Resting her head on his chest again, she resumed her exploration of his muscles. Slowly. Like she was cataloging each and every dip and swell.
They lay there in silence, enjoying each other’s company. When Jake finally spoke again, she jumped a little, not realizing until then that she’d been falling asleep.
“I’m worried about tomorrow,” he murmured, the softly spoken words waking her right back up. “We don’t know how many of those things we’re going to be facing and we still don’t know how to stop them.”
She pushed herself up to look at him. “What are you worried about? Beyond the obvious of not knowing how we’ll deal with Darby and his crew?”
Jake gazed at her for a long time before answering. “I’m scared you’re going to get hurt tomorrow,” he finally said, and the pain in his voice took her breath away. “The thought of anything happening to you—”
Jes didn’t let him finish. Instead, she climbed on top of him, kissing her way up his chest to his jawline and then across to his lips. “I’m just as worried about you getting hurt. So why don’t we make a promise to each other? I won’t let anything happen to me, and you won’t let anything happen to you, okay?”
He slid a hand up her back until he weaved his fingers into her hair, holding her tight. “Okay. I promise.”
Jes knew it was a promise neither one of them could really make, but they made it nonetheless. Then they focused on kissing as she felt the heat building up once more between her thighs. She stopped thinking about tomorrow and focused on the man under her, praying the rest of the team didn’t come back for a while.
Chapter 12
“I found an out-of-the-way corner near the rear loading dock area,” Forrest announced in Jake’s earpiece over the main radio frequency they were using.
In the background, Jake could hear a rustle as the guy pulled a shortbread cookie from the package he’d brought with him. Because, according to Forrest, he’d been on enough stakeouts to know they could run longer than you usually thought, and he didn’t want to deal with an empty stomach. Not that this was exactly a stakeout, but Jake could see his point.
“There’s no one here yet,” Forrest added, “but from the way all the security types are moving around, the Bilderberg guests should be arriving soon.”
“Copy that,” Jake said.
To say he was relieved was an understatement. Misty might not have found anything in the Lanesborough Hotel’s computers to indicate the meeting had been changed in any way, but he’d still been worried something would come up at the last minute to screw up their plan. So far, it looked like their luck was holding.
He and Misty had been hiding in one of the hotel’s unoccupied guest rooms for the past hour. While she’d been wandering around the Lanesborough’s computers yesterday, she’d reserved what the hotel called a junior suite. In addition to the bed, nightstands, and dresser, there was a sitting area with a love seat and an antique desk and chair. Floral draperies that matched the pastel-green walls hung from the windows as well as framed the bed. Jake had to admit, the place was money. Even better, the room was a thirty-second sprint from the conference rooms where the Bilderberg Society was meeting.
Well, a thirty-second sprint for him. Probably closer to a three-minute run for Misty. Still, close as far as he was concerned.
“Harley, everything good with you?” he asked into his mic.
“Good here,” Harley said softly. “We’re already putting the salad out on the tables, which means Forrest is right about the Bilderberg people getting here soon.”
No one had questioned Harley when she’d shown up for work that morning dressed as one of the hotel waitstaff. Either her new coworkers thought she was a recent hire or were simply too busy getting everything ready for their VIP guests. Jake still wasn’t sure how Misty got into people’s computers, but he had to commend McKay for assigning her to the team because she was invaluable. Having Harley inside the meeting room with the Bilderberg members when Darby and his buddies attacked would be critical.
On the downside, having Harley in that room came with no small amount of risk, too. Flat out, they had no idea if Darby and his crew possessed an enhanced sense of smell or not. It was possible they’d ID Harley as a werewolf the moment they walked in. If that happened, she was as good as dead.
Jake had told Harley as much back at the B&B this morning, but Harley agreed to go through with the dangerous assignment anyway. As far as she was concerned, stopping Darby and rescuing those kids outweighed the risk. While Jake could appreciate that, he was already kicking himself for putting her in that room on her own.
“Caleb just radioed in. They’re almost in position and waiting for your signal to move,” Misty murmured from where she sat at the desk, part of her attention on the conversation coming into her earpiece, the other part focused on the laptop screen she’d been staring at intently for the past fifteen minutes.
The computer allowed her to tap into the hotel’s security cameras, flipping from view to view, giving them eyes into nearly every part of the building while the earpiece let her monitor the team’s backup radio channel Jes and Caleb were using for the other part of today’s operation—the one they were trying to pull off completely on their own.
McKay had come through with a location on the hostages a little over two hours ago thanks to a random delivery receipt for nine cheap twin-sized mattresses Misty had found while searching Darby’s computers the other night. At first, no one had thought much about it because up until then, they thought Olivia had been the only kidnapping victim. But after realizing Darby had abducted more children, the intel analysts had dug deeper and tracked the mattress delivery to a big farmhouse located twenty miles northwest of London just outside the town of St Albans. The home had been rented about two weeks earlier by a shell corporation indirectly connected to the Darby empire and the utilities had been turned on several days later. Since then, there’d been a steady stream of takeout delivered to the place—pizza, ham and cheese sandwiches, donuts, cookies, cereal, and lots and lots of milk. It wasn’t much to pin their hopes on, but it was enough to make McKay believe they’d found where the kids were being held.
Of course, finding where the hostages were hopefully located meant their team would have to hit two targets at the same time—the farmhouse on the outskirts of St Albans and the Lanesborough Hotel in the center of London. Any other option put either the kids or the Bilderberg people at risk. While the support team McKay had sent over would help as much as they could, it’d be on Jake, Harley, Misty, and Forrest to take care of Darby and his crew while Jes and Caleb handled the hostage rescue.
It twisted Jake’s gut into knots being separated from Jes like this, but there was nothing else they could do. Ultimately, this plan gave them the best chance to take down Darby and rescue the kids at the same time. Hell, it was theonlychance.
He ran his hand through his hair, cursing silently.
“They’re going to be okay,” Misty said, looking at him as if she could read his mind as easily as she did a piece of computer tech. “Jes is highly experienced and Caleb is a werewolf. If anyone can pull this off, it’s the two of them.”
Jake nodded, knowing Misty was right. Jes was good at her job, and Caleb was the most capable werewolf he’d ever worked with. Even so, it was difficult trusting the guy to protect someone so important to him, but he had no choice.
This was what it meant for him and Jes to work together on the same team, though. There would be times when he couldn’t be right there beside her, when he would have to let her take risks and trust she’d be okay. If he wanted them to be more than teammates, he was going to have to learn to deal with the stress this kind of situation provoked.
