A handon my shoulder startles me awake. “Natasha’s on her way with Graham,” West says.
I don’t remember lying down on one of the couches. I definitely don’t remember someone covering me with a thin, gray blanket. But I sit up and blink the sleep from my eyes. “Isn’t she safer if she stays at the apartment with Graham?” I’d give anything to have her in my arms right now, but she’s in enough danger already.
“You’re in the safest place in the goddamn world.” This, from Ryker, who ambles over with a cup of coffee in his hand. “All the traffic cameras in a four-block radius loop whenever one of our vehicles is in range. If anyonedidget wind of us, this entire place can lock down tight. The walls, ceiling, and doors are reinforced. No one’s getting through without a fuck-ton of firepower, and even then…it’d be a goddamn miracle if they managed it. Should a lockdown be triggered, every member of our family around the world gets notified. They can be here in anywhere from three to twelve hours. Not to mention the fucking arsenal we have locked behind some of the best biometric security money can buy.”
“She’ll be safe, Doc.” West unwraps a protein bar and sinks down across from me. “And this isherfight. You’re just along for the ride.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Natasha
I didn’t thinkI’d be able to sleep after Doc left, but Graham arrived armed with chamomile tea and, twenty minutes later, I could barely keep my eyes open. His knock startles me awake, and I check the clock. Shit. It’s almost 8:00 a.m.
“Natasha? We need to get to the warehouse in the next half an hour. Are you decent?”
I’m on my feet in under a minute and yank the door open. “What’s wrong? Is Doc okay?”
“He’s fine,” the young man says. His smile is so easy, like he’s never come up against a problem he couldn’t solve. But there’s also a lifetime of pain and worry in his eyes. “He patched Wyatt up. But West got some intel out of the guys who broke into Doc’s house, and we’re calling in some of the big guns for help.”
“The big guns? There’s someone out there bigger than Ryker?”
Graham’s laugh lights up his entire face. Any exhaustion he carried from the long night fades away—or maybe that’s the coffee he obviously made. My mouth waters at the scent.
“Impossible. The man’s almost seven feet tall. His daughter’s in the one hundred and twenty-fifth percentile for length. That kid is going to tower over Wren by the time she’s a teenager. The big gun I’m talking about is the former head of the Joint Special Operations Command. He retired a few years ago. He’s part of the family in a weird way. Grew up best friends with Trevor, but no one knew it until we had to rescue Ripper from Afghanistan.” Graham shrugs. “It’s a wholething. Once this whole mess is over, you and Doc should come to one of West’s BBQs. That’s where the newbies get to hear all our stories.” Graham turns and heads back down the hall. “Do you take anything in your coffee? I’ll fix you a cup while you change. We’re out of here in ten minutes.”
“Black, please. I’ll hurry.” I grab a pair of tailored pants and a flowing blue tank top. At the last second, I dart back to the shopping bags and fish out a black lace bra, and high-cut panties. I don’t know why, but I want to feelprettytoday.
Because this might be the last day I have with Doc before I run?
I want to memorize everything about him. The way he touches me. The sounds he makes as I wrap my fingers around his dick. His taste. But also, his smile. His laugh. The crinkling around his eyes. The feel of his hand on mine.
The hot water stings when it runs over the stitches at my hip. But the wound is healing. No trace of the infection that could have killed me.
Carefully, I smooth body wash over my skin. Why didn’t I ask Doc to bring his soap from home? When he smells it on me, he gets this possessive look in his eyes. It shouldn’t be so arousing. He’s not some over-the-top romance novel hero and I’m not a damsel in distress. But I can’t help the way I react to him.
When I emerge from the bedroom, Graham has two travel mugs sitting on the counter next to the floppy hat and oversized sunglasses I wore on the way here.
“We control all the cameras in the building.” He shows me his phone screen with a long list of devices. “The internet connection is encrypted to hell and back, but I’ll loop them all until we’re in the SUV for good measure.” He dons a light jacket to hide the gun strapped to his hip.
“How long have you worked…uh…here?” I ask when we’re in the elevator.
“Almost four years.” A grin curves his lips. “Best job in the world.”
“Wyatt almostdiedtonight. How can you say that?” I might need to change my mind about Graham. I’d thought him smart and capable, if a bit young. Now, I wonder if he’s just naive.
He sobers, and as the elevator reaches the garage, takes my arm and leads me to the black SUV in silence. He doesn’t speak again until we’re on the road. “When someone calls us, they’re out of options. Did you know the average ransom demand these days is over four hundred thousand? That’saverage.One of the cases we took on last month had a three-million-dollar price on his head. He was an executive for a tech company out of Malaysia. The company itself was worth a fortune, but they refused to pay. His family didn’t have that kind of cash. We got him back for two-hundred-and-fifty thousand. Safe. Nothing more than a broken arm, a handful of bruises, and some really awful memories. But when we breached the old factory where he was being held, we found six other victims. Including a husband and wife who’d been taken while doing volunteer work in the Philippines. Their entire net worth was only a little over a hundred-and-fifty thousand. The terrorists were asking for over a million. That couple had been there for a month. No one was ever going to come looking for them.” He meets my gaze as hestops at a traffic light. “Sam and Debra are back in Spain with their three children now. A boy and two girls, all under the age of twelve.”
“Shit.”
The SUV accelerates smoothly onto the freeway. “Kidnapping is a global business, Natasha. I get to save people for a living. All over the world. Yes, it’s dangerous. Yes, every single time we go out on a job, there’s a chance one of us—or all of us—could die. Q worries—a lot. But he’s alive because of what we do. And how good we are at doing it.”
“What do you do when you’renotsaving people? You don’t go on jobs every day, right?”
He chuckles. “No. We only take on two to four jobs a month at most. We train three nights a week. I work as a bartender on the weekends. West owns a Krav Maga studio. Raelynn works there part time. Inara’s a translator. Wyatt’s retired—for now. Hope does some book keeping work, and they go up to his cabin in the mountains every few weeks. Rip is on staff at one of the local animal shelters. Wren works for Second Sight—that’s Dax’s firm in Boston—on more mainstream jobs when she’s not helping us.”
I hunch a little lower in the seat. These men and women are saving lives. And for the past eight years, I’ve done…nothing. Before I found my way to Blakely, I worked a bunch of odd jobs—anything I could get that would pay me under the table. Washing dishes, cleaning motel rooms at a place Iknowrented by the hour, even being a line cook at a truck stop diner.
What would my life have been like if I’d been able to choose? If I’d been able to use my college degree in political science? Or get a master’s degree in…anything?
