Red Zone (Red Zone 1)

“Mine,” he whispered.

“Mine,” she answered.

She saw it then, in the depths of his eyes, the possibility of everything she’d ever wanted. And it was all just out of reach.

His movements were slow, deliberate, as though he didn’t want their joining to end. Their mouths tangled in a kiss that was heavy with meaning. Each taste was a feeling too deep to express in words. Each touch of lips to lips was a promise that couldn’t be kept. Each teasing bite was a reprimand for a future filled with loss.

Friday felt tears on her cheeks as she clung to him and realized they weren’t only hers. One lone tear had rolled down his face to fall and mingle with hers. He reached up, wiped his face, groaned, and then surged into her. Her throat began to ache with repressed sobs. His kisses

left her mouth and made their way across her cheek to her ear.

“I love you,” his voice was hoarse.

Her tears fell faster, as her body soared higher under his touch.

“It will always be you,” he whispered. “Only you.”

A sob escaped her, and his mouth was there to capture it. She wanted to scream at the injustice of it all. She wanted to beat something, anything, to release the anger at leaving this man. Her man. Instead, she fought the anguish back and pushed her love for him outward. She pushed it through her fingers as they clung to him. Through her lips as she kissed him, taking his taste deep inside of her where it would always live.

“I love you, Luke Boudreaux,” she said against his lips and watched as he swallowed, taking her declaration into him, making her a part of him in a way. Maybe, just maybe, she would live on in this man, a part of his heart, his soul. Forever.

Their kiss became desperate; their movements, frantic with need. Together, they shattered. And when they reformed, they did it as one. For always.

Chapter Thirty-Nine

“What the hell am I looking at?” Mace said into the comm unit strapped around his throat.

The team was in the hills, south of the location marked by Striker’s tracker. They should have been looking out over the built-up suburbs of La Paz. Instead, they were staring at a gash in the landscape and a shit ton of digging equipment.

“Mining,” was Sandi’s droll reply.

“The images you’re sending me don’t match up to the ones I’m getting through the satellite feed,” Hunter said over the comm.

“Secret mining,” Sandi amended.

Hunter typed in the background. “I’m checking all records, but there are no official mining operations running in the south of the city.”

“I don’t think they would have hidden it if it’d been legitimate. Just sayin’,” Sandi said.

“Not helping.” Mace frowned at his sister.

“What?” She shrugged at him. “Somebody needs to educate the rookie.”

“The rookie is over a hundred years old,” Hunter said.

“And still ignorant.” Sandi smiled mischievously at her brother. “That must chafe.”

Mace wasn’t amused. “Could you two focus for a minute? Has the signal from the tracker moved?”

“Nope. It’s still at the coordinates I sent you.”

He hit a button on his binoculars, and a coordinate grid came up, superimposed over the area in front of him. “He’s in the third building from the left, beside the gate.”

“The one that’s surrounded by guards?” Ignacio Morales, the leader of the other half of their team, asked. His people were positioned two streets up from the main gate.

“Yeah.”

“I can deal with the guards at the gate,” Gray said over the comm.