Live Wire

chapter 14




The bedroom door closed, stripping the light from the room and leaving Tehya to stare into the dark.

She listened as he undressed and checked his weapon before laying it on the bedside table, then slid into the bed, all without the aid of the light.

Once he settled in, a moment of tense silence filled the room before he spoke.

“I was sixteen, she and her family were visiting from England, with a neighbor. She was blond, delicate, and beautiful, and I fell like a ton of bricks for her.

“The affair lasted until the end of summer, when her parents found out. They had the neighbor’s ranch hands beat the hell out of me, and when that didn’t work, they locked her in her bedroom, refusing to let her out until arrangements could be made for her to return to England. And I thought I could rescue her.” The tone of his voice warned her that perhaps that young love hadn’t died, but had instead contributed to killing the belief in love Jordan had once possessed.

“I slipped into the house, picked the lock to her bedroom door, and slipped in.”

He paused and Tehya wondered what he was thinking, remembering. The silence wasn’t as heavy as before, but it still held the weight of the scars she knew he carried deep inside.

“She had been playing with us all,” he finally sighed. “It was a ploy to force her parents to return her to England rather than have her attend the private school they were considering in America. She wanted to be with her Irish lover.” Mockery filled his voice. “She considered me an acceptable stand-in for the summer, though.”

Sixteen. God, how that must have twisted his male pride, as well as his heart.

She felt him shift in the bed until he turned to face her, the gleam of his eyes in the dark pulling her, giving her a connection to him that she desperately needed.

“It was nearly ten years later before I saw her again. I was commanding a small team, working with the British in routing a terrorist cell in London. We managed to strike during a meeting being held by their Afghani commander. Their second in command was there as well, an Irish national who had led the cell for years. They were in interrogation when I had a visitor. At first, I couldn’t believe it was her. She didn’t just act older, she looked older, more coarse, less like the lady she had pretended to be when she was a teenager. And she needed a favor.” It wasn’t anger or pain in his voice, instead, there was a heavy vein of mockery overlying the amusement. “She thought she could give me a little f*ck for old time’s sake and I would help her gain her lover’s release. The Irish second in command was the stable hand she’d played me and her parents to return to. I looked in her lying eyes as though they were windows into my own career. We knew there was a link from British Intelligence into the terrorist cell, and we hadn’t been able to find it. I was staring at it. She was the daughter of one of the highest ranking intelligence directors in MI-6 and she was the terrorists’ link. But I wanted proof. I wanted it, and I betrayed her to get it without a moment’s hesitation or guilt. At sixteen, I would have died for her. For years after that, I compared every woman I took to bed with her. But I betrayed her in less than a heartbeat and I didn’t feel a damned thing for her as they led her away in handcuffs two weeks later.”

“Jordan, she betrayed you,” she whispered. “It’s not the same when two people love each other. When they’re together, when they’re working toward a future together.”

“Isn’t it?” He reached up and touched her cheek again, as though that connection, as small as it was, was needed.

“Mom and Dad were working toward a future. They had three sons, they had a life together, and they were committed to that ideal of love that they professed was so strong.” Now, there was anger, pain. “Dad loved her until nothing mattered to him as much as his wife. When one of the young families that worked for us on the ranch was targeted by racists, she fought back for them. She didn’t tell Dad what she was doing, and she didn’t tell her sons, who were nearly grown. She didn’t tell anyone she was driving out to rescue them and take them to a friend’s house in the next county. When her vehicle went over a cliff and exploded, the sheriff ruled it an accident. There was no investigation, no questions asked, despite the fact that there were three adult bodies and a child’s in that vehicle as well. We had no idea what the hell happened until her friends slipped into the house late one night and told us what she had been doing.” A shard of bitter laughter filled the room for a second. “She loved so deeply that she didn’t care about risking her own life, the life her husband and children depended upon.”

What was she supposed to say? She stared back at him, her eyes burning with tears.

“The same as you and your men are forced to risk your lives protecting and saving the world,” she finally pointed out huskily. “How is it any different, Jordan? She wasn’t just helping that small family, she was imagining her own family in the same danger, and had no choice but to react.”

“You know, that’s the same bullshit excuse I gave Killian when his wife Catherine disobeyed orders and slipped into the warehouse where Sorrel’s men were holding a young girl they had kidnapped. We had to wait on orders to go in and they were getting ready to move the kid, but we still had time. I was on the line with my director and we were getting the order to go in. It was coming,” he snarled. “We told her it would get there in time. But she went in. She went in, she got the girl, and she was running out of the warehouse with her.

“They shot her before she made it to safety, before we could get to her. She protected that kid, covered her body with her own as she went down and kept her alive until we got there. But she died, Tehya, and she took Killian’s unborn son with her. A child she hadn’t even told him about. And they gave him the same useless argument. A mother’s instinct. The need to protect.”

He came over her, pushed her back to the bed as she stared up at him, eyes wide, her breath catching.

“If you ever, ever f*cking endanger yourself like that, then I will walk away,” he snarled. “I won’t watch helplessly, Tehya, while you destroy yourself. I will not let you kill me inside because of your damned stubbornness.”

“Then you’ll live by the same rules.” She was back in his face, teeth bared, furious, aching, hurting for him and yet drawn into the emotional vortex she could feel swirling out from him. “Wrap me in cotton, Jordan. See if I give a f*ck. Because you’ll be right there with me or you can kiss my ass good-bye.”

Jordan stared down at her. He could barely see the outline of her face, but he could see her eyes. Wicked, witchy cat’s eyes that glared back at him, that demanded, that refused to back down.

She had an answer for everything.

She made him want to believe in love. Made him want to believe in that unspoken emotion he couldn’t seem to get a handle on inside himself. That illusion he had always disdained in the past.

She made him want to give her the world, and even when he’d been sixteen, when he’d been dick dumb, he hadn’t truly wanted to give any woman the world.

What did she do to him? He wanted to walk away, because he knew she was a weakness. He wanted to keep her at a distance, remain aloof, but it was damned impossible. She was tying his guts up in knots and at the same time, finding a way to keep his attention focused squarely on her.

And he couldn’t figure out how she managed it.

“While we’re together,” he stated. “When this is over.” He had to force himself to breathe through the words. “When it’s finished, Tehya, I don’t want to walk away. At least, not immediately.”

She was silent, still. He could feel her hurt, he knew she had expected more.

“Don’t walk away, Jordan.” Thick, heavy with unshed tears, her voice whispered through the darkness. “For as long as you can, don’t walk away.”

He lay back down beside her before pulling her into his arms, her head resting against his shoulder.

He held her, his chest heavy with words he had no idea how to say. Hell, he didn’t even know what the words were, just that they struggled to be free. That something inside him felt trapped.

As he stared into the darkness, he wondered, for the first time, if the illusion of love were cared for, if it were cherished, was there any way it could be preserved?

* * *

Sleep hadn’t come easy for Jordan. The soft weight of Tehya in his arms had felt too natural, much too right for him not to question it.

He’d slept with many women over the years, lovers, mistresses, and never had he slept well with them, let alone lain comfortably with them in his bed.

He realized as he held her, though, that each time he had fallen asleep with her in his arms, it had simply felt right.

She was changing him. He felt it, and he had to admit there was an edge of discomfort in the knowledge. There was the realization that the consequences of losing her would be far different than those of losing anyone else.

As sleep settled over him, he allowed himself to push aside the questions and the concerns. For now, there was nothing he could do but accept it. There was no other option when it came to keeping her close to him. So far, the men shadowing her were too damned good at staying just out of reach. He wasn’t about to risk having her taken from him.

There were safeguards built in just in case. Eyes were watching twenty-four-seven, always keeping Tehya in view on the off chance that Jordan hadn’t covered every angle.

Those eyes were his last defense against the loss of the one woman he knew he couldn’t bear to lose.

Because he could sense the danger coming.

He just didn’t expect it to come so soon.

He was nudged from sleep by the awareness that something just wasn’t right. A sound, a feeling, a shift in the air that wasn’t natural.

It was an awareness, a warning that something threatened Tehya.

He had, before slipping into sleep, tucked his Glock beneath his pillow rather than leaving it on the bedside table.

Lying on his side, one arm around Tehya, he slid the other slowly beneath the pillow, his fingers curling over the butt of the gun as he felt Tehya shift by just the slightest degree, just enough to slide her arm over the side of the bed, the movement hidden by the blankets.

She was awake and ready to move. He had known that same awareness would awaken her as well. She had been on the run for too many years before she came to the Elite Ops. Those instincts didn’t die.

Senses open, Jordan listened, fighting to determine where the danger was coming from. He’d left the lights on in the front room; the glow beneath the door had given the room the faintest bit of light.

It wasn’t there now. The lights had been turned out, allowing the danger to slip into the room without alerting him by flooding the bedroom with light.

It must have been the click of the door that awakened them.

Rather than moving as he would have at any other time, Jordan paused. Listening closely he opened his eyes just enough to check his peripheal vision. And there they were. The faintest of shadows, not just one. F*ck, there were two.

He had to find a way to take both out at the same time, or to disable the first before drawing the fire of the second and praying he was fast enough to avoid the bullets.

The two shadows shifted, positioning themselves until their weapons were trained on him, not on Tehya.

He almost let his lips curl in satisfaction. They were trying to take him out, to separate Tehya from any hope of support or protection. That wouldn’t happen. No matter what happened to him, his men would never allow her to be taken.

But he had no intentions of allowing himself to be taken out so easily.

He could feel Tehya. She was ready to move, tense, and on the verge of panic. Where her back rested against his chest, he could feel her heart racing furiously, the danger of the moment speeding adrenaline through her body.

His hand tightened on her hip where it had rested as they slept.

It was coming. He felt it. The weapons were trained on him, the assailants were ready to take the shot. But now he also knew where the bastards were. Two. They had come in as a team, one to take him out, the other to go after Tehya. He doubted they had plans to kill her.

He was running out of time.

Jordan watched the shadows shift again from the corner of his eyes and knew his time was up.

He moved.

As though Tehya’s instincts were directly connected to his, she moved with him as the sound and red flares of silenced weapons discharging popped through the room.

He went for the first would-be assassin. Slamming the butt of his weapon into the head and feeling him fall, he turned and prayed the first was disabled long enough for him to deal with the second.

The pop-pop of bullets discharging from a silencer again echoed through the room again as Jordan rolled. They slammed into his pillow, where his head had been.

“Keep the lights out,” he snarled, just in case Tehya was going for the lamp. “Get behind something.”

Protection. Tehya had to be protected. That one instinct, that one imperative thought drove his every movement.

He needed the darkness now. The flare of light would blind his senses, leaving him defenseless for precious seconds. It would give the assailants an advantage, perhaps the chance to do as they intended. To kill him.

Eyes narrowed, his gaze pierced the darkness as he threw himself to the side again, drawing the gunfire his way, rather than Tehya’s.

He was trusting her to take care of the assailant on the floor while he disabled the other. Discarding his weapon, Jordan threw himself at the second assailant. Rage was a fever rushing through his system, burning into mind and lighting a fuse to danger-induced adrenaline.

Stupid bastards, he thought. If he knew he were going into a darkened bedroom he would have worn night vision hardware. He would have never gone in as blind as his prey.

A shift in the shadows alerted him.

Jumping to the side, Jordan rolled as the blood-red streaks of light flared in the darkness. Catching the assailant as he jerked to the side to change direction, his fist slammed into the kidneys, drawing a hard cry from his throat as Jordan took him to the floor his hand going for the weapon coming around on him.

Gripping the hand holding the weapon, Jordan struggled to wrestle it from his assailant before he could fire again.

“Bastard!” A harsh cry from the knee Jordan drove into his attacker’s crotch as the gun went off, ripping along his side as Jordan snarled at the pain.

His fist slammed into a jaw as he jerked the weapon from the other man’s hand and tossed it across the floor. He was going in for another shot when the bedroom door slammed open, flooding the room with just enough light to momentarily blind him.

He jumped in the direction of the weapon he had just tossed to the side.

“Clear.” It was Micah’s voice, icy cold and dangerous, that assured him the intruders were friendly rather than enemy.

Without hesitation, Jordan jumped to his feet and went across the bed in a hard roll to come to a crouch where Tehya was supposed to be.

Instead of moving to a point of protection, she was finishing a quick knot to the belt from her robe around the hands of the first assailant.

She had jerked his shirt back on, two buttons secured just beneath her breasts. Red-gold curls flowed wildly around her shoulders, her cat’s eyes glittered with rage and fear.

“Where are the others?” Jordan snapped as he jerked his pants from the bottom of the bed and quickly pulled them on, his gaze going between the two disabled men as Micah secured the second.

“Front room,” Micah answered, his dark gaze piercing between the edges of the black mask he wore over his face. “We cleared the hall and the rest of the suite.”

“Get these f*ckers to the reserve suite.” Rage was pulsing through him, eating at him as he turned, his gaze going over Tehya once again as she stared at the unconscious attacker at her feet.

Jordan had only disabled him, Tehya must have moved behind him and knocked the man out.

What the hell had made him think that she would actually move for safety? He wanted her safe. Wrapped in protective cotton, as she had said earlier. And God help him, he knew as long as this danger existed, there would be no chance of her ever knowing peace, or security.

Black-masked, moving with dangerous precision, Jordan’s team moved in, gathered up the unconscious assailants and rushed them from the suite to the room next door.

Micah, Noah, and Nik had been staying there while John, Bailey, Travis, and Lilly had taken rooms across the hall.

The two couples were in the front room, faces unmasked, weapons held ready as they covered the opened, connecting door.

Watching from the bedroom door as the two men were dragged into the secured suite, Jordan could feel his teeth clenching in nearly uncontrolled fury.

The need to kill beat in his veins, threatening to override his control. He could tear their heads from their bodies. The thought of it had his muscles bunching, his fingers fisted as he fought to hold back the urge.

He turned back to the bedroom slowly, his fingers flexing on the side of the door. The hard, wall-vibrating slam of the door a second later sent an unconscious flinch jerking through Tehya’s body as her eyes widened.

It was the first time she had seen his eyes since the attack.

Tehya stared back at him, shocked.

She had seen him in a variety of dangerous situations. She had seen him when his nephew had been wounded, when his father had been hospitalized with a heart attack, and when his youngest nephew had nearly been killed in a car wreck several years before. She had never seen him like this. With the rage burning in his eyes like blue flames, his face was so tight with fury, so sharp with violence that the savagely hewn lines of his face were displayed in sharp detail.

“Get dressed,” he growled, his voice a rumble of violence.

Tehya was moving before he finished speaking.

Jerking open dresser drawers, she had everything she needed within seconds. Less than two minutes later she was sitting on the side of the bed and tying the laces of her sneakers.

Beside her, Jordan was changing, taking more time to dress, taking the time to control the rage she had seen blazing in his eyes.

He wore jeans and a black shirt. His boots were still unlaced as he checked the clip from the Glock.

Snapping the ammunition into place, he sat down and tied the short combat boots he’d pushed his feet into. Rising, he turned to the pack beside the bed table, removed extra clips, and shoved them into his back pocket.

“If you go hunting tonight, then I go with you,” she warned him as she stood, went to the dresser, and pulled a thick ribbon from the makeup bag that had somehow been knocked over and pushed behind the TV sitting there. Knocking it back along the dresser in frustration she stared at her expression, seeing the white, shocked color of her face and the brilliance of her emerald-green eyes.

She looked like death.

Dragging her gaze from her own eyes, she watched Jordan in the mirror as she tied her hair back, her eyes narrowing as she lifted her chin in determination against the dominant look he flashed her.

“I’m not going hunting tonight,” he assured her.

Tehya forced herself not to flinch at the sound of his voice, a harsh, vicious rasp that assured her the rage was still in danger of escaping.

“You’re not yourself yet.” She swallowed tightly, terrified that once he faced the two attackers, he would lose the rational, logical control he was famous for. “You look like you’re ready to kill, Jordan. I’ve rarely seen that look in your eyes.”

He stared back at her ruthlessly.

“Look.” She shoved her hands in the pockets of her jeans. “I don’t want you doing something you’ll regret because of me.”

She could feel her heart racing out of control, the panic shifting from a fear of Jordan being wounded, or worse, killed, to the fear of him losing his control and perhaps blaming her for it.

“I’m fine.” His hands swiped through his hair as a tight grimace crossed his face.

“Jordan…”

“I’m fine, Tehya.” His voice sharpened. “I won’t kill the bastards, no matter how badly I want to. Now if you want to be there for the questioning, you’d better come on. I want my chance to find out who the f*ck they are before Noah cuts their throats.”

He turned and stalked from the room, like a predator on the prowl, the air of danger surrounding him keeping her nerves on edge.

Jordan could feel her fear, her worry. His instincts were too finely honed, his knowledge of her too deep to escape it. Just as his knowledge that he was the one now causing her wariness couldn’t be escaped.

He would have to deal with it later. He would have to face the fact that he was riding a very fine edge of control because of the threat she was facing.

Stepping into the connecting suite he moved, or rather stalked to where the two men were bound in chairs, still unconscious.

“Who are they?” He directed the question to his nephew, still masked, his eyes a much darker blue and blazing with his own fury.

“We have John Frackle.” He smacked the first man on the head, causing it to jerk to the side in unconscious response.

John Frackle was approximately six feet, his brown hair cut close to his scalp. Gray tape was still slapped over his mouth, effectively gagging him in case he awakened.

It would come off soon enough, as soon as he was conscious, and when it did, Jordan promised himself the bastard would talk or he’d lose his tongue. Or perhaps never have the chance to attempt to talk again.

“Frackle has a nice little history listed with several law enforcement agencies from what we’re learning.” Noah jerked his thumb over his shoulder to where Nik was at the computer pulling up files and printing them out. “It seems he likes to work for maggots who target pretty women. If they’re not virgins when he kidnaps them, then he’s known to rape them before they reach the men that hired him.”

Jordan turned his gaze slowly back to Frackle and let his lips curl in anticipation.

“Killing him will be fun,” he drawled.

Tehya flinched at the promise in his voice.

“And who is his buddy?”

“He’s teamed up with Marco Fillipini. Good ole Marco may not know his partner well, though. This one, I know of. Marco’s penny-ante, mainly sticks to France. I have a few feelers out to get his story, but I thought we might go easy on him if he talks a little bit for us.” Noah smacked Marco a bit harder than he had Frackle.

Both men were well muscled, likely well experienced, and in a world of hurt once they were conscious, if Jordan had his way.

“They were outside the party you attended tonight,” Nik said from where he sat at the computer. “They’re working with the same team that attacked Tehya’s home. From what I’ve learned so far, they’re mostly mercenaries, though Frackle and Fillipini were low-level soldiers in Sorrel’s organization before he was killed.”

Jordan lifted a brow as he gazed at Frackle, then Marco. His fingers curled into fists again. The need to see their blood was almost as strong as the lust that tormented him where Tehya was concerned.

That realization was shocking. He’d never allowed himself to become so involved with anyone, besides his nephew. He’d been angry over attacks against his men or wounds they’d taken, but never had he experienced this level of violence.

“Someone got them some pretty toys,” Noah spoke behind him. “It took them less than three seconds to slip our security with ones they brought.”

Jordan gave a brief nod of his head. “They have to be well-funded just as we suspected, with ties, or their employer has ties, to the military somewhere. That’s the only way they could have acquired the technology needed to get through the security.” His lips thinned as he continued to stare at the other two men.

“That technology is only available in a few countries other than America,” Micah informed him. “You can’t get that just anywhere, Jordan.”

“I’m more than aware of this.” Icy cold, emotionless, his voice was like a sibilant whisper of death.

“I want complete dossiers on them.” He turned to Nik, his gaze meeting the other man’s. “Everything. I want to know who they socialize with and who they work for. I want to know every particle of their lives.”

“And you’ll have it,” Noah swore, “the moment it’s ready.”

And Tehya knew Noah. She knew the bond he shared with his uncle. That information would be available very soon, if it existed.

With a jerk of his head toward the door behind him, Jordan indicated he was finished there and that the others should follow him.

Turning, he curved his arm around Tehya’s waist and drew her with him back to the front room of the suite. He would give the two men time to awaken, then he would awaken them himself it necessary. Maybe. There were alternatives to interrogating men whom he knew wouldn’t give him the answers he wanted. And he realized he didn’t want to have to question them in front of Tehya.

He didn’t want her to see the worst of him. In the years she had been at the base, she had never seen him interrogate an enemy, had never seen him kill.

He realized he didn’t want her to see it now. And it was going to happen. Frackle and his partner had all but signed their death warrants when they came for him with the intent of taking Tehya. And if they didn’t talk, if they didn’t give him answers, then, Jordan promised himself, they would never threaten anyone, ever again.