“You got someone to call?” asked the officer.
“I do,” she replied.
She was escorted to a holding cell.
One minute she was saving BLACK OPS from a hitman. The next, she needed to get bailed out of jail. As she lifted the receiver on the wall-mounted phone, she realized she didn’t know Tank’s number.
That’s just great.
She called Caroline.
Please don’t be doing Stud-Man. Please pick up.
“Hello,” Caroline answered.
“Car, it’s me,” Sydney said. “So… I ran into a little prob and I’m in Fairfax County jail. Any chance you can bail me out or maybe send Tank?”
“Are you okay?”
“Nothing but sunshine and rainbows over here.”
“Where’s the SUV?”
“It’s probably gonna get impounded. It’s missing a tail light.
“We’ll pick it up.”
“I screwed up,” Sydney said.
“I’m just relieved you’re okay.” Caroline hung up.
I messed up.
She glanced around the holding cell. She’d gone from being a prisoner at the Black Site to being an actual prisoner.
I will never complain about Creepy Secret Zone ever again.
Thirty minutes later, an officer walked over to the holding cell. “Ms. Austin.”
She’d been standing by the door. “Tell me something good.”
She unlocked the cell, Sydney followed her into the main room. It was one-thirty in the morning and the precinct was busier than expected. She swept the room. Standing at the check-out counter looking like he’d walked straight off the pages of a fashion magazine stood her man.
Tank was talking with the clerk… or maybe she was talking to him.
Sydney’s heart skipped a beat, the breath got sucked from her lungs. With every step, her heart thumped faster while heat spread through her like wildfire. There stood six-foot three of raw granite. When he looked her way, she couldn’t miss the ticking in his jaw. He narrowed his eyes, and he crossed his arms. More angry he could not have looked.
His absolute frustration turned her on in a way that terrified her. She wanted him to unleash all that energy on her.
I can handle him.
All of him.
She stopped inches away, peered up. A shadow darkened his eyes.
“Thank you,” was all she said.
There were no smiles, no hugs. She didn’t throw herself on him. Just the opposite. She bathed in the deep freeze that was Tank Santini. His icy greeting only ratcheted up the heat burning through her. She could thaw him, no problem, and she would enjoy every minute of it.
