How many times had she replayed the events of the night she’d let him go when he needed someone other than her? Hundreds.
As she sat in his kitchen, wearing nothing but a button-down, white dress shirt like the ones he used to wear to work and a pair of pink panties, she watched as he studied his phone when it rang. He didn’t look up at her before he answered the call. Even without being able to overhear the woman speaking on the other end, Malin would’ve known whom it was.
As they both listened, Dutch scrubbed his face and told the woman he’d “be right there.”
“She’s drunk,” he said. “At the very least, I have to get her home.”
“Go,” she told him. “She needs you.”
When she came out of the bedroom a few minutes later, he was already gone.
Months went by before she saw Dutch again, and then he’d had amnesia and had no idea who she was. She had been working the same op then that he’d blown to bits a few short hours ago.
Malin had almost blown it up herself that night when the man who stood between her and the organization she had been assigned to infiltrate, demanded she hand Dutch over to the al-Qaeda bastards that were responsible for beating him nearly to death before she found him wandering the streets of a small town in Germany.
In that moment, she’d asked herself what Dutch would do. Without having to think about it, she knew he would’ve done anything to keep the op going. And then, he would’ve turned around and gotten her rescued, just like she had for him.
* * *
“Tell me about the mission,” she heard him murmur.
“My mission was to infiltrate the Islamic State by acting as a trainer for their female recruits.”
He smirked and leaned closer. “You can tell me the truth, baby. I have the necessary security clearance.”
Was this how he meant it to go? Would Dutch try to seduce her into divulging the true nature of her mission? Malin would’ve laughed out loud if it wouldn’t have let him know how close he was to the right track.
Instead, she kept the wall she’d built around her heart firmly in place, determined she’d never let him penetrate it again, no matter how much he still made her girly bits do a happy dance.
—:—
Dutch stood and walked to the front of the plane to use the bathroom when Malin dozed off. Between whatever her real dealings were with the Islamic State, not to mention United Russia by way of Sergei Orlov, the woman probably hadn’t gotten much rest in the last several weeks.
“Got a minute?” Onyx asked from the cockpit.
“If we’re headed home, I’ve got a few hours.”
Onyx nodded at the co-pilot, a man Dutch didn’t recognize, and stood, motioning toward the galley. He walked out and closed the cockpit door behind him.
“Who is that guy?” Dutch asked.
“Contractor. Listen, I got word from Doc.”
“And?”
“What do you think about Indian Springs Island?”
Dutch scrubbed his face with his hand and shook his head. “I don’t like it.”
“Why not?”
“I want somewhere more remote.”
“It belongs to Gunner. You won’t find anywhere more secure.”
He knew Onyx was right. Gunner Godet, one of four senior partners at K19 Security Solutions where Dutch was a junior partner, would make sure his island was secured tighter than the CIA headquarters.
“Gunner’s got some experience with United Russia,” Onyx added.