“Fuck. I’m sorry.”
Sullivan bit the inside of his cheek. “After she died, I fell off the wagon. Started popping pills again, getting high so I wouldn’t have to feel anything. Kept dealing, too, and then I got busted for possession. That’s when I met Tom—I told you about him, remember? The cop who took me in? He gave me a place to stay, helped me get clean again, and encouraged me to enlist in the army. And . . . yeah, you know the rest.”
Liam’s blue eyes flickered with sorrow. “You named your boat after her.”
He nodded. “Before she got sick, we used to talk about what our life together would be like. She wanted to live on the water—that was her dream, to eventually buy a place on the beach in a small town. She’d work as a nurse at some clinic, and I . . . well, who the fuck knew what I’d do. But that was our dream. She wanted a boat, and on weekends we’d take it out on the water. So . . .”
“So you gave her the dream,” Liam finished hoarsely.
“Yeah, I guess I did.” A humorless laugh slipped out. “Maybe it’s a good thing we never got to live that dream together. Sooner or later I would’ve broken her heart.”
“What makes you say that?”
“You know me, mate. Have I ever been able to keep my pants zipped? I would’ve gotten bored with her eventually, stepped out on her. I would’ve hurt her.” He bristled when he noticed Liam studying him intently. “What?” he said defensively.
Liam didn’t answer. He just kept staring, as if he was trying to figure something out.
For the life of him, Sully didn’t want to know what it was, so he stood up and ran a hand over his cropped hair. “Call your family back. Keep working on them until they agree to leave Boston.”
“Sullivan—”
“Rivera’s targeting families,” he muttered, avoiding Liam’s eyes. “The only thing you need to be worrying about right now is keeping yours safe.”
Chapter 26
Cate woke up to the sound of Ash’s soft, steady breathing. He was lying beside her, one arm thrown over the top of his face, the other loosely embracing her. The darkened window indicated it was still nighttime, but she wasn’t sure how late.
She thought she’d feel euphoric after sex with Ash, but the multiple rounds of it had only exhausted her body. After the last orgasm had washed over her, she’d felt hollowed out emotionally. Throughout all the sex, he’d said a lot of things. Filthy, erotic, exciting things, but none of them had indicated that what they were doing was anything more than a physical release.
She supposed that was exactly how she needed to treat it—as a purely physical experience that had everything to do with their bodies and nothing to do with their hearts. He wasn’t suddenly in love with her. That kind of thinking was precisely what had led to her seventeen-year-old heart getting crushed.
But she wasn’t a child anymore. She wouldn’t let Ash crush her again. Even if he walked out the door right now, she was not going to let him take her heart with him.
As a flicker of panic ran through her, she sat up in bed and rubbed her face, wishing that Ash didn’t have this power over her. The power to turn her into an emotional mess.
“What’s wrong?” His eyes snapped open, his hand already moving to grip the weapon that wasn’t at his side.
Cate wasn’t sure if he’d been awake or if his military training had kicked in by her movement.
“Nothing’s wrong,” she assured him. Then she drew the sheet up to her breasts, feeling awkward with her state of undress now that the passion had cooled like the sweat on her body. “Noelle should be back soon, right?”
Ash cast her an unreadable glance from under hooded eyes before swinging his legs out of bed. Unlike her, he had no problem waltzing around nude. He casually and slowly picked up his pants and shirt, tossing both on the bed.
Cate silently chastised herself for the way her heart sped up and her core throbbed in anticipation. One would think that after the third . . . or was it four times? Whatever the number, her body should be revolting against another bout with Ash. Instead, it wanted to stand up and declare its availability.
Ash flipped his phone over and checked the screen. “Noelle’s on her way,” he reported.
Cate watched as he picked up his pants and pulled them on. Then he plucked the shirt off the sheet and tossed it over his shoulder, not bothering to fasten his pants.
“I’ll see you in the morning, sugar.”
Grabbing his boots, he made his way around the side of the bed, planted a breath-stealing kiss on her mouth, and then sauntered out of her room.
I’ll see you in the morning, sugar?
What kind of half-assed statement was that?
Cate threw herself down on the mattress with a huff. The sheets smelled like him. She smelled like him. But instead of getting up and washing herself off, she rolled over, buried her face in the pillow, and breathed him in. God, he was so sexy. And so damn good in bed. But she’d known it would be like that with him. She’d known it when she was seventeen—that he was the right guy to take her virginity.
Ash might be an asshole, but tonight he’d proven that he was utterly unselfish in bed, and . . . Cate suddenly felt cheated. Instead of an experienced, patient lover for her first time, she’d gotten inept fumbling in some dirty hotel room in Jakarta with a drunk journalist who’d bragged about how he was a stud in bed but in actuality turned out to be a total letdown.
The guy’s technique had consisted of three steps: wham, bam, and thank you. As in, he literally thanked her as he rolled his body off hers. She should’ve known better, though. Another journalist there, a woman, had warned Cate about the guy, but in her own drunken state, she’d viewed the yellow flag the fellow female had thrown up as a sign of jealousy.
The second time she’d had sex, she’d been sober. It hadn’t hurt, and the guy had lasted longer than the first, but it hadn’t felt like she thought it should. She hadn’t burned for him. There’d been no energy between them. It was dinner, a little fondling, some kissing followed by penetration, and then it was over.
Was she wrong to want more than that? To want passion? She wanted someone who stormed the castle, who was so overcome with need that he’d tear down the walls to get to her. Maybe it was archaic to crave that, but she did.
Of course, she also wanted her freedom and independence. Was that even possible? To have it all?
Noelle’s dry voice sounded from the door that Ash had apparently left ajar. “From the looks of your bed, I’d say you and Ash worked through your issues.”
Cate allowed herself one silent moan of embarrassment before flipping over on her back. She was a grown woman, damn it. She had nothing to be ashamed of.
“We had a lovely chat,” Cate replied, grateful that the darkness hid the flush on her cheeks. “So Jim made the trip okay?”
“Yeah. He looked peachy when I left. Sofia had him all hooked up to his needles and IVs and that fucking ventilator.” Noelle dropped her gun on the other bed and sat down, looking rattled. “You got my text, right?”
Cate nodded. The text had come through in between rounds two and three of her and Ash’s sexcapades. Her thighs squeezed at the memory because she was pretty sure that was the round when Ash shoved her up against the wall and pounded her from behind. There might still be plaster stuck to her breasts from that particular session.
“Well, like I texted you, Sofia said the swelling is going down. Good thing we bought that MRI equipment last year or I might’ve been tempted to haul him to a hospital.” Noelle clenched her fists on her knees. “When we find Rivera, I’m going to gut him from his neck to his dick. No, to his groin,” she corrected. “Because I’m chopping off his dick and feeding it to him before I fillet him like a fish.”
Cate was fully on board with the bloodthirsty tactics. She wanted Rivera to pay too. “What’s the plan?”
“Sa
me as it’s always been—find the asshole. We need to follow the son and the wife, but we don’t have the resources for both.” Noelle sounded exhausted, not just from the trip she’d just taken, but all of it. “Rivera has eyes everywhere, it seems.”
“How’d he get to Ash’s grandmother?” Cate wondered out loud.
“Best guess is that he’s pulling favors from gangs in the States. There’s a motorcycle club that runs drugs and guns from Mexico across the border into Texas. They serve as a pipeline for gangs in the central US. I spoke to an FBI source earlier and he said that the prisoner who iced Bernie Roma is connected to a rival family on the East Coast—New Jersey, maybe Boston.”
“Boston . . . Doesn’t Liam have like a thousand family members in Boston?”
Noelle nodded.
“You think he’ll go home?”
“He has to be thinking about it.”
Cate pursed her lips in thought, her mind running over the options—the very few options—available to them. “The wife,” she finally said, surprising herself with the confidence in her voice. “We should focus our resources on Camila Rivera.”
“Why do you say that?”
“A couple reasons. Family is obviously important to Rivera, because he’s targeting our families—”
“The son is family too,” Noelle pointed out. “And this whole clusterfuck is retaliation for the other son’s death.”
“Yes, but I don’t think Benicio means as much to him as Adrián did,” Cate countered. “You didn’t hear him on the phone—he sounded so disgusted when he spoke about Benicio. He basically called him a coward.”
“Did he mention the wife?”
“No, but I find it super fishy that she’s resurfaced in Guatana out of the blue like this. I did some research, and she spends most of her time in Monte Carlo and the Caribbean. Suddenly she’s back in Guatana? At the same time her supposedly dead husband is photographed in the market?”
“You’re saying she’s here to see him,” Noelle mused.
“My gut says yes.”
The other woman nodded. “All right. We go with your gut, then. You and Ash can tail her while Macgregor and Port toss wherever it is that she’s staying.”
Her and Ash on another mission? Oh boy. Cate didn’t know if she could handle it, but if she wanted to convince everyone that she was a capable adult, complaining about being paired with someone she’d slept with would not be the right way to go.
“Sounds good,” she said, and her voice was a bit hoarse because her heart was in her throat.
When she’d arrived at the compound four years ago, Jim’s people had gone out of their way to welcome her. Abby showed her how to throw knives. Isabel taught her how to apply makeup and use clothes as a weapon. Jim took her on tracking lessons. And Ash, before he’d driven her away, had been her constant friend.
But she’d never felt like she was one of them . . . until tonight. Noelle had not only listened to her, she’d actually acknowledged Cate’s instincts and was using them to formulate a plan.
For the first time in her life, Cate felt like she truly belonged.
* * *
The next morning, Noelle outlined the plan and gave credit to Cate, who basked in the glow of approval. She knew it was silly but she loved knowing that today’s mission to tail Camila Rivera was her doing.
“Holden, what do we have in terms of eyes on the ground?” Noelle turned to the tech man. “Can we tap into the local surveillance?”
He shook his head. “At least eighty percent of the city’s surveillance cameras have been busted, disconnected, or just aren’t working because of a tech failure. I’m thinking we use a drone. The model I brought has a two-mile radius and can fly up to an hour at a time. I’ve got two of them, so we can have one in the air while the other is charging up.”
In the seat next to Holden’s, Liam frowned. “How noticeable is it?”
“And aren’t those fuckers noisy?” Sullivan asked from the doorway. He appeared to be trying to position himself as far away from Liam as possible, which brought a pang of sadness to Cate’s belly.
Every time she saw them, the tension between them seemed a thousand times greater. She wished they’d just talk through their issues, whatever those issues even were. Why did men have to be so damn complicated?
Case in point—Ash. He was leaning impassively against the wall, making a studious effort to avoid her gaze. He’d stopped by her room in the morning but Cate had been busy getting ready and so he’d given her an indecipherable look and left. She had no clue what was going on in his mind, and unfortunately, now wasn’t the time to try to figure it out.
“Got these from an Army contact.” Holden reached into his bag and pulled out a small bird-shaped object with a propeller attached to the top. The thing was no longer than Cate’s hand. “It’ll look like a bird unless you’re on top of it. And it’s got regular and thermal cameras, so if she goes into a building, I can track her general movements.”
“Two miles is a good distance,” Liam remarked.
“Ain’t technology grand?” Ash drawled. It was the first thing he’d said all morning.
Cate’s eyes flew to him and he gave her a cool look in return. Damn it, how did he feel about last night? Was he regretting it?
“Not grand enough,” Noelle replied briskly. “Drones aren’t going to flip the hotel room where Camila is staying.” She addressed Liam. “How are you getting in?”
“We’ve got it covered. Paige is helping us out.”
Sullivan spoke up in a light tone. “You sure you don’t need me on the ground?”
Noelle shook her head. “No, the others have got it covered. You’re with Macgregor.”
Cate didn’t miss the unhappiness on his handsome face. Liam wore a similar look, though she suspected his displeasure came from the fact that Sullivan clearly didn’t want to be paired up with him.
And as messed up as it was, the fact that these two easygoing guys and best friends were having problems suddenly made her feel a little better. Maybe her insecurity as it related to Ash had more to do with general relationship bullshit than any immaturity on her part. Or maybe it was her own feelings of inadequacy that were causing her to feel uncomfortable after last night.
The buzzing in her pocket interrupted her unhelpful thought process. She pulled out her phone and then swore under her breath.
Unknown caller.
“Rivera,” she told the group.
Holden immediately darted over to his laptops. Ash, meanwhile, pushed away from the wall and stomped to Cate’s side, as if Rivera was going to reach through the phone and grab her.
Although, hadn’t he done that already? By killing Ash’s grandmother and Isabel’s father, that psycho had touched them all. Yesterday, there had been palpable fear in the air. Kane and Luke couldn’t get home fast enough. Isabel had taken an entourage to New York to plan a funeral. Even D had ultimately bailed on the op, insisting he needed to be with Sofia even after telling Noelle he would stick around.
Cate couldn’t let herself underestimate Rivera, and as much as she might be loath to admit it, having Ash’s big frame by her side brought her a sense of comfort.
No one spoke as she answered the call. “Hello, Mateo.”
“Hello, little one. How are you this morning?”
“Feeling pretty good,” she lied.
“How do you like my welcoming committee?”
“Are you talking about when we shot up your airport or when we killed your son?”
There was a short silence before Rivera spoke again. This time his voice was tight and a lot less jovial. “I was referring to the deaths of your loved ones.”
“I think it goes to show how weak you are, coming after old people like that.”
Ash stiffened.
She could tell by the way he was glar
ing at her that he didn’t like her aggressive stance, but playing the weak victim wouldn’t result in mercy from Rivera. They’d killed his son. In retaliation, he was threatening to destroy each and every one of their families. He wanted them to be emotionally destroyed because it would feed his giant ego. The better tactic was to get him to overplay his hand or at least send him into a rage.
Jim always said that staying calm was the one way to gain an advantage over an opponent. Or maybe he’d said the key was appearing calm? Cate hoped the latter was accurate, because under her serene exterior, her heart was galloping like a racehorse.
“You’d prefer I struck closer to home?” he countered with a laugh. “I thought I was being kind. I was told that Bernie Roma despised his daughter—I did her a favor, no? And Mr. Ashton’s grandmother was feeble and ill. That was a mercy killing.”
Lord, she was glad Ash wasn’t able to hear that. He’d have ripped the phone out of her hands and gone tearing into the street after Rivera.
“I was telling someone the other day,” Rivera continued, “that young people today lack gratitude. I’m teaching you an important lesson, querida. I find that women respond to sexual violence the easiest. They don’t mind getting their fingers broken, but rape them and they break like fragile china.”
Holden gestured for her to keep Rivera on the phone longer.
Her palms were sweating over the obvious delight in Rivera’s voice at the prospect of raping her. Somehow, she forced out a natural tone. “And how did Camila respond? Does she approve of you sticking your dick in someone else to punish them? Is that how you justify your infidelity? Because that’s a new excuse. ‘Oh, no, dear, it wasn’t an emotional thing at all. I don’t love her like I love you,’” Cate said in a mocking tone. “But you do love it, don’t you? You get off on having that kind of power over people. Though is it really power when you prey on people weaker than you? That’s what you do, right? You hide and attack the weak and old?”
“You shut your vile mouth, little girl,” Rivera growled into the phone.
“Or what? You’ll shut it for me? Teach me a lesson? I already have a dad, so I don’t need your input, thank you very much.”