NINE
Alexa strode into the doughnut shop, and Jake’s pulse picked up. He leaned back in his chair, trying to look bored as she approached the table.
“Doughnuts for dinner?” she asked.
“Sure, why not?”
She pulled out a chair and sank into it. He slid a napkin over, offering her a chocolate-iced doughnut with chocolate sprinkles. She didn’t even look at it. “No, thank you.”
“What kind of cop doesn’t like doughnuts?”
“I’m not a cop. I’m an FBI agent.”
“That gun on your hip says you’re a cop, babe. Same with that scowl you get when you’re annoyed. At least have some coffee.” He pushed the cup toward her. “You probably plan to be up late.”
She ignored the coffee, too. “What can I do for you, Lieutenant?”
“You’ve got it wrong, Alexa. I’m here to help you.”
“What makes you think I need your help?”
“The Ricky Avedo case is one of the most important investigations your office is running right now. And your most important witness rejected your offer of protection. She’d rather have a SEAL.” He smiled. “Can you blame her?”
“We don’t need your help. She’s under surveillance.”
“You mean Rosewood and Taggart? Sorry to break it to you, but Ryan shook them loose an hour ago.”
She tried not to react, but he could see no one had told her about this development.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “Emma’s been transferred safely to an undisclosed location. I’ll be happy to put her in touch with you, but I’m going to need you to answer a simple question first.”
Alexa waited, not talking or scowling or giving anything away. But just the fact that she hadn’t gotten up and left yet told him how important Emma was and that the FBI needed his help communicating with her.
“What’s your question?” she asked casually.
“Who called Emma and set up that fake meeting? And don’t tell me you don’t know. You ran her phone records as soon as you found out about it.”
She tipped her head to the side. “If Emma’s so safe with your friend, then why does it matter?”
“Threat assessment. We like to know the direction a threat’s coming from to better defend against it.”
She looked at him for a long moment. Then something changed. Her shoulders sagged, and she leaned back in her chair, sighing. For the first time since he’d met her, he got a glimpse of the real woman beneath all the armor. Jake could see she was under a lot of strain.
She pinched off a bite of his doughnut and popped it into her mouth. She chewed for a moment and then took another bite.
“That’s good.”
“I know.” He watched her, waiting patiently. When she glanced up again, he felt like she was ready to talk.
“I can’t tell you who exactly. In fact, I really shouldn’t tell you anything.”
“We’re on the same team here, Alexa. Five weeks ago, I dropped into the jungle to help rescue this girl. I want to help her stay alive, same as you.”
Alexa looked around the little restaurant. It was almost empty, and the employees were wiping down counters and wrapping up for the day. “Like I said, I can’t tell you who. But I can tell you what.” She took a deep breath. “ICE.”
“Immigration and Customs Enforcement?”
She nodded. “Their LA office. The call originated from there.” She took a sip of coffee. “It’s been said—and I’m not confirming this—that Ricky Avedo has a contact on the inside somewhere. Someone who helps him with his trafficking operation. He’s had way too much luck dodging raids in the past, and investigators believe he’s getting tips. Good ones. Whoever provides them also helps him troubleshoot problems.”
“Problems such as Emma Wright.”
“We’re looking into that, yes. We believe someone may have planned to ambush her at her hotel, possibly grabbing her on her way to her room or inside it. The room is on the first floor, so they could have slipped out through the patio door. When she didn’t enter the hotel, they changed the plan and went after her on the street.”
Well, shit.
Emma was dead on when she’d told Ryan she couldn’t trust the feds. Someone within their ranks was gunning for her. Or helping Avedo gun for her, which was the same thing.
Avedo was dangerous and highly motivated, a very bad combination for Emma. Jake had been doing some digging, and Ricky and his dad had an extremely lucrative business. There was a lot on the line, a lot to protect.
A lot to lose if some nosy congressman’s daughter blew the lid off everything.
“Sounds like you have your hands full,” he said.
“I gave you something. Now it’s your turn.” She leaned forward. “How can I reach Emma? I’m sure you can see how dangerous this situation is for her.”
Jake nodded. “I can.” He stood, and she looked up at him, startled. “When she’s ready, I’ll have her get in touch.”
———
The place wasn’t what Ryan had pictured. When Emma said Manhattan Beach he’d expected a fancy setup, maybe with a view overlooking the Pacific. But it was your basic walk-up apartment, a couple dozen units centered around a sparsely landscaped courtyard. She was in a second-floor apartment, but that was about the only good thing he could see about the place.
She led him down an open-air walkway.
“Your super needs to change out these bulbs,” Ryan told her.
“What’s that?”
“These light bulbs. I see two out on the other side. Where is he? I’ll talk to him.”
“I have no idea, actually. The management doesn’t know I’m staying here.” She stopped at a door and knocked. “I hope this woman’s home. I’ve only met her once. I don’t even know what she does for a living.”
The answer became apparent when Emma’s neighbor answered the door in orange short-shorts and a Hooters T-shirt.
She smiled. “Emma, hey. What’s up?” Her gaze landed on Ryan, and her smile brightened.
“Sorry to bother you, but I’m locked out again.”
“What’s that?” She shifted her attention back to Emma.
“I misplaced my key. You mind lending me the spare?”
“Sure, no problem.”
The neighbor went and got the key and then rushed off to work, giving Ryan a little wink when Emma wasn’t looking.
“Good thing we caught her,” Emma said, unlocking her door. “I don’t know how we would’ve gotten in otherwise.”
“I do.” Ryan followed her into a dark apartment. The front hallway was lined with large brown moving boxes sealed with tape.
“It’s a mess.” She glanced over her shoulder. “I haven’t unpacked yet. I’ve only spent one night here.”
The living room had almost no furniture, just a faded blue futon and an armchair that had to have come from the Salvation Army. The place was immaculate, though, and the kitchen smelled like Pine-Sol.
“My friend left it clean, but she sold off some of the furniture before she left, so . . .” Emma’s words trailed off as she made a beeline straight for the refrigerator and opened it. “Aha!” She beamed a smile at him. “Can I offer you a beer?”
“Definitely.”
Ryan crossed the living room to check out the windows. Between them was a door to a narrow balcony, barely room for one person to stand on. “You need some new locks on these windows.”
“Huh?” She looked up from the fridge.
“These old latches are crap. You can pick up some burglar latches at any hardware store. Or I can.”
She popped the top off a Corona and handed him the bottle. “I’m on the second level. You really think that’s necessary?”
“Yeah, I do.”
She shook her head and went back into the kitchen. “I don’t have much food, unfortunately. I’ve only picked up a few staples. Oh—I have Grape-Nuts. Damn, but no milk. You want some dry cereal?”
“I’ll pass.”
A box near the window was open and partially unpacked. Ryan looked inside. She had a stack of review books for the GRE, an anatomy textbook, a Tagalog-English dictionary.
She also had a couple of yearbooks and several pictures in frames. Ryan picked up the top photo. Emma was standing on a snowy hilltop with her arms wrapped around some guy. They both wore ski jackets and scarves, and the backdrop was a snow-covered mountain range.
“This him?”
“What?”
Ryan looked to the kitchen, where she was rummaging through the pantry.
“Hunter Bevins, your ex.”
She glanced up. “Oh. Yeah.” She frowned. “Where’d you get that?”
“In your box.” The box packed with stuff she wanted in her new place.
Ryan’s gut tightened with jealousy. He couldn’t help it. The fucker had taken her skiing and probably to expensive restaurants all the time. He probably had some six-figure job and drove a fucking BMW.
And he’d hurt her and embarrassed her in front of everyone she knew, and still she wanted his picture in her new apartment.
She walked over and took the frame out of his hand, then tossed it back into the box. “That’s old,” she said.
“Is it?”
“Yes.” She stared up at him, and he tried to read her expression.
A sharp rap sounded at the door, and Ryan was across the room in a few strides to peer through the peephole. No one there, which was exactly what he’d expected.
He opened the door and found an olive-green duffel on the ground.
“Who was that?” she asked from behind him as he closed the door.
“Lucas Ortiz.”
“Who?”
“Lucas. You met him.” He unzipped the duffel and took out a black notebook computer.
“That’s my laptop! How’d he get this?”
“He dropped by your hotel room in San Diego.” Ryan pulled out a clear zipper bag of makeup. “I told him to grab everything in the bathroom, in case you needed anything.” Lucas had remembered to get her prescriptions, Ryan was glad to see. He handed her the zipper bag and continued going through the duffel. He found a change of clothes, a new burner phone, an envelope containing a hundred dollars in cash, and a jumbo box of condoms. Lucas definitely had his back.
“Dropped by?”
Ryan looked up.
“How do you ‘drop by’ a locked hotel room?”
“He let himself in.”
“How? He could have been arrested!”
“Not likely.”
Ryan zipped the duffel before she could catch a glimpse of his provisions and get offended. On the ride over here, Ryan had realized he might have been taking some things for granted with Emma. He couldn’t just assume she wanted to be with him. She hadn’t told him about nursing school, so maybe she saw this whole thing as a one-off. If so, Ryan had plans to convince her otherwise.
But she wasn’t paying attention to his provisions. She was already booting up her computer on the kitchen counter.
“What are you searching for exactly?” Ryan asked, looking over her shoulder.
“I need to check something. The date of this argument I overheard at the Conners’.” Her hands flew over the keys as she entered search words. “I stopped by the ambassador’s residence to drop off an itinerary for one of our mission trips. The maid let me in. They were arguing in the living room. . . . Damn it, where is that itinerary? It was the trip to Leyte. Richard’s assistant e-mailed me the schedule. Here.” She clicked open an e-mail. “I knew it! March twentieth.”
“I’m not following.”
“The argument. It was after the passport incident. I told you about the missing passports? That whole thing blew up on March fifteenth. Oh my God, Ryan. Do you see?” She looked up at him eagerly.
“Not at all.”
“Sorry. Backtrack. Renee and Richard were arguing when I showed up. I remember she said something like, ‘You think I don’t know your little secret?’ It was so much like an argument my parents once had, and I jumped right to the conclusion that she’d found out about one of his affairs.”
“He had affairs?”
“All the time. And she said, ‘I’m not trapped, you know. I have resources,’ or something along those lines.”
“You’re saying the ‘secret’ she was referring to was the passport thing?”
“Yes! What if he was involved? What if he’s working as an inside man for the Avedo family, getting them things they need and giving them tips to help them run their operation? As the ambassador, he’s privy to all kinds of sensitive information.”
It wasn’t a bad theory.
It was damn good, in fact. Better than anything Ryan had come up with, and he had plenty of information Emma didn’t.
She was exiting her e-mail account now and logging into someone else’s.
“No way. I still have access to Renee’s.” She smiled up at him, her eyes glittering with excitement. “Okay, let me just search a few things here. If you were talking to a divorce lawyer, what are some things you’d discuss? Money! Of course.” She entered the word retainer in the search field and came up with an e-mail trail. Ryan skimmed the messages over her shoulder and whistled.
“Damn, you’re good at this. You sure you want to be a nurse?”
“Here’s an invoice right here. She retained a divorce lawyer in Los Angeles, Ryan. She was planning to leave him.”
“Which makes me think Conner helped orchestrate the attack,” Ryan said.
“You mean . . . the attack on the plane? I thought some sort of missile brought it down. I thought it was militants.”
“The Avedo family’s connected throughout the region,” he said. “They spend millions a year running their operation, and despite all their political rhetoric, these militant groups are happy to sell their services to the highest bidder. Kidnapping for ransom, murder, extortion, whatever—they do it all.”
“So you think Avedo arranged with one of these militant groups to have her targeted?”
“Yes, but with help. Whoever carried out the attack on her plane, and even her car before that, would have needed details about her schedule, her security, details the ambassador definitely had about his wife.”
Emma’s hands were shaking now. She was white as chalk.
“Hey.” He slid his arm around her waist. “You want to sit down?”
“No.”
“Honey, you don’t look good.”
“I’m fine, I just—” She slapped a hand on the counter. “That prick. He killed her, Ryan.”
“I know.”
She glared up at him, tears of anger in her eyes. “His own wife, Ryan. He killed Juan and Mick, and he tried to kill me, too. And you and your team almost got killed—”
“Now, I wouldn’t go that far.”
“Ryan, he’s a murdering bastard, and I want him in jail!”
Ryan wanted him in a dark alley without any witnesses around. But he knew what she meant.
Her hands were still shaking, and she looked like she was going to unravel. He pulled her against him and wrapped his arms around her.
“I can’t believe it. How can he live with himself?”
“Hey.” He gave her a squeeze and stepped back. “Why don’t you take a break? Get a hot shower or something. I’ll comb through this and make sure we didn’t miss something.”
She glanced at her computer. “Are you sure?”
“Yeah.”
“That sounds like heaven, actually. I haven’t showered in days.”
“Go. I’ll work on this.”
She took a deep breath. “Thank you.”
She went up on tiptoes and kissed him, brushing her breasts against his chest. She felt soft and tempting, and Ryan’s cock perked up. He forced himself to ignore it.
“I won’t be long,” she said, grabbing her beer.
He watched her disappear down the hallway and then turned back to her computer.
One thing at a time. He needed to get this evidence secured ASAP, before someone at the embassy realized that she still had access to the system. He skimmed through, selecting a few messages and forwarding them to himself. Then he created a document and saved it to Emma’s hard drive as backup. A printer would have been good, but she didn’t have one set up.
He glanced around her apartment as the water went on in the bathroom. She really hadn’t unpacked much. The place was practically empty. He eyed the box with all the books and photographs.
Hunter. What the fuck kind of name was that, anyway? The guy had probably never hunted for anything in his life besides a missing golf ball. Probably didn’t even know how to hold a gun. And who wore a Rolex skiing? The guy was a loser, no question. He wouldn’t have survived a day in the jungle by himself or even five minutes with one of Avedo’s goons. Emma had not only survived, but she’d managed to escape.
Emma was tough. She might not look it, with the fancy clothes and the heels and the Bambi eyes. But underneath all that was a woman who could build latrines and sleep in the forest. A woman who liked cheeseburgers and french fries and hot sex. A woman who considered beer a staple, for Christ’s sake. That was the real Emma, the one he was falling hard for. So hard it scared him.
He glanced at the hallway, where he heard the hum of the pipes. She was having a moment to herself now, and he should leave her alone. Really.
In need of a distraction, he took out his new burner phone and called Jake.
———
Emma stepped into the hallway and jumped.
“My God, you scared me!” She held her arms over her bare breasts. “I was just getting some towels from my room.”
But he was a step ahead of her. He handed her a towel and backed her against the wall, taking her mouth with his before she could get a word out. And he didn’t just kiss her—he kissed her.
“You’re naked,” he murmured, dipping his head down to kiss her breast.
Not quite. She was still in her panties, but he was quickly taking care of that, sliding them down her legs.
“Ryan.” She gasped as he kissed his way up her body, then took her mouth again. His kiss was hot and urgent, as though it had been weeks instead of hours since they’d last been together. His tongue delved into her mouth as he pressed her against the wall.
“I wanted to leave you alone, but—” He plumped her breast in his hand and squeezed her nipple. “I can’t. You’re so fucking hot, Emma, I can’t stop touching you.”
“Hot. Right.” No one had ever called her hot before, but maybe he thought flattery would put her in the mood.
He pulled back. “You don’t think I’m serious?”
“I think . . .” She rubbed her hand over his erection. “I think you seriously want to get laid.”
“You’re fucking beautiful, Emma. How do you not know that?”
“I need to lose a few pounds.”
“Don’t.” He slid his hand over her butt and squeezed. “I love you like this.”
Her heart skipped a beat as she stared up at him. He didn’t realize what he’d said, but it was sweet anyway, and she pulled his head down to hers for another kiss. She loved the way he kissed her. And touched her. The way he gripped her flesh like it was something he desperately needed to hold on to. She loved the way he made her feel confident and sexy, like the star of one of his fantasies.
One of those fantasies apparently involved a shower, because he was towing her toward the bathroom now. He stepped into the steamy little room and quickly stripped off his clothes. Taking her hand, he pulled her into the tub with him and positioned her under the scalding spray.
She loved his body, so hard and muscled. She’d been awed just touching him in the dark last night, but in the light like this, he was truly heart-stopping.
He dipped his head down to her breast, and she tipped her head back, loving the warm pull of his mouth as his talented fingers slipped down and inside her.
“God, Emma.” He moved up and kissed her neck as he touched her. She was already flushed and fevered, but he was turning the heat up, making her ache inside again with that relentless yearning. He knew just how to touch her to make her crazy with need for him.
“Ryan.” She clutched his shoulders, clinging to him, leaning against the cool tile of the shower as his fingers worked their magic. “Ryan . . . please.”
“I love it when you beg,” he murmured.
“Please. I need you now.”
His hands went away, and she opened her eyes to watch him through the steam as he grabbed his jeans off the sink and somehow hunted up a condom. “Hold on,” he said, and she slipped her hands around his neck. He gripped her hips and lifted her, and she wrapped her legs around him as he lowered her onto him.
He felt good. So good. There was nothing gentle or romantic about it as he took her against the shower wall. It was hard and raw and possessive, like he was staking a claim. And she was letting him. She wanted him to claim her, needed him to, and she clutched him as tightly as she could, clinging to him for dear life as he thrust into her again and again and again. She braced her hand against the wall beside her.
“I’ve got you,” he said, gripping her hips.
How many times had he told her that since they’d met? And the thing was, she believed him. He had her, body and soul. He had her heart.
“Emma.”
“Yes. Oh, yes.”
She came apart, shattering in his arms, and he caught her and held her even as he came, too, driving her back against the hard tile.
They stayed there like that, gasping and holding each other as the hot spray fell against their intertwined bodies. Emma’s pulse was racing. She couldn’t breathe. He pulled back and looked at her, his gaze intense. What was he thinking when he looked at her that way?
“You okay?” he asked.
I love you.
She kissed him, too afraid to say it. Maybe she’d always be too afraid. And she felt a pang of guilt. All the risks he’d taken for her, and she was too insecure to say a few simple words? She should tell him. Right now, while they were still winded from sex.
And then a phone buzzed, and she was glad she hadn’t. She slid down his slick body. He steadied her on her feet as the phone rang again.
“Whose is that?” she asked.
“Mine. Lucas brought me a new one.”
He handed her the towel she’d left on the sink, then stepped out and grabbed his jeans before disappearing into the hallway.
Emma dried off quickly. She wrapped the towel around herself and went into the living room, where she found him standing near the window with a cell phone pressed to his ear. He was bare-chested and had a grim expression on his face.
“What’s the name of the place?” He glanced at Emma. “No, but I can find it.”
“Who is it?” she asked.
He muted the phone. “Mays. She’s with Jake. She said there’s been an important development and she wants a meeting.”
“Are you sure it’s her?”
Ryan looked at her a moment. “Good call.” He got back on the phone. “Hey, put Jake on a minute, will you?”
Ryan’s gaze drifted over her, and the look in his eyes heated. She stepped closer, and he pulled her against him.
“Jake? Hey, man, just making sure. We’re on our way.”