Page 4 of Missile Strike

Hariri stood, left currency on the table, and wove his way through the crowd to the door.

“Tango two exiting the cafe,” Danny advised.

“Finn is on him.” Nathan named one of Dìleas’s European agents. “Danny, you and Emily get back to the hotel, ASAP.”

Leaning close, Danny murmured to Emily, “We’re out of here.”

He left money on the table and escorted her out of the cafe and through the crowded streets to the hotel the team was using as their command center.

Nathan met them at the door to their suite, dressed in his customary metal band T-shirt and jeans. At six-foot-six, he was one of the few people Danny felt short around, and while Danny liked to live up to his “Surfer Dude” nickname in how he presented, Nathan’s short, spiky blond hair and facial scruff gave him an outlaw demeanor that intimidated most people. Despite his appearance, he was an easy-going guy until someone made him angry.

Then he wasn’t.

“Hey, darlin’.” Nathan kissed his wife, his thumb brushing her cheek in a move so automatic neither of them seemed to notice, before he removed the recording device from Emily’s bag.

Danny looked away, his gaze taking in the suite’s living room with its low-profile oatmeal upholstered sofa, a light oak round coffee table, and a bentwood armchair with an amethyst cushion. Two framed glass doors opened onto a private terrace overlooking the bay with two lounge chairs and a small table.

After taking a seat on the sofa, Nathan connected the recording device to his computer.

Danny almost made it to the armchair when there was a knock at the door.

“That would be Ryder.” Nathan’s icy blue gaze met Danny’s before returning to his laptop.

Lifting his shirt just enough to free his compact Sig, Danny moved to the door. He peered through the peephole, his shoulders relaxing at the sight of the tall man with wavy chestnut hair and electric blue eyes on the other side.

Ryder.

Nathan had been his SEAL team leader. At Dìleas, Danny worked mostly under Ryder Montague, an aristocrat and former British SAS soldier who’d served with the president of Dìleas, Lachlan Mackay.

Re-holstering his weapon, Danny opened the door.

“Mate.” Ryder greeted him with a nod as he strolled into the room wearing tailored linen trousers and a navy polo. “I just spoke with Nathalie. She said to thank you for the photo.”

Danny had been on the protection detail for Nathalie Williams, Ryder’s fiancée, back when she was president of her father’s defense firm. Now she was enrolled in art school in London and had sent Danny one of her watercolor paintings. He’d finally gotten it framed and had sent her a photo of the painting hanging in a place of honor in his Northern Virginia apartment.

“You know I’m her favorite bodyguard,” he teased Ryder. Another one of his colleagues so in love he could barely see straight.

Good thing it wasn’t contagious.

“You’re just in time, amigo.” Nathan said to Ryder. He cued up the recording and hit play.

When it ended, everyone in the room wore the same rigid expression.

“They plan to kill Senator Strickland and his son and take the women as hostages.” Emily voiced what they’d all heard, her cheeks flushed with anger.

The same rage iced Danny’s veins. Bella and her family were in immediate danger. And this wasn’t the first time she’d been collateral damage because of her father’s career.

“We need to evacuate the Stricklands now,” he gritted out. “Their conversation is coded but the urgency behind it isn’t. I think they plan to make their move tonight.”

If it was the last thing he did, he’d make sure Bella didn’t fall into terrorist hands.

He owed her that much.

Nathan reached for Emily’s hand. “Get on the phone with your father. Tell him we have our confirmation and we move this afternoon.” The two shared a long look, probably remembering their own close call with death at the hands of a Parisian crime lord.

Admiral Dane and Senator Strickland had a prearranged conversation that would alert the senator if he and his family were in danger and what arrangements were being made to secure their safety.

Ryder was already on his phone. “I can have the helicopter ready in one hour. Tell the admiral to instruct Senator Strickland to have the yacht they rented prepared to receive the family at eighteen hundred for a dinner cruise. The activity at the harbor should keep our kidnappers distracted.”