Chapter Thirty-One

Dev waited until Joachim finally left. By then it was dark. He’d paced the cramped motel room like a trapped panther, which told her he was hiding from someone. Not like she didn’t already know he was some kind of criminal. Any guy who manacled a woman to his bed was a dirtbag, and she had no intention of hanging around until he returned.

He hadn’t touched her since that one and only encounter, but… the nerve! Shivers raced up her bare arms at the thought of his greasy hair in her eyes and mouth, and at the way he’d pinned her to his bed. As soon as she got out of this cuff, she was gone!

Rolling to her feet, she took quick stock of her precarious situation. Metal cuffs. Metal bed frame. Metal headboard. All seemingly inescapable and attached to each other, which meant she wouldn’t get far since she couldn’t drag the bed through the door. No matter. There had to be another way out of this mess.

She’d already tried to slip out of the cuffs, but that hadn’t worked. Spying the phone across the room on the battered, shabby credenza, she traced the cord visually from the receiver to the wall connection above the baseboard. It certainly looked authentic from where she stood. Useable.

All righty then.

On her feet now, she shoved the mattress off the frame with both feet since she had limited mobility, and her arm only stretched so far. But damn. Who in their right mind bolts a bed to the floor and the headboard to the wall? This baby wasn’t going anywhere.

Which told her precisely what kind of a motel this was, didn’t it? The kind with hourly rates, bed bugs, and ugly, greasy blond, two-legged rats. The kind where cheaply made headboards banging into walls could make a lot of noise unless everything was bolted down.

Swallowing hard now, she stretched for the phone, but it might as well have been on the moon. Desperate, she glanced upward. Every motel room had a handy, dandy spigot on the ceiling in case of fire, didn’t it? Not. This motel wasn’t up to code, and she was running out of options and time. Joachim would be back soon. Sly maybe, too.

Hurry, Dev. You can do it. Hurry!

Stubbornly, Dev stamped one bare foot and declared, “I will not be turned into a nameless statistic, not by Sly, and not by Joachim. There has to be a way out of here.”

Standing there in the empty room, still shackled to a bed frame that had to be from the turn of the century—hadn’t these people ever heard of Memory Foam?—she broke out in a sweat. “I can’t die like this,” she told the silence as her heart started pounding an anxious beat. “I’ve got a son to live for. A man who actually loves me, I know he does. I’ve got a life!”

Her nagging conscience piped up with: And look what you’ve done with it. You’re still worried about James, you’ve been sold by Sly, and now you’re trapped in a motel room, by a man who thinks he got a bad deal when he got you.

I know, I know. Think, Dev. Think.

He’ll be back soon. Hurry!

Okay then. If this was the end, she meant to let the whole world know. Dev opened her mouth and screamed. For minutes upon minutes, she yelled for help, screamed, “Fire!” and just plain bellowed her heart out.

For nothing.

After giving her all without even a single knock at the door or a friendly, ‘hello, are you in there?’ she dropped to her knees on the matted, grungy carpet, out of breath and running out of time.

Guess this wasn’t the kind of motel where considerate people intervened in other people’s business, either. No, she had to end up in a motel where murderers shot slasher films, while some unwilling victim earned several minutes of fame the hard way, by getting her throat cut. This was where good girls turned into hookers, and where hookers died hard lonely deaths when they pissed off their pimps.

Her time was running out. No one knew where she was, but here she would die. Maybe. Joachim would be back soon. Maybe he’d bring Sly and that creep, Prince Bagani.

Oh, God, not him. What else can I do?

There seemed nothing left to do, but… cry.

Seth made good time after he hit GITMO. The facility itself was a bastion of gray against the green Cuban landscape, but instead of waiting for a chopper in the morning, another already sat on the tarmac to take him to Florida. Before he knew it, he was in the air and on his way to the land of the free. Nothing felt better.

His heart turned toward Devereaux and her ragged little bungalow on Starfish Drive as the camouflaged bird flew low over the waves between Cuba and home. America always looked grand after a hard operation, and this one had been tougher than most. Seth still didn’t know whether Alex would help Husam and his sisters or not. What had seemed a simple request only hours earlier now seemed an impossible dream.

Alex didn’t just send his TEAM off without vetting his intentions through proper federal channels, and when he did, it was usually because he’d signed a contract to support whatever federal entity needed his help. He wasn’t running a charity, but a topnotch business known the world over for getting the hard jobs done right. He followed his own strict protocol, and because he did, he’d garnered trust throughout the world. He had allies in Afghanistan, Liberia, even inside Russia and China.

For the most part, Alex followed the order of law. Yet there were a few times, he’d stormed the beaches to get one of his men or women back, politics be damned. Seth hoped this might be one of those rare times. Otherwise, poor Husam, his sisters, and his brothers-at-arms didn’t have a prayer. Khadeem’s death squads would squash their families, and Corporal Ritter was right. Because of the political quagmire America’s supposedly free press had turned into, very little of the world’s real news ever hit American palates.

By the time the chopper’s skids touched down at the United States Coast Guard Station at Islamorada, Florida, instead of on Drunken Sailor Island, which Seth would’ve preferred, night had fallen. But he didn’t argue with the location. Home was home, and he knew how to drive. Within the hour, he’d rented a Chevy truck from a twenty-four-seven rental agency and was on his way west.

Traffic on Overseas Highway US Route 1 was light but steady. His shoulder still ached, but the quick patch job he’d done on himself once he’d left Eric behind at the prison must’ve been enough. The bullet hadn’t struck him full on anyway. He’d only been grazed, and the wound wasn’t feverish, just sore. He’d live.

The night was warm and the breeze off the Atlantic filled his nose with the scents of wind, sand, and salt. All the truck’s windows were open, and for the first time in years, life was on its way to being good again. Make that great. He had a woman in that life again, and she made all the difference. How well he knew that man wasn’t meant to live alone—or with ghosts.

He’d been coasting on ‘good enough’ for too long. The moment he’d taken Devereaux in his arms and made love with her, his life had changed for the better. Colors were brighter. The air smelled sweeter. Even his heart pumped differently, as if it had a reason to keep him alive, as if his veins pumped more oxygen now. As if the ghosts of his past had finally let loose the stranglehold they’d had on him and his heart.

His chest expanded with every breath of—life. Damn, it was good to be headed back to Devereaux’s home. Just one smile from those pretty blue eyes, and he was a goner. She had a way of making him feel better about himself, and it wasn’t just because of the incredibly hot sex they’d shared. No. Though that was definitely one of the things he loved about her, there was more going on between them, and he knew it.

Despite her economic situation, Devereaux had an eternally optimistic take on life that seemed to sweep others along in her wake. Of all the people in the world, she had a right to be bitter, and he wouldn’t blame her if she were. Most single moms worked their asses off just to end up living on the fringe of poverty, and because of her pig-headed brother, Devereaux wasn’t far from being homeless. Yet she gave and gave until her kitchen cupboards were literally bare.

Well, no more. Seth intended to remedy at least that much. There had to be an all-night grocery store, at least a 7-11 open between here and her house, where he could stock up on a few necessities for breakfast. Seth’s shoulders lifted like a little kid hiding a gift behind his back for his best girlfriend. Wouldn’t Devereaux be surprised to see him on her doorstep with his arms full of groceries in the middle of the night?

That 7-11 had better have a box or two of donuts. Everyone loved donuts. And a rose. Didn’t all convenience stores keep a bin full of silk roses near the checkout stand for sappy guys like him? Seth hoped so.

Memories of kissing Devereaux’s warm, lush lips warmed his blood. It was time to tell her. Hmmm. Yes. Tonight was the night.