, not ready to accept what our crack techs insist is the God-awful truth.”
When they got to their suite, Jax saw that four more of their team had gathered in the adjoining conference room. They all looked up at him, clearly concerned. Max Peters, one of the DEA agents on the op, lifted a nearly empty bottle of Glenmorangie to Jax inquiringly. Jax shook his head and began pacing across the front of the room. Not willing to believe what his men were saying, he barked question after question, demanding they tell him everything they knew—and how they’d learned it. At first he refused to trust what he was hearing. It was too fucking implausible to be true. But the more he listened to his men’s serious responses, the closer he came to accept that they’d been deceived by a skilled chameleon.
Glaring at Scott Atkins, their chief technology guy, Jax snapped, “What department? Where? What city?”
“San Jose PD, boss man. To be specific, their SVU division—Special Victims Unit.”
“Goddammit, are you telling me that after nearly twenty-four fucking months of planning, some half-assed police department decided they wanted to single-handedly take down the Muñoz cartel? Without as much as notifying a single goddamned state or federal agency?”
Atkins shook his head. “It’s worse than that, Jax. It’s not officially the SAPD. Christ, it’s not even their SVU division. In fact, the gig isn’t anywhere to be found on their official books.”
As he began to allow himself to believe the preposterous tale his solemn men were telling him, Jax fought to keep his voice under control. Trying for calm, he asked the question that his gut told him he already knew the answer to. “All right. If, as you say, the SAPD is in the dark, as is apparently their SVU, whose crazy mission are we dealing with?”
Serge Striker sighed. “Have a feeling you’ve already guessed the answer to that pertinent question, boss man. Apparently the ‘mission,’ if you can call it that, is the brainchild of one hardheaded, not-to-be stopped woman.”
Brent Peters stepped in and met Jax’s hard gaze. “I’ll make this as succinct as I can, Jax. Apparently Martinez Flores and his guys killed two members of the SAPD SVU that was tailing him. That untoward action put them in the crosshairs of none other than Sergeant Viviana Moreau.” He added with an ironic grin, “According to the men who’ve worked with her, Sergeant Moreau is known as the Enchantress. You may recall what made Marvel superheroines indomitable was their strength of character and tenacity. According to Galaxy trivia, the Enchantress is one of Marvel’s most power-hungry and devious superheroines.” He sniffed. “Remind you of anyone we know, dude?”
Jax stopped pacing and growled at Brent. “Goddammit, who’s in charge of her? Somebody must be!”
Scott Atkins glanced at his computer screen and rattled off some of their findings. “She’s a member of an award-winning SVU. It won’t surprise you that no one can keep her on a leash, including her squad leader and even her unit captain, who is a thirty-year veteran. In addition to her off-the-books, undercover jaunts, the feisty sergeant’s cracked some of their most difficult cases—virtually single-handed. Given her penchant for notoriety, she’s become something of a media darling. As you know, she’s as beautiful as she is shameful, which makes terrific copy for a ravenous press. Even the police commissioner has become a Viviana groupie. And why not? What could be better for a beleaguered police department than a gorgeous, renegade police detective who always gets her man—no matter if she follows the rules or not?”
Serge Striker picked up the tale. “Apparently her foray into the Muñoz cartel is pure Viviana Moreau. She didn’t ask permission, just went forward and headed for Belize. Once here, she browbeat her furious captain into agreeing that he would give her three days to carry out her crazy plan. At the end of the three days, whether she succeeds or not, he said he would yank her out if he had to call in the Avengers to do it. By the way, it’s rumored that the sixty-five-year-old captain is due to resign—apparently because he’s admitted he can’t control their off-the-rails superstar.”
Jax spit out, “Who’s here with her, on her team? Who are they, and how are they disguised?”
His men exchanged glances among themselves, then looked to their second-in-command to answer their boss. Brent said with a sigh, “Here is the most unbelievable part of this un-fucking-believable tale. She’s solo, Jax. Here on her goddamned lonesome. Now, granted, her squad leader and a couple of other guys are in Belize, hanging out with the Belize PD. I guess when Sergeant Moreau gives the word that she has the Muñoz cartel under control, the locals and her squad will helicopter in and save the day. On second thought, that would make too much sense. My guess is that they will try to get here with sirens blazing and lights flashing, hoping like hell no one notices, and they save their wayward woman before the cartel chops her into pieces and feeds her to the sharks.”
Acknowledging Jax’s disbelief and clear anger, Scott Atkins broke in. “Don’t know if it will help, man, but Wayne Matthew has partnered with her on a couple of ops. Told me to tell you he’s available if you want the lowdown.”
Not answering, Jax strode out to the balcony. Yanking out his cell phone, he hit a coded key and connected with one of his longtime associates. At Jax’s curt greeting, the always cheerful Louisiana good ole boy, who was one of the most dangerous operatives Jax had worked with, drawled, “Hell, hotshot, haven’t seen you since we were chasing snakes out of the swamps in Somalia—or were those the badass human kind of reptiles called Al-Shabaab?”
Jax managed a short laugh but couldn’t bother with the niceties. “Sorry, Wayne, hate to cut to the chase, but you must know from Scottie that we’re in a hell of a mess.”
Wayne’s sigh was audible. “Shit, man, all you have to say is that somehow you’ve hooked up with none other than Viviana Moreau. A word of warning, buddy. You may think you can control her the way you do every man and woman you’ve commanded. Forget it, Jax. Give in now. Let me put it this way. Everyone who has ever worked with her falls in love with her. How could they not?” He groaned. “Jesus, man, you gotta know, that combination of sassiness, courage, and hardcore sexuality is hard to ignore. If it makes you feel better, she has the same effect on the bad guys that she does on us Dudley Do-Rights. Trust me, there’s not a perp she’s been after who survived her. For the rest of us grunts, the ones who had the privilege or misfortune of working with her, it was pure chaos. Added to a pathological inability to follow orders…Ask me, as I’m one of the saps who thought he could control her, she’s as uncontrollable as she is courageous. No one stands in her way if she sees an opportunity to go it alone. To sum it up, buddy, any guy who’s worked with the Enchantress will be the first to tell you she’s a hot mess. Beautiful? Hell yeah! Sexy as fucking hell? You know it. Plan on the hardest dick you’ve had, but forget about getting relief. You’re as likely to pound nails through concrete with that righteous rod of yours as you are to pound into that sweet snatch. To this day, I’ve never heard of a guy who got to do more than beat his meat into submission, mooning after her.” His sigh was more of a groan. “Yep. Be prepared, man. Try escaping the lure of Cleopatra combined with Mata Hari in a modern version of Marilyn Monroe, and you’ll know why those of us who’ve worked with her will tell you to watch your six. Or better yet, your heart. Because, buddy, as outrageous as she is, to know her is to love her.”
At the end of a heated discussion, Jax and his team decided that the only thing they could do was to play along with the brazen Mata Hari. Given her obsessive need to fly solo, it was a given she’d resist joining a team she didn’t lead. Jax, in particular, was unwilling to do anything to expose her, including letting her know they knew who she was or who they were. After playing out various scenarios, they agreed that the best way they could protect her from the hell that was about to rain down on the cartel was for Jax to make a play for her. He knew in his gut that was the only way he could protect her from Flores. Even though Flores would be pissed as hell, Jax was certain the bastard wouldn’t take him on. After all, the cartel believed that Jax and his cohorts were about to give them access to a significant cache of sophisticated weapons few cartels had. For that fact alone, he knew that Felix Garcia and the cartel’s queen bee would knock Flores back.
Not that Francesca Ortiz wouldn’t be furious when he made an overt play for the feisty would-be bar slut. Jax convinced himself that it was worth the risk of igniting Madam Ortiz’s ire. It was the only way he could get close enough to Sergeant Moreau without betraying their identities. He had to protect her from the cartel and from herself. After all, she was a fellow police officer—and, not incidentally, the most alluring woman he’d ever met. He was furious with her for potentially torpedoing a twenty-four-month, high-level operation at the precise moment they were about to pull it off. He also acknowledged that his need to protect her was about more than protecting the mission. If he had to get in her pants to protect her, so be it. Face it, Sergeant Moreau wasn’t the only one who pushed boundaries, who believed in the “ends justified the means” philosophy. Fuck it, it was the creed Jax lived by. He admitted that this time he was pushing that cavalier MO to the extreme. If nothing else, the fact that, for once, his dick was fully on board should have warned him he was on dangerous ground.