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The room was clean, and she could smell the sheets on the bed were freshly laundered. On the dresser she saw a bowl of fruit, various cheeses, bread, and a carafe of ice water. Another door opened to a lavatory. They’d certainly made concessions for her comfort, although not as lavishly as Petrov had.
Raketa shook thoughts of him away. What she needed to focus on was crafting a plan to do what she wished Gunner had done in the first place—kill the sonuvabitch.
After having a few pieces of cheese and some of the bread and fruit, along with several glasses of water, Raketa struggled to keep her eyes open. She lay down on the bed, knowing sleep was inevitable, only then did it dawn on her why. The bastards had drugged her.
—:—
“She’s out,” Onyx reported.
“Roger that,” said Gunner. “The plane is ready. I’ll meet you there.”
He had a very short window of opportunity if he wanted to get Raketa to the island before she came to. Once they were there, she’d have no means to leave. The closest land was a sixteen-mile swim.
Gunner had no intention of harming her to get her to talk. He wanted Raketa to tell him the truth because she wanted to. That meant she had to trust him enough to open up, something her training had ingrained so deeply in her to never do. Breaking through those walls was going to take time.
Gunner climbed into the small plane and put on the headphones Mantis handed him.
“There’s a landing strip on the opposite side of the island,” he told him, pointing to the map.
Mantis gave him a thumbs up before pointing to where the SUV had just parked.
Rather than waiting for Onyx to bring Raketa to the plane, Gunner jumped out and carried her himself.
“Thanks, boys,” he said, motioning for him and Dutch to head out.
The flight plan Mantis had filed would carry them just so far. Once they got close to the island, the small aircraft would intentionally lose contact with radar, land, and be stored in a well-hidden hanger. Mantis would be picked up by the supply boat and transported north into Maryland where he would be met by CIA agents who would take him to headquarters.
As much as Gunner disliked Striker, he had to give the guy props for delivering as much as he had on this op. He no longer worked for the agency—he was a K19 partner now—but he’d been able to secure support from his former employer that even Doc wouldn’t have been able to negotiate.
* * *
It wasn’t just getting Raketa to come clean with him that Gunner was concerned with. The threat against her from United Russia was very real. The last he’d heard, the bounty on her head had been raised to five mil. Doc was working hard to strike a deal with the modern-day equivalent of the KGB, but so far nothing he’d offered was equal in value to how much they wanted Raketa dead.
UR wasn’t her only threat, though. There was a reason Petrov had taken her in the first place. If it had been for the money the Russians were offering, she would’ve been dead a long time ago. There had to be another reason.
He turned around and studied Raketa’s sleeping form. Her beauty never failed to take his breath away or stir the kind of desire in him that no other woman ever had. They had chemistry. That much had been evident since the first time they saw each other and every time since.
In the last few months, the other three founding partners of K19 had met and married women that each of them, at one time or another, had professed to be their soulmate. Gunner had never believed in the notion, nor the other crap people in love spouted off about.
Each time he heard one of them go on about the love of their life, he couldn’t help but inwardly call bullshit.
Mercer had been the first to tumble. He had fallen for Quinn Butler who, as it turned out, was Doc’s daughter. Until recently, no one had known she was, not even Doc. For sure anyway.
The day Mercer told Gunner that he was giving up his partnership, retiring from the work they did, Gunner was incredulous. He couldn’t fathom why the kid would throw away his career and the kind of money being a K19 partner pulled in just for a woman.
Doc was next when he announced his marriage, closely followed by his retirement. Gunner hadn’t been surprised. Doc had just returned from a harrowing two years of being held prisoner by a Russian faction that United Russia wanted annihilated far more than they wanted Raketa’s head on a platter. Doc’s wife, Merrigan, had been the one who rescued him along with UR’s help. Which was why now, Doc was taking the lead in negotiating for Raketa’s life.
It wasn’t until Razor met Ava McNamara that Gunner began to believe in someone finding their one true love. Razor was as anti-bullshit as he was, and if there was anyone Gunner would’ve predicted would die a sexually sated bachelor, it would’ve been Tabon “Razor” Sharp. But his buddy had fallen hard and fast for Ava, refusing to accept anything less from her than spending the rest of their lives together.
Razor had been on life support—close to death—but Gunner knew he fought his way back for Ava.
When she came and found Gunner sitting in the chapel, praying that God would spare his best friend’s life, and told him that Razor was going to be okay, he’d closed his eyes and laughed, thinking that next time he wouldn’t be so quick to call bullshit on things he’d never admit to—like the idea that maybe Raketa was more to him than a woman he wanted to have sex with. Maybe the inexplicably insane level of attraction he felt when he was with her could one day grow into something deeper.
He groaned at his own train of thought. He knew better than to think the kind of happiness that his teammates were experiencing would ever come to him. He’d learned that the day he’d killed Lena Hess. While he hadn’t loved her in the same way Mercer, Doc, or Razor loved their wives, the pain he felt when she died was the worst he’d ever known, until a few weeks later when his father died.
“Everything okay, boss?” asked Mantis.
Gunner nodded and looked out the window of the plane down at the deep blue waters of the Atlantic Ocean.
