Deadly Force (5 page)

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.”

She paused. Accusing a member of Congress—someone she’d trusted emphatically—wasn’t easy to do. “After hearing that phone conversation, I’ve figured out that
I
didn’t blow the operation. My intel was accurate and solid. I made the correct call, but someone else, namely Senator Halston, leaked information about the operation before it went live and that’s why the mission failed.”

Cal shook his head. “You got all of that from a simple sentence about a blue elephant and a reelection bid?”

Bianca had kept her cards close to her chest for so long, the thought of divulging more facts—
the
fact—that would trigger Cal’s understanding felt like betraying her country. She’d rather jump off the boat into the cold Pacific than expose the NSA’s secrets. “I’m the only blue elephant the NSA currently employs. The other one, Alisha Jamison, was killed in a freak car accident six months ago.”

Except for the storm, silence reigned. Bianca glanced at the screen, saw the SUV had made its slow crawl through the docks and parking lot and was now leaving.

Cal rubbed his knuckles over the slight growth of beard on his square jaw. “What does this have to do with Warfighter?”

“I’ve been with a sub-unit of SE2 for approximately nine months. During that time, I had one assignment. Track down Otto Grimes.”

Cal stiffened at the mention of the terrorist’s name. “You were on his tail?”

“I was tasked with finding—or creating—a scenario to take him out.”

“You?” Skepticism showed on his face. “Why isn’t the CIA handling it?”

They’d been “handling” Otto Grimes for years and not getting anywhere. President Norman had had enough. “Grimes was supposed to attend a birthday party for Prince Hamid’s son on board his yacht on August 23rd. The CIA had an asset—a crew member—on board the yacht. After careful analysis of all the players and the situation, I recommended the crew member see to it that the ship entered international waters after the party was over and the guests fell asleep. That would allow a SEAL team to board, take out Otto, and disappear. It was a solid plan, so when the birthday party happened, I made the call to send in the SEALs, and my boss agreed. So did the Secretaries of Defense and Homeland.”

“
You
made the call? Since when do you decide when and where a SEAL team goes?”

Since she’d been appointed to Command and Control as part of the President’s Threat Matrix team. Many people knew about the Threat Matrix team, but C&C didn’t exist on paper.

“President Norman pulled the plug on the operation at the last second. The timing was wrong, he said, even though every one of my analyses confirmed we had better than an eighty-three percent chance of success. The next day, Grimes called up three terrorist cells who set off bombs at multiple U.S. universities based overseas, killing fourteen Americans and injuring twenty-six people.”

Cal no doubt knew about the bombings. Everyone knew. They’d been all over the news with plenty of mudslinging at the president and his cabinet for letting it happen. Grimes had produced a new YouTube video calling POTUS a little boy hiding behind his mother’s skirts.

Cal’s forehead creased as he did the mental math. “That’s when my unit was called up.”

She nodded. “First, I was told to come up with a new approach to take out Otto.”

“To save the presidency and win Linc Norman a second term.”

Now he was catching on. “Blue elephant, second term for the prez. Still think the caller was talking about someone else?”

Cal got up, drank half the cup of coffee, and refilled the cup. “I’m still struggling with the fact you made the call to send in my team.”

The dog watched Cal’s every move. So did Bianca. He didn’t drink any more coffee. Instead, his jaw set and a muscle jumped under his left cheekbone as he eyed her.

Danger
. It radiated off him like heat off a missile.

Cal would never hurt her. His intense stare, however, might make her melt. “I made the call to send in
a
team. I never know which unit will be picked—I’m kept in the dark, and that’s how it should be. Most of the time, I don’t even know if it will be SEALs or Marines or Berets. All I know is that a Special Forces unit will go in and get the job done. In this case, however, I forecasted it would be a commando unit such as yours who knew the terrain and the terrorist in question better than any other team.”

He stewed, still seeming to struggle to wrap his brain around her “desk jockey” job. “But
you
gave the order?”

“I’m an integral player behind the scenes when it comes to tracking and analyzing terrorists, international terrorism hotspots, and hunting down terrorists on Homeland’s most wanted list. It’s a critical piece in my job to keep POTUS safe.”

He zeroed in on her for a long minute, probably hoping she’d break under that intimidating stare.

She didn’t.

His gaze was unremitting and challenging. Was he blaming her for sending him and his men into a death trap?

He didn’t need to. She’d already castigated herself a million times. “Grimes has always been an unpredictable leader, as you know,” she said, “but he always rewards his lieutenants for a job well done. That’s the consistent thread I uncovered during my time tracking him. I knew after the bombings successfully went off at those universities, he would find a way to meet with his top lieutenants, Warwick and Meidi, to reward them. Based on my outcome analysis, your team had an eighty-nine-point-six percent chance of success of killing or arresting Grimes and at least one of them. An even higher percentage than the first SEAL unit had.”

He sipped the coffee, his dark eyes never leaving her. She could almost see the dozens of questions he had behind those eyes.

She tried to hold his gaze, but on the screen, she saw a dark shadow. The black SUV drove into the marina again.

“I have a lot more to tell you,” she said, rising from the bench. “But right now, the most important thing you need to know is that a call was made at three-sixteen this morning. A call to an assassin the CIA has used for off-the-book wet jobs for the past twenty years. His assignment is to kill me.”

She grabbed her briefcase and her damp jacket from the hook on the wall. Turning the screen so Cal could see it, she tried to stay composed. “He just pulled into the parking lot.”

Chapter Four

Cal was still so attuned to Bianca’s body, the moment she’d stiffened in response to something she saw on her phone, he had too.

Assess
.

He’d turned up the heat on her and she’d responded by shutting him down. His ego smarted, but he’d seen the lust in her eyes, felt the energy pouring off of her in the tight quarters. She wasn’t immune to him any more than he was to her. Every time he was close to her, his chest tightened with love, and everything below his waist hardened with yearning. Hers, in typical fashion, always responded.

Figures I’d fall for a crazy woman
.
Beautiful but crazy.

“The CIA sent an assassin after you.” Saying it out loud made it sound even more ludicrous. On the phone’s screen that she was now shoving at him, he saw a dark vehicle driving slowly through the parking lot. “And he drives a Cadillac Escalade.”

Her body tensed even more, not from danger but irritation. She lowered the phone and got in his face. “I know you have a ton of questions, and I’ll try to answer them, but I’m not kidding, Cal. There is a man after me.”

He moved the curtain aside on the small, round window to his left. A tiny stream of water was leaking in through the worthless seal.
Capillary effect
. Water could find the smallest of cracks and the effect more or less acted as a water pump to keep bringing water in. Kind of like his and Bianca’s tumultuous relationship…they’d found each other’s cracks long ago, widening them over time with all their petty shit.

Water was also leaking in from a spot near the door. Another thing to fix on the boat. The capillary effect was why water could enter at one point, such as the window, and come out three feet away at the doorframe. Bianca’s love did the same thing to him. The brush of her hand or the feel of her thigh next to his circulated heat and love and lust through his entire being.

Who’s the crazy one
?

The storm had mostly blown itself out, the wind dying off to a light breeze. The rain continued in a steady drizzle.

Cal scanned the parking lot. The SUV was gone. “The CIA can’t harm an American citizen on US soil. You know that.”

“The CIA is not behind this.”

Maggie rose from her spot and walked over to the stairs. Her nose twitched as she sniffed the air. “You just said they were.”

Bianca was the queen of exaggerated sighs, yet this time, her sigh was contained. “The assassin is experienced in doing wet work for the CIA—
that’s
what I said.”

Through the window, Cal saw two men in trench coats carry a net onboard their small fishing vessel. Todd and Hurley. He wasn’t the only one in the marina whose work day had been put on hold. “Why would anyone want to kill you, B?”

“Can we talk about this later? We really need to get out of here.”

She started to turn away. Maggie whined. Cal reached for Bianca’s arm and stopped her. “Who is this assassin, and who hired him?”

“It’s—”

Everything happened at once. Maggie barked, Bianca whirled to look at her, and the window beside Cal’s shoulder exploded.

Protect.

Without thinking, he barreled into Bianca, taking her down in a hail of glass and rainwater. His arms went around her, one hand cradling her head before it struck the floor.

She let go of an “oomph” when his weight fell on her. Her glasses flew off her face and her briefcase skidded across the floor, smacking into the leg of the table. A fine line of blood blossomed on her right cheek. Cal shifted to the side, keeping her tucked close to his much bigger body.

She’d been hit. By flying glass or something worse? The cut across the top of her cheek appeared thin, as if from a piece of glass, but the blood…

It pooled and ran over her cheekbone, flowing backward into her hair. Into his fingers at the back of her head.

Cal’s stomach fell. His chest constricted. “Shit. Are you alright?”

Bianca’s eyes were round saucers as she stared up at him, bewilderment and fear clear in their blue depths. She gave a single nod and her throat worked as she swallowed hard.

He glanced up and saw a hole, a depression in the wall across from where they’d been standing. From his position on the floor, all he could see was the indention in the wood paneling, and the faintest gleam of metal, but Cal knew the sound of a bullet punching through glass. Knew the reaction his body had to being shot at.

Shield
. In his head, he heard the sounds of battle. Smelled the odor of metal and blood and sand. For a split second, Bianca’s body morphed into Tank’s…

And then she squirmed, sucking in a breath and bringing him back to the present.

Temples pounding once more, he refocused on her face. Even though it had been months since he’d felt his wife beneath him, he couldn’t deny his instant and automatic response to her delicious warmth and feminine softness.

It’s only adrenaline
. A natural response to the situation.

In the back of his mind, he knew it was more. His body recognized the familiar feel of the only woman he’d ever loved and was responding accordingly.

Now was not the time for his body to take a fucking stroll down memory lane. Someone had shot at him and Bianca.
Maybe she isn’t crazy after all
. Like always, the male inside him rose to the challenge of keeping her safe.