Undercover Captor(17)
He didn’t think she was talking to him anymore. She seemed to be repeating that mantra to herself.
When she started applying pressure and digging that bullet out, he pulled in a deep breath. He locked his gaze on her face. Focused only on her.
He’d been shot on another mission, just a few months back. He’d been lured into a trap. Hit before he’d had a chance to call for backup. When he’d woken in the hospital, Tina had been there. “You were...worried about me,” he said, remembering.
She glanced at him. “Are you staying with me, Drew?”
“Always,” he whispered.
“Good. Because I’m not planning to let you go.” Her lips curved. She was so gorgeous when she smiled. Did she realize that?
She even had a dimple in her left cheek. A little slash that would peek out every now and then.
The dimple wasn’t showing at that moment. Tina had to really smile, had to really laugh, for it to come out. He’d caught her laughing with her friend Sydney once. That was when he’d first seen the dimple.
He’d been lost, staring at her.
“Stitching you up,” she said. “Just a little bit longer.”
He’d watched her that day, and he’d wanted. But there had been another mission waiting for him. There always was. And, even if there hadn’t been, he didn’t know how to approach a woman like her.
Wining and dining. Those were tricks that other guys used. He didn’t know anything about romance.
He just knew too much about death.
“All done.”
Drew glanced down. She’d put a bandage over his wound.
“Thanks, Doc.” He owed her. He’d find a way to repay that debt.
“Thanks for getting me out of that place,” she whispered back to him. A soft, wet cloth pushed over his skin and smoothed down his chest.
He tensed.
Her hand lightly stroked him. “Easy. It’s a bacterial wipe from the kit. I’m just going to clean the blood away.”
“Tina...”
Her hand stilled. She looked up at him.
Focus. “Don’t...leave the house.”
She nodded then smiled. One of those real smiles that flashed her dimple.
Gorgeous.
“I can’t,” she told him. Then she was the one to wiggle their cuff. “I can’t go any place without you.”
The darkness pressed in on him. “Damn straight,” Drew heard himself mumble. “That’s the way it’s going be...here on out...”
And, with Tina’s hands on him, with her smile the last sight he’d seen, Drew let the pain finally take him away.
* * *
“WHERE ARE THEY?”
Lee Slater froze at the demand. Oh, hell, he hadn’t thought the boss would be showing up so soon.
“Did you think I wouldn’t hear about this screw-up?” Anton Devast demanded as he stepped forward. Lee could easily hear his footsteps and the thud, thud, thud of his cane. “The men here are loyal to me, not you, Lee.”
Lee squared his shoulders and spun to face the boss. The guy in front of him didn’t look intimidating. Older, with gray hair at his temples, a slight slump to his shoulders, and the fingers of his right hand curling so tightly around that cane—the guy didn’t look like a threat at all.
He was. He was the deadliest man that Lee had ever met. “I’ve got men tracking them now—”
“You let Bruce Mercer’s daughter escape.”
Cold. But when he looked into the boss’s eyes, that dark blue gaze seemed to burn.
“Sh-she had help.” He was stuttering. Because he’d seen the boss in action. The guy was faster than men half his age. “We think... We think an EOD agent was undercover.”
“I know. Carl told me.”
Carl. Damn it. The guy should have waited for Lee to break the news to the boss.
“Don’t be angry at Carl. I convinced him to tell me everything as soon as I arrived.”
Lee realized that there was blood at the bottom of that cane.
It wasn’t just a cane, he knew. A deadly blade could extend from that tip. Sorry, Carl.
“An EOD agent, in my operation.” The boss began to pace around the room. Thud, thud, thud. “I should’ve eliminated Mercer years ago. The same way he tried to eliminate me.”
The boss had to use the cane because Bruce Mercer had nearly killed him twenty years before. The boss had almost lost his leg in that explosion.
He had lost his son.
Devast stopped pacing. He lifted the cane and pointed it at Lee. “You have six hours to find them.”
Lee nodded quickly. “My men—”
The cane pushed against his throat. The blade extended just a bit. “No, not your men. You. Get out there. Kill the EOD agent and bring that woman back to me.”