A blush appeared over her cheeks and her lips turned up. Damn, she was beautiful when she smiled. Hell, even when she didn’t smile.
“Uh-huh.” He held the phone out to her. “Lauren’s hopping up and down. Want to talk to her?”
“Oh yes, please!” She held out her hand and he placed the cell in it.
He could hear an agitated female voice but he couldn’t make out what Lauren was saying, though he could imagine it.
“Yes,” Felicity said. “No. Just a little weak.” She met his eyes. “Um, yeah, Metal has taken very good care of me. Yes, a little. Oh God, yes. Can’t wait!”
She handed him back the cell. “Lauren and Jacko are coming over. Is that okay?”
“Sure. But he’ll take care of the ambulance first.”
Felicity smiled briefly back, then chewed her lip. “Am I going to be in trouble for stealing it? And—God! For sounding that bomb alert? I’m sure that’s a federal offense.”
“Don’t even think of that.” He’d make goddamned sure of it. She’d been fighting for her life. He had friends in Portland PD. No one was going to touch her, guaranteed. “Not a problem. The problem now is to figure out who’s after you. We can start when you feel better.”
“No,” she said, beautiful face suddenly stony. “We start now. That attack was out of the blue and it could happen again at any moment.” The effect of being safe, of the tea and bread, and of talking to Lauren, was wearing off. She’d lost color in her face, her eyes drooped. She was exhausted and scared but she wanted to attack her problem anyway.
Damn. Just like a SEAL, only gorgeous and female.
She had a very pretty, slighty pointed chin and he was absolutely certain that chin spelled stubbornness. But she was also kindhearted. So he took the whole thing on himself.
“Listen,” he said, scooting closer. “We’re definitely going after the guy, but I’d feel much better if Jacko was here. Do you mind waiting for him to arrive so we’re all on the same page?”
Metal could tackle this himself, but he’d just given her an out. She needed more rest.
“Okay.” She stifled a big yawn behind a small fist. “Sure.”
“In the meantime maybe you should rest.”
She wasn’t saying anything but she was in pain. His admiration went up another notch. Suck it up. Embrace the suck. SEAL life mottos.
“Thank you,” she whispered and he nodded. He didn’t want thanks, he wanted the fucker who’d slashed her. Badly. Her eyes searched his. “Why are you doing this for me? I can understand Lauren and maybe Jacko because he’s with her. But why are you helping me?”
Metal took a minute. He wasn’t good with words. Put a rifle in his hand, give him a lung-shot teammate and he knew exactly what to do. But this? It was hard to put into words because he surprised himself with the depth of his feelings.
Since she’d stumbled into Lauren’s house, white-faced and bleeding, he knew he had to take care of her. No other options. But he couldn’t say that. It would scare the shit out of her and confuse her. So he said part of the truth.
“Okay, here’s the deal.” He took her hand in his again, scooted his chair closer. “I hate this. I cannot tell you how much I hate this. I don’t know what this fu—guy wanted—”
“You can say fucker,” she said quietly, a faint smile on her face.
“I say it a lot,” Metal warned.
Her smile grew wider. “That’s okay.”
He gave a brisk nod. “So, whatever this fucker wanted, he was more than willing to hurt you to get it. I know you’re really smart. Lauren says so and you thought your way out of a very dangerous situation like you’d been trained for it. But though you’re smart, you’re not physically strong and violence isn’t your thing. And I hate that this fucker thought he was going to win and I hate even more the fact that he’s out there looking for you. This is exactly what’s wrong with the world. The strong using their strength to hurt. If there’s anything in my life I want, it’s to stop that. And this guy is going to get stopped.”
It was probably the longest speech he’d made in years and he hadn’t even touched on the heart of it.
Metal was born strong. He was always the biggest in his class and his father and brothers taught him self-defense from when he was a toddler. He’d never been bullied but he’d stopped a lot of bullying.
That’s what the O’Briens were all about. Generations of them—siblings, father, grandfather and great-grandfather just off the boat from Ireland. Generations of big, strapping O’Briens, all firefighters and cops. Guys who protected, guys who made a difference, guys who helped.
Guys who were there on that terrible day in September in New York, all rushing into the burning buildings and never coming back out. Father and four brothers, all gone in the space of a couple of hours. His mother died a week later of a broken heart. After burying his entire family, eighteen-year-old Metal, who’d been thinking of breaking with the firefighter-cop tradition and going to med school, enrolled in the Navy, intent on becoming a SEAL. And he’d done it.
He wasn’t a SEAL anymore. He had almost more metal in his body than bone. But by God he still had his SEAL heart and his SEAL skills and no one was getting near Felicity again.
Unless it was him.
That spurted up out of nowhere and he repressed it, hard.
“We’re going to stop him.”
She listened to him so carefully, taking in his words through her ears but also her eyes and maybe even through the hand he was holding.
Her eyes were amazing but more than their beauty, they were alive. It was as if she operated at a higher level than other people, vibrated to a faster vibe, like a hummingbird.
“This feels familiar.” She clenched her fingers around his. “You held my hand all night, didn’t you?”
Metal blinked. “Yeah.” Was she angry? “I’m sorry, I—”
“Thanks,” she said quietly. “It helped.”
He nodded. No way he was going to say that it helped him more than it helped her. He knew intellectually that she wasn’t in danger of dying. She’d suffered blood loss but had been transfused. Other than that, once the gash was stitched up and she was taking antibiotics, she was fine.
But Metal had had men, good men, die in his arms, even while he was working frantically to save them. He never let down his vigilance. If she had had any problems during the night, he was right there. And holding her hand, feeling it warm up in his, reassured him on the deepest level there was.
“What’s your name?” Her head cocked to one side, eyes half-closed. “You saved my life, you held my hand, I’m in your bed and I don’t know your name.”
She was toppling. He answered as he eased her back down with a hand cupping the back of her head.
“Sean Aiden O’Brien. But most people call me Metal. And yours?”
“Metal,” she murmured sleepily. “Nice to meet you. I’m Felicity. Felicity Ward. That’s my name—for now.”
A minute later she was fast asleep again.
Chapter Five
Washington, DC
Borodin had new intel that brought him to Washington.
Roy Gregory, in exchange for another infusion of cash, had dug farther into the files and uncovered the interesting information that Felicity Ward had a mentor inside the FBI. He’d originally handled the Darin family before handing them over to the U.S. Marshals Service and had kept in touch with the family over the years. Al Goodkind, now retired, living in Alexandria, Virginia. A product of the Cold War, he even spoke some Russian. Or at least he had a minor in Russian Studies and a major in Law from Georgetown University.
Gregory discovered that it was Goodkind who had put Felicity Ward’s name forward as a freelance consultant.
Other information—Goodkind lived in a residential area
of Alexandria, in a house with a large lawn. Neighbors at least a hundred meters away. He was a widower, no children, lived alone. He was a former FBI agent, it was true, and could be presumed to be armed. But he was also seventy-five years old. Gregory included the latest medical report from his FBI-appointed doctor and Goodkind wasn’t in good health. He had high blood pressure, incipient diabetes and had had prostrate cancer seven years ago.
He wasn’t going to live much longer anyway.
It was time to pay Goodkind a call.
If Lagoshin was fucking this up, Borodin would have to unfuck it. Find Felicity Ward via a lateral route. Via her affection for Al Goodkind.
Borodin himself could take care of Goodkind. He was still strong enough to take on a sick old man. But that was one of the many advantages of being rich—never having to get your hands dirty. Borodin had his two pilots with him and they could grab the old man. His pilots were all ex-military and knew their way around weapons and hand-to-hand combat. On trips, his pilots often doubled as bodyguards. Borodin trusted them. His current pilots, Yevgeny Milekhin and Lev Zolin, had saved his life in Uzbekhistan on an inspection of a gas pipeline.
Borodin checked out of the hotel. His time in New York was over.
Zolin picked him up in a rented town car and drove him out to the private aviation sector of JFK. Zolin and Milekhin had been sleeping in the airplane, which was perfectly comfortable. They’d certainly slept in worse places. Having the pilots in the plane insured that they would be ready for takeoff at any moment.
By the time Borodin arrived at the plane, a flight plan to Washington, DC had been filed, the planed was fully fueled and they took off fifteen minutes after he boarded. The plane was registered to a shell company headquartered in Aruba and could never be traced back to Intergaz.
They were ghosts.
That’s what money did. Made you invisible, nearly untouchable.
Another town car met them at Ronald Reagan National Airport, rented by one William Novella, whose cloned credit card Borodin had bought on the black market. He had about a hundred of them with him. In the parking lot, Zolin switched plates with another car. The car would take Borodin into Alexandria. Zolin drove and Milekhin waited with the plane.
The weather was overcast and cold. The forecast was for snow. Apparently it was snowing in Portland, their next stop. Borodin laughed when he watched the weather reports from anchors breathlessly announcing ‘heavy snowfalls’ and subzero temperatures.
What would these weaklings do in Siberia, where a snowstorm could dump 160 centimeters in twenty-four hours, where temperatures in winter dropped to minus twenty-five degrees Celsius, where kids played ‘snow bomb’—throwing a bottle of boiling water in the air and watching it freeze before it hit the ground?
He and his men could move around just fine in the cold.
Finding Al Goodkind’s house with GPS was easy. By the time they made it to his neighborhood light was draining from the sky. It was a quiet neighborhood, very few people were about. Alexandria was where apparatchiks went to die. Men and women who had spent a lifetime in service to their government. You’d think a lifetime in government would be enough to induce paranoia, but no. The homes were separated by large open lawns and there were no fences.
In Moscow, former KGB functionaries—those that lived long enough to retire—resided in gated communities with twelve-foot walls and barbed wire because they’d made enemies. No one was foolish enough to live like these people.
They passed by Goodkind’s home four times, twice from the east and twice from the west. They daren’t risk any more pass-bys. The house was dark.
“What do we do?” Zolin asked.
This was their only lead. “We wait,” Borodin said.
Portland
Felicity woke up when the front doorbell rang. She heard Metal’s deep bass and then Lauren’s quiet voice.
Sun was streaming in and it gave her cognitive dissonance until she glanced at her Doctor Who watch. The only way what she read there made any sense was if she’d slept almost sixteen hours. She’d been sleeping for almost two days straight.
“In here,” she called out, wincing. But, surprise. Her side hurt much less than it had before. She found she could even sit up in bed without Metal’s help.
Metal, such an odd name.
Well, she should talk.
She’d named herself after a comic book character, Felicity Smoak. Was he called Metal because of all those muscles? They were as hard as steel. When he’d carried her, when he’d helped her sit up in bed, whenever he’d touched her, she’d felt those steely muscles. He’d been enormously delicate but the man was built. Amazing muscles. Hard, warm.
He’d held her hand all night. For two nights in a row.
She was certain that it was that hand that was helping her heal so quickly. Even asleep she’d somehow felt the strength and warmth, a constant infusion of power, like Peter Parker having been bit by a genetically modified spider, only without the bite.
This time forty-eight hours ago she’d been flying over the Rockies, happy to be meeting an old friend who was actually a new friend.
And there she was, that old and new friend, standing on the threshold of the bedroom.
“Felicity?” Lauren held the doorjamb with one hand and the handle of a carry-on case with the other. The night before last, Felicity had barely glimpsed her. She’d been so weak and in such pain she mainly remembered Metal’s broad face above hers, reassuring, his deep voice almost lulling her to sleep.
She knew what Lauren looked like. She’d arranged her fake ID, after all, and she’d needed photos to do that. She’d been the one to change Anne Lowell into Lauren Dare. Even in the photos Lauren had been pretty but she was stunning in person. Better than in her ID photos, where she’d looked drawn and pale, faint lines bracketing her mouth. Well, being hunted down by a drugged-up psychopath would do that to you. Being on the run was not exactly like going to the spa.
Right now, though, Lauren looked pink and happy. Smiling. Most of the reason she looked happy loomed behind her. Jacko Morton, her new love. At first glance he didn’t look like the kind of guy to make a lady happy. Not tall—Metal towered over him—but very broad in the chest and shoulders, and he looked like trouble.
Snow still pinged against the windowpanes of Metal’s bedroom windows. Despite the weather, Jacko wore only a T-shirt under his jacket, which he’d already taken off. Felicity could see barbed wire tats and some kind of tribal tat spilling out from under the sleeves. He looked like he could and would chew you up for breakfast and spit out the bones.
Until he looked at Lauren, that was, and his face changed.
It was amazing to watch. A big bruiser’s brutal face sort of melting when he looked at Lauren, then morphing right back into toughness when he looked away.
“Ma’am,” he said in a basso profundo voice, nodding at her.
She nodded back. “Jacko.” She felt as though she was in a Western, only she didn’t have a six-gallon hat with a brim to touch. She smiled at Lauren. “We can’t keep meeting like this.”
Lauren gave a choked laugh and launched herself across the room. Felicity opened her arms, saying at the last minute, “Careful of the war wound.”
But Lauren was already wrapping her up in a warm, careful hug. She buried her face in Felicity’s neck, tears wetting her skin. “We stopped by yesterday but you were sleeping. You looked okay and didn’t have a fever so we let you rest. I’m so glad you’re healing. I was so scared for you,” she whispered.
Felicity’s throat tightened as she gave herself up to Lauren’s gentle, perfumed embrace. She tried to think who in her life would cry for her but gave up the attempt immediately. Her oldest friend was Al Goodkind, a retired FBI agent, and though he undoubtedly cared for her he wouldn’t cry. Nothing could make the tough old coot cry e
xcept maybe if something happened to his beloved granddaughter. And even then...
So feeling the tears Lauren shed for her gave her a warm tingly feeling, like a promise made and kept. “I’m okay,” she whispered. She looked over Lauren’s shoulder to where Metal stood, huge and still, light brown eyes intent as he watched them. She spoke to Lauren but watched Metal. “He took real good care of me.”
Something flared in Metal’s eyes. Something hot.
And then crazily, something flared in her. Something hot.
It was such an unusual feeling that at first she wondered whether she had a fever, a temporary one. Like a two-second fever. But it wasn’t that. It was looking into Metal’s eyes and seeing...power. Pure male power and male interest...directed at her.
He’d been so kind, like a doctor would have been. Impersonal, efficient, dedicated. But this was something else and it popped something to life inside her.
“Whoa.” Lauren opened her arms and stood up, wiped her eyes, looking for traces of mascara on her fingertips. “You scared me. Us.” She looked over her shoulder. “And I’m really glad Metal took good care of you, because if he hadn’t I’d have beaten him up.”
It was ridiculous. Lauren was half Metal’s size, slender and delicate. Metal was huge. But he didn’t smirk, didn’t smile at the notion.
“And I’d have let you beat me up if something had happened to her. But as you can see, she’s fine. As a matter of fact—” He looked to Jacko, back to Lauren and then to her. But when he looked at her, his face changed. Subtle but definitely there. With the punch of heat. Echoed in her. “She needs to eat if she wants to regain her strength. I cooked some stuff so if you guys want to stay...”
“And we can talk about all of this,” Jacko growled, waving a hand at her. He sounded pissed. Was he—was he angry at her? Well, of course. She’d brought trouble to Lauren’s door. Whoever was after her could maybe track Lauren down, hurt her. Oh God, just the thought of it made her feel awful. She cringed.