He’d moved furniture in front of the door, paid Marcella, Marceline, and the pimp at the front desk each a hundred bucks for security backup. He’d moved more furniture in front of the balcony doors, and he’d cocked, locked, and loaded every damn firearm they had between them.
Everything about this little oasis they were in said “Do Not Disturb.” And he expected the world to respect that for at least twelve hours.
Once he got her all tucked in and comfy, he got in on the other side and pulled her in close, letting her wrap her legs in with his and rest her head on his shoulder, and breathe on him and make him feel secure.
She was his.
“They look pretty comfortable.”
“Too damn comfortable.”
“Why in the hell did you make us work all night, if everybody else got to go to bed?”
Suzi heard the voices from a long distance, like maybe she was dreaming them, but then she realized she wasn’t dreaming.
She knew those voices, and with a soft groan for her aching body and her pounding head, she slowly opened her eyes to a narrow squint.
It was like old home week in room 519 of the Posada Plaza. Zach was leaning up against the open balcony door. Creed was sitting cross-legged on top of the table, eating something covered in sugar. Dylan had the chair, and Hawkins was sitting on top of the dresser closest to the bed.
“Looks like you won the fight, Suzi,” he said. “Good girl.”
“Thank you.” He was proud of her, she could tell, and it did her heart good.
There had been a time when she’d ruled these boys just by being beautiful, and a little sad, and sometimes, in private, a lot sad, until Hawkins had found a place for her.
She’d thought he was crazy at first. Her? Do work for General Grant? But the job had been perfect for her, to wine and dine her way through a series of embassy parties in Prague and let Buck know who talked to whom.
Piece of cake.
And now look at her. Five years later, she was getting the crap beaten out of her and still coming out on top.
“What’s wrong with Killian?” Dylan wanted to know. “You slip him a Mickey, or does he always sleep like that?”
She looked over at the man sound asleep in the bed with her. He was out like a light.
“He had a big day,” she said, shifting her attention back to the boss. “Two big days.”
“Thought he was tougher than that,” Zach said from over by the balcony.
“He’s gonna have to be tougher than that,” Creed said, and took another big bite of deep-fried doughnut.
“He’ll be fine,” she assured them, and for a moment, the room fell silent.
“You were with him,” Dylan finally said, breaking the silence. “What do you think?”
She knew who he was talking about, and it wasn’t Dax Killian.
“J.T.,” she said. “His memory is gone. He’s been tortured. It looks like many, many times. Half of his ring finger on his right hand is missing. He’s got scars on his face, his neck, his arms… probably everywhere, but that’s all I could see with him dressed.” The memory of how he looked played in her mind as she told the guys about Conroy Farrel, John Thomas Chronopolous, and it wasn’t until the tears ran down the side of her nose and pooled on her lips that she realized she was crying.
A pall had fallen over the room.
She understood. What she’d told them was awful, maybe even more awful than what they’d believed all these years.
“We’ve got his girl under lock and key,” Dylan said. “We’re taking her out of here with us, on a transport plane that leaves in two hours. I expect you and Dax to be on that plane. Got it?”
“Yes, sir.” She got it. She’d just been given orders by the boss.
“We’ll debrief at Steele Street, before you go to Washington to see General Grant. That’s the way we work. Got it?”
“Yes, sir.”
He wasn’t Dylan anymore; if she wanted what she’d just earned the hard way, he was “sir.”
“Then get your boyfriend up, Suzi. We’ll see you at the airfield.”
“What about J.T.?” she asked. “What happens next?” She knew her guys, and this was far from over.
A look passed between the men.
“We left him a business card,” Hawkins said. “He’ll know where to find us.”
Yes, he would, Suzi thought. There was only one business card in this group, and it said: DYLAN HART, UPTOWN AUTOS, WE ONLY SELL THE BEST, 738 STEELE STREET, DENVER, COLORADO.
CHAPTER FORTY
Marsh Annex, Washington, D.C.
Buck Grant was impressed as hell.
He sat back in his chair, his phone to his ear, looking at Suzi and seeing his pension grow by leaps and bounds. The girl had done him good. But somebody somewhere had a whole helluva lot of answering to do, and Buck was going to damn well find out who. The Conroy Farrel mission and the Memphis Sphinx mission should never have intersected, let alone meshed like two halves of a whole-but they had, and that meant there was a connection higher up the ladder. In Buck’s experience, the higher up the ladder things went, the more dangerous they became, which in this instance wasn’t going to slow SDF down for a second. He and Dylan were already tearing this thing apart, event by event, line by line, and they were going to find the bastards who had turned J. T. Chronopolous into Conroy Farrel, and Buck didn’t have a doubt in his mind that the search would also reveal who had stolen a top secret artifact from one of the most secure laboratories in the world.
Buck also didn’t have a doubt in his mind that it was going to cost him everything-least of all the pension Suzi had just helped become a little more secure. This thing was big, and dark, and dirty, and everybody was on Buck’s list of possible perpetrators, including the guy he was calling.
“Bill,” he said when the phone was answered, and he meant William Davies, who’d been the assistant secretary of defense for Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict when SDF had first been created and put under Grant’s command, William Davies who since then had been kicked so high up into the stratosphere of government that his missives and his orders came from places he most certainly wasn’t at-like the Department of Labor or the Department of Education.
“Buck,” Davies answered.
“I’ve got that item the DIA lost a few months ago, the one their buddies over at Langley asked SDF to go get back for them.”
“That statue they were screaming about?”
“That’s the one.”
There was a slight pause on the other end of the line.
“Good job, Buck. A couple more like that, and you might actually work your way back into the Pentagon.”
Buck doubted it, but it was nice to hear.
“Do you want to send somebody over to get it, or do you want my team to take it back over to DIA?”
There was no pause this time.
“I’ll take care of it. No need for you and your guys to bother. I’ll have some people there in half an hour.”
Like Buck hadn’t seen that coming.
“Good enough, Bill. The package is ready to go.” He grinned. Business as usual. Don’t rock the boat, not yet. Let the big boys have the glory-that was his motto. All Buck wanted was the truth.
He hung up the phone and looked over at the woman sitting on the other side of his desk.
“Rough go?” he asked. She was still beautiful, still wearing an outfit that dared him to look, but she’d been hurt. Her face was bruised and scratched, and he could see a couple of Band-Aids on her arms here and there.
“Not too bad,” she said. “Nothing I couldn’t handle.”
Right. That’s what he had Dylan Hart for-to tell him the whole truth, and his girl had been pushed to the wall on this one. They’d all been pushed to the wall, his whole team.
“Glad to hear it.”
She was damn proud of herself. He could tell, no matter how cool she was playing it. She always held herself well, but her shoulders were just a little bit straighter, and he noticed.