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An hour later, I was slumped in the backseat of the SUV, playing with the tennis bracelet I’d kept from my mother’s jewelry as I let my mind wander. When I’d seen Decker after my rushed packing job, I’d expected that thick tension and, even more, had expected discomfort around us after our toe curling kiss. But there had been no awkward silence between us and the dark pressure of tension had eased back into more of a charge in the air around us, tingling and drawing us closer but without the weight of the unsaid between him and I.
I hadn’t been the only one to notice the change. All the men working in and around the house seemed to have released a collective breath and cheer had bloomed among them. It was nice to see them go from serious and almost vibrating with expectation of the worst to men that worked with easy efficiency now that they weren’t walking on eggshells around their boss. At one point Aiden sidled up beside me as I stood on the porch watching the SUVs being loaded and draped an arm across my shoulders. “Not sure how you did it, but you finally got his head on right, so thank you.”
I tilted my head up to the side to look at him and scoffed. “Pretty sure Jack saved the video in case anyone didn’t see it. Can’t pretend that having cameras all over doesn’t keep you well informed.”
He cut me a suspicious look from the corner of his eye. “I’ve been coordinating the drive and flights since our morning meeting ended. What kind of video are we talking about, Lake?” My immediate blush had him yanking his phone from his pocket to text Jack for a copy. When he got a returning text saying that there had been an odd camera outage at that particular time in the library, Aiden complained that everyone was conspiring against him and went to join the others with packing the cars. The text that made me fish my own phone from my back pocket had only managed to make me chuckle with embarrassment.
A video file with the thumbnail clearly showing the interior of the library and a great view of the interaction between Decker and I. The text that came in seconds after the video file was simple.
It’s the only copy. - The Wizard
Ignoring the embarrassment of Jack having witnessed a very private and intimate moment, I saved the video to my phone and vowed to only watch it in private or until I couldn’t hold out any longer. There was still the delicious tension present in the proximity between Decker and I, but instead of his rigid commands, he silently guided me to the car with a hand settled into the small of my back. I tried to ignore every hair on my body standing at attention for him with the simple touch. Decker hadn’t simply escorted me to the car, but once I’d settled into the backseat, he’d slowly reached across me, his face so close, it would have been easy to kiss him.
I’d thought he’d been about to take my mouth with his, until he pulled back and the seatbelt clicked over my lap, pulling my attention down to the strap. When I looked back into his eyes, he was smirking at me, knowingly. If I hadn’t been so entranced with the smirk on his lips, I would have been giving him shit for playing this dangerous game with me. It seemed that Decker Mullins had a flirty side. Heaven help my panties if he kept this up.
Now I was strapped into the backseat, finger hovering over the thumbnail of the video, wondering if now was the appropriate time to watch this. Deciding there was no appropriate time to watch the beginnings of a sex tape, I double checked that the volume on my phone was all the way down and tapped the video, discreetly shifting my phone sideways for a slightly larger version of our moment. I felt the ghostly reminder of each touch as I watched it on the screen.
His fingers tracing my face, silent words exchanged mostly from him as I sat there looking completely dumbfounded. A cool head in the face of a seriously sexy Decker, I was not. I looked like an idiot trying to follow someone speaking a foreign language and mentally kicked myself for not keeping all defenses up.
I’d reached the part where he’d begun to leave and remembered that moment with fierce anger. I was angry at that moment. Or I thought I was until I saw my face in the video. That wasn’t anger on my face; it was something more akin to fear, and I was forced to remember the sinking feeling in my stomach that had pushed me to blurt out the question that had him turning back and immediately I was right back in that library. The heat in his eyes when he’d turned back to face me had been startling to say the least. It was the kind of burning want that threatened to incinerate everything in its wake. Including me. Any sane woman would have taken a step back at his first move to advance, but I’d stood there, releasing the tiniest exhale of relief that I wasn’t as easy to leave as I’d been thinking when I asked about “after” in a voice that nearly trembled with nerves.
Then his mouth had taken mine. It was the only way I could ever describe it. A possession of my lips. I’d been with enough men to have personalities to attach to different styles of kissing. Even the most self assured and confident men had never possessed my very breath the way Decker had. It wasn’t the confidence, though he had that in spades as his tongue had deliciously invaded my mouth. It was something… primal. Something down to the base of his entire being that was hungry for me. I’d never experienced that kind of desire and had known, even through the haze of lust clouding my mind, that my walls had shattered like cheap glass in that instant. As if he’d known and needed confirmation, his hand had tightened around my neck and something very primal inmehad immediately submitted. As if my own libido had just been waiting for this Alpha to waltz in and take over.
Feeling a heat spreading over my chest, I closed the video and took a shaky breath, unable to continue to watch without fear of bursting into flame right there. I chanced a look up at the men in the front seat and almost let out another breath, this time of relief, that they hadn’t seemed to notice my reaction to replaying that video. The silence was broken by a very robotic and choppy version of Jack trying to communicate through the SUV’s speakers. Immediately the world seemed to shrink and I watched as Evan and Decker exchanged a dark glance before Decker spoke. “Come again, Kasey?”
“You… off monitor… constant… scramble…” The words were disjointed and I felt panic start to rise as both men switched into soldier-mode before my eyes. There was static for long moments before Jack’s voice was back, sounding almost panicked as one word made it through whatever was scrambling the line. “Nasiriyah!”
I heard the exhale of “fuck” that came from Decker’s lips and had only a moment to glance around us at the fairly busy freeway before the SUV in front of us was lifted from the ground in a blinding explosion.
__
DECKER
It had been the only clear thing Kasey had said before a dark dread spread through me. It wasn’t a code word so much as a place. The place where I’d failed Grady and by some cruel twist of fate I’d survived. It was a signal of an incoming attack, and suddenly we weren’t on a freeway in the United States, but yanked back to that dusty dirty road in the Iraqi desert. The SUV in front was a humvee just before it wasn’t. The past and the present seemed to collide with each rapid blink of my eyes, and I was struggling to keep my mind here in the SUV. I was yanked from my flashback as Turner swiftly yanked the car to the right, sandwiching between two semis and avoiding the ball of fire in front of us, his face a mask of fierce concentration as he maneuvered in and out of traffic, leaving the other SUV to do the same.
The sound of rushing water in my ears was the only thing I could hear as we picked our way through the traffic that had begun to pile up amid the exploding car, but once we were off the freeway and speeding down a maintenance road, apparently vacant, I finally glanced behind me for the remaining SUV. But I hadn’t made it far enough to see behind the car because my eyes locked onto something else. Someone else. A pair of forest green eyes, wide and full of terror. Without a thought, my hand was behind me reaching for her, and immediately I felt the warmth of her small hand sliding into mine. Clinging to her fingers, the sound of rushing water seemed to stop, like a bubble popping and my ears were back to working order, along with the rest of my thoughts.
I searched behind us for the remainder of my team, picking out the car holding Fitz and Cabot too far back to be any help at the moment. I didn’t have time to wonder what counter attack my remaining men were planning, I had to get us out of this situation quickly and without the help of Kasey. The static had taken over the deathly silence of the car and every so often I could hear the faint attempts of my men trying to come through. The attack was well coordinated, I’d give our target that, but I’d been through situations with no outside communication before. I was ready. It was a big difference from the disconnecting child I’d been before I’d taken Lake’s hand. She seemed to ground me to the moment and clear the fog of anxiety that had been plaguing me for years. The world around me was crystal clear as I took in the tree lined road, eyes sharp for any sign of danger.
I shot a glance through the mirror again and saw by the fierce determination in her eyes as she stared back that I’d done the same for her. Turner’s bark of “incoming” pulled my eyes back to the windshield where two cars had barricaded our path. We’d been herded this way by whoever was mounting this attack. Turner took a slow, methodical breath as he positioned the SUV to ram the back end of one car to clear the path for us.
Lush foliage gave way to abandoned buildings as we sped down the street toward the rather obvious obstacle and that inner knowledge of being watched slammed into me hard. I had my eyes on the derelict buildings around us, noting the number of good vantage points for our assailants. My gaze drifted back toward the car as we grew closer to it, and my eyes froze on the single item perched atop the trunk of the car, glinting in the afternoon sun. The exact spot that Turner’s training had drilled to hit in order to move the vehicle from our path. A single .308 caliber rifle cartridge, flashing in the sunlight like a warning beacon, catching Turner’s attention as well. He seemed to understand the danger in the same way and was attempting to turn toward the other car, knowing it meant the SUV would do little more than come to a crashing halt from t-boning the second obstacle. It wasn’t fast enough though, and the world went supernova as we glanced off the trunk of the car we were now attempting to avoid.
I knew the exact moment I’d lost Lake’s hand from my own grip, the world around me flashing between the green trees blurring as the car rolled over and over, and a dust brown as the humvee seemed to rip apart around me. Pain exploded from the right side of my skull and I struggled to blink my vision clear as the world flipped between the past and the present. The past seemed to win as my body was jerked sideways again before a bone jarring stop had me staring into the face of Grady Remington.
I tried to reach for him as his pain filled eyes silently pleaded for help, but my arm was pinned by the fragments of crushed car around us. I could see his body seizing with each cough that I couldn’t hear through the ringing in my ears. Blood trickled from his lips as he struggled to reach for his gun, and I tried reaching with my right arm to assist. The pain that radiated from my left shoulder had me halting all movements before turning my head to see what had me pinned.
I’d expected parts of the rear door to be twisted and pinching my arm into its awkward position but the large hunk of metal impaling my shoulder had embedded deep into the seat keeping me pinned like a bug on display. My attention was back on my best friend just as the gunfire started. I’d turned in time to see a bullet rip through his chest before pain sliced through my leg. I knew I was screaming for Grady to hold on even if I couldn’t hear anything besides the rapid staccato of the battle around us. His vacant eyes fixed to nothingness above my shoulder.
My eyes shot open and immediately pain exploded in my skull. The world was… wrong. I could feel the warm trickle of blood seeping from the wound on my head, but it wasn’t running down my face, instead it lazily flowed up my forehead, dripping onto the roof of the SUV. Slowly, it sank in that we were upside down, and I was still strapped into my seat, the belt locking me in place, suspended in the air. Wrestling my knife from my boot, I called out Lake’s name. I’d thought I had shouted, but it was a faint grunt that was met with silence. Swiftly slicing through the strap, my body fell to the roof of the car and I righted myself slowly, crawling toward Lake’s motionless body, dangling from the seat belt I’d flirtatiously fastened to her only an hour before.
Positioning myself below her, I cut through her restraint and caught her into my embrace as she fell limply. “Lake,” I murmured through a haze of pure fear as I gently tapped on the side of her face. Grady’s lifeless eyes still haunted my thoughts as I tried to remind myself I wasn’t back there and this wasn’t the same. Her eyes opened slowly, completely out of focus and I noticed the small trickle of blood running down the side of her face. “Look at me, honey, come on.” My words were soft and I let out a huff of a relieved breath when her eyes seemed to focus on me finally.
“Boss?” The groggy male voice came from the driver’s seat and I turned to see that Turner was still alive and attempting to reach for his own knife to free himself. With the steering wheel smashed into his lap, there was no way the other man could retrieve his knife and I gave a grunt of warning before slicing the belt and Turner gasped sharply as gravity attempted to let him fall but the steering wheel pinned him in place. He began to push on the steering column in an attempt to free himself when I felt Lake go rigid on top of me. Looking back at her, I saw that her focus wasn’t with us in the car but past us and out the window behind me. Then I heard the sound of approaching footsteps.
My eyes caught Turner’s but the other man had given up his attempts to dislodge himself and instead had his side arm out and pointed at the approaching footsteps. I silently pushed Lake to the corner of the car, tucking her in a position that put Turner’s gun between her and our possible attacker. I pulled my gun from its holster and aimed toward the footfalls as well. We may have been trapped like fish in a barrel, but I wasn’t about to make this easy for the damned assassin sent after us.
When I heard the yells from Fitz and Cabot, I lowered my gun with a breath of exhausted relief. I hadn’t been sure I’d be able to defend Lake from this position. I heard Turner curse with pain and turned to see he’d returned to trying to push the steering column up enough to escape under, with no success. Lake was still in her corner pressed against the door and Turner’s seat. Her hand was wrapped around a shard of mirror, blood trickling from between her fingers.
