Deadly Force Read online

  “Maggie?”

  He pointed at the Lab. “Dry her off, will you?”

  Bianca looked like he’d asked her to sleep with a terrorist, but after Maggie whined and wagged her tail half-heartedly, Bianca conceded and started running the towel over the dog’s fur.

  Cal filled Maggie’s bowl. As she inhaled it with loud, chomping noises, he sidestepped Bianca and headed for the shower. “Make yourself at home.”

  “Cal.” She touched his arm as he passed. “Can we get out of here? We don’t have to go far, just…away from San Diego.”

  The feel of her hand on his arm stopped him. The familiar scent of vanilla and almond came off her skin—the lotion she’d used since high school. His cock gave a twitch, his eyes automatically closing so he could breathe deeper.

  Home. She smelled like home.

  In that moment, his male instincts told him to follow her anywhere. His heart, however, knew better. He shifted his arm out from under her hand and opened his eyes. “And go where?”

  “How about we sail up the coast for a couple of hours?”

  “In this storm?”

  “The Love Boat’s not seaworthy?”

  She knew how many cats ran wild in San Diego but not the simple fact that taking a sailboat the size of his out in a storm was a bad idea?

  His senior chief had given him orders…stay low and near HQ until the investigation was over. Cal’s meeting with the military review board was in two days. They were going to crucify him but he deserved it. “I can’t leave San Diego.”

  She bit her bottom lip, looked away.

  This time, he reached for her, snagging her elbow. She jumped, wrenching it away, and he felt like an ass. She’d always had a knee-jerk reaction to people grabbing her, thanks to her bitch of a mother.

  Gently, he reached out and took her hand. It was cold, her fingers trembling. “Is someone really after you?”

  She looked down and closed her fingers around his. Her eyes were sad when she glanced back up. “I’ve missed you.”

  Goddamn. She couldn’t do this to him. Not here, not after everything she’d said to him the last time they were together. I want a divorce.

  For one half-insane moment, he almost wrapped his arms around her. Her body had always fit so perfectly inside the ring of his arms…

  “I came to see you in the hospital,” she said. Her voice was quiet, so quiet he almost didn’t hear the words over the wind and rain beating against the boat. “Your senior chief told me you didn’t want to see me.”

  The hospital? He’d been injured during the raid, a couple of bullets doing some damage as he pulled Tank to cover. “Ramstein?” He’d been transported there for medical care and a debriefing in the aftermath of Warfighter. “You came to Germany?”

  She looked down and her lashes fluttered against her skin. In the dim light, she looked pale—too pale. “I heard about what happened. Saw the report. Only, per orders, no names were mentioned. I didn’t know who’d been killed and who’d been injured. No one would tell me, and I was going crazy. All I could find out was that only two of you were taken to the base hospital, so I hopped on a plane.”

  “I didn’t know.”

  Her chest hitched. “Lugmeyer said…” She exhaled hard, her gaze flying up to Cal’s again. “He told me to fuck off. That I was the last person in the world you needed by your bedside.”

  Justin Lugmeyer was Cal’s senior chief first, his friend second. He’d been coming to the rescue during the raid and had taken shrapnel in his thigh. “I was in a dark place, Bianca. I was laid up and had amnesia. Seeing you…well, Justin was doing us a both a favor by keeping us apart.”

  Dropping his hand, she turned away, anger making her movements jerky. She wiped at her face. Tears? He’d only ever seen her cry twice—and never over him.

  He reached for her, brought her back, her chest bumping into his. “Forget Lugmeyer. You’re here now, and whatever’s going on, I will protect you, got it? You don’t have to be scared. I won’t let anything happen to you.”

  She went up on her tiptoes to kiss his cheek. A strong wave hit the boat, knocking them both off balance. Cal used the opportunity to draw her closer and brush her lips instead.

  Her eyes went round and locked with his for a brief second, and yes indeed, he spotted a damp streak across her left cheekbone. As he went to brush it off, thunder boomed, another wave hit, and her briefcase skidded off the table.

  She startled, pushing him away, and made a production out of retrieving it. “You better take that shower.” She tossed the briefcase on the bench seat and set her rain-speckled glasses on the table. “We have a lot to talk about.”

  A part of him wanted to drag her into the shower and wash the sadness off her face. Forget their damaged past for an hour or so and erase the pain they’d caused each other.

  Instead, he grabbed a fresh towel. At the entry to the head, he said over his shoulder, “Help yourself to coffee.”

  “You know I hate your coffee.” The attitude was back in her voice but she still wouldn’t meet his eyes. “I’ll make a fresh pot.”

  Smiling, he closed the door behind him.

  Her stomach had grown used to the rocking of the boat but the movement still played havoc with her nerves. Or maybe being so close to Cal was making her jittery. The simple touch of his hand nearly made her cry with longing.

  Coffee wasn’t going to help, but she needed to keep her hands busy and her mind off Cal and his gorgeous, rock-hard body now naked in the shower.

  She cleaned her glasses and put them back on. Then she got the coffee pot going with fresh grounds and water, and as it perked, she searched the two cabinets nearby. Cal’s food inventory included six boxes of high-protein granola bars, some type of protein drink mix, and—she moved the muscle-building stuff aside and saw a blue box that brightened her day—good, old-fashioned, sugar-filled PopTarts. Yes.

  The soft hiss of the shower as it came on in the bathroom competed with the sound of the brewing coffee pot and the rain outside. Surrounded by water, Bianca focused on opening the box of breakfast goodness and snagging a foil wrapper to take back to the table. Blueberry. That’s a fruit, right?

  She tore open the wrapper and wished Cal had a toaster. From the heat in his eyes a minute ago, she probably didn’t need one. All she needed was to look like the damsel in distress and he went into alpha male, all protective and me-Tarzan, you-Jane.

  Those eyes. When he went Mr. Intense, the energy radiating off him nearly fried the ends of her hair.

  She wasn’t a crier—which was probably why Cal had gotten protective when he saw her tear up. Telling him her life might be in danger invoked ridicule—drama queen—but a couple of tears, and bam, he turned into a knight in shining armor…or in this case, a Navy SEAL.

  That used to turn her on. It still did if she were honest. Unfortunately these days, it also annoyed her. She wasn’t a kid anymore. Not some teenage girl with her head in the clouds. He might call her a drama queen, but his protective act was a joke after all the times he’d walked away when she needed him.

  Marriage. Did anyone ever survive it?

  She broke the breakfast pastry in half and took a bite. She would have preferred chocolate, but sugar was sugar. Maybe if she put food in her stomach, she could handle coffee. The smell was certainly appetizing.

  Maggie sat at Bianca’s feet. Her eyes were dark like Cal’s but her energy was bright and playful. Bianca tossed her a corner, and the dog caught it in mid-air and swallowed it whole. She panted, looking like she was smiling again. Bianca ignored her and tapped a few icons on her phone.

  Instantly, a black-and-white picture of the marina’s land entrance appeared on the screen. Everything looked the same. No new vehicles, no pedestrians out in the storm.

  She continued to watch, thinking about what Cal had said. Being a SEAL had been his life. That’s why she’d had to let him go. Cal put himself through the training and the danger involved with being a SEAL in orde
r to drown out emotional pain. Every time she’d tried to talk to him about their marriage, her miscarriages, or leaving the navy, he’d shut her down.

  During six years of marriage, he’d never been an overly warm person, but he’d never been cold either. Until she’d lost the first baby and he’d lost his father in rapid succession. The SEAL missions had kept coming and Cal had wrapped himself in ice.

  The coffee wasn’t done percolating when he stepped out of the bathroom. A wave of humid air and the smell of sandalwood came with him. A towel hung low on his waist, beads of moisture covered his chest.

  He was inked on his upper shoulders, a rising Phoenix on his right and a trident on the other. Various scars were visible—one under his right pec, another on his left calf, a trio on his lower back. As he dried himself in full view, her eye caught site of an ugly red scar near his left collarbone. He’d been shot during the mission. A little lower and he wouldn’t be standing there in all his glory.

  Snagging a second towel, he dried his hair as the dog did her best to get his attention, acting like she hadn’t seen him in hours rather than minutes.

  Bianca’s eyes tracked a bead of water as it flowed down over his left pec. It continued down his ribs, one by one, until it hit the first rock-hard ab. As if it were enjoying the terrain, the droplet languidly slid over the muscle. Like a tiny rollercoaster, it dived into the crevice, then topped the next ab before it finally hit the towel wrapped around his hips.

  Bianca licked her lips.

  Cal’s hair was short so it didn’t take much buffing to dry. He flipped the towel over his shoulder, the ends of his hair in disarray and sauntered to the sink. There he poured coffee into a mug and offered it to her. “I only have one coffee cup so we’ll have to share.”

  Sharing coffee. Why did that sound so sexy? Bianca glued her eyes to the small screen in front of her. “That’s okay. I don’t want any.”

  “After you made a fresh pot, you don’t want a cup?” He squeezed into the bench, sliding her sideways. The towel around his waist split over his leg, baring the muscled expanse of skin and daring to reveal more.

  He did a chin cock at her phone. “What’s that?”

  Tongue-tied, Bianca fought to keep her attention above his waist, above his naked chest for that matter. “It’s a… I put a…” She couldn’t form a coherent sentence with him this near and this…naked.

  Cal slid the cup to her. “Drink. You need caffeine.”

  What she needed was a good old-fashioned screw on the table. Seeing him, being close to him…it was driving her hormones crazy. Maybe if she got it out of her system, she could concentrate again.

  No. So not going there. Like an electrical circuit, she and Cal were the positive and negative poles the current ran between. At one time, she’d thought they were a direct circuit—her always the negative pole and him the positive one—but after marriage, she now thought of their relationship as an alternating current, neither of them always positive or always negative. These days, they alternated their polarity on a regular basis.

  And yet, always there was that delicious, dangerous electricity between them.

  Accepting the cup, she took a sip. Caffeine really was the last thing she needed, but she let her lips linger over the rim, pretending to drink while she fought her natural urge to rip his towel off and put her mouth on something much more satisfying. “Could you put some clothes on?”

  He smirked, rose from the seat, and grabbed a dry pair of shorts from a drawer under the bunk bed. Without returning to the bathroom, he dropped the towel and pulled on the shorts. “What’s the camera for? You that paranoid?”

  Damn him. Like she needed the full Monty after the bench peepshow. Her parts weren’t just tingling now, they were exploding like fireworks. She crossed her legs under the table and pretended she hadn’t been watching as he turned once more to face her.

  “Better?” he said.

  He’d never been self-conscious of his body. Not that he flaunted it. Not Cal. But he never worried about how he looked, and for good reason. He was beautiful.

  She met his gaze and a little thrill went through her at the heat burning in those dark orbs. He knew he was distracting her, probably had done it on purpose to see how she’d react. She’d known this would be a trial and she had to stay firm. She had to keep the good memories, the ones where Cal loved her and made her feel important, at bay. She had to remember all the reasons she’d filed for divorce.

  Hard to do when he was looking at her like that. All that intense, gorgeous male letting her know he still wanted her. Even after she’d ripped off the bandage on their marriage and exposed the fact they weren’t good for each other anymore.

  Well, she wasn’t playing games. It was time to be one-hundred-percent truthful. “I’ve always loved your body, Cal,” she murmured, maintaining eye contact. “There’s nothing I’d rather do right now than jump your bones, but I’m not here to seduce you and I’m not repeating the same mistakes with you and our marriage again. The camera is for our protection.”

  This time he sat on the bed. His shoulders slumped, his eyes went flat. “Fine. Talk. Why are you in danger and from whom? What did you find out about Warfighter?”

  She’d irritated him. Not the first time. How much should she tell him? “Someone leaked the details of the mission before you were sent in.”

  Nothing changed on his face, yet she sensed his entire body stiffening, going on alert. “Who?”

  Bianca fiddled with her phone, stalling. She was about to go out on a limb here, and she’d always liked Senator Halston. He reminded her of Cal’s dad. “I don’t have concrete proof, but I—”

  “Who the fuck leaked it?” His face was in shadow, his eyes pure black with anger.

  She swallowed hard. “Senator Halston.”

  “Patrick Halston?” He snickered in disbelief. “The man was a SEAL back in the day. He’s our biggest supporter on the Intelligence Committee.”

  She knew it would be a hard sell to Cal. Even harder to the Justice Department. Sometimes the truth sucked. “A week ago, I was eavesdropping on a cult outside of the city. Running satellite images, intercepting calls, that kind of thing.”

  “I know what you do for the NSA.”

  Oh, but he didn’t. Not all of it. “Senator Halston was here for a dog and pony show at Camp Pendleton. He received a call from a top official in D.C. at five o’clock in the morning last Saturday. I intercepted the call…accidentally.”

  Bianca paused and glanced down at her phone’s screen. Was that a seagull she’d seen from the corner of her eye swooping past the camera upstairs or something else? A red sedan backed out of a parking space and headed for the entrance. Probably someone who’d decided not to ride out the storm on their boat.

  Cal opened his hands, urging her on. “And?”

  The rest of the marina appeared rain-drenched and quiet. “Halston wasn’t on base where he should have been. That’s one of the reasons my program picked up the call. He was at a hotel in downtown San Diego with a woman. The caller”—she couldn’t tell him who it was without revealing too much detail and raising suspicions about her real job inside the NSA—“told him ‘loose lips sink ships.’”

  “It’s just an old saying, B.”

  He didn’t get it yet but he would. “There are people inside the NSA that use everyday common sayings to communicate more…sinister…messages. ‘Loose lips sink ships’ is a threat, telling Halston to shut his mouth or suffer the consequences. The caller said, ‘you’ve already cost me my best blue elephant, and you’ve cost the president a second term in office. Haven’t you learned your lesson?’”

  “Blue elephant?” Cal’s brows dipped together. “What’s that?”

  “That would be me.” Bianca tapped her temple. “Because my memory is like an elephant’s, and certain people inside the NSA refer to me, and others like me, as that animal.”

  “Why blue?”

  Here’s where it could get dicey. “Colors d
esignate which section the elephant works for.”

  His eyes narrowed slightly. “You work for S2E.”

  The NSA was made up of a dozen directorates with sub-units and sub-sub-units, all labeled with letters and numbers, many of which were hidden from the general public. Bianca had started with one directorate, ended up with another. Command and Control. Six people in the world knew it existed: the president, vice president, her Command and Control boss, Jonathan Brockmann, Senator Halston, and a couple of people at Homeland.

  Even though she’d been yanked out of C&C and sent to California, she was under oath not to expose the truth about her unique job.

  If I end up dead, it won’t matter. “A blue elephant is one of the highest analyst code names inside the NSA.”

  One brow arched. “I didn’t realize you’d made it that far.”

  “That’s what happens when you’re stationed on the west coast and your wife is stationed on the east and you’re never home for normal, married-couple conversations over dinner. You know, ‘Hi, honey, I’m home. How was your day?’”

  His eyes darkened and Bianca dropped her gaze to the screen. This was no time to dig into their marital problems, and she couldn’t have told him about the blue elephant status before now anyway.

  She eyed a black SUV turning into the marina. It did a slow cruise by the boats on the far end of the docks. All of the boats were larger and nicer than Cal’s. In the driving rain, the SUV’s wipers slapped furiously back and forth, struggling to clear the windshield.

  “I was recently sent here to work with the Southern California Violent Crimes Taskforce and told to make it look like I’m helping them take out a couple of criminal organizations,” she told Cal. “My actual assignment is to covertly investigate the high-ranking Bureau agent in charge of the taskforce, Victor Dupé. With my clearance levels and the type of operations I’ve handled for the past nine months, investigating an FBI agent is below my clearance level and pay grade. Way below. I believe the reason I’ve been demoted is because I made a call on an operation that went bad. It was a top secret operation that very, very few people knew about, and when it failed, I took the blame. They shipped me across the country on a bogus assignment to get me out of D.C., and now someone is following me and tracking everything I do.”