Page 88 of Summer Heat
The butler opened the door. “Gabriella, please come in. Everyone’s gathering in the main hall. It’s dangerous to be out here.”
Cash stood in the shadows. She knew the butler couldn’t see him. Yet, her pulse stuttered, and her throat tightened. She wanted to protect one man from the other. Nicola looked over her shoulder, and Cash was gone.
CHAPTER TWO
Cash ran through this mind-scrambling scenario as he pushed toward the semi-agreed upon location. He had two more minutes to scoot his caboose there before his spotter had one more thing to bitch at him about. Cash and Roman were tight. One hell of a sniper-spotter team, and best of bros. From boot camp to Titan Group, they’d been by each other’s sides, watching backs, chasing chicks, and fighting in the trenches.
With fifteen seconds to spare, Cash rounded a moss-covered boulder and ran smack into Roman.
“How goes it, dickhead?” Roman scowled. “Your mic not working? Your earpiece burn out?”
A rumble of tires put the pause on their conversation. The armored Range Rover barreled around a tight curve, and they jumped in before it came to a stop. Two doors shut. The driver tore down the road as Cash and Roman righted themselves in the backseat. Cash ignored Roman and waited for the shitstorm he knew was coming.
As if on cue, Roman turned his camo-painted face and stared hard. Cash started to peel off his ghillie suit, unzipping the outfit of fake leaves.
“Hold your roll, Cash.”
“Back off.”
Roman lowered his voice. “The hell I will.”
All the questions, all the confusions morphed into fury. Distrust. “Did you know?”
“Know? Know what?”
Cash lunged forward, wrapping his hand around Roman’s throat. “So help me God. Did you know about her?”
Pressed against the window, Roman jabbed his knee into Cash’s gut. Like two battling rams, they pounded and cursed.
The man at the wheel, Rocco, shifted in his seat. “What the fuck? Sit down.”
Cash felt the Range Rover skid to a stop, knew he and his best friend were trading blows, but none of it clicked in his frontal lobe. He was all emotion and instinct. The back door opened, and Roman ducked out, pulling Cash with him.
Roman caught him in the jaw with a fist full of knuckles. Wet asphalt scratched his face. He righted himself, pulling an arm back. He’d kill Roman if it was the last thing he did. All that bullshit about loyalty and honor. What a crock.
Losing his balance, he fell back. Rocco clasped his punch-ready fist and pulled him off Roman, who pounced up into a fighter’s stance, fists raised, knees bent. Rocco had killed the car’s lights. No moonlight. Just the three men, two with sweat steaming off them in the cool night air and one level-headed, probably wondering what the fuck. Hell, maybe Roman wondered that too.
***
Shaking, Nicola walked into the main hall. Her fingers vibrated and her heart banged like she was one of Antilla’s eight-ball snorting girls. It was a good look for her now that she’d been lassoed into the main hall with distraught women who were genuinely upset that the bastard was dead.
Sweet, funny Cash Garrison. She had no doubt it was him, though he must have a hundred pounds of pure muscle hanging off those long limbs. Could men in their twenties have growth spurts? She didn’t remember him as tall. Certainly not as broad. And his voice was deeper than the bottom of the cliff she supposedly drove off of a decade ago.
Nicola looked from one woman to the next. She could identify all of them. Then she eyed the men. They too were catalogued in her memory, but she didn’t know what each did for Smooth or how the money funneled in and out of his Swiss banks.
The CIA was right to be disappointed in her. Beth should put her on desk duty at the Farm until she was an old biddy talking about her days in the spy game. Shit. She really needed to talk to Beth.
In the corner, Antilla’s head of security barked orders. There was no telling what that crackpot might do. Nicola needed to get the hell out of here. Patio escape plan, round two. The butler touched her shoulder.
“Gabriella, would you like a glass of water?”
Him again? He was always around, always watching. “No, grazie.”
“May I get you a lemonade? The taste reminds me of sunset walks on the beach at night.”
She went from ignoring him to pinning him against the wall with a stare. “Scuzi?”
He spoke slower. More deliberate. “I said. Sunset walks on the beach. At night.”
