AllFreeNovel
Share Us
She blinked again and that lovely mouth curved in a smile. “We might.”
Yesss!Raul did a mental fist pump. But alas, he’d been a SEAL and once a SEAL, always a SEAL. The unofficial SEAL motto wasdo the hard thing first.What he wanted was to crawl back into bed with her for a repeat of last night, but what they needed to do was get going to Toby’s apartment.
He bent to kiss her again, lightly. Because if he gave her a real kiss, he wouldn’t be able to stop. “I didn’t know which kind of coffee you liked so I brought both. I’ll drink whatever you don’t. Plus, I raided your kitchen, which has some mighty fine stuff, and put breakfast on the table. How far is it to Toby’s place?”
“About a quarter of an hour I think, if we have wheels.”
Tight, but doable. “I’ll have coffee and a slice of the omelet I found and go get my car at the hotel. If you can be downstairs waiting in half an hour, we can make it by nine.”
She downed the espresso. “I’ll have another one of these, thanks.” She twirled her finger and he obligingly turned his back. He’d seen it all last night but that was at night. They would definitely get to the point where she was comfortable with being naked with him during the day, but apparently now was not that point. He could hear rustling behind him and two slim arms snaked around his waist. She squeezed. “Thanks.”
He brought one of her hands to his mouth and kissed the back of it. “No problem.”
Emma walked out from behind him dressed in a bathrobe, walked into the kitchen and sat down at the breakfast table. He slid another espresso in front of her and she looked up with a smile and a nod.
“Have you given a thought to what happens if Toby isn’t missing but just went off grid for a while? If we walk in on him? It would be embarrassing.”
Emma scrunched up her face in thought, then shook her head. “No. I’ve been thinking about this a lot. I think the worst thing that could happen is that the apartment’s empty and we have no clue where Toby is. He was infatuated with Colin and I don’t think he’d ever ghost him. Toby wouldn’t ghost anyone. I think he was really sick of the mind games his family played with him. And I can’t imagine him just not showing up for work without telling anyone. Toby loves his job at PIB, but above all, he loves his career. He wouldn’t jeopardize it for anything. I don’t think we’re going to walk in on him chilling on his couch watching TV or with a new lover. I think – I think something’s happened to him.”
The face she turned up to his was worried, drawn. Raul erased the wrinkles between her eyebrows with his thumb. “Well, we’re going to do our best to find him. And when we do, maybe he’ll still have his boyfriend to come back to.”
She smiled wanly. Emma was worried and Raul thought she was right to be worried. Every description of Toby was as a serious man and serious men don’t disappear without a word. There were all sorts of nasty scenarios – ranging from a kidnapping to murder. Raul’s job was to find him and keep Emma safe. Though now his priorities were – keep Emma safe and find Toby.
“So, I’ll be in front of your building in forty-five minutes and we’ll meet Colin at nine. And we’ll start looking for Toby in earnest.” She nodded, still looking worried. Raul dropped another kiss on her lips. Fast because she was sinfully sexy, sitting there with flame-red curls tumbling around her shoulders, the bathrobe with a sexy gap in front.
Raul was a SEAL so he had the fortitude not to look. But it wasn’t easy.
Emma turned her head, soft hair shifting on her pale shoulders. “We should synchronize watches.”
“How do you check the time?” he asked.
“On my cell.”
“Exactly. And our cells show the same time. So, we’re good. We’ll go to Toby’s and decide what to do afterwards. So, see you downstairs at –”
“Eight forty-five. I’ll be there,” she said softly.
He nodded. Yeah, she’d be there. Emma was solid.
He was used to moving fast. He caught an Uber right outside Emma’s building to his hotel and changed into jeans, boots, shirt and jacket. Suitable for working. It was warm enough to be without a jacket but he wanted to be armed. He had a Glock 19 in a pancake holster. And there were more weapons in the vehicle Black Inc had made available. Upon arrival at the airport, the Black Inc office texted him the license plate of the vehicle he would use and what he could find inside. It was a pretty exhaustive list, including weapons hidden inside the door panels, and drones. Everything he might need for a mission with no parameters.
Raul had no idea what the nature of the danger might be, but where there was a lot of money involved, there were bad things and bad people. So, he was glad he was loaded for bear.
He didn’t have to speed and pulled up right on time outside her building. And there she was. It had been a long time since he’d felt a rush at seeing a woman. They were going to try to find a missing man who might have been kidnapped. Serious stuff. But he had Emma at his side. Dressed in straight legged black pants, a light green cotton sweater and a dark green vest. Sneakers. Hair pulled back in a messy pony tail.
She looked good enough to eat and there was no place else in the world Raul would rather be. As she walked toward him, smiling, he leaned over and opened the passenger side door. She opened it up and bent down with a smile.
“Hey,” she said.
“Hey,” he answered, as something in his chest gave a hard knock.
9
“Todo hecho.”
“Bueno.”
He had had no doubt that his man, Guillermo De la Vega, would do what had been ordered, do it well and on time. After all, he’d been a colonel in Mexico’sFuerzas Especiales, Special Forces. He was just as disciplined and efficient working for Marin as he’d been working for the Mexican Army. Maybe more so, since he was being paid fifty times as much as he’d earned as an officer.
