Meeting Penny’s gaze, Rafe mentally relived the last week—Penny sparring in the training room, the too-close-for-comfort scuffle in the alley, and the professional ease with which she handled the meeting with Fuentes. Hell, she’d been the one who remained casually aloof while he nearly reached across the table and throttled the sick fuck with his bare hands.
He couldn’t believe he was going to fucking say it. “Don’t make me regret agreeing to this, Red.”
With no questions, no hesitation, the team sprang into action. Logan fired up the laptop while waiting for Charlie to answer stateside. Stone and Chase talked schematics and logistics with Trey. Backup plans were only good if you knew where the hell you were, but some kind of contingencies needed to be made—and a hell of a lot of them. Plans A, B, and C wouldn’t hack it this time around. Their ducks needed to be lined up straight to fucking Z.
Penny’s presence hovered behind Rafe’s shoulder. “What is it, Red?”
“Thank you,” she murmured softly.
He stole a glance and mentally cursed with the sudden urge to yank her onto his lap and tell her everything would be fine. Instead, he gave a slight nod and prayed he hadn’t made a mistake. “You can thank me if we manage to get out of this in one piece.”
*
In her mind, Penny envisioned Alpha’s tech guru as a tall, lanky brunet with a built-in pocket protector in every shirt. And the way the guys talked about Charlie Sparks also had her anticipating him to be…well, a him.
Not only was Charlie not a him, but she sported shaggily bobbed blonde hair adorned with pink highlights—and an English accent Penny couldn’t get enough of.
“It isn’t a bloody windup toy, Ortega. Stop playing around with the bloody thing.” Charlie glared at Rafe from over the video link like she wanted to reach through the screen and strangle him.
“No. It’s a watch.” Rafe smirked, obviously having a good time teasing the other woman. “But do you really think this looks like something Rafael Manuel, self-made millionaire and professional ladies’ man, would be caught wearing?”
“He’d be bloody lucky to wear that baby. And it’s quite a bit more than a watch. What you have in your hot, callused hands is my pride and joy. It’ll detect any surveillance device that’s within a hundred-foot distance—audio or visual. Because let’s face it, Fuentes is going to have his place bugged like a New York City hotel room. Before either of you decide to talk any kind of shop, you scan. If you move an inch to the left while in a heated discussion, you scan. It wouldn’t even hurt if you ran a scan after breathing too deeply.”
“I get it,” Rafe interrupted. “I scan and scan again.”
“Scan until your bloody finger is well…bloody. I know I don’t need to remind you that one slipup could mean the two of you coming back or becoming cheetah bait.”
“Are there cheetahs in Honduras?” Penny asked absently.
A grin spread across Charlie’s face as she shrugged. “Do I look like an animal rustler? Although, I have to admit that I sometimes feel like I am when I’m surrounded by those five. You have no idea how thrilled I was to actually stay behind this time around. Too much sweat takes the pink out of my hair.”
Penny chuckled and took a good look at the blonde’s surroundings. It didn’t look like an office space or have the stark, cool lines seen in most military bases. Framed photographs decorated a cherry wood-panel wall, and to the far right over the other woman’s shoulder, Penny glimpsed the edge of an ornate plate-glass window. The way the browns and golds swirled together into the form of an old-fashioned beer mug looked…familiar.
“Charlie, where did you say you’re stationed stateside?” Penny asked, her gaze narrowing on the wall behind the pink-haired dynamo.
“At our new headquarters. And I say new, but we’ve really been here six months. Renovating a bar to fit our needs takes a hell of a lot of time. And as it turns out, you can’t really hire just anyone to build secret bunkers into the mountainside.”
Penny’s gaze drifted to one of the photos over Charlie’s left shoulder. Two smiling women with arms tossed over each other’s shoulders stared back at her. Penny didn’t need to see it closer to know the one on the left wore a white tank and blue skirt, and the other wore the exact opposite: a blue top and white shorts.
She knew because she was the one wearing the jean skirt.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Penny stared at the photo, the one she knew for a fact hung on the wall of her hometown’s neighborhood bar, Hot Shots. Thousands of miles away. In another time zone. In Pennsylvania.
Around her, the room went silent. No one moved. No one spoke. No one even appeared to breathe as she registered the fact that Alpha Security’s headquarters wasn’t as secret as they thought.
When she turned her gaze on Trey, Penny felt as if the floor slid out from under her. Regret flooded his eyes. He took a small step forward before stopping. “Penn—”
“Your headquarters,” she said, cutting him off. “Your headquarters is in Frederick?”