CHAPTER ELEVEN
Draven listened for the sound of the lock engaging. Just because they were in a safe house didn’t mean they could afford to be lax on security. He scanned the hallway both ways before pressing his palm to the bulge in his pants. Walking away from Indy had been one of the hardest things he could ever remember doing. But staying would have caused bigger problems. She was meant to be off limits. Just because he’d let her sweep in under his defenses wasn’t an excuse to take advantage of her.
It's not taking advantage if…
He slammed the door shut on that thought without prejudice. What he wanted didn’t matter, she was vulnerable even if she didn’t believe it. He knew it. Which was why he was on this side of the door and regretting his life choices.
Argh.
He turned back toward the front entrance of the house and went looking for the guys. Spending time with them, farts, burps, and all the stink which came from running around in the jungle for days on end, would hopefully remind his dick that while this mission may be helping a friend, it was work and his brains needed to be in his head and not in his balls.
He paused just inside the front door and glanced around. He could almost feel the cameras he knew had to be here watching his every move. There was no way an operator with Sawyer McKinnon’s experience didn’t have a way to monitor every inch of his house.
Raptor. He’s Raptor.
He took the corridor Sawyer had directed the teams to earlier and walked past the first three doors until he came to a fire door and pushed against it. It moved a little, then refused to open. He angled his head to peer through the small glass windows and scowled at the bicycle lock threaded through the door handles. “Fuckers.” They should have known he’d be coming. He knocked heavily on the door and waited.
Dude stuck his head out of the room closest to the fire door, his hair dripping wet.
“Yo, Cooper, it’s Kilkenny.”
“One sec.” Dude disappeared into the room and returned with a towel wrapped around his waist and unlocked the bicycle lock, then pulled the door open. “Did your lady throw you out already, man?”
“Nah, but she needs to shower and shit.” That sounded reasonable. “I figured you guys might be quicker.”
“Don’t bet the house on that, man.” Dude led him into the room. “Benny takes about six years to get clean.”
“Damn.” He dropped his ruck on the floor and took the glass of whiskey Dude was pouring from a bottle on the table next to the TV. “Even so, he can’t be as long as a woman in the shower. I have a sister—I remember how it goes.”
Dude filled a glass for himself and swapped the glass to his non-dominant hand before clinking it against Draven’s.
Draven narrowed his eyes at Dude. “You don’t have to hide your hand from me. Those missing fingers tell me that you do the hard jobs. You are the one who faces down the IEDs, so we don’t step on that shit.”
“It’s habit, at this point.” Dude shrugged. “It weirds some people out.”
“I’m not one of them, Cooper.” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “Neither is a single man on Charlie team. That hand means you put yourself between danger and your team. That says a hell of a lot about you in my book.”
“Noted.” Just like most other men he knew in the community, Dude shrugged off the praise, if you could call it praise, drained his glass, and started pulling clean clothes out of his go bag. “Yell at Benny to hurry up,” he said over his shoulder. “Let him know you’re waiting, or you’ll be here all week.”
“Nah, I can wait, and cold water doesn’t bother me.” He flopped into a chair. Dude didn’t need to know that a cold shower was exactly what he needed.
Dude looked at him in disbelief but dropped the towel and pulled on a pair of boxers. "Suit yourself.”
By the time Draven’s skin was wrinkled and he shivered under the water, he figured any arousal he’d had had retreated. He was as clean as he was going to get. He switched off the water, stepped out onto the bathmat, and grabbed his towel.
“Kilkenny, hurry your ass up.” Dude opened the door and stuck his head around it. “We’re gonna go and get some grub. You might want to go grab your woman.”
His belly rumbled at the mention of food, reminding him that way too many hours had passed since he’d had the granola bar for breakfast. “Two minutes. I just have to pull on pants or I’ll get yelled at by Raptor.”
Dude winced. “Yeah, good thinking. He gets kinda pissy about manners and shit.” He withdrew from the bathroom and left Draven to get dressed.
He had no idea why Raptor was so finicky about manners, because most of them had all met his brother Hawk and his men. None of those three had one single manner between them. At least in the field, the only one with manners in that triad relationship was Micah Kennedy’s K9 Delta. Draven made short work of getting dressed and ran the towel over his head one last time, which was all his closely shaved head needed to be dried. He gathered the towels he’d used and folded them on the rail before bagging his filthy clothes and leaving the bathroom. “I’m just gonna go grab Indy.” He followed the guys out of the room. “I’ll meet you in the dining room.”
“Don’t be too long.” Kristof’s voice followed him toward the guest suite. “Our Wolf eats like a starved hound. Combine him with the other Wolf and you’ll have scraps if you aren’t snappy.”
He was tempted to give the Charlie team leader the bird, but remembered the cameras he was sure were there and restrained himself. If he fucked up this safe house, Nemesis would fire him for sure. He paused outside their room and blew out a slow breath.
She’s Lizz’s best friend; keep your dick in your pants and your paws to yourself.
He knocked on the door loud enough to be heard over the shower if she was still in it and waited. Draven frowned when Indy didn’t answer the door, and he knocked again. “Indy, are you ready for dinner?”
The sensation of swarms of ants crawled up his skin and around the back of his neck, warning him that something was off. He put his hand on the doorknob and twisted, but of course he’d made her lock it when he’d left so it didn’t fucking open. He hammered on the door. “Indy, open the door.”
“What’s wrong?”
Draven almost jumped out of his skin when Raptor called from a door further along the hallway.
“I don’t know, Indy won’t open the door.” He dropped his ruck and rifled through the pockets for his lockpick kit. “I’ll pick it.”
“Not if the key is in it, you won’t.” Raptor strode toward him. “Come with me, we can pick the French windows.” He opened the door next to the guest suite. “It’s faster if we go through here.”
Draven didn’t need telling twice. He was almost stepping on Raptor’s heels by the time the man had entered the room. They crossed to the windows and Raptor placed a fob-like device against the mechanism, opening it and leading him out into a small garden.
Draven almost tripped over Raptor when he stopped dead in his tracks in front of him. “Jeez.”
“Fuck,” Raptor muttered softly. “Would your friend go walk about without telling anyone?”
“No. Why?” He tried to see around Raptor, but the other man’s bulk and the shrubs prevented him from seeing anything.
“The door is open.” Raptor pulled out his side arm. “Whatever we see in here, do not lose your shit.”
Draven echoed his movements and followed him to the French windows. When they entered the room, Raptor went right and Draven to the left. It didn’t take more than a glance to clear the bedroom, and two more seconds to tell them the bathroom was also empty.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
She can’t be gone.
He raced for the French windows, calling over his shoulder, “She must be in the garden.”
“Unless she’s shrunk like those kids from the movie from when we were kids, no, she’s not. It only goes past the door.”
Raptor was correct, a wall ended the space. “How the fuck did this happen? She was meant to be fucking safe here.” He slammed Raptor against the wall. “How the fuck did this happen, Raptor? What the hell did you do?”
“I swear this isn’t on me.” Raptor didn’t fight back against him. “We will find her and then hell will reign down. I swear it.”
He had to have something to do with it. There was no other explanation. Draven slammed Raptor into the wall once more before turning away. He ran for his phone; he’d plugged it in earlier when Indy was in the shower the first time. His fingers were stubborn and fumbled as he picked it up, and he dropped the phone. “Fuuuck.”
“Hunter, we got a problem…”
He gathered the pieces of his phone and put it back together as Raptor called Kristof and flipped the lock to open the door into the hallway.
“Bring everyone,” Raptor ordered. “We’re gonna need a plan.” By the time he’d finished speaking, the sound of pounding boots could be heard from toward the other part of the house.
Wolf Steel and Kristof both tried to enter the room together, and after a slight struggle where their shoulders were trapped in the door frame, Kristof popped through the door first. He strode toward Draven and skidded to a stop in front of him.
“We’ll find her.” Kristof gripped him by the shoulder and held eye contact. “I swear we’ll find her. If they’d wanted her dead, they’d have put a bullet in her brain in the room or slit her throat. They wouldn’t have taken her with them.”
“Jeez, bro.” Wolf tossed the stress ball he held directly at Kristof, hitting him in the back of his head. “You are meant to be calming his ass down, not giving fuel to the fire which will make the top of his head explode.”
“How the hell did they manage to get in here?” The two team leaders could argue and bitch all they wanted. Draven had better things to do. “This whole place is locked down.” He glanced at Raptor. “At least I’m assuming this place is locked down.”
“Yeah.” Raptor paused at the door. “I’m gonna go check my cameras and shit. Be back.” He disappeared out of the room.
“I don’t know how they got in here. This place is usually like Fort Knox.” Wolf pulled a sat phone out of his pocket. “But…”
“Who are you calling?” The last thing they needed was for Wolf to call Navy Command on this. Not only was Indy not supposed to be in the country, but Draven wasn’t meant to be here either.
“The only person I know who has any hope of finding her before whoever has her kills her or sells her.” Wolf punched in numbers and put the phone to his ear. “Yo, Tex, I need a favor.”
“Tex?” Draven remembered him. “Keegan, right?” A tiny spark of hope unfurled in his gut. He was an idiot and clearly had forgotten how to use his brain cells, as the first thing he should have been doing was calling Trev back at HQ and asking him to help find her. He finished putting the battery back into his phone and pressed the button to switch it on.
Archer clicked his fingers and pointed to the phone he had to his ear to and mouthed, “Trev?”
Wolf nodded in response to Draven’s question, but spoke to Tex again. “Yeah, we have a woman who was taken from the safe house within the last half an hour. We need to find her.” He glanced at Draven. “He’s on it. What was she wearing?”
Nothing. She was naked as a jay bird and sexy as fuck.
“She was getting in the shower when I left, so depending on how long after I left the room, she might have been naked.” He went into the bathroom and picked up her ruck. “I don’t see a change of clothes here, just the ones she was wearing earlier. But I have no idea what she changed into.”
“Don’t worry,” Wolf replied. “There can’t be that many blond American women in this town. Tex will find her.”