Laura Kaye - Hard As It Gets

“I’ll sit on your lap later if you want,” she said, referring to his T-shirt: I’m not Santa, but you can still sit on my lap . . .

That quirked a grin out of him. “My lap is open to you any time, babe. Ow.” Nick cuffed him on the back of the head and he flinched. “Santa.” Jer pointed to himself. “The Grinch.” He pointed to Nick. “You choose.”

Becca laughed and the guys joined in. Nick shoveled some pork fried rice down his throat and tried to pretend it wasn’t funny. But she could see the truth in his gorgeous eyes.

Fifteen minutes later, they were back in the gym again. Her eyes widened at the arsenal getting pulled from duffel bags and cases. Handguns. Rifles. Tasers. Ammunition. Headsets. Radios. Other things she couldn’t identify and honestly didn’t want to. Turned out each of the guys who’d driven here—Shane, Beckett, and Easy—had come prepared for the worst.

And now here they were.

“Why do you all have all this?” she asked.

Beckett looked over his shoulder. “Security is my line of work. But ever since I got back from Afghanistan, I’ve been preparing for the day the shit rained down again. Had to come sooner or later.”

“I’ve always been a collector,” Shane said. His gaze dropped to a duffel. “After last year, it became more than a hobby. It seemed smart to be prepared for whatever had come at me before to take another swipe.”

Easy nodded. “What they said. In a nutshell.”

The only thing lined up on the floor that didn’t make her stomach hurt was a huge professional-grade trauma kit that made hers look like a child’s toy—one of Shane’s contributions to their new supplies. Nick had explained that Shane had medic training, and knowing the man was equally capable of healing as killing added a new layer she couldn’t help but respect.

For a few minutes, Nick, Shane, Beckett, and Easy silently checked their weapons and filled their holsters. Metallic clicks and snaps filled the air. She sat with Jeremy and Marz in a semicircle behind Marz’s desk.

Suddenly, Marz shoved up from his chair. Not-Eileen yelped awake from where she’d been sleeping at Marz’s feet. “This is bullshit.”

“What?” Nick asked.

“I’m coming with you.” The sounds of their weapons checks ground to a halt.

Beckett shook his head. “We need you here, Marz.”

“No, you don’t,” he seethed.

“Derek, man—”

Marz glared at Beck. “Don’t you fucking say one word about my leg. I’m as capable as any of you.” She hadn’t known Derek long, but Becca absolutely believed him.

The big guy held up his hands. “I was just gonna say we need you to run the op with the cameras and scanner intel.”

“Jeremy can do it,” Marz said, crossing his arms.

Jeremy bolted upright in his seat, and Nick froze. “What?” they both asked.

Marz perched on the edge of the desk and looked at Jeremy. “I spent three hours teaching you this equipment last night during their reconnaissance mission. By the time he went to bed,” he said, addressing the other men, “he could recite it in his sleep. Jer knows what to do.”

“Uh, I don’t know,” Jeremy said, shaking his head.

Nick crossed to the desk, intense gaze focused on his brother. “Can you do this?” he asked. “Because we could use Marz in the field.”

A lump lodged in Becca’s throat.

Jeremy tugged his fingers through his hair and nodded, then he rose to his feet. “I can do it. I’ll do it.”

Nick rounded the desk and extended his hand, but when Jeremy accepted it, Nick pulled him in. Seeing the brothers embrace was almost more than Becca could take. As much as she missed Scott, she couldn’t imagine Jeremy learning he’d lost his brother, too. She dropped her gaze to her lap and fought back tears. They clapped each other on the back, then Jeremy was beside her again.

“I might throw up,” he whispered to her.

“Me, too. We can hold the bucket for each other.” He chuckled, but she was only half kidding. Becca rose to her feet. “I’ve made a decision.”

Nick’s brows cranked way down. “You’re not coming with us.”

Her jaw dropped open, and she planted her hands on her hips. “First of all, that’s not what I was going to say. I know a lot of things. One is that I know nothing about how to do what you’re about to do. But, second of all, if I wanted to come, there’d be nothing you could do to stop me.”

He crossed his arms and cocked an eyebrow at her, his gaze filled with heat and amusement. Nick bowed his head. “Please, then, continue.”

“What I was going to say is that we have got to stop eating nothing but takeout. Tomorrow night I’m going to make a big meal of everybody’s favorite comfort food. So decide what you want and I’ll go to the store in the morning.” Because they’d all be coming back. And they’d all sit down around a table together and give thanks that they’d made it through, like the family they were. Or were becoming. She simply wouldn’t accept any other outcome.

A lively conversation erupted about what their choices might be. Laughter and groans of approval rang out. Nick came to her and dropped a kiss on her forehead. “You just told them you believed in them again. Thank you.”

She nodded and found herself blinking a lot for the fifteenth time.

A few minutes later, Miguel walked through the door to the gym. He’d been here so often, Nick had given him the codes. “I’m back. And I’m ready to go,” he called.

Nick scratched his head. “Uh, Miguel.”

He held up a hand. “Don’t ‘uh, Miguel,’ me, son. I did shit like this for twenty-five years on the force. You’re understaffed to take on something this big. You need me.” He threw a challenging look up at Nick. The two of them facing off was almost comical, as Nick had a good five inches on the older man.

“I’d be proud to have you,” Nick said, extending a hand.

From that moment on, Becca’s gaze couldn’t stay off the clock as it inched closer and closer to seven. At the windows, the sky went dark, another indication that it was time for them to go.

And then they were ready.

Marz gave some last-minute advice to Jeremy, who sat sheet white at the computers but was nodding and nailing the answer to every question Marz asked.

Nick came right up into Becca’s space and, without a word, buried his hands in her hair and his tongue in her mouth. It was the kind of kiss that could change a woman’s life. She just prayed it wasn’t the last one he ever gave her. He pulled back, met her gaze, and said, “See you in a few.”

As the six men crossed the room and threaded their way through the gym equipment, Becca called out, “Be careful, you guys. And good luck.”

Without looking back, Shane raised a hand and waved. “Ain’t no thing but a chicken wing.”

One by one, they all disappeared through the door. And her heart dropped all the way to the floor.

Becca’s nerves had her tapping a tuneless song out on the desk, and Jeremy’s skin still hadn’t regained its color, but at least his voice was calm as he responded to the guys’ radio transmissions. It was quite possible that they were the two most stressed-out and scared people on the face of the planet.

There were two teams. A-Team consisted of Nick, Shane, and Easy going to the strip club. B-Team consisted of Beckett, Marz, and Miguel going to the storage center. In place of real names, they all had call signs. Nick was A1, Shane A2, and so on. Jeremy’s sign was Eileen. Marz’s brilliant idea.

“B1, there are two cars in your target’s parking lot,” Jeremy said into his headset as he glanced between the traffic camera images on side-by-side computers. Otherwise, the U-Ship-n-Store appeared empty. But they weren’t using their location names over the radios, either.

“Roger that,” came Beckett’s voice. Marz had routed incoming audio through the computer speakers so she could hear it, too. Sitting on Becca’s lap, the puppy tilted her head back and forth with each new transmission, like she followed along.

“A1, you’ve got a packed house already.” Jeremy wasn’t exaggerating. Confessions was located in a long brick building that had probably once housed a store or business. The large lot at the side was crammed with cars, and the valets were hopping.

Nick’s voice crackled through. “Roger.”

“Eileen, this is B1. We have an ETA of three minutes. Any status change?”

“No. Two cars. No obvious interior lights.”

“Roger.”

“A1 to Eileen, ETA is two minutes to our target.”

Becca’s stomach did a nauseating loop-the-loop. The guys had decided a coordinated dual assault was necessary to have the best chance at rescuing Charlie. Because if they did them sequentially and the first one failed, that would allow Church time to move Charlie and defend himself. The downside to the coordinated strategy was each team only had three men.

Against however many Church had.

“B-Team is on location.”

“Okay,” Jeremy said. “I mean, roger that.”

Becca rubbed a circle on Jer’s back. “You’re doing great,” she said. “Don’t worry about using the right words. They’ll understand.”

He blew out a breath and nodded just as another transmission came in.

“A-Team is on location.”

“A1, B1. Be advised, both teams are on location.” Nick and Beckett both acknowledged the information.

On one monitor, B-Team ran across the darkness of the storage center parking lot and flattened themselves against the side of the building. On the second monitor, Nick, Shane, and Beckett approached the strip club’s front door just like any other guys heading out for the night. Becca covered her mouth with her hand, her gaze hanging on every detail of Nick’s body. And then they disappeared inside.