Page 36 of Russian Rescue

Her eyes bulged. “Seriously? They are trying to use you for something to do with nukes? Jesus fuck.”

“Yeah. It’s not good.”

“Uh, no. It’s not good at all. We need to shut these people down, whoever they are. Come on, Wes. Think. Who the hell are these guys?”

I started racking my brain, trying to put together all the pieces of the puzzle.

“It was a Russian server, and it had a lot of nuke stuff on there, so I’m assuming that’s what this is about. I ended up going in and out of a lot of places, so it’s hard to say exactly where I was that interested them. Also, the guys who were torturing me kept talking about nuke ‘locations’ and ‘codes.’ I think they wanted me to get them those. Like, hack the system to find them.” I stopped and furrowed my brow. “But that doesn’t make sense if this is the Russian government after me, because they already have their own nuclear locations and codes.”

“So, this isn’t the Russian government then,” she said confidently. “That means we’re dealing with rogue terrorists or a cell. And that’s actually a whole lot better than if this was the government chasing you. The government we can’t stop and shut down. Witness protection would be the only option. But a terrorist group? We’ve shut down plenty of those, and I bet we can do it again.”

With hope fluttering inside my chest, I nodded. “Yeah. We can. Once we get Amanda safe, I’m going to track down these motherfuckers, and we’re going to wipe them out. All of them. No one is coming after me or my family again.”

“Looking forward to it.” Piper grinned. “Just find out who they are and point me in the direction to go kick some ass.”

I smiled back at her. “With pleasure. I love watching you kick some ass.”

“You just love my ass, period.”

“Valid.”

I slung my arm around her neck and pulled her in for a hug. “Now, back to showing me how to kill people so I don’t die when we go fight these bastards.”

CHAPTER NINE

Piper

––––––––

I sat on the couch with a glass of vodka dangling between my fingertips. Wes was in the bathroom taking a shower, and I continued trying to burn the image of him naked and wet from my mind.

It didn’t work.

The entire day with Wes had been torture. I’d thought he was sexy even when he was just a hot, nerdy computer guy. Now that he could throw knives and swap between an SMG and a pistol in impressive time, my smoldering feelings for him only ignited brighter.

Turning off the visions of almost kissing him earlier today hadn’t worked either. Those continual flashbacks were pure agony, pulling my body tight as a bowstring ready to snap. When the water shut off, I took a stilling breath, trying to dig back into the titanium resolve that had stopped me from leaning up and capturing his lips with mine. Being pressed against that tree with his tempting mouth just a breath from mine was torture, and he’d been dead on when he’d called me out on my attraction.

An attraction I had to put an end to. Somehow.

The bathroom door opened, and Wes walked out wearing nothing but the sweatpants he’d gotten from Oleg. As my eyes raked up his rock-hard body to his head, that battle I’d been fighting to ignore my attraction to him exploded into a fiery ball of flames.

“What do you think?” he asked, waving a hand over his short, dark hair and his smoothly shaved face.

“What—how?”

He did a spin. “Eh? Not bad, huh? You’re not the only one who can go incognito. I found some hair dye and scissors in the bathroom closet. I guess Oleg keeps it here for you operatives to change up your look. There are like four colors in there, but I thought this one was pretty good with my skin tone. Actually, it’s close to my natural color when it’s not bleached out from the sun.” He waved a hand over the wet, tousled spikes. “I decided to change my hair so the Russians won’t recognize me. They’re looking for a surfer type with dirty-blond hair and a scruffy face. They won’t be looking for a guy with dark, clean-cut hair and a pretty face like this.”

When he grinned, it showed off the perfect chisel of his now naked jaw. I nearly dropped my glass as I took in the walking, talking temptation moving toward me. Wes had been crazy hot before, but now with his new look, he could have waltzed down the center of any runway at Fashion Week.

He was gorgeous. And the dark hair only made his light blue eyes pop out more.

“You... you look—”

“Hot. I know.” His cocky grin split his face. “I had been thinking about cutting my hair off for a while. This was just an excuse to do it. Not bad, though, huh? I mean, you may have to take the scissors and clean up a few spots in the back, but it’s pretty good for my first time.”

Pretty good didn’t cover it. The short, dark tousles of hair sticking up in a trendy style looked like something he would have gotten in a salon.

“You look... good,” I finally managed to get out.