Maverick (Elite Ops 2)

“I demanded this op.”

Noah glanced back at him in surprise. “Why?”

Micah’s expression hadn’t changed. His face was still closed, set. His eyes were like black ice and his voice like frozen air. It was enough to give a person frostbite.

“Why is for me to know.” Micah shrugged. “It’s your place to accept. Now if you wouldn’t mind, your chattering is getting on my nerves. Perhaps Jordan could find a muzzle that would fit you.”

Noah grimaced and tightened his hands on the wheel of the car as he made a turn behind the cab and gauged the distance to the hotel where Risa was heading.

Hell, she deserved better than the operation that was going to be thrown at her tomorrow. She deserved more than to be used as he knew this operation would use her. She wasn’t mentally or emotionally capable of handling the stress it would lay on her fragile shoulders.

He’d mentioned his fears to his wife, Sabella. Worried that this operation would tax the girl’s ability to heal and to get on with her life. But they had no choice. This wasn’t just their best chance at capturing an assassin whom no one could seem to pin, but it was also their only chance to save her from a horrifying death. Risa was beginning to remember what everyone had believed she would never remember: the night of her kidnapping and rape and the man who had been in league with the father who had masterminded it.

Those memories could be the death of her.

“Risa Clay isn’t a broken woman.” Micah’s comment surprised Noah into glancing back at him.

“What makes you think that?” Noah asked.

“You know the same things I do,” Micah stated. “The trips to the spa, the shopping trip, and the clothes she’s bought. The intimate toys found in her bedside drawer. No, Noah, she is not a broken woman. She is a woman trying to heal.”

“And you think handing her over to you will complete that healing?” Noah snorted. “Hell, from what I’ve seen you can’t keep a woman past the time it takes to fuck one, Micah. You’re like a robot, man. That’s fine with a woman that’s not looking for anything more.”

“Noah, you are becoming a mother hen,” Micah sighed. “You remind me much of one here of late. I need to discuss this with Sabella. She’s becoming a bad influence on you.”

Noah grinned. Damn, his Sabella was his lifesaver.

“She’ll just laugh at you,” he promised the other man.

“I have no doubt she will laugh, simply because she knows you’re a lost cause.”

Noah let the argument go. There was obviously no convincing Micah that charming a woman took more than an invitation to his bed. Especially a woman like Risa, one who had known the horror she barely remembered. She may think she had forgotten details and faces due to that fucking Whore’s Dust, but Noah knew her mind remembered, her body remembered.

He knew because he had been there. For nineteen hellish months he had been pumped full of that shit. He knew what it did to a body, to a mind. What it would do to the child she had been, and to experience the humiliation and pain of a rape on top of it wouldn’t be that damned easy to get over.

Risa hadn’t been as lucky as the other victims pumped full of the date rape drug. She hadn’t completely forgotten that night, nor had she forgotten the endless months she had been held in the asylum. She sure as hell hadn’t forgotten that it was her father who had consigned her to both hells.

The bastard Jansen Clay. Noah prayed he was burning in hell now.

“Live Wire, be advised, mark is bearing on your location,” he spoke into the mic attached to his wrist as Risa’s cab patted into the predetermined checkpoint. “Maverick is four doors down and coming in cold.”

Four cars back and cold as ice. The man had to be made of computer chips.

“Ease in,” Jordan ordered softly. “Let’s see we have interest.”

“Orion wouldn’t be that sloppy,” Micah stated as the cab turned into the club’s receiving area and drew to a stop.

Seconds later Noah pulled in behind the cab, and he and Micah watched as Risa stepped from the vehicle.

Micah saw her face, each exquisite detail, and felt his body tense in familiar, but unwanted arousal and interest. It had been happening ever since they had started this op and he had been ordered to tail her. She’s a mark, he reminded himself. A very vulnerable, very innocent mark, he had to remember that.

But the mark looked like an earth angel. Dressed in the bronze and brown, her sun-lightened hair swaying about her shoulders, her expression equal parts fear and valor.

He fought his body’s reaction to her, fought his interest in her. He was here for one purpose: to capture that bastard Orion, and Risa Clay was a means to that end. As he had told Noah, tonight was a meet and greet, nothing more. A little chitchat, a dance or two, and tomorrow she would be forced to realize her world was changing. She had become the hunted, and Micah was her only chance at survival.

As she entered the club he stepped from the car, adjusted the black evening jacket he wore, and followed behind her at a sedate pace.

She was simply beautiful. Micah had seen her before, several times, though she was unaware of it. She was friends with the wives of the Durango team, all of whom were based in Atlanta.