The door opened. Amber walked in, taking in Lily, the gun in her hand, and Hawk with a sweeping glance. She didn’t seem surprised at the weapon pointed at him, heading straight into his open arms, although she was very careful how she hugged him.
“Tried to come after me, didn’t he?”
Brad came in and he briefly exchanged glances with Lily.
“He won’t be sedated. Then he got impatient and I had to get all philosophical with him,” Lily said, putting away her gun.
“Oh no, she didn’t start one of her long tracts about choices and rules, did she, Hot Stuff?” Amber went over to the bed, her smile disappearing. “You look even worse in this light. What did Marisa say about your injuries?”
Marisa was one of the housekeepers, who also appeared to be the nurse around here. “Nothing serious,” he answered, and looked over Amber at Lily. He nodded at Brad. Those two didn’t even address each other anymore. “So all that stuff about choices and rules was to distract me? Did you mean any of it?”
“Absolutely,” Lily said, not indicating which question she was answering. “Marisa said he has bruised ribs, nothing broken. The pretty face is going to heal. But he really needs to go to a hospital just in case he’s hurt inside. There’s also a lump on his head, so probably a concussion.”
“Shouldn’t you be in bed?” Amber tried to step out of his arms to get a better look, but Hawk wouldn’t let her. She frowned. “Hawk, I need you in bed. Oh, stop grinning like that. You don’t know how awfully swollen your lips are!”
“Ah, in case you haven’t noticed, they are attached to me, so I do know they are swollen, thanks.” He just wanted to bury his nose in her hair, inhale her scent. It was good to have her in his arms again. “Did Dilaver give you any trouble?”
“Yes and no. We’ll talk about this once I get you back in bed.”
Hawk looked at the other two occupants in the room. “You’re going to embarrass Brad and Lily, sweetheart, the way you keep suggesting bed.”
“I’d punch you if you weren’t hurt already,” Amber warned.
Hawk sighed. He was going to have to show her how tough a SEAL was. “First Lily shot at me, now you’re going to punch me. I think I just escaped one torture chamber for another. I was heading for the restroom when you came in. I’ll get back into bed after taking care of business, if you don’t mind.”
Lying down for so long had cramped up his sore muscles. Since he knew she was watching him, he tried not to hobble too much as he made his way to the john.
“Look at him pretending to limp,” he heard Brad say as he closed the door.
Hawk leaned heavily against the door, willing the burning in his ribs to go away. Bruised ribs were better than broken ones, he reasoned. It was going to hurt a lot while he hiked around in the country looking for weapons.
He looked at his face in the mirror, turning slightly to the left to check out the cut that was courtesy of a bottle. The housekeeper had sewn up the wound. There was another cut above his eyebrow and he had a nice black eye.
“Frankenstein,” he breathed out, baring his teeth to look at his gums. His swollen lips made the task more difficult than usual and even stretching his face that way hurt. He hoped the swelling would go down fast. It was easier to remember a battered face and it would make walking around incognito a bit tougher. He’d have to think of a good plan to protect both of them from Dilaver’s men.
Amber tried not to look too worried. Hawk needed to be checked out by a doctor and there was no way she could get him to a hospital without Dilaver finding out. Maybe when they made it out of Macedonia…She frowned when she heard his breathing again. She wished she had been here when they had taken his shirt off. Those bruised ribs must make moving around very painful, yet he hadn’t taken any of the painkillers.
They had to come up with a plan and she was glad Brad and Lily were here this time, and apparently holding a truce. After she had checked with the housekeepers and some of the girls, they pulled a table into Hawk’s room and gathered around it, with a map of the region spread out. She ordered Hawk to stay in bed, and placated him by sitting on it herself. He wanted her near him and the heated look in his eyes made her feel all warm and funny inside. She knew he was only obedient because he didn’t feel like arguing at the moment. She was beginning to understand how he was—always biding his time.
“The most important thing is to get out of here,” she said. “Sooner or later, Dilaver will get wind that I’m still in town. Right now he thinks Brad is taking me on vacation, so we have to stick to that part of our original plan.”
“I’m more interested in this Aunt Greta that suddenly appeared,” Hawk said. “You said she was at the apartment making a deal with you. I’m going to have to ask my contact about her. If only we had a last name….”
“No reference to her last name in our conversation,” Amber said, frowning as she took a sip of her coffee. Hard to believe it was still barely noon. “She has no accent whatsoever, very chic, and knew a lot about information and how it works in the system.”
“Maybe I can contact someone to check the airline logs, see whether any American woman around her age came into Macedonia recently,” Brad said.
“Good, but according to her, something big happens soon. Why didn’t you tell me it was a bomb, Hawk?”
“I was only told that the weapon was a trigger,” Hawk explained. “My contact told me he’d tell me what to do when I get to the right location.”
Amber put down her cup and drew a circle on the map with her finger. “Jed probably didn’t want me to get the information. Anyway, from the coordinates, we’re going all the way to Serbia. Each weapons cache was dropped so Dilaver didn’t have to transport them to the different groups controlling the region. So why is Greta so adamant about getting her hands on a bomb? Anyone can make a bomb, right?”
“The correct question is, what is the bomb for?” Hawk asked.
“Well, you’re the one after it. Don’t you know?” Lily countered.
Hawk shook his head. “I have only two tasks. Destroy the weapon caches at the different locations. But most important of all, retrieve this specific one. I can see now why I can’t just destroy it—it’s a bomb.” The first mission was for his SEAL commander, who brokered the deal to work with GEM and the COS commandos. Admiral Madison didn’t want any more weapons given or sold to anyone who might be shooting back at them in future covert ops. The second mission was to retrieve the secret weapon for GEM and the COS commandos, who weren’t exactly talkative types.
