Hot Ice (A Hostile Operations Team Novel - Book 7) Page 24

  Some of the other guys filtered into the room then, looking tired and elated all at once. Lucky and Victoria were there too, and Garrett wondered, not for the first time, how Victoria had ever managed to work for a dick like Ian Black.

  He knew better than to ask her, however. Nick Brandon didn’t react well to questions like that, even if Victoria jabbed him in the ribs and told him to shut up while she turned cool eyes on the questioner and made him feel like the worst kind of asshole for even asking.

  Garrett knew why she’d done it. They all did. Her baby sister, who was currently studying at Georgetown and trying to repair her life. Victoria had been trying to rescue her, using any means necessary to get close to her sister and the terrorist she’d married.

  The door opened again and Mendez breezed in. He didn’t look particularly thrilled at the moment. Everyone snapped to attention and Mendez growled, “At ease.”

  Then he rounded on Garrett.

  “When I give you an order to stand down, soldier, I fucking mean it!” he shouted. “Do you have any idea how many asses I’ve had to kiss tonight to get you out of police hands? Fucking hotheaded is what you are.”

  Garrett merely glared as he clutched the blanket to him. He’d heard the colonel yell at him when he’d taken off after Ian Black, but he’d kept running. How could they let the motherfucker get away again? They’d had to let him go in Qu’rim when they’d had him, but now that he was here, threatening Grace, there was no fucking way Garrett wasn’t going after him when he had the chance.

  “You got anything to say?” Mendez demanded.

  “He threatened Grace, sir. He needed to pay for that.”

  Victoria gave Lucky a significant look. Garrett didn’t even pretend to know what it meant.

  Mendez raked a hand through his hair and snorted. “Every fucking time. If there’s a woman involved, you assholes lose your mind.”

  The women in the room didn’t say a word, though Lucky put her hand over her mouth, ostensibly to cover a yawn. Garrett was pretty sure it was really a grin.

  Mendez turned back to the door and opened it. “You want to come in and talk to these motherfuckers?”

  Ian Black strode into the room—and chaos erupted.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  GARRETT LAUNCHED HIMSELF AT BLACK’S throat.

  Flash caught him before he could throw a punch and wrenched him backward. Brandy was next, but Victoria had her fist wrapped in his shirt and jerked him away. The room was a swarm of angry words. There was no telling who might erupt next, but Black just stood there as calmly as a general surveying his troops.

  “Stand down! All of you!” Mendez shouted as Garrett broke free of Flash’s grip and surged toward Black again.

  Flash wasn’t gentle as he caught Garrett again and shoved him into a chair. Black stood there, looking about as tired and abused as Garrett felt. His eye was swollen and his lip split. The only difference was that he belonged in the prison outfit he was wearing.

  “Hey, Vic,” Black said, his gaze going to the only marginally friendly face in the room. “You’re looking well. If you ever miss working with me, I still have a place for you.”

  Victoria put a hand on Brandy’s arm when he growled. “I’m happy here, thanks. But then again, I’m happy to see you too. If you’re here, I can only assume that means you’re on the right side of things after all.”

  “I told you, didn’t I?”

  “You did,” Victoria said softly.

  “That’s right,” Mendez said, glaring at them all. “Without Mr. Black, we wouldn’t have accomplished what we did tonight. Brooke Sullivan is safe, Grace Campbell is back home with her family and out of danger, and we now know precisely who our guests are that we picked up at the safe house as well as who they’re working for.”

  Garrett swallowed hard. Ian Black was on their side? He was having trouble processing it. Black had been so menacing and cold in the warehouse and van. “He told them to shoot Brooke if something happened.”

  “I didn’t say shoot her,” Black drawled. “I said get rid of her. Subtle difference. Besides, I knew you guys would be there to stop it.”

  A part of Garrett didn’t care what was going on, he still didn’t like this guy. “Grace knows who he is,” Garrett said. “And she thinks he’s the enemy.”

  “That’s good. It’s what we’re all supposed to think,” Mendez said. “It’s what we would have thought if you’d followed orders, Ice. The fewer people who know the truth, the better.”

  “And on that note, I’ve already been here too long. It’s not good for me to be with you guys,” Black said. “It’s my head if my handlers find out, not yours.”

  He said that last directly to Garrett. For the first time, Garrett almost felt a pinch of sympathy for the guy. Almost, but not quite.

  “I’m not telling anyone,” he said tightly.

  Mendez shook Ian Black’s hand. “Thanks for everything, Black. Try not to fuck with us too much out there the next time, okay?”

  Black snorted. “Until the job is done, I can’t promise anything.”

  When he was gone, the room exploded with sound. Victoria was the only one who didn’t say anything. Mendez held up a hand and they all quieted.

  “What I know, I can’t disclose. Do I completely trust the guy? Hell no. He still has an agenda to fulfill, and I’ll be damned if I know what that is. But he’s on the right side when it counts the most, so I have to give him credit for that. I have no doubt our paths will cross with his again—and you’ll have to be just as suspicious and cautious as always. Trust but verify.”

  “You said he helped identify the guys at the safe house, sir—but what about the one who attacked Dr. Campbell at the lab?” Flash asked.

  The question had been on the tip of Garrett’s tongue, but he was glad Flash asked considering Mendez wasn’t too happy with him at the moment.

  Mendez’s gaze was steady. “Not sent by the same people, no. According to Black, that was a rather ill-advised attempt to learn what Dr. Campbell actually knew, made by someone in the chain of command he’s working for at the moment. It wasn’t authorized. The man was a hired thug with a criminal record. He’s been picked up for other offenses.”

  “But how do we know no one else wants her?” Garrett asked.

  Mendez got that don’t fuck with me look he often wore. But Garrett wanted to know—needed to know—that Grace was going to be safe from all harm.

  “You’re going to have to trust that I know what I’m talking about, soldier. The threat to Grace Campbell is finished.”

  Garrett didn’t flinch from Mendez’s hard gaze. Someone cleared his throat, and Mendez glanced at his watch. He still wore one, a big diving watch that Garrett had never seen him without.

  “It’s late, boys and girls. Let’s go over this in the morning.”

  Garrett shifted and yawned, his jaw cracking as he did so.

  Mendez gave him a long look. “I think I speak for all of us when I say welcome home, Ice. We’re glad to have you back.”

  “Glad to be back, sir.”

  But the words felt empty as he said them. He should be pleased the job was done. Instead, he wished he was in a tent with Grace for just one more night, eating s’mores, naming the constellations, and curling up with her asleep in his arms.

  Everyone filtered out of the room, patting him on the head or squeezing his shoulder. Lucky bent down and kissed his cheek, an unusually demonstrative move for her. It made him choke up just a little to know how much everyone cared.

  “I can drop you at your place,” Flash said when it was just the two of them.

  Garrett pulled the blanket around his shoulders. “Nah, go on. I’ll just sleep here tonight.”

  There wasn’t much point in going home. There was no one there waiting for him. If it weren’t so late, he’d call Cammie. He was dying to call her and let her know he was still here, still her dad. Still doing his best to provide for her. He pictured her in her Hello Kitty p
ajamas, sleeping soundly, and his chest ached.

  He fingered the phone Billy Blake had given back to him earlier. They’d retrieved it from the Jeep when they’d rescued Grace. He opened the pictures and scrolled to his favorite one of Cammie, taken last Christmas when she’d been with his parents. He was still staring at it when Flash cleared his throat.

  Garrett looked up, realized that Flash could see the picture from his vantage point. He dropped the phone to his lap.

  “Hey, man, sorry about your daughter and everything. That’s some rough shit.”

  “Yeah, it sure is.” His jaw tightened. He remembered Grace telling him he needed to get together with the guys and talk about his problems over wine. He would have laughed if his heart didn’t ache so much.

  But maybe she was right, at least in one way. Keeping it from his friends wasn’t a healthy way to behave. He bottled up too much crap until he wanted to explode—and it took its toll on him, trying to act as if everything was normal when it wasn’t.

  “It’s hard to talk about. My daughter… it’s rough. I don’t get to see her as often as I want to. And her mother talks shit about me, so I’m always afraid it’s going to sink in, you know?”

  Flash seemed to hesitate a moment. Then he sighed. “My parents got divorced when I was six. Except it was my dad who got custody. My mom… she was kind of fucked-up. But it didn’t matter what my dad said, or how many times she disappointed me—I was always waiting for her to come pick me up when she promised, or come to my games.” He shoved a hand through his hair and blew out a breath. “All I mean is it took a lot—and I was a bit older by then—before I realized my dad was right. So don’t worry that your little girl is going to listen to what her mother says so easily. She’ll believe in you until you give her reason not to—and even then she won’t stop believing at first.”

  Garrett swallowed the knot in his throat. “Thanks, man. I think I needed to hear that.”

  Flash shrugged. “No problem.” He went to the door and stopped. “See you later.”

  “Yeah… and thanks again.”

  *

  Almost a week had gone by, and Grace hadn’t heard a word from Garrett. After everything they’d shared, everything she’d felt, he hadn’t called her or come to see her. It made her sad, and then it made her angry.

  She’d known it was temporary, but maybe she’d gotten just a little lost in the things she’d been feeling. For her, it had meant something. She’d thought it had meant something to him too, but then he’d told her he had no room in his life for her. There was his job and his daughter, and that was all. Grace didn’t fit in.

  She’d moved back home after two days with her parents, mostly because the reporters were camped out in front of their house, looking for a quote about her father’s campaign—and a juicy tidbit about her, the disgraced scientist.

  Well, maybe not disgraced exactly. The director called her and told her she still had a job if she wanted it. Researchers made mistakes, he said. And at least she hadn’t published her findings before they were corroborated. The lab had done a good job of mitigating the damage. The cynic in her believed it had everything to do with her father and the office he was currently seeking. She was still valuable currency, at least for the moment.

  They sent Tim Fitzgerald to the WHO conference in her place, where he made a speech about flu genetics using some of her research that had been verified. Naturally, Tim took all the credit, standing on stage with his unnaturally bronzed skin and looking a bit too much like an actor rather than a scientist.

  And he was welcome to it, she decided. Maybe the next group of nut jobs would come after him instead of her.

  That wasn’t a charitable thought, and she frowned at herself in the mirror as she applied makeup. She’d promised to go to a cocktail reception her mother was throwing tonight, though she wished like hell she’d said no.

  But her parents were convinced that being seen in public was a good thing for her, so she dutifully did her thing. Maybe they were right. Holding her head high and appearing to enjoy herself gave people less to speculate about than if she barricaded herself in her home and only ordered takeout.

  Brooke had stopped by earlier to help her pick out her dress—a red silk strapless dress with a fitted bodice and a poufy skirt that floated around her hips and fell to just below her knees. With strappy sandals and a cream wrap, she looked festive and elegant. The red gave her face color and helped to hide the fact she was feeling sad and disjointed.

  Grace had stared at Brooke while she went through the closet until finally Brooke had stopped and given her a significant look. “What?”

  “You almost died because of me. Why are you still talking to me?”

  Brooke’s brows drew together. “I did not almost die. And I’m still talking to you because you’re my best friend.”

  “You wouldn’t have been in danger if not for me.”

  Brooke had put her hands on her hips. “I’m not going to say it was fun, Grace, but it’s over and life goes on. I’m having nightmares sometimes, but that’s to be expected. I’m talking to someone about them, and I expect they’ll go away. Besides, you can make it up to me by telling me all the details of your days on the run with that handsome bodyguard.”

  Grace’s face must have shown what she was feeling, because Brooke dropped the skirt of the dress she’d been looking at and came over to wrap her arms around Grace. “I’m sorry, honey,” she’d said, and that’s when Grace realized she’d started crying again.

  She had a good cry, told her best friend everything, and then washed her face and started getting ready for the evening.

  When Brooke left, she’d squeezed Grace’s hand one last time. “If he doesn’t call you, then he’s not good enough for you. And I will personally hunt him down and kick his ass for you.”

  Grace laughed, but her heart was still bruised and battered.

  When she was ready, she went out to get into her car, still feeling a bit strange that she was allowed to drive herself now. But no one was lurking in her bushes when she backed the car out of the garage. She drove the distance to the hotel in the city in complete silence. She didn’t want to listen to the radio. Soon she would be inundated with noise.

  After she handed the car over to a valet, she prepared to face the reporters near the entrance. But they weren’t interested in her anymore. They’d moved on to the newest piece of news to capture their attention, namely something another potential presidential nominee had alleged about her father’s military service. She had to hide her surprise at the question, but she managed an answer and passed into the hotel.

  “Darling,” her mother said, rushing forward to kiss her on both cheeks. “I was afraid you wouldn’t come.”

  “I said I’d be here.” She smiled hard, though inside she ached.

  “Jeffrey is here,” her mother replied, taking her hand and leading her through the throng of people.

  “Mother, I really don’t think—”

  But it was too late. They’d arrived at Jeffrey’s side, and he seemed genuinely happy to see her, smiling and giving her a kiss on the cheek. Her mother managed to fade away at some point until Grace found herself alone with her ex-boyfriend. She cleared her throat.

  “Is your fiancée here? I’d like to meet her.”

  Jeffrey’s face turned a dull red. “Well, uh, Laura and I have, uh, decided to take a break from each other.”

  “Oh.” Grace was genuinely shocked—but she felt nothing over the news other than sorrow for him. She reached out and gave his arm a squeeze. “I hope it works out.”

  He shrugged. “I’m not sure it will. I may have made a mistake.”

  He was looking at her with fresh interest, and her stomach did a slow flip before dropping into her toes. Once, she would have been elated that he thought he’d made a mistake when he left her. Now, it made her think of another man and how much she wished he felt the same.

  “Dance with me,” he said, sweeping her into his
orbit as the band struck up a waltz.

  She was too startled to refuse, and she soon found herself on the dance floor. If she closed her eyes, she could pretend he was another man… except she didn’t feel that singular thrill of excitement she got when Garrett touched her. If Garrett were whirling her around the room in his arms, she’d know it blindfolded.

  “I’ve missed you,” Jeffrey said.

  Grace stiffened slightly but he felt it.

  “It’s true.”

  “It’s not true, Jeff. It’s been months since we split.”

  “I was confused. And maybe I was afraid of where we were going.”

  She resisted the urge to snort but only barely. “Afraid of where we were going? We were together for years. You’d been with Laura for far less time, and you were already engaged. I don’t think you’re afraid of getting married, Jeff. You just didn’t want to marry me.”

  She stopped dancing, and he had to let her go or stumble. They stood on the edge of the dance floor. His color was high and his mouth was taut.

  “It’s over. It’s been over for months, and though you might have always thought you could walk back into my life anytime you wanted, it’s not true.”

  “You aren’t really in love with that bodyguard,” Jeffrey sneered. “It didn’t take me long to figure out that was a lie.”

  “Actually, I am in love with him. But not everything is meant to work out, is it?” She held her hand out, and he took it automatically. “Have a nice life, Jeffrey. Help my father get elected, marry Laura or don’t, but don’t waste any more time on me. It’s not fair to either one of us.”

  She left him standing on the dance floor and walked away, her head held high. The churning in her stomach had everything to do with Garrett and nothing to do with Jeffrey, but there wasn’t a damn thing she could do about it. If he’d felt anything about their time together, about them as a couple, he would have called.

  She slipped through a side door and into an adjoining ballroom. It was blessedly quiet and empty, and she leaned against the wall and closed her eyes.

  “Hiding again, Grace?”