Deadly Force (37 page)
Authors: Misty Evans
“Where will we live?”
“Anywhere you want,” Emit said. “As long as it’s here on the West Coast. We’re doing more and more business in China and Russia. Keeping our base of operations here is more efficient.”
“Do we have a deal, B?” Cal was still holding her. He lowered his voice, his gaze dropping to her lips and slowly working its way back up as if he were memorizing her features. “Will you be my wife again
and
my on-the-job partner?”
Her mind was spinning with possibilities. The complications.
A new adventure was waiting. A job that would challenge her mind and that came with one incredibly awesome benefit package.
Bianca didn’t need logic to make this decision. All she needed was her heart. “On one condition,” she said.
Both Cal and Emit lost their smiles. “What?” they said in unison.
“Maggie’s part of the team too.”
The two men released a collective sigh of relief. “Of course,” Emit said.
“Not just as a pet,” Bianca added. “Maggie likes to work and she’s good at sussing out bad guys.”
Emit shot Cal a quizzical look. “Sussing?”
“Never mind,” Cal said.
“She has separation anxiety.” Bianca ran her fingers through Cal’s dark hair, touched the scar on his eyebrow. “Like a certain other female in your life, she doesn’t like being left behind.”
Cal grinned. “I think you’ve fallen for my dog.”
“She’s
my
dog, and surprisingly, I love your dog as much as I love you.”
He kissed her, laughing against her lips. “By the way, we have one more addition to the team. Come meet her.”
He set Bianca on her feet and led her to the SUV.
When he opened the door and stepped back, she peered inside. She saw no one. “Your new team member is a ghost?”
He pointed. “Over there. In my coat.”
On the seat, a jacket was wadded up. Bianca leaned closer, and Maggie stuck her nose in, sniffing. Her tail beat a rapid-fire staccato against Bianca’s leg.
A tiny ball of black fluff moved, stretched, and then blinked up at her. A small, pitiful mew came from its lips.
“A cat?” Bianca threw her head back and laughed. “You adopted a cat?”
“You told me to.” Cal scratched Maggie behind the ears. “And I was lonesome. You stole my dog.”
“I didn’t steal her. She wanted to live with me.”
Bianca drew out the kitten and cuddled her. Maggie tried to stand on her back legs to see it, but Bianca made her sit. Then she lowered the cat and let Maggie take a sniff. Maggie wagged her tail and the kitten mewed and licked Maggie’s nose.
“Well, that’s settled,” Cal said, putting an arm around Bianca’s shoulders.
She cuddled the kitten again, suddenly feeling very maternal. “Not exactly.”
Leaving the security of Cal’s embrace, Bianca hustled back to the apartment, carrying the cat with her and Maggie running by her side.
“What’s going on?” Cal followed her inside.
Emit joined them, and Bianca handed the cat off to Cal. “What’s her name?”
“She doesn’t have one yet,” Emit said. “We decided we both suck at naming things, so Cal was leaving it up to you.”
“I see.” She eyed the bathroom door at the end of the hall. “You guys grab a beer from the fridge and have a seat.” Thomas had stocked her fridge with some kind of IPA while Ronni had stocked her pantry with chocolate PopTarts—her kind of friend. “I’ll be back in about, oh, three minutes.”
In the bathroom, she unwrapped the pregnancy test. Maybe the universe wasn’t playing tricks on her. A new kind of hope took root in her chest.
The test didn’t take three minutes. A plus signed showed up in less than one. Bianca hung onto the bathroom sink, staring at that little plus sign and trying not to hyperventilate. She laid a hand on her lower belly. “Hang in there, kid,” she murmured. “You have a very bright future if we can make it through the next few months.”
She splashed water on her face and prepped herself to go back into the other room.
Cal was standing at the end of the hall waiting for her. When he saw her face, he frowned. “You okay?”
She marched into the living room, past him and over to Emit. The kitten was in his lap, purring and trying to go back to sleep. “What kind of maternity benefits do you offer?”
He’d made himself at home on her sofa, propping his feet on her coffee table and swigging her beer. Neither man seemed to have noticed the baby book hidden under
Reunion In Death
. “Why do we need maternity…?”
He stopped with the beer bottle halfway to his lips, his eyes bugging out.
Standing at the arm of the sofa, Cal looked like he was going to drop his bottle. “Are you…?”
She held up the stick with its pretty little plus sign. “I am, and I think this time we have a good shot at going full term. So you better make sure you know what you’re doing, Callan Reese, because your team is about to expand.”
With a loud whoop, he set down the beer bottle, picked her up, and spun her around. “Yes!”
They were both laughing when Cal finally set her back on her feet. “We’re going to be one awesome team, Bianca Marx.”
Maggie jumped and barked, delighting in the happy moment. The kitten opened one eye from the comfort of Emit’s lap and looked disinterested.
“It’s Bianca Reese, for your information,” she told her husband, “and we’re going to be an awesome
family
.”
Note from the Author
Dear Reader,
PTSD affects between 11% and 20% of our military veterans. Service dogs can help traumatized veterans overcome emotional as well as physical challenges. Many veterans with PTSD report their dog companions soothe, draw them out of their emotional numbness, and allow them to sleep at night.
And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. For some veterans, their service dog is not just man’s (or woman’s) best friend, but the one thing that keeps them functioning and connected with their families and friends. Bonding with a dog elevates a person’s levels of the hormone oxytocin which can improve trust and overcome paranoia. The best part is that many organizations adopt shelter dogs and train them for this rewarding job. Being adopted by a service dog organization and trained to help a veteran is a dream come true for them as well as the person they help!
Please consider supporting one or more of the service dog organizations. You can learn more about a few of these organizations by visiting my website at
http://readmistyevans.com/book/27/deadly-force
.
A portion of proceeds from the sales of this story in the SCVC Taskforce series will be donated to service dog organizations providing support for our veterans.
Happy reading!
Misty
And now enjoy an excerpt from the first book in the SCVC Taskforce Series
Deadly Pursuit
by Misty Evans
Cooper Harris wanted to hit something. Hard.
FBI Special Agent Celina Davenport—sexy siren of his daydreams as well as evil temptress of his night dreams—was sucking face with the biggest drug cartel leader in California and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it.
Her soft voice coming through the mic as she taunted Londano to have sex with her on the beach gave him an instant headache of giant proportions. But it was the silence that followed, broken only by the sound of them kissing, that made him want to slam the wall of the surveillance van with his bare fist.
Sucker punched. That’s what it felt like.
It’s her job, idiot
.
She knows how to handle herself
.
Didn’t make him any happier. Which showed what a total sexist he really was. Sure, he felt protective about all the guys on his squad, but he never second-guessed them or their skills. He never went apeshit if they kissed a mark or led her on in order to get the information to take someone down.
Celina was female and a little one at that. Short, underweight, except for a few well-placed curves, and she had a soft, almost Southern Belle persona that totally belied her fiery Cuban roots. Push her buttons and you’d see that fire, but it took an ungodly amount of button-pushing for it to surface. He knew. Out of everyone on the SCVC taskforce, he’d managed to tweak every hot button she had at least once. Most of them he’d not only pushed, but punched into the stratosphere.
He loved it when the real Celina came out. Not the professional FBI agent she’d polished to perfection, but the holy shit amazing woman underneath. The one whose emotions rose up and took over, blasting him with her clever wit and overwhelming logic even as she flushed with anger and made gestures with her hands he’d never seen before.
Yeah.
That
was the Celina he’d fallen for.
But he couldn’t ever let her know that. How she tied him up in knots. How absolutely gone he was every time he was around her. He was her boss. Head of the taskforce.
He was also fourteen years, six months and four days older.
She was a baby. A rookie. A Feebie, for Christ’s sake. DEA agents did not play well with FBI agents.
And he was The Beast after all. His reputation would hardly hold up under the pressure if he robbed the cradle
and
got the female rookie Fed on his team hurt in the line of duty.
So he didn’t cut loose and punch the wall of the surveillance van, didn’t give into the surge of acid in his stomach. Instead, he scratched Thunder’s tiny square head and batted away the image of Special Agent Celina Davenport kissing Emilio Londano.
FBI agent Dominic Quarters’ gaze was heavy on Cooper’s neck. Fucker had the hots for Celina, too. Cooper shot him an accusatory glance. Fucker could eat shit. “What the hell is your girl doing to our op, Quarters? This wasn’t the takedown we had planned.”
“Pull your shorts out, Harris.” The shorter man eased back in his plastic chair and shrugged. The San Diego Mafia had been formed in the early 1970s by Jose Prisco. Thirty years later, his twin nephews, Emilio and Enrique Paloma-Londano took over the business. While most cartels gained international reputations for brutality and murder, the San Diego traffickers posed as legitimate businessmen. Their unique criminal enterprise involved itself in counterfeiting, kidnapping, and drug trade, but Emilio and Enrique passed off as law-abiding citizens, investing in their country’s future and earning the respect of their neighbors and the general public. The Feds wanted them gone. The DEA wanted them gone. Even the CIA thought it was a good idea. Too bad it wasn’t one of the spies he’d worked with before instead of Quarters sitting next to him. “She saw an opportunity and ran with it.”
An opportunity? That’s what this asshole called it? “She’s going to get herself killed.”
Quarters did the shrug thing again and Cooper’s hand balled into a fist. Punching Quarters would be way more satisfying than punching the van’s side panel.
The van slowed, following a discreet distance behind Londano’s car and bodyguards’ vehicle. “Perp is pulling off highway and parking approximately one-quarter klick from here,” announced Thomas, a West Point grad who’d held a high profile position with the Department of Defense before defecting to the DEA. The T-man was Cooper’s right hand man on this takedown.
Two keystrokes of Thomas’s fingers and a night-vision view of the boardwalk appeared on the screen in front of Cooper.
The surveillance van wasn’t the only vehicle in the area. A few diehard surf heads always parked near the beach overnight, only moving when the cops harassed them. There were plenty of cops in the area tonight, but none would be visible until after the sting took place, thanks to Cooper’s friendly relationship with the police units from L.A. to San Diego. They all wanted Londano out of business and they knew Cooper’s taskforce was about to do it.
“Perp is exiting car.”
Like he couldn’t see that. On screen, Londano and Celina headed to the beach. Thunder, in Cooper’s lap, whined. Cooper was petting the dog too hard. “Sorry, hot rod,” he murmured, never taking his eyes off the screen. He wanted to watch Celina. But years of intense training and experience told him to keep his attention on Londano. “Radio the other units in the area that this is going down here and now.”
Thomas made a sound of acknowledgment and began notifying their backup.
Celina kicked off her high heels and strolled into the rolling Pacific Ocean. The moon and stars lit the beach with a surreal light that even the night-vision view couldn’t compete with. Cooper could only shake his head at her stupid courage and undeniable sensuality. She glowed like a beacon.
A beacon that only reminded him he was trapped in a hell of his own making.
ROMANTIC SUSPENSE AND MYSTERIES
BY MISTY EVANS
The Super Agent Series