Mastered By The Mavericks (19 page)

He normally laughed this crap off. Wasn’t like Rhett had never given him that glare
before. Christ, if he had a buck for every time the man
had
dragged out that combination of sadness, indictment, and confusion, he’d have enough
flow for a mansion in the Garden District. He made it easier on them both by rowing
his boat right on by, enjoying the scenery on his way to easier waters, letting Rhett
wallow in his muck of holier-than-thou.

He didn’t feel like rowing right now. Didn’t feel like pretending that Rhett’s walls
were just as high and ugly as his, just because the
fils de putain
chose not to escape his emptiness in diving for pussy.

Only this time, that was exactly what he’d done.

Because Rhett hadn’t been escaping the emptiness.

Rhett had been escaping
him
.

The moments in the kitchen had shaken him so deeply, he’d coped by getting his dick
into a female as soon as possible. Trouble was, she wasn’t just any female. She was
Brynna Monet. Sexy, funny, whip-smart, open-hearted Brynna—a woman who deserved honesty
and openness in return, not mooning stares and hints at “forever” when they all knew
damn well that this was the craziest set of circumstances from which to expect a forever.

Nope. No rowing by this time. Rhett had sure as hell not played fair, and neither
would he.

Nothing like that to lend the resolve to lean back, hands braced behind him, displaying
his spread-out body for the attention of anyone who cared to look. And yeah, Rhett
looked. And looked some more.

Reb smiled. Leisurely. Knowingly. If Rhett wasn’t going to acknowledge the electricity
between them, he’d sure as hell handle it for them both.

“I still need cleaning up, Double-Oh.”

The man didn’t move. Just filled the doorway with that hard tension on his lips, that
palpable need in his presence—

That was suddenly too much for the narrow space of the arch.

His energy spilled through the room, hitting Rebel with its full force of fury—and
lust.

Immediately, Reb hissed from the impact.

Instantly, his cock punched against his briefs.

Violently, Rhett stumbled backward. From his new position, he hurled a glare back
into the kitchen, stabbing the air like spears of ice. “You heard what the lady said.
Do it yourself.”

‡

B
rynn zoomed from
fast asleep to wide awake in three seconds. After silencing the alarm on her phone,
she ran a hand through her hair and blinked in confusion. Where was she, and why had
she set her alarm for the middle of the night?

A gasp took over as the answers surged in. She was in one of the guest bedrooms at
Dax Blake’s ranch, and it wasn’t the middle of the night. It was five-thirty a.m.,
the beginning of the day. In half an hour, she’d join Rhett and Rebel for a check-in
with Say and El, then start her shift at the mouse cam console. Already she prayed
it wouldn’t be another six hours of looking at nothing but live feeds of halls, doors,
and feet. Lots and lots of feet.

Rhett, Rebel, and she had followed those feet everywhere inside that damn building—for
three days now. Breaking up the days and nights into rotating shifts of six hours
each, none of them had left the mouse cam alone for a second. Rhett had trained Rebel
and her on the basic maneuvering techniques for the device but if they encountered
a special circumstance like stairs, elevators, or ramps, the protocol was to fetch
him for help. Because of that, Rhett slept on the pull-out futon in the small den
next to the office. In a strange display of solidarity, especially in light of the
continued friction between the two, Rebel also slept close by, making his bed out
of a couple of blankets and a pillow on the living room couch.

Whatever
.

She hated—
hated
—being cavalier about it, but it seemed her only safe path to some semblance of emotional
stability. “Semblance” was the right word for it, too, because their tense blood with
each other hadn’t stopped either of them from warming more of hers—and endearing themselves
deeper on just about every level.

Just as disconcerting? On most of those occasions, the gorgeous bastards weren’t even
trying. Like the morning she’d spied on Rebel as he tackled the parkour run in Dax’s
gym, providing his own sportscaster commentary—landing himself in first place, of
course. And the night she’d overheard Rhett in the shower, belting every perfectly
memorized word of
Welcome to the Jungle
. Then there was Rebel’s laughter, given with all of himself, at her stupidest jokes—and
Rhett’s “innocent” grin when he’d pranked her gullible side.

Those events were easier to write off than the purposeful ones, like the way Rhett
drove ten miles to find a store that carried her beloved hazelnut coffee creamer,
and the afternoon Rebel had brought handpicked wildflowers to ease her grief that
they hadn’t found Zoe on the camera feed yet.

Zoe
.

There was her hugest reason to keep the distance from the guys. Good news: she wasn’t
about to forget it; not with the endless ache in her stomach and the constant tear
at her soul. Didn’t stop her from being damn glad that the guys were bunking across
the house. The few hours of sleep she allowed herself each night were the key to staying
alert during her shift in front of the monitors.

Now, it was time to get to work again.

That meant shutting off the swoony recollections of Sergeants Stafford and Lange,
and focusing her mind completely on what mattered.

Please, God…grant me insight about this
.
The
right
kind this time.

So many times, she was sure they’d found Royce or Adler themselves—as if evil geniuses
had a certain “walk” and she’d surely recognized it by now—but the urgent strides
had always belonged to a scared minion or determined perimeter guard, on their way
to some computer room or post. Rhett, Rebel and she still hadn’t found the one location
in the place they needed to learn about: the exact location where those assholes were
hiding Zoe.

While washing her face in the en suite bathroom, she grimaced into her hands. Gulped
away tears.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
She had no right to this frustration and sorrow when Zoe was living on a diet of
the stuff, alone and terrified somewhere in that building, wondering if she’d ever
be free—or alive—again.

Hang on, Zo. Please hang on
.

She hitched up the pink T-shirt she’d worn to bed long enough to throw on a bra and
apply fresh deodorant, not bothering to change out of her pajama bottoms. She’d showered
before bed, knowing that right now, all she’d want to do was return to the office—though
the fact that Rhett hadn’t woken her up yet wasn’t encouraging at all. If he’d found
something, he’d have called her cell from the office. After brushing her hair into
a fast ponytail—now was no time for vanity—it was time to get the update on what the
mouse had discovered in the last five hours.

Progress. Please God, just one more favor…let it be some kind of progress.

She wasn’t surprised to enter the living room and see only Rebel’s mussed bedding
on the couch. The pirate had started to stir when she went off to bed, having logged
only two hours of sleep himself. By now, that wasn’t a surprise. Despite their charming
moments, the vibe from both men this week had been, in a word, restless. Perhaps even
hyper. It wasn’t normal for them. She knew it was silly to be so certain of it, but
she was. The truth was emblazoned across both their faces, a far different thing than
the tinkles they attempted as remnants of their earlier pissing match. This was something…strange.
And different. For them both.

Could she be off the mark? Possible but not probable. Though she’d spent only sparse
time with both of them before now, there was also a reason the field of psychology
was a perfect fit for her. The gut instincts she relied on for everything from dancing
to cooking were especially accurate when it came to people.

So why was this mission weirding them both out?

Part of that replay was obvious. They usually didn’t have to deal with a mission tag-along,
especially one who’d redefined “break the ice” with them both inside the first twenty-four
hours of the op. But her intuition insisted there was more. Something about their
dynamic had little to do with her or the demands of the mission, and everything to
do with the demands of their relationship.

If that was even what it was…

Was
that
what was going on? And had her…“fun”…with them become a fly in their ointment?

The questions were jarring. Certainly not because she had an issue with them as a
couple—they were actually damn stunning together—but if they’d lied to her about their
significance to each other, especially in light of the passion, intimacy, and orgasms
she’d given to both…well, now they all had a problem.

Though it sounded like the guys had just hunted up a fresh one of those for themselves.

She stopped as the
f
word was bellowed so loud, it made the hallway’s glass walls tremble. Should she
proceed? She felt like one of those too-stupid-to-live ingénues in a horror movie,
investigating the bump in the darkest part of the woods.

As she neared the office, another snarl erupted on the air. Fortunately, this one
didn’t sound like King Kong with a tack in his paw. The words added onto it pegged
the speaker as Rhett.

“Moon, you’ve got to calm the hell down.”

A bunch of pounding steps. More animalistic breaths. “That’s easy for you to say,
isn’t it? You’re not the one who just blew this mission.”

Her brows slammed together.
What the hell
? The mission was blown? Why? How?

“Okay,
chill
. We have no idea what happened. You know there are probably a thousand explanations
why—”

“Why what?” She made the demand from the doorway. Spying from the hallway wasn’t going
to cut it anymore. The pain in Reb’s voice wrenched her as much as what he’d said.
But now that both the guys spun toward her, she wasn’t sure that was the right call,
either. Aside from their tight black T-shirts and low-slung sweats, they looked like
hell. No, worse. Like they’d been to hell, tried to climb out then kept getting tossed
back in to give Satan his jollies.

Rhett released the first resigned breath. Past a steeled jaw, he gritted, “The mouse
cam went dark.”

She drummed her fingers against her thighs. Sent back a look of bewilderment, though
her heart thudded an equally urgent tattoo. “So what does that mean?”

Rebel swung an arm toward the live feed monitors, both now black. “See for yourself.
It means we’re fucking blind, is what it means.”

Brynn shook her head. Wondered why she wasn’t throwing herself over into the same
hell pit as them. “So we just reboot it or something…right?”

“Tried,” Rhett supplied. “And failed.”

“Which means what?”

“Any number of things. Perhaps Adler’s boys finally detected the unit somehow, then
snuck up and disabled it.”

“Highly unlikely, since the last piece of footage would have shown the unit being
picked up and examined.” Rebel sagged against the wall and clawed a hand through his
hair. “Even if those goons figured out the unit was there, they’d have to fish around
for a power switch.”

“Theoretically.” Brynn hated saying it, but the premise made sense. “When El’s nieces
come over to play, I have trouble finding the power buttons on their toys, and I can
see
those.” Five minutes with one’s thumb up Twilight Sparkle’s butt wasn’t an experience
easily forgotten.

Rebel rammed his head all the way back against the wall. “Which leads us back to the
only possible explanation.”

“Which is what?” She didn’t like saying that, either. Revision: she hated it. Felt
like she’d been drafted to the Spanish Inquisition and been told to drill a steel
peg through his leg. Same difference, judging from the pain on his face.

“Primary battery life on the thing is three days,” he muttered. “You have to program
the thing to activate the backup battery—a
manual
procedure after the unit is turned on.”

She absorbed that with careful silence. “And you’re not sure if you did that.”

His face contorted like that was the second steel peg. “Fucking. Idiot.”

“Shut. Up.” Rhett wheeled back fully toward his partner. “You perform surgery on bombs,
Stafford, not cameras. You’re used to being given space, silence and longer lead times
for your work, instead of guards, alarms, and deadlines breathing down your business.
Cut yourself some fucking slack and let’s move on with a new plan.”

A new plan. Brynna darted a glance outside and wondered if Rhett had done the same.
It was almost six o’clock. Dawn was already here; daybreak wouldn’t be far behind.
If “a new plan” included the safer cloak of night, they were screwed for about thirteen
hours.