Chapter Twenty-One

Devereaux stretched in her sleep, surrounded by warmth and the delicious scent of the man she was falling in love with.

Too soon, her inner diva nagged. Jiminy Cricket would’ve been proud of this annoying troll of a conscience.

Better than too late, Dev nagged right back.

There was a time she’d second guessed every decision, but she’d learned to go with her gut these last five years, instead of her guilt for never being good enough. Because of her failure with James, she’d avoided men like the plague and she’d lived like a nun. Well, no more. Decent men didn’t come along often. If Seth was as good as he seemed—and she knew he was—she intended to spend as much time with him as possible. Every second, if she had her way. Maybe forever.

Gru stretched alongside the bed like a yard statue, his spiny back to her and his beautiful hide a puzzle of emerald greens mingled with limes and hunter greens. Guilt for having buried him alive brought Dev to her feet. Wrapping the bed sheet toga style around herself, she knelt beside Gru.

“I am sorry I buried you,” she told her lizardly bestie. “I really thought you were dead. I mean, you were bleeding, and you were colder than usual, and...” She dropped to the floor on her knees, stroking Gru’s magnificent spines with her fingertips, her head canted at the way his emerald skin wrinkled when he breathed. “I should’ve taken better care of you, Gru. I wouldn’t blame you if you bit me, but I hope you don’t.”

“I sure will,” Seth said from the bathroom door, refreshed and with his hair still wet, a towel tied off at his hips. “Bite you.”

Be still my heart. Dev licked her lips at the sight of the Grecian god in her life. And that chest. It could’ve been carved out of marble for the flat planes of muscles stretched over his pecs and the rigid valley between them. Muscles rolled down his belly, punctuated with one long exclamation point of fine hairs that ended—there. Beneath his towel. If there was a sexier man in the world, Dev didn’t know him.

“I called your brother.”

Well, damn. “Way to burst a girl’s libido,” Dev muttered as she dropped the sheet and stood to face Seth, her body completely bare and her nipples hardened at just the sight of him. Any talk about Cord could wait.

Seth’s gaze hooded as the tip of his tongue slipped over his bottom lip. She liked that tongue. He’d done amazing things to her with that tongue. One step. Then another. Finally, Dev stopped at his feet to look up at him. My, my, my, what a handsome man he is, all muscle, brains, and—and mine.

The black in his eyes swallowed the brown, and Seth was caught. He couldn’t look away any more than she could. She lifted to her toes to kiss those wet lips but ended on her back in his bed. Seth’s towel was gone, and her heart beat a crazy thrum throughout her entire body. His knee settled between her legs as his palms captured her head, holding her still as he plundered her mouth with long, wet strokes.

Passion ignited between them, and Dev gave herself up to the pleasure of the flame. Tenderly. Slowly. Seth worshipped her body. From her lips to her breasts. From her nipples to her belly button. All the way down, then up again until he settled his hips between her legs for the—love. A random thought surfaced that Katelynn’s death had happened for a reason, that this was where Seth had always been meant to be. Not up north in chilly Illinois, but down south in tropical Florida. Not settled down with her, but with—me.

“Thank you,” Dev whispered to the unseen angel in his life who’d unwittingly stepped aside, enabling Seth to be here on this beach at this particular time.

“I haven’t done anything yet,” he whispered, his voice a ragged rasp against her cheek as he entered her body with one slippery thrust.

“But you will,” she told him, her eyes closed but her tender heart opened wide and exposed to all possibilities in the universe. She’d known enough bad times in her life; it was time for the good. If Seth was the guardian angel he seemed to be, Dev meant to hang onto him as long as she could.

But first—he took her to the stars. Again, and again…

And again.

‘Brrrrr-riiiingggggg!’ Groggily, Seth scrambled to answer his satphone before the ringing woke his sleeping beauty. She’d been so tired, and man, he loved waking up to her warm body in his bed.

Calls from Virginia were alarming any time of day. Had to be his boss. It started up with another ‘Brrrrr,’ before Seth thumbed accept. “Yes, boss,” he murmured as he ducked into the bathroom and quietly shut the door behind him.

“How’s your uncle?” Alex Stewart asked without preliminary chitchat.

“He’s holding his own. Sleeping most of the time. Dad wants to move him home with him and Mom in Illinois, but not until he’s stable. How’s everyone on The TEAM?” The TEAM, aka Alex’s less than brilliant brand, had nonetheless achieved, and now set, brilliantly high standards in the covert world of privately contracted surveillance. Established on a wing and a curse, after his life took an unexpected hit, forcing Alex to forsake his USMC dreams, The TEAM’s reputation for integrity and just plain getting the hard jobs done excelled above all others. Alex had a knack for hiring the best, though there’d been a couple bad apples over the years. Seth blessed his lucky stars he wasn’t one of them, at least, not any longer.

“Busy,” came back, terse and tired, over the line. Alex thrived on caffeine and stress, though Seth suspected the stress might catch up with his taciturn boss one of these days.

“Might help if you’d get away from the office a couple days. Boss. You’re always welcome here.”

“Can’t. Cassidy Dancer’s in trouble,” Alex growled as he cut to the chase. “Eric Reynolds and she have been inside Cuba for three weeks working with FAST. Just heard from Commander Delaney. Dumbass led his team straight into an ambush. Eric’s in bad shape, but Cassidy’s missing and wounded, assumed taken.”

‘Or dead’ hung between Virginia and Florida like an unwanted specter of things to come. The need to run and assist his fellow agent prickled up Seth’s spine. Cassidy and Eric worked out of the Seattle office. Both top-notch snipers, they must’ve been on a damned serious mission if they’d been embedded with FAST. USMC’s premier Fleet Anti-Terrorism Security Team, was one of the best highly-trained and hard-hitting, dedicated counter-terrorism units in the US arsenal.

“Why Cuba?”

“Human trafficking,” Alex snapped, like Seth should’ve already known. He did, he just hadn’t expected Alex to be involved in the same business Cord was.

“You wouldn’t happen to know former Lance Corporal Cord Shepherd?” He had to ask. After all, ‘once a Marine, always a Marine,’ right?

“Should I?” Alex snapped again.

This was going nowhere. “Where do you need me to be?” Seth asked, his feet already pointed toward the door.

“Dancer and Reynolds encountered a team of foreign mercenaries in an abandoned prison on Isla de la Juventud, thirty miles south of the western end of Cuba. They contacted FAST for back up. A team deployed within hours, but FAST only sent six operators. They should’ve sent a hundred. That was what Cassidy and Eric were up against—a damned battery.”

Battery was USMC jargon for an entire company of Marines, a hundred plus men and women.

“So they weren’t embedded. Okay, that’s different. What kind of mercenaries?”

“Saudi,” Alex bit out. “Eric relayed as much as he could before they were overrun. FAST already had intel from their CI in Riyadh that the Cuban government allowed Khadeem’s men free rein in the country. Princess Lianna Khadeem’s been abducted.” Oh, shit. Alex knows about the princess. “Her father’s an important friend of Saudi royalty. Khadeem’s demanding blood on a rock. He’s claiming US intervention, that we’re behind it all.”

“Send me, Boss,” Seth replied without hesitation. Cassidy Dancer was a damned good agent and a woman in need. She would not die in Cuba. “I can get into Cuba before anyone else, but there’s something you need to know.” He swallowed hard. “I know where Princess Lianna is.”

“You WHAT!?” The thunderbolt hurled from TEAM headquarters to Florida was a megaton more explosive than anything Mother Nature was throwing down on Drunken Sailor Island.

Gritting his teeth, Seth repeated, “I know where Princess Lianna is, Boss. She’s safe. Cord Shepherd brought her ashore yesterday with a group of women he rescued from Roland Montego, the bastard running a human trafficking ring out of Varadero, Cuba. I’ve seen her. She’s been roughed up, but she’s alive and…” And shit. I’ve just outed Cord and Devereaux, the very thing I promised I’d never do.

The “Son-of-a-bitch!” that bellowed from one mad-as-hell former Marine stung Seth’s eardrum like a pissed off hornet. “How’d Montego get her?”

Seth shrugged, not exactly sure of the details, so he told Alex what he knew. In for a penny, in for a pound, right? “Her husband, Basheer Bagani, sold or gave her to Roland Montego. I don’t know which because I haven’t had the chance to question her after Cord rescued her along with eight other women and two little girls.”

That caught Alex’s attention. “Two children? How old?”

“Twins. Eight, maybe nine?” Seth had no idea, but that sounded about right.

But that piece of intel had to be ripping a new hole in Alex’s heart. He’d lost his only daughter to a car accident years ago, but anything—anything—that had to do with rescuing endangered children had his name stenciled in big, black CAPS all over it.

Seth proceeded carefully. “Boss, I fail to see how Cord rescuing those women lays any blame on the United States. He did a good thing, and he’s doing it on a shoestring and a prayer, with just a handful of men, his sister, and without a single dollar of federal aid. American citizen or not, Khadeem ought to reward him for rescuing his daughter.”

Something crashed at Alex’s end. Might’ve been another window. He was known to throw things when stress pegged what little good humor he’d started his day with.

“I’m only saying this once,” Alex finally replied, his tone as steady as the weather in the eye of a hurricane. “We’re on friendly relations with Saudi Arabia, not the damned sheik of the Quari’im Peninsula. Farraq Khadeem is balls deep in ISIL, the Taliban, you name it. If there’s a terrorist cell out to kill Americans, he’s funding them and they’re working out of his ports. For years he’s wanted the method and means to pick a fight with the United States. Looks like your buddy just gave it to him.”

“No, Boss,” Seth maintained, “he didn’t. Cord Shepherd did a good thing. He’s part of a network my uncle pulled together. How Khadeem can spin this into anything more than what it is—saving his daughter’s life—is a lie. Unless…” Seth sucked in a gasp of enlightenment. “Holy shit, Boss. Khadeem’s behind this. He knew, may have even orchestrated, what happened to Lianna. That was why he handpicked Basheer Bagani. Out of all the eligible Saudi princes, he married her off to a known pervert and rapist. Khadeem had to know Bagani was in tight with Montego, that—”

“Not hardly. Not in that part of the world. Those two were probably betrothed when they were kids.”

“But surely once he became aware of Bagani’s crimes, a father would—”

“The bastard!” For the savvy businessman that Alex absolutely was, he could be one mean son-of-a-bitch when backed into a corner. “Montego’s a flaming sadist. He doesn’t just sell women and children, he panders to the sickest clientele and…” BANG! Another loud crash sounded at Alex’s end.

“I can be ready in an hour, two, tops,” Seth assured his flaming mad boss. “What was Cassidy’s last known location? Do you know?”

“Your uncle?” Alex bit out.

Oh, that. Talk about the shit hitting the fan all at once. “Yes, sir. I just discovered Uncle George was a former Marine like you. Not even sure my dad knows. Did you know him?” No, of course not. George is a Vietnam era vet. You’re Desert Storm. Dumb question. Seth drew in a deep breath and kept going. “He’s been networking with other Marines for years, infiltrating and rescuing as many as he can. It’s been crazy here the last couple days, and—”

“Don’t ever call me, sir, Agent McCray.”

Oh, shit, yeah. Seth knew better than to do that, too. Hell, everyone on the East Coast knew better. Alex respected military officers; he just didn’t like most of them. “Yes, Boss, but you need to know I can get into Cuba today, may even have access to a couple hard-assed Marines.” Like you.

“Stay,” Alex hissed. “I can’t proceed without State Department concurrence, not after the intel you just shared. Shit!”

Exactly. Seth kept his opinion of the State Department to himself. Most federal partners built their empires around their rapacious need for an ever-growing piece of the federal budget pie, as well as an inherent policy of CYA, covering their asses. Hence the layers and layers of federal bureaucracy that could stop this rescue before it started.

That the State Department had even come to Alex for an assist inside a foreign government usually meant one thing: they wanted a dirty job done, but they also wanted deniable plausibility in case things went bad. In other words, they’d never admit they’d funded a private contractor to do what they couldn’t do legally. Cassidy Dancer and Eric Reynolds were collateral damage, two civilians the Feds would turn their backs on in a heartbeat when or if shit hit the fan.

Guess the State Department had no idea who they’d signed on with when they’d hired The TEAM. Even twelve hundred miles away, Seth could hear Alex’s mental gears grinding out possible scenarios to get his agents back, probably thinking, ‘Screw anyone who gets in my way’ at the same time.

Alex would only follow federal protocol for so long, but the man wasn’t hard-wired to give a shit when his men’s lives were on the line. Hell, one time he’d called in every last Navy favor ever owed to bring Adam Torrey home from some deserted island in the middle of the Pacific. With an aircraft carrier, no less.

The skeleton of a damned fast emergency infiltration plan fast-tracked through Seth’s mind as well. Cassidy didn’t have time to waste on bureaucratic bullshit, but Seth had a boat and the means to get into Cuba and retrieve her. He had access to the same former Marines his uncle had relied on. Supplies, ammunition, tactical gear, all that. ETA sixty minutes and counting—if he could tactfully—the word of the day—get Alex off the line.

Seth cleared his throat, summoning the most effective argument, when a mighty, “Fuck!” lanced his eardrum at the same precise instant that a thunderclap struck the beach, its too-close-for-comfort detonation rattling the shack’s floorboards and window panes.

Good enough. Seth grabbed the opportunity and thumbed ‘end’, disconnecting the call. Alex would be flaming mad, but Seth had a woman to rescue, and he was the only agent close enough to get the job done. By hell, if a sixty-year-old former Marine like Uncle George could do it, so could his US Army nephew.

Still in the bathroom, Seth faced southward. Damned if he wasn’t looking at himself in the mirror, but that wasn’t who he saw. Instead, he saw a cocky blonde female agent with a perpetual suntan and the brownest eyes. Cassidy Dancer was no slouch in the covert world. If anything, she worked harder than most men to prove herself every single day. And she needed him now.

Cuba lay beyond the walls of Uncle George’s humble little shack, and somewhere on that tropical island, Cassidy was being held prisoner because of the calculated gamble of a known despot who’d likely traded his daughter to start a war. Khadeem already had boots on the ground just one hundred miles off United States’ shores. The Keys were accessible and as vulnerable from that foreign insertion as Cuba was to what Seth had in mind.

There was no other choice. Seth speed-dialed Eric Reynolds.

“Seth!” Eric hissed when he answered. “Shit, man, where are you?”

“Headed your way, buddy, and bringing Hell with me. What’s your GPS?”

“Thank fuck!” Eric breathed as he rattled off his coordinates, the tremor in his tone belying his panic. “I lost her, Seth. I had them in my sights, but there were so many, and… shit. This is my fault. If she dies—”

“Not happening, Reynolds!” Seth bit out, the roles reversed as he offered support to the man responsible for nurturing him through so many stinking hard times that Seth had lost count.

It felt good to be on the giving end for a change, especially with Eric. Once a Navy Corpsman, he’d traded in his medical kit for a sniper rifle, but a natural born medic never lost his need to serve his fellow warriors, even the broken kind. Eric was one of those enigmas in life, a medic at heart but with the eye and the aim of a fully qualified scout sniper. Guess he thought if he killed enough assholes, one less US soldier would die. Yeah, that was Eric, half-angel of Mercy, half-angel of Death, and the man Seth owed his current peace of mind to.

“When?” Eric asked, his voice raw with emotion. He was also a new father of triplets. He needed to be on his way home as much as Cassidy.

Seth mentally double-checked Eric’s coordinates against his to-do list. Could he be packed and ready in time? Was travel into Cuba even possible? Hell, yeah. “Three, four hours at the most,” he promised.

“Damn, in this storm? You sure?”

“Bad weather’s the best time to invade, don’t you know? When no one expects you?”

That merited a weary chuckle. “Man, you’re crazy, but yeah. Pull a George Washington on these bastards. I’ll be waiting.”

“Are you still with the guys from FAST?” Seth needed to know.

“Lost two of them in the ambush, but yeah. This isn’t Benghazi. Reinforcements are definitely on their way.”

That was good to know. “How many?”

“The whole damned company from Guantanamo.”

That gave Seth pause. The Corps followed the rule of three: three men to a fire team, three fire teams to a rifle squad, three rifle squads to a platoon, and three rifle platoons to a company. That put the number of Marines coming to Eric’s aid at a good one-hundred-twenty, maybe more once you counted all team, squad, platoon, and company leaders. “Jesus, Eric, you don’t need me with that kind of support.”

“Yes, I do. Come,” Eric pleaded. “It’s not enough. Trust me, Seth. I need every man standing. You should see these guys. They’re Arabic, every last one of them, and they’re trained killers.”

“But Eric, the Marines of FAST are better trained.”

“But they’re not enough, buddy. I need every last gun in this fight or we’ll lose Cassidy and…” A shudder raced through the line between Eric to Seth. “She’s hurt, Seth. I know she’s been hit, and she’s a woman, and… Shit. I’ve got to get to her.”

Eric’s anguish for this captured teammate radiated within the chambers of Seth’s heart. Cassidy was one of the few non-military members on The TEAM. This might’ve been her first time in combat. Yes, she was one of those types who thought she could fight the world alone, but she was still a woman, and tough guys like Eric and Seth had grown up with an inherent chivalry woven into the deepest threads of their all-male American souls. A man’s primary job on Earth was to protect and serve his women and children. End. Of. Story.

Seth relayed what he knew, including where Lianna Khadeem was and who was keeping her safe. He ended the conversation with, “Watch for me, Eric. I’m bringing the heat.” I only hope I’m bringing enough.

Turning off his satphone, he popped the battery free of its compartment. Alex would be flaming mad, but he wasn’t here, was he?

Swallowing hard, Seth opened the bathroom door and prepared to confess what he’d done. Devereaux might be angry, but she knew the rules. A man never left his buddies behind. Even now, two of Cord’s guys had already reinserted into Cuba to rescue that Julio fellow. Yeah. She’d understand.