Under the smell of damp wool from his clothing, the wind brought with it a faint, evocative scent. Familiar, yet out of place on this quiet, dark stretch of sidewalk. Rafe lifted his head, eyes narrowed. “Since I’m not that interested in answers, I’ll just go ahead and sho—”
He felt a rush of air, felt more than saw the shadows converging on him a split second before pain reverberated up his arm. His fingers went numb, but he didn’t drop the H&K. Spinning to meet them, he stayed in motion. Kick, duck, fire. Shot the taller shadow pointblank as he practically ran into his weapon. The guy went down hard.
Rafe tried to count his assailants, but they moved fast as they surrounded him, barely visible, just shapeless black against denser black, discernible as silhouettes only when they crossed between him and the distant street lamp.
He stayed in constant motion, not wasting a bullet until he was damned sure it would do its job effectively. Two men grabbed an arm each, restraining him as another rabbit-punched him in the belly. The air left his lungs, and he allowed his body to slump. Then he used their hold to lift his legs and kick the man facing him, hitting him squarely in the sternum. He grunted and fell, and the men holding Rafe staggered backward with the impact. One let go, the other held his gun hand, squeezing Rafe’s fingers around the weapon, until he had to release it before his fingers broke under the pressure.
Foul breath alerted him just how close his assailant had gotten. Hanging onto Rafe’s hand proved to be a major mistake, as Rafe suddenly jerked that arm around and in close to his body, bringing the thug with it. He snapped his head forward and down as the guy’s head got close to his. Bone and cartilage exploded in a howl of pain and spray of blood, and the man reeled away. A moment later, Rafe heard the bone-rattling slam of the man’s body hitting the wall behind him five feet away.
He smelled cigarette breath, spinning in time to block the thrust of a knife with his forearm, covered in thick wool. The second man staggered back, cursing. Rafe bent, whipped out the knife from his ankle holster, and went in fast and low.
His
blade punctured cloth, hit flesh, and ripped. Another one down as the man screamed like a girl, doubling over in agony. Rafe silenced him with a knee uppercut, snapping the guy’s mouth shut and dropping him like a felled oak.
Another shadowy figure stumbled into him backward and they staggered like drunks, throwing off Rafe’s center of balance. The man grunted and wheezed as he tried to spin around to face Rafe. Fingers slick with blood, Rafe couldn’t get a firm enough grip on the knife to be effective. Grabbing the end of his own scarf, he wrapped it around the guy’s throat, jerking unrelentingly upward. The man gargled and flailed against him.
Even as the man gasped his last breath and his knees crumpled, Rafe was wiping his wet hand on the man’s coat. Letting him drop, he stepped over him.
He spun, using his bloody knife to strike out as yet another attacker came in, bent low. He twisted sideways, but not fast enough, a shoulder or maybe a foot slamming into his groin.
White stars exploded in his vision and bile rose in his throat at the agonizing pain. He didn’t have time to indulge himself by grabbing his balls and doubling over.
This one was smaller, wiry, fast as hell. A woman. He smelled Carolina Herrera, causing him to pause for just a second as he recognized the scent—that hesitation almost got him killed. He saw a brief flash of steel in the stygian darkness as she aimed for his face with the business end of a knife. He jerked out of its way just in time. Down on one knee, he saw the H&K and lunged for it on his belly. Up and back in control as someone came around him from the left.
She whispered his name in the darkness, causing another almost fatal hesitation. Leaping into the air, she shot out one leg–a brush of air, and her boot caught him in the temple. Staggering to maintain his balance, he saw more stars, a whole fucking galaxy of them. He couldn’t see her worth shit anyway, so he didn’t let the little detail of impaired vision hinder him.
Rafe felt rather than saw as he lashed out his hand, grabbing her ankle in the downswing. She grunted as he flipped her on her back. He went to the ground with her, landing on her hard, his knee to her chest. A shadow darted into his peripheral vision and without looking away from her, Rafael, lifted the 5.7 and fired.
“Who the fuck are you?” His nose told him Winston, but that just didn’t compute and thinking that way was going to get him killed.
“Why don’t you kiss me again and find out?” Her harsh, erratic breaths fragmented her soft, breathy whisper. Her breath smelled sweet, and the subtle, heated fragrance of her skin made him think of hotel rooms and forbidden kisses. He pressed his knee harder into her diaphragm, making her struggle like a pinned butterfly. “Try again. Who are you?”
“Your worst nightmare, Navarro.” Wheezing but her words were clear enough.
He pressed the bloody knife into her cheekbone, aware of someone else lurking nearby. He started leveraging himself off her. “I’ll take you into hell with m—”
An explosion of white-hot pain, then black blotted out the night.
TWELVE
W
inston let out a bloodcurdling yell when Rafael grabbed her upper arm, hauling her off the bed and onto her feet. The movement sent red-hot shards of agony up through his balls into his brain like a pickax. “Shut up,” he snapped. “You’re not afraid, and you sure as shit weren’t asleep. Get the light.”
The bedside lamp blazed on, showing she was armed and pissed. “What are you doing in my room, Navarro?”
Pale hair a disheveled tangle around her shoulders, her eyes heavy with faux sleep. She looked soft and warm and sexy as hell. Even with the SIG held loosely in one hand. He flung her arm away before he pulled her closer. Damn woman was tying him in knots. “Damn you’re good.”
She put her fists on her hips in an aggressive stance that thrust out her unbound breasts, barely covered by a thin, black tank top. Narrow-eyed she glared up at him. “Have you lost your ever-loving
mind?
How dare yo—” Her scowl turned into a frown. “What happened to you? Did you get in a barroom brawl?”
The blood-stick wound on his temple throbbed like hell, and pain still shot through his balls. However, his ego had taken the brunt of the attack. “Right. I always take myself off to the pub to have a pint while I’m working,” he said, incensed because – Well, because he was pissed. And she was
there
. “Why’d you do it, Winston? What the
fuck
are you up to?”
She took her hands off her hips, but kept a hold of her pistol. “Five feet six.”
“This isn’t a joke.”
“
Really?
You bust in here—and how, I’d like to know, since I locked my door and had a chair shoved under the handle—drag me out of bed and shake me like a dishrag. Why don’t you tell me what
you’re
up to, Navarro!”
The problem with being mad at a woman at three in the morning was the distraction of knowing she was all but naked under that skimpy top and thin cotton pants. Which was probably a calculated plan. The woman was not to be trusted.
He’d woken in the gutter. A blinding headache, weapon’s back in their holsters. It wasn’t blood on his face, it was egg. He’d been taken down by God only knew who, for God only knew what reason. Even God was probably wondering why he was still alive instead of trying to charm his way through the Pearly Gates.
Winston was mixed up in this clusterfuck, and he wanted answers. Now.
He hadn’t been one hundred percent positive that it was her in the alley. However, on the rest of the slow, painful walk to the hotel, his machismo and a healthy dose of skepticism had almost convinced him it
was
.
“I knew that was you in the alley. Did you think I wouldn’t recognize—” He was just about to say, ‘The smell of your skin’ when he realized how incriminating that might sound and caught himself. “You?” He indicated the lump on his head. Easy to miss since his face was a bloody mess; everything looked terrible. Good thing he hadn’t bumped into anyone as he’d come through the hotel lobby.
“No, I’m sure you’ve always been aware of my incredible skill at astral projection, and my remarkable ability to be in two places at once.” She cocked her head, pale eyes filled with irritation. “
Have
you been drinking? You aren’t making a damn bit of sense.”
Seeing her half naked, combined with the events of the last hour, made him fucking irrational. “You and your thugs attacked me on the way back from the warehouse—”
“Now I have
thugs
?” With a shake of her head, she shot him an incredulous look. “
Seriously?
While I do understand
why
someone would want to beat the crap out of you, Navarro, I, unfortunately, have been right here in the hotel all day and night, just
thinking
about beating you to a pulp. But thinking about it doesn’t equate actually
doing
it, unless that’s another superpower I wasn’t aware I had? Let me get some clothes on, and we can meet in the other room so I can look at that hole in your head while we talk about the–Whatever it was.”
“Put some clothes on.”
“I just said—” She let out her breath. He wasn’t listening. “I’ll be there in a minute. Get hot water and towels, I’ll bring my med kit.”
Rafael spun on his heel and stalked from the room.
Honey watched him go with a knot in her belly.
Someone
had attacked him, but it hadn’t been her. They wanted Navarro to
think
it was her. Why? What the hell was going on? How was she in the center of a whirlwind without knowing how she’d gotten there? Each event layered on the one before it, forming an equation that equaled bad news.
It was as if someone was trying to infect the team with a Trojan horse virus, weakening them all by making them suspect one another. Well, they’d picked on the wrong computer geek. Bra, then sweater layered over the skimpy camisole. After pulling a comb through her hair, she called it good, and with her small medical kit in hand, went into the other room to see if she could make sense of what had happened to him. First thing’s first.
“Let’s establish a baseline.” She put the kit on a table next to his idea of a bowl of hot water—a half-filled glass of tepid water—and a pile of giant, fluffy white bath towels from his bathroom. She spared a moment to pity whoever was going to try to get the bloodstains out of them. “I was here. You were
wherever
. I haven’t seen you since you left this afternoon. Go from that presumption.”
After repositioning the lamp so she could see what she had to deal with, she decided she’d see better without the shade and proceeded to unscrew the finial and remove it. In the bright light of the naked bulb, the head wound looked even worse than earlier.
Blood covered the entire left side of his face with a dark purple bruise forming underneath. His wet hair stuck to his blood-splattered neck. His shirt was blotched with red, his jeans wet to the knee, his knuckles scraped. Her heart did a somersault. It had to have taken an entire team to beat him this badly. There was no way two or even three men alone could have done this much damage to as seasoned a T-FLAC operative as Navarro. She knew firsthand what a skilled fighter he was.
He squinted into the brightness, putting up a hand to shade his eyes. “Jesus, Winston, have mercy. I’ll tell you anything you want to know without the interrogation lights.”
She wasn’t amused. “Yeah? Well, you can start with ‘Sorry I didn’t give you the benefit of the doubt,’ and a dozen red roses.”
“You like red roses?”
She didn’t. Peonies were her thing. Pink, fragrant, and girlie. No one would ever suspect or ever bothered to ask. “I like apologies better.” Honey tilted her head to study him thoughtfully. “Stay still so I can see what I’m dealing with here.”
He looked like hell. That was bad enough, but she was scared for him, and that worried her even more. There’d never been anyone in her life worthy of worry other than Pollack. Concern for her friend filled all her emotional corners, leaving no room for anyone or anything else.
Until now.
That she had such a visceral and profound—she’d call it
empathy
—for Navarro was wrong in a hundred different ways, none of which she wanted to analyze now. “You need a hospital.”
Wincing, he half rose from the chair. “If you won’t slap on a Band-Aid, I’ll do it myself.”
Honey put a firm hand on his shoulder. “A Band-Aid is not going to help this. Trust me. Stop being a baby and sit your ass down, Navarro.” Oh, hell, she really, really didn’t want to deal with any of these emotions. Especially for the Spanish Stallion, who hadn’t gotten his name because he was good at bomb disposal. A reputation, no matter how exaggerated, was usually based on some small kernel of truth. She’d seen enough of the broken hearts he’d left in his wake to know that the kernel of truth in this case was pretty damn big.