•••
In retrospect, the sharing-the-bed thing had probably been a bad idea. If the LC hadn’t called when he did, John was pretty damned sure he would have forgotten his vow for the second time. Wake up with a warm, sexy female in his arms and his body was going to react.
But he knew that was BS. There was react and there wasreact, and with Brittany it had been hard and fast. Really hard and fast. He’d been a few seconds away from rolling her on top of him and going for round two. Which he had hoped would go a little longer than round one, but with the way he’d been feeling a few minutes ago, he wouldn’t put money on it.
What the fuck was the matter with him? What happened to his control? He wasn’t exactly a teenager anymore. But tell his dick that. It seemed to have forgotten the past fifteen years.
Once he left the room, John hustled down the hall and didn’t speak again until he entered the stairwell. As their hotel room was on the fourteenth floor, he figured the chance of someone walking up or down the stairs was pretty unlikely.
“Sorry about that,” he said to the LC. “Brittany wasin the room, and I didn’t want you to say anything she could overhear through the phone.”
There was a long pause. “You sounded like you just woke up.”
“I did.”
John knew that needed an explanation, so he told Taylor how he’d gone to Vaernes and found Brittany asking questions in a bar. He left out the part about him glowering in a corner while she flirted with a soldier. He also left out the part about finishing his beer before following her out to the parking lot and fighting off the attacker.
The LC cursed under his breath. “I’m guessing the attack wasn’t a coincidence.”
“I don’t think so. She got a call from a coworker not long afterward, telling her that her apartment in DC was ransacked. The guy in the parking lot tried to grab her purse, so I figure they were looking for something.”
John repeated everything she’d told him about the drop, including the car, the license plate, and the woman wearing a military jacket. He also told the LC about the documents she had.
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me. A redacted deployment order? Only a handful of people would have had access to that.”
Pretty much exactly what John had said.
“I’ll have Kate look into it and see what she can find out,” Taylor said. “Maybe finding Brittany’s source will help us find the leak.” He didn’t sound overly optimistic. “Anything about the guy in the parking lot?”
“It was raining and hard to see. He was wearing a hood, so I didn’t get a good look at him. But he was about my size and build and knew how to fight.”
All of which were significant. Not a lot of guys had a build like his. He was in top physical condition—or had been two months ago.
“One of ours?”
“I couldn’t rule it out, but if I had to guess, I’d say Eastern European.” Team Nine had trained with some guys in Crimea once, and Brittany’s attacker reminded him of that.
“Russian?” The LC asked grimly, as if he already knew the answer.
“Could be.”
Taylor didn’t say anything, but John knew what he was thinking. If the Russians were trying to stop her, what did that mean? Were they trying to protect a source—maybe the same source who’d leaked the mission—or did they just want to avoid the public relations disaster of having it be known that they wiped out a platoon of US soldiers?
Retiarius might have been on Russian soil—which made it look bad for the US—but President Ivanov had vowed to go to war under that very scenario. If what had happened became public, he’d lose considerable face or be forced to go to war. Humiliation or a war with the biggest superpower in the world. For Ivanov, that was what you called a no-win situation.
“Did he get a look at you?”
“Not a good one. It happened fast. I was wearing a hood, too. With any luck, he’ll just assume I’m one of the locals.”
And without luck they were screwed. Like Brittany, they would be targets for anyone who wanted their op to stay a secret, and it would make finding out who had set them up a hell of a lot more difficult.
“Do you think they were tracking her?”
“Probably. I didn’t want to take any chances, so I got her out of there fast.” John explained about her luggage and phone, as well as the zigzag train rides.
“Where are you now?”
“Denmark.”
