HOT Angel_Hostile Operations Team_Book 12 Page 5

  As they passed Scott’s door, Max started growling again. Then he barked and didn’t stop. Brooke was shocked when he veered toward the door and started scratching on it and whimpering. Her heart jarred inside her chest and sweat broke out on her forehead and between her breasts. She didn’t know why. All she knew was that Max was behaving oddly and it rattled her.

  “Max,” she scolded. “Stop.”

  But he didn’t stop. He jumped up and hit the door—and the lock clicked as if it hadn’t been firmly closed in the first place. The door swung wide. Max tugged her forward like a sled dog on the Iditarod, wheezing and barking.

  It took her a moment to realize there was a body lying on the floor…

  Brooke yanked on the leash before Max reached Scott’s side. A red puddle flowed around his still body, and empty eyes stared glassily at the ceiling.

  Brooke froze. A moment later, the floor rushed up to meet her and everything went black.

  Chapter 6

  It had been a long day at HOT HQ and Cade was just climbing into his truck when his phone rang. He looked at the display in shock. And then he punched the Accept button before it went to voice mail. If Brooke had finally worked up to speaking to him, he wasn’t letting her leave a message.

  There was also, in the back of his brain, the idea that if she was actually calling him, something was wrong.

  “Hey,” he said. “Everything okay?”

  Her voice was barely a whisper. “No,” she said. “I… Cade, I need help.”

  Every hackle on his body prickled to attention. His heart squeezed in his chest. His blood ran cold.

  “What’s wrong, angel? Tell me what you need. Where are you?”

  She sniffed. Tears. “At the hospital. There’s a policeman with me, but…”

  His heart was a wild thing in his chest. “Brooke, baby, tell me which hospital. I’m coming.”

  She named the hospital and he fired up his truck. His phone synced with the truck so she was on speaker and he could drive.

  “Can you tell me what happened? Are you hurt?”

  “I’m okay.”

  “Ma’am,” someone said in the background. “We’re going to need a statement.”

  “I need to go, Cade. You’re coming, right?”

  He gripped the wheel hard. “I’m coming, angel. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

  * * *

  Cade broke several speed limits to get to the hospital in Arlington, but finally he was striding into the ER and up to the desk. He was still in uniform, and the nurse behind the desk blinked a couple of times as she gazed up at him.

  “I’m looking for Brooke Sullivan,” he said.

  The nurse blinked a few more times before reaching for her keyboard. “Are you family?”

  “I’m a friend. The friend she called to come get her.”

  “Name?”

  His last name was on his chest but he didn’t bother pointing that out. “Cade Rodgers.”

  She stood. “I’ll buzz you back. Room five.”

  He went over to the double doors and waited for them to open. Then he strode inside, past another desk with doctors and nurses, past medical equipment that beeped and whooshed, and over to room five. The door was closed. He knocked and then opened it when he heard her voice.

  Brooke lay in a bed with a hospital gown covering her body, her face pale. When she saw him, she burst into tears.

  For a moment he didn’t know what to do. And then he went over and sank down on the chair beside the bed.

  “Hey, what’s this? You’re gonna give a guy a complex, angel.”

  She covered her eyes with a hand. Her other hand lay in her lap. He took it gently in his. Her hand was cold, but she didn’t jerk away. Instead, she gripped him tight. He let her cry.

  A few moments later, she gulped in air and growled. “Dammit, stop it. This is ridiculous.”

  He plucked tissues off a stand nearby and pressed them into her hand. She took them and wiped her eyes.

  “I’m sorry. I’m a mess.”

  “It’s okay. Can you tell me what happened?”

  She pulled in a breath and nodded. “I was bringing Max back from his walk. There was a strange man in the hall, but that doesn’t mean anything because he could have been visiting anyone. Except I think he had a gun. But anyway, when we were passing my neighbor’s door, Max went nuts. The door was closed but the lock hadn’t clicked. Max knocked it open. Scott was dead. Bleeding out from a gunshot, or so the police told me. I fainted.” She lifted a hand to the back of her head. “Got a bump on my head where I fell. Thankfully I landed on carpet and not the marble in the entry. No concussion, just a small knot.”

  Cade was trying to process it all. She’d found a gunshot victim and she’d fainted. She’d also potentially seen someone who might have done the deed. Shit.

  “I couldn’t call Grace. She would worry—and she’s pregnant, though nobody knows it yet, but you understand why I couldn’t call her and get her involved in this.” She shrugged and her bottom lip trembled. “If Garrett were around, I might have called him. But you were the only one I could think of.”

  He squeezed her hand. “I’m the right choice, angel. You did the right thing.”

  She nodded. “The doctor said I should be able to go soon. I gave the police my statement and a description of the guy I saw. I’m not a suspect because they swabbed my skin and I haven’t shot a gun recently. No traces of lead, or whatever it is they look for.”

  Cade’s jaw was granite. She’d been at the scene of a murder and she’d possibly seen the killer. Even if they’d cleared her of actually firing the murder weapon, the police weren’t done with her yet. Not by a long shot.

  “Do you want to go back to your place? Or would you feel better somewhere else?”

  “I have to go back. Max is there. Bert put him in my apartment for me.”

  “Bert?”

  “Sorry, I’m not explaining well. One of the neighbors heard Max barking and called security. That would be Bert. He works the evening shift on the front desk. He came up, found us, called the police and put Max away for me.”

  “Are there cameras in the building?”

  She nodded. “Elevators, hallways, entrances.”

  “So whoever shot your neighbor is on camera.” Thank God.

  “Unless he’s a vampire.”

  Cade hadn’t expected her to make a joke. He laughed though, relieved that she could. If she could joke, she wasn’t too traumatized.

  Yet.

  He frowned. Yep, yet was the operative word. Trauma wasn’t always immediate, and she’d had a lot of it in her past. She hadn’t told him anything beyond the first night when she’d texted him at midnight. That was as much as he knew about what had happened to her. That and the reports he’d read. They’d held her for about forty-eight hours. Threatened to kill her. Put a gun to her head.

  Fucking Ian Black had been involved somehow. Cade didn’t know precisely how because it was classified, but Black had been undercover during that op and pretending to be on the side of the bad guys. If Cade ever found out that Black had let them hurt Brooke, he’d kick the man’s ass so thoroughly they’d be picking up pieces of him for days.

  It’d be worth the trouble Cade would get into. He wouldn’t even feel guilty for it in spite of the fact it was Black’s help that had kept Mendez from being thrown in jail when he’d been relieved of duty a few months ago. Because of Ian Black, HOT had their commander and their teammates on Delta Squad back in one piece after the Russia adventure.

  But if Black had let anyone hurt Brooke, it was all over but the crying. Nothing could redeem him if that was the case.

  There was a knock on the door and a nurse entered. She flicked a glance at Cade and then focused on Brooke, smiling.

  “I have your discharge papers. Just need to go over them with you, and then you can get dressed and go home.”

  Cade waited while she explained meds and dosages—for pain and nausea, if they happ
ened—and gave instructions on rest and recuperation from the fall. Brooke signed the paperwork, and then the nurse was gone.

  Brooke turned her baby blues on him with a tentative smile. “All that’s left is clothing.”

  “Guess you want me to step out for that one, huh?”

  She nodded. “Sorry.”

  He gave her a grin. “Not as sorry as I am.”

  “You’ve pretty much seen it all anyway.”

  “Not the parts I want to see. You always manage to artfully drape scraps of fabric over the good stuff.”

  Brooke laughed. Cade loved her laugh. He took it as a good sign that she was doing so instead of clamming up in front of him. They might know each other pretty well by now, but it was all through text. That had to make it a little weird for her. For him too. Mostly because he wasn’t sure how familiar to act with her. They’d been intimate without being intimate. They’d exchanged all kinds of information. He thought that made them friends at least.

  But what did Brooke think? She’d called him, but she’d already said he was the only one she could think to contact.

  “Have to keep up the mystery so you don’t move on to the next hot babe who sends you naughty texts.”

  “It’s working. I’m on the hook.”

  She lifted her fingers and waved them at him. “Go. I want out of here.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he told her before stepping into the hall and trying not to think too hard about her flipping back the sheet and revealing her body in nothing but a bra and a tiny pair of panties. At least he hoped they were tiny.

  He dragged a hand over his face and focused his gaze on the male at the nurse’s station. Dudes didn’t do it for him, so maybe watching that guy would get his mind off Brooke and her tiny panties.

  But then the guy looked up from his paperwork, sensing someone watching him. A second later, he smiled and lifted an eyebrow. Cade nodded at him.

  “Waiting for my girlfriend,” he said. “She’s getting dressed.”

  The guy didn’t stop smiling. “Whatever you say, sir. Let me know if you need anything.” He chewed the end of his pen for a second and then went back to his paperwork.

  The door behind Cade opened and Brooke was there, looking cute in yoga pants and a jacket. “Did I hear you call me your girlfriend?”

  “Yeah.” Cade took her arm and steered her down the hall toward the double doors. “I think I accidentally hit on a dude.”

  Brooke snickered. “Accidentally? How do you accidentally do that?”

  “Because I needed to think of something other than your smoking-hot body, so I was watching him instead. I think he took it as interest.”

  “I can give you a reference if you like. Gives good text. Something like that.”

  “No effing way, angel.” He led her out of the hospital and into the parking garage. It was dark now, but the garage was well lit. She stopped walking before they’d gone too far. Cade stopped too. She gazed up at him with wide eyes.

  “I… I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m just a little overwhelmed.”

  “I know. It’s okay, Brooke. You don’t have to pretend with me. If you want to cry, cry. If you want to scream, do that too—only wait until nobody thinks I’m abducting you—” He realized what he was saying and choked it off. Her eyes went even wider. “I’m sorry. Poor choice of words.”

  She shook her head. “No, not at all. It’s a normal thought to have. Somebody would think you were harming me if I screamed. I’m not planning to scream,” she added with a little grin he wasn’t entirely sure was genuine.

  Hell, she made his chest squeeze. She was trying so damned hard to hold it together. Anybody who’d seen a gunshot victim for the first time would be shaken up, but someone who’d also been dealing with the kind of trauma she had in her past? Yeah, the woman was doing a pretty good job here.

  “Do you want to go to Grace’s? I can get Max for you.”

  “No. Absolutely not. She would worry, and I won’t have that. Besides, Max might bite your face off. I wouldn’t want that on my conscience.”

  “He wouldn’t. Dogs love me.”

  “I guess we’ll see.” She closed her eyes and shook her head. “You sure you want to deal with my crazy? It’s pretty spectacular.”

  “You aren’t crazy, angel. You’ve suffered a traumatic event and you’re processing it.”

  “Okay, we’ll go with that.”

  Chapter 7

  Brooke was out of sorts. Totally and completely. And not just because of Scott’s murder. Though, yeah, that was pretty significant in her psyche at the moment. She’d fainted so quickly she didn’t remember much beyond an impression of his body on the floor, eyes glassy and blood pooling beneath him.

  If she’d gotten a really good look?

  A hard shiver rolled over her. She didn’t like to think about it.

  But the other thing running through her mind and wreaking havoc was Cade. Specifically, his presence. She’d spent so much time on the phone with him, though not really on the phone with him, that he wasn’t a stranger to her. And yet he was.

  His voice was gravelly and deep, his eyes a shade of rainy gray she found amazing, and he was tall and built like a precision instrument—one designed for combat. None of those things came across in text, of course. Though she’d met him more than once, she’d minimized his size and height in her mind until he was lean and not so tall.

  Now she was dealing with the fact he was nothing like she’d pretended to herself. This man was big. Strong. More than capable of violence when called upon to fight.

  And yet he was her closest friend right now, besides Grace. She asked herself how long that would last once he had to deal with her in person. Once he realized she wasn’t the sexy, fun girl he sexted with on a regular basis.

  Brooke’s heart began to throb. Once he knew, would he move on to someone else?

  Part of her had to admit she’d put off moving forward with him precisely because she was afraid that once he knew her better, he’d lose interest and want out. But now that she’d called him to her side, could she force him back into the box she’d put him in?

  They reached a black Toyota Tundra that was sleek and shiny except for the TRD painted on the side of the bed. Cade held open the door and she climbed inside. Her head throbbed just a little, but it wasn’t bad. The drugs were doing a good job of dulling the pain. In fact, as soon as she got her prescription, she’d take the really good stuff and go to sleep for a while.

  Cade got in the other side and started the vehicle. “Where do you want to get those filled?”

  She smoothed the paper on her leg. “There’s a Walgreens a block from my place.”

  They got the prescriptions filled on the way and then Cade took them through a fast-food drive-through so they could get something to eat. Once they had their food, he drove the short distance to her building and, without prompting, shut off his vehicle. Brooke was both relieved and nervous about him going up with her.

  They headed into the building, and Bert looked up with a concerned expression. “Miss Sullivan! Are you okay, ma’am?”

  “I’m fine, Bert. Thank you.” She turned to Cade. “This is my friend Cade.”

  Bert glanced at Cade’s uniform. His eyes shone with respect. “Thank you for your service, Sergeant.”

  “My pleasure.”

  Bert nodded at his uniform. “Special Forces.”

  Cade smiled. “Yep. You a vet?”

  “Four years in the Army.”

  Cade held out his hand and Bert took it. “Thank you for your service as well.”

  They spoke for a few more moments, and then Cade followed her to the elevator.

  Once the doors were closed, she turned to him. “How did you know he was former military?”

  “He knew my rank and he recognized my Special Forces patch. Usually requires some service to do that, though he could have been a military brat—someone whose parents were in, not a literal brat.”

  Brooke l
aughed. “I’m familiar with the term, actually. Learned it from Garrett.”

  They reached her floor. When the doors opened, her heart rate kicked up.

  Cade was right beside her when they stepped out of the elevator. “I’ve got your six.”

  “Thanks.”

  She knew what that was because Grace had told her one time when they were going shopping for a rare toy for Brooke’s niece. Grace had made the whole thing seem like a mission into enemy territory. Which, she supposed, it had been. They’d gotten the toy, but not without visiting a dozen stores and outwitting a few of their fellow shoppers.

  There was crime-scene tape over Scott’s door. A shot of adrenaline rocketed through her. She didn’t know whether to scream or cry or shake uncontrollably, so she settled for hurrying by like something was going to jump out at her. When she reached her own door, she sucked in a breath as she fished in her jacket for her keycard.

  Max started to bark as she laid the card against the electronic lock. Then the door opened and Max was there, whirling and wagging his tail. She prepared to grab him in case he went after Cade, but all he did was stop and tilt his head for a second. His eyes fastened on the fast-food bag that held their burgers.

  There was no growling, thank God.

  Cade held his hand out and Max sniffed it. Then he licked Cade’s hand and tried to nuzzle the food bag. Cade lifted it out of the dog’s reach.

  “Sorry, buddy,” he said.

  “Come on, Maxie. He hasn’t had his dinner,” she said to Cade. She went over and got kibble for Max’s bowl, then dropped it in and stood watching him while he dived in.

  Cade had come inside and shut the door behind him. He walked over to her kitchen island and deposited the food.

  Brooke had been trying not to focus on being alone with this man, but it was getting harder to do. They were here, in her apartment where she’d given herself so many orgasms while thinking about him, and all she could think of was that she wanted it to happen for real while at the same time the idea terrified her.