God, he was sure of himself.What she didn’t understand was why he seemed so sure about her too. With Jackson’s death, Gray wasn’t sure about anything. Her entire future had changed.
Not only had she lost her friend, but her business partner. What was she supposed to do now? Where did she go from here? Without Jackson’s stories, did her photographs even have a home?
Vulnerability swamped her insides and heart beating too fast, she couldn’t hold back. “I don’t know where I belong anymore, Chase. The last place I ever expected to be was with my father and his special ops team. My dead brother is alive. My freelance partner is dead. And you make me…”
“What?” he asked.
She twirled her hand around her temple. “Mental.”
“Bullshit.” He caught her wrist out of the air and wrapped both their arms around her waist. “You’ve been through a lot in the last couple of days.” Palm on top of her hand, he entwined his fingers through hers. “But don’t lump me into the bad things column. You feel something for me, and it scares you. I get it. I may be military, but I’m not your father, and I’m not your brother. We can make this work. I know we can.”
“How?” she asked, before realizing the question left her open to the possibility that a relationship with Chase might truly be what she wanted.
“I’ve got some ideas.”
“Do you?”
“You bet your hella sexy ass I do.” His lips landed back on her temple and his breath tickled as he kissed her skin. “But for now let’s take it one day at a time. Okay?”
“You sound like Dr. Christina.”
“Who?”
“Tara’s therapist. She’s always saying shit like that.”
“She sounds like a smart lady. Maybe you should make an appointment with her.”
“To talk about?”
“Whatever you want. Jackson, your brother, your father, your feelings about me. Maybe she can help you sort through some things.”
“God, you really are a persistent fucker. You know that, right?”
“Yep. Might as well get used to it, because I’m here for the long haul.”
“Are you?”
“I am. Trust me…” His arms tightened, and Gray felt safe and secure in the circle of his embrace. “It’s the two of us to the end, baby.”
CHAPTERTWENTY-SEVEN
From his New York apartment,Adam sat behind his desk and took in the faces of the JTT who knew him only as Sam Black. Sixteen hundred miles away, they had gathered around an old boardroom table in Palo Pinto, Texas.
As an operative, he’d been covertly feeding the colonel’s special operations unit information on Bodak’s arms trafficking activities from the start. Since Adam’s cover had been blown, he didn’t see a reason why he shouldn’t look each of them in the eye.
“No changes?” the colonel asked.
“None,” Adam replied. “The main arms shipments will come in through Charleston in seventy-two hours. Smaller caches through ports in New York, Florida, and Texas. Diversions are set up on the West Coast twelve hours in advance. Long Beach first, followed by Los Angeles.” Adam hit the send key on his encrypted message. “Just sent the final details to Mann.”
“Holy fuck,” Jay Mann said, moving his mouse around and putting up a detailed list of ship names and cargo counts on the JTT’s big screen. “That’s a shit ton of armament. Pistols, AK-47s, M16s. Where the fuck did Bodak get that many MANPADS?”
Adam shook his head. “They’re American made, but serial numbers have been scrubbed, and we haven’t been able to track the origins. We purchased them off a dealer in Lebanon for next to nothing.” Surface-to-air missiles were a dime a dozen in Western Asia but garnered big bucks in countries like Guatemala, where drug wars raged, and gang violence had reached new heights.
“Do we activate the contingencies in play and notify the ATF?” Chase Mackenzie asked the group.
With the window closing on discovering Wright’s identity, the question was reasonable, though Adam’s response to it wasn’t. He hated losing. Hated it even more, considering he’d been the inside man on the job, and in two years, he hadn’t accomplished mission goals.
Not even close.
