Simon Carter recognized the ringtone; he would have ignored it otherwise. He opened his eyes and blinked at the naked woman sleeping beside him. With the exception of the few smile lines around her eyes, his wife hadn’t changed at all since he had first fallen in love with her fifteen years ago. A glimmer of moonlight streamed in through a couple of broken blinds, highlighting the side of her face and the top of her shoulder. He kissed her lightly on her forehead and got out of bed without disturbing her. He picked up his phone from the charging station and went down to the kitchen. He foraged through the fridge and found a pot of leftover chicken à la king. He prepared himself a plate and put it in the microwave. While it heated, he poured a tall glass of ice water and gulped half of it down.
The last time Hunt had contacted him was to let him know he had been transferred to the Miami field division in Weston. Carter was happy for him. Hunt was a good man, well respected by his peers. True, his decisions in the field were highly intuitive, often very rash, and his complete lack of political correctness offended the higher-ups, but no one could argue about the results. Hunt always led from the front, and Carter had learned many important lessons from him. If Carter had become a good team leader, it was mainly due to Hunt’s mentoring.
Carter opened Hunt’s text message and saw it contained a multitude of attachments, all of them fingerprints. Hunt’s message was short, direct, and to the point.
Carter read the text message twice. The ambush in Miami had made national news. The US marshals had lost good men in the attack, but there had been no mention of Hunt’s involvement. His friend was in deep shit and needed his help. Hunt had left instructions on how to contact him.
The microwave beeped, but Carter ignored it. He wasn’t hungry anymore.
“It’s getting close to midnight, baby,” his wife said from behind him. “Are you coming up?”
She was three-quarters of the way down the stairs. There was nothing he wanted more than to cuddle up with her under a pile of blankets, but Hunt’s message meant he needed to head back to the office.
“I’m sorry, Emma; I need to go,” he said, brandishing his phone.
Her worry was apparent. “Be careful, okay?” She had been a close friend of Scott Miller’s wife, and Scott’s death during the Chicago drug raid had shaken her, made her aware of just how dangerous Carter’s job was.
“Always,” he said, scooping her up in his arms.
Emma wrapped her arms around his neck and let him cradle her against his chest. His lips trailed across her hair and down to her neck.
“I love you,” he whispered in her ear. “I’ll be back in no time.”
Though Carter drove with his habitual care, his mind was preoccupied. Rumors that Tom Hauer—the current acting administrator of the DEA—wanted to shut down the RRT program and replace it with regional special response teams—SRTs—bothered him. If that were to happen, each major domestic office would be required to maintain its own operational SRT, and chances were he’d be asked to relocate. He and Emma were happy in Stafford. She had found a job at one of the local schools, and they were less than an hour’s drive from her parents. Carter loved his in-laws—both former CIA case officers—and he knew how much his wife cherished her time with them. If his team were disbanded, where would the DEA send him? Since he was the main breadwinner, he and his family wouldn’t have any choice but to go where the DEA wanted him to go.
The other thing that troubled him was Hunt’s email. A quick check into the DEA’s network had indicated there was now an arrest warrant for Hunt. Apparently one of his rounds had hit a bystander during the ambush on Vicente Garcia’s motorcade. If this was true, why the hell did Hunt refuse to turn himself in? Why had he run? Something was amiss. Running went against everything Hunt stood for.
He needed to speak to Hunt. And soon.
But, for now, he’d give his friend the benefit of the doubt and check those fingerprints.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Miami, Florida
Physically speaking, Anna knew everything about the man sitting next to her. The man she’d known as Terrance Davis wasn’t classically pretty, but he was ruggedly sexy. His hard-to-look-away-from, piercing blue eyes were warm and understanding, but they could also become as hard as diamonds in the span of a second. He had dark brown hair that he liked to keep short. But what she remembered the most—and missed even more—were the tight bands of well-defined muscles layered across his flat stomach. Hunt had the body of an Olympic swimmer.
She used to know what Terrance Davis liked in bed, what worried him, and what made him happy. She knew what made him tick and what made him laugh. But what about Pierce Hunt? What did he like? What made him sad?
Pierce Hunt’s eyes were different too. In his eyes burned an intensity she had never seen before. These were the eyes of an apex predator ready to do anything to get what he wanted. And since they all wanted the same thing, Hunt was exactly the type of man they needed to save the girls.
Three knocks on the door steered her attention away from her ex-lover.
This time Tasis was kind enough to announce his presence by knocking on the door before he entered. His MP5 was slung to his side and not pointed at Hunt’s head, which, in Hunt’s opinion, was a nice improvement. He was also carrying a sealed white envelope that he gave to Tony.
“From our friend at the MDPD,” Tasis said before moving out of the room.
Tony glanced down at the envelope and took a deep breath.