Page 55 of Baby One Last Time
After a noisy huff, she went quiet.
“Why the mute?” Jensen asked.
“In case my idea doesn’t pan out.” I pulled out my cell phone and punched in a number I knew far too well by heart and put the phone on speaker.
Derek picked up after the first ring. “Cynth.”
His sleep-thick voice made me picture him with tousled hair and morning stubble, and the knot of fear in my gut twisted into lust. I bit the inside of my cheek to pull me back to the here and now.
“Derek, I have a situation.”
“Fuck me,” he said.
“Hey, that’s my line,” Jensen said.
“Jensen’s there?” As Derek spoke, there was rustling. He was already up and out of bed. “Please tell me you two got picked up for being drunk and disorderly and I’m coming to bail you out.”
“Not exactly.” I did not want to tell him the truth, to admit what an utter clusterfuck I’d made of this situation, but Mai didn’t have time for my cowardice. “I got a tip, we followed it to a warehouse, and—long story that we can explain while you’re driving here—Mai ended up hidden in an SUV that is now parked in front of La Parisienne. Behind the gate and wall and security system.”
Derek rambled off a string of colorfully combined curse words. “I’ll be in the car in two minutes,” he said. “I’ll call you from there and you can explain how the actual fuck this happened, Cynthia. And Jensen, don’t think you’re off the hook either.”
I winced. “There’s one more thing. We need climbing gear. Three sets of it. And it wouldn’t hurt to bring some vests and helmets.”
“Great. Nothing like being used for target practice at four in the morning,” he muttered. “Anything else? Unmanned drones, maybe? Some C4?” As he spoke, I heard the clanging of rappelling hooks.
I muted my phone. “Do we have unmanned drones?” I asked Jensen.
“Not with us in Miami.”
I unmuted. “No, that’s everything,” I said.
“I’m hanging up now to sneak out of the resort. I’ll call back in two minutes.”
The phone clicked off. I took a long, slow breath, enjoying the two minutes of peace that remained before Derek heard my story and lost his shit all over again.
“He was dressed and packed in like a minute,” Jensen said. “He’s fast.”
Once again, my mind went somewhere that was totally inappropriate. Meanwhile, my partner was sitting inside Beecher’s perimeter, her life on the line. It was the adrenaline. It had to be. If not, I was pretty sure I was a monster.
Derek was still swearingup a blue streak when he pulled in behind us. He drove a rented Mercedes with the headlights off and parking lights on. He’d listened to the entire story in the first three minutes of his drive, sworn for the next five, and made it to our location in eight. I’d moved to the back of the van for the call so Jensen could keep Mai company over the comms, and so the hacker with a heart of gold didn’t have to hear the tirade that I alone deserved.
Derek turned off the parking lights and climbed out of the car, his silhouette in his all-black mission gear barely discernible in the dark night. I sat frozen for a few heartbeats, watching him move, fluid and cat-like and cool. And so damn sexy it made me ache.
Adrenaline, I reminded myself. I climbed to the front of the van and into the passenger seat as he arrived outside my window. I opened the door and he stepped close. I held my breath, waiting for his touch, which didn’t come.
Jensen leaned over and handed him a comms unit. “I’m working on a more secure channel. It’ll take a few minutes to get us all on it.”
“Thanks.” Derek slipped the comms into his ear. “We’ll suit up.” He looked at me and held out his hand. Not an invitation. Not a polite offer to help me out of the van. A command.
That rankled, but I was the one who’d dragged us all into this mess, so I obeyed. I held onto his fingers and stepped down into the scrub grass along the side of the road. Without dropping my hand, Derek led me further down the side of the van to the spot where he’d dropped a duffel bag.
He dropped my hand and turned to face me, and I braced myself for the next round of admonitions. He closed the gap between us, grabbed my face in both hands, and kissed me. Not to greet. Not to seduce. To stake a claim. Deep and passionate and long. Heat and lust flashed through me and stayed, energizing every cell. When he pulled away, I was breathless. I grabbed the front of his long-sleeved tee shirt to steady myself, and he slipped his arms around my waist and pulled me into his body. Every bit was hot and hard and desperate for me. I molded myself to him, thrilled to know we were both jacked up on the same heady concoction of brain chemicals.
“Getting some mixed signals here, Wilder,” I breathed against the base of his throat.
“When this is over, we do need to have a long talk,” he whispered in my ear, his warm breath tickling the nape of my neck. Between that and the adrenaline, it was hard to focus on the task at hand. “Starting with why you lied about me being able to trust you.”
“You know, in a weird way, I think that was true. Not about where I was going—”
