Even as his mind struggled desperately with the problem, he was aware of every detail around him, aware that the newbie, young Paul, was an inch too high, close beneath one of the beams. Mack hissed and all movement ceased. The warehouse was utterly still. His cold gaze pinned Paul. Mack signaled with a flat hand. The rookie’s body hugged the cold cement. Despite the cover of darkness, Mack knew Paul flushed crimson.
The kid blushed a lot. What the hell he was doing with their team, Mack couldn’t figure out. Basically, they were babysitting, and that could get them all killed. No one on the team wanted the kid with them, but Sergeant Major Griffen had been more than insistent. It wasn’t that the kid wasn’t highly intelligent—he was. He also was psychic, although none of them had gone through Dr. Whitney’s program with him. All the GhostWalkers tended to know or at least recognize one another. Paul was an exception. Mack didn’t like question marks, and the kid posed too many.
Mack rolled free of the interlocking track beams. The loudness of the freight lift was out of the question. It had to be the stairs, each one more perilous than the next. There would be two flights to get to that third floor.
Where the hell are the sentries?
The question nagged at him, would not let him go.
Everyone was on high alert now, the question as disturbing to them as it was to him. He waited a heartbeat, but couldn’t find a reason not to continue.
He moved cautiously. Four stairs . . . seven. He felt it on eight. The wire puzzled him. It was an alarm, not a mine. His mind seized on that, worried at it.
Mack had done this so many times that he knew exactly how each one of his men was feeling. Adrenaline pumping, heart racing, fear choking, guns rock steady. Something was off-kilter. Wrong. The word fluttered in his head, beat at him like tiny wings.
Definitely off.
Kane’s anxiety heightened his own.
Mack gained the second floor. Where the first floor had been mostly empty space and building materials, this one was packed with electronic equipment. A bank of computers was built into the far wall, the only thing completed. Everything else was in boxes, all electronics equipment, high-end.
“Bingo,” Paul’s whisper came over the radio, trembling with excitement. “Moving day.”
Check it, Kane. Maybe we’re looking at how they transported the guns.
Inside electronic equipment? This is satellite tracking, cameras, stuff like that. Not guns. We’ve stumbled onto something, but I’m not certain it’s what we’re after.
Mack wasn’t certain either. He shook his head, his mind screaming at him now. This was all wrong. No sentries. This type of equipment was far too advanced for the kind of terrorists that made up the Doomsday organization.
He moved up the staircase. Third stair this time. No explosives. Seventh stair. He rolled beneath the beam on the landing, came up on one knee, breathing deeply.
Here! Here!
His men were spreading out, back-to-back, in a standard search pattern.
What is it? What’s wrong? Find the answer! Find the answer!
Mack moved carefully through the furniture.
The furniture, Mack. All wrong,
Kane hissed in his mind.
A long plush couch, a hand-carved wooden coffee table, a priceless Persian rug. Beautiful, expensive. A small object on an end table. A dragon. Like in a living room. A home. Knowledge came a heartbeat too late.
Something stirred just feet from him, a weapon glinted.
“Break off! Break off!” He yelled it even as he launched himself toward the small figure crouched behind the recliner. His body, solid, heavily muscled, hit the smaller, softer one squarely, knocking the woman flat, pinning her to the floor.
She shocked him by fighting hard, going for pressure points, obviously having a working knowledge of hand-to-hand combat tactics. It took some strength and finesse to subdue her. He successfully blanketed her body with his, tensed for the bullets he was certain would tear into him. His team was well trained, superb even. Not a shot was fired. Even so, as a precaution, Kane caught Paul’s weapon, pushing it away so it wasn’t pointed at McKinley’s body.
There was a long, deadly silence. Mack could hear her breathing, her heart racing. There was no struggle once he’d pinned her; she lay perfectly still beneath him. For a moment he was afraid he had knocked her unconscious, but her breathing was too ragged.
“Is anyone else up here?” He whispered the words in her ear.
She shook her head.
Kane and the others began a standard search pattern. McKinley hoped she was telling the truth. She smelled fresh and faintly exotic, her skin satin smooth, petal soft. The scent, the feel of her, was oddly familiar. Too familiar. His body recognized her before his brain did, reacting with enough testosterone for his entire unit, mixed with more adrenaline than any of them could possibly handle.
McKinley slowly, carefully, eased his weight until he was certain he wasn’t hurting her, yet still kept her pinned. As each member of the team barked, “Clear,” he shifted enough to get a good look at her face. One leg remained firmly over her thighs, a warning not to move.
Behind them, a lamp was switched on. “All clear, sir.” That was young Paul. His men were all staring, yet trying not to stare. The woman was in a long nightgown. See-through. One of those diaphanous, filmy things that clung to every curve and sent a jackhammer through the middle of a man’s skull. Her gown had pulled up her thigh, revealing a more than generous expanse of gleaming skin.
She had tousled hair, a riot of curls, and large, haunting, sapphire-colored eyes. He would know her anywhere, anyplace.
Jaimie.
He said her name, at least he thought he said it, but no sound emerged. Maybe he’d just breathed her name. He touched her thick mane of silky, midnight black hair, his fingers sliding into one of the curls and tugging, letting the strands slide through the pads of his fingers, trying to regain the breath she’d stolen.
“Get off me, McKinley.” The fear was in her voice, but she was striving for control. “What are you doing here? Hi, boys. I missed—most of you,” she greeted from the floor.
“Hey, Jaimie,” Kane said.
“Man, Jaimie,” Javier added. “Sweet damn security system. I should have recognized your work.”
“Great to see you, Jaimie,” Brian Hutton added with a little grin. “Although we’re seeing more of you than brothers are comfortable with.”
“What the fuck are you wearing?” Mack demanded. Lust punched hard and mean, his entire body tightening, his cock hard as a rock. He was furious with her, scared for her. Shocked at seeing her. What was going on? She had fucking left him.
Left
him. Disappeared without a trace.
His hand gripped her throat and he trapped her there on the floor, letting her feel the strength of his anger—of his need. He leaned close. “Did you find yourself, Jaimie? Did you find everything you were looking for?”
Did you miss me the way I missed you? Did you bring my heart back, because I have a damn big hole where it should be.
He stared down into her eyes—eyes he’d always fall into, eyes he’d always drown in.
Damn you, Jaimie. Damn you to hell for this.
The attraction was worse than it had ever been, flooding him until his body was no longer his and discipline and control had gone out the window.
“Don’t you dare look at me that way.”
She swallowed hard. He felt the movement against the palm of his hand. “What way?”
“Like you’re afraid of me. Like I’m going to hurt you.” There was panic in her eyes, fear almost amounting to terror, and it sickened him.
“Mack.” Kane’s voice was very soft. “You’ve got your hand around her throat and you’re sitting on her. That could be interpreted by some as an aggressive action.”
Mack hissed, his head snapping around. “Anyone else have anything brilliant they want to contribute?”
No one else was that stupid—or brave.
He loosened his hold on her throat but retained possession, feeling the satisfyingly frantic beat of her pulse in the center of his palm. “What the hell are you wearing?” he demanded again. “You might as well be wearing nothing at all.”
“It’s called a nightgown,” Jaimie replied, her voice sarcastic. “Mack, let me up. In case no one’s ever told you, you’re heavy.”
He was solid muscle. And right now every single inch of him was as hard as a rock. Moving was going to be painful, one way or another.
Sighing, because everyone was going to know exactly what she did to him, he shifted very carefully. “Get some clothes on.” Abruptly, Mack was on his feet, pulling her up with him. A quick flick of his eyes and his men found the ceiling interesting.
They were grinning like idiots. All of them. Even Kane. Mack resisted swearing at them.
“Have the decency to turn around,” he ordered the others.
Morons. Every single one. He didn’t turn around. He glared at her. Daggers. “That’s a hell of a thing to wear unless you’re entertaining, Jaimie. Are you entertaining?” His hand slid down to the satisfying hilt of his knife. He’d do some entertaining of his own if some son of a bitch was moving in on Jaimie. Not waiting for an answer, he tore off his jacket and threw it at her. “Cover up.”
“Go to hell, Mack. This is my home. My bedroom, in case you haven’t noticed.”
Still, she slipped her arms into the jacket and inhaled, rubbing her cheek along the material without thinking, and then stalked across the room to yank open a drawer. “You’re a long way from home.” Jaimie made the observation as she donned a pair of charcoal sweatpants. “Not to mention you’re a little overdressed for these parts.”
He noticed her hands were trembling as she pulled the edges of his jacket together. Her voice was exactly as he remembered. Soft, husky, beautiful. Like clear running water. It hurt him to look at her. Her chin was in the air—the same defiant Jaimie he’d known forever. But she wasn’t looking at him, not directly, and that wasn’t like Jaimie.
“The next time you want to drop in, local custom demands that you do me the courtesy of knocking.” She paced away from him, back again, unable to rid her body of the adrenaline. “What are you doing here, Mack?”
“We followed a shipment of weapons.”
Her eyebrows shot up. “To San Francisco? To my home?”
“Right to your front door, baby.”
She winced. “I’m not your baby, Mack. That was a long time ago. What are you really doing here?”
“Our information . . .”
“Mack, come on.” She crossed to the window and looked out over the pounding waves. “You and I both know this is too big of a coincidence. If you weren’t the one to arrange it, then your informer wanted you here. Wanted us together.”
He
wanted them together, so whoever had done this, deliberately or not, Mack owed them. Jaimie had disappeared out of all of their lives some time ago. She’d been a big part of their street family and now here she was—practically in his lap.
He crossed to stand behind her, gently taking hold of her shoulders and moving her back away from the window.
Kane cleared his throat. “The information was, the shipment we’re after was off-loaded and stored in this block of warehouses. Corner. High security. That’s this warehouse, Jaimie.”
Her sapphire gaze touched his face, jumped away. “Actually, it’s not. You want the one at the end of this block. Mysterious trucks in the middle of the night. Hard cases, trying to look friendly. You want that warehouse, not mine.” Her gaze swung back to Mack. There was something faintly accusing in the depths of her eyes, but then she glanced away from him—as if she couldn’t bear to look at him.
Deep inside, there was a stirring, an answer. Mack could feel his body’s reaction, taut, dangerous, a man’s reaction. Jaimie Fielding. His fists curled. His Jaimie. Stubborn Jaimie, with her outrageous sense of humor, her computer brain, and her pure ethics. Her small teeth bit nervously at her lip, drawing Mack’s immediate attention to the fullness of her soft mouth. He had always wanted to crush her lips beneath his when he saw that mouth—still did. She’d
left
him.
“I think my rights as a United States citizen have been severely violated,” Jaimie pointed out. “You just invaded my home.”
Mack swept a hand through charcoal hair. “Can it, Jaimie,” he snapped. “This isn’t funny.” Seeing her threw him. Drawing her scent into his lungs sent his body into some kind of permanent overdrive. He was supposed to be disciplined, but somehow, with Jaimie around, his body went haywire, thinking with other portions of his anatomy rather than his brain.
“Do I look like I’m laughing?” Her eyebrows arched in inquiry. “I can assure you, I wasn’t trying to be funny.” At his look, her full, lush lips curled, pursed. “Well, so, all right,” she conceded. “Maybe I was a bit. Your hotshot intelligence group made a big mistake. Left you with egg all over your face. Not to mention I was waiting for you.”
Mack snatched up the frying pan lying beside the sofa. “I suppose you thought you were going to bean the entire team with this.”
A low rumble of laughter swept through the room. Jaimie smirked at them. “Laugh all you want, hotshots. If I’d been your enemy, you would be dead or wounded right now.”
“She has a point.” Mack’s glittering eyes swept the room. “We’re lucky this isn’t the place.”
Kane watched Mack watching Jaimie. It looked like trouble to him, but then, it always had been trouble when the two of them had been in close proximity. Combustible. Like a match to dynamite. He found himself grinning. “Did you provide the anonymous information?”
“Not a chance,” Jaimie denied staunchly. “I’m sort of doing my own thing here and wouldn’t call attention to myself. Nor do I want an angry neighbor torching the place with me in it if I set the hounds on them.”
“Why all the security?” Paul demanded, unconvinced. “And what’s with all the electronic equipment?”
“I’m a spy for Russia,” Jaimie snapped. “Where’s your search warrant? This is still the United States, whether you have an invisible badge or not.”
“He’s new, Jaimie,” Kane said softly. “Cut him some slack.”