“I hate to tell you this, but I’m pretty sure these guys don’t eat donuts.”
Zak laughed. “Right. You keep believing that. Just a word of advice—don’t get between these guys and the boxes when I throw them down on the table or you might get run over.”
She shook her head as Zak headed toward the front gate. He was going to be embarrassed when he bought a half-dozen boxes of donuts thinking it’d get him in good with the guys, only to have no one touch them.
Mac started for the admin building, wondering what she should do while Gage cleaned up, when he suddenly appeared at her side. She jumped.
“Crap, you scared me!”
“Sorry about that.” He grinned. “I wanted to let you know it’ll only take me about twenty minutes or so to get cleaned up. Feel free to roam around the compound if you want. Or you can watch TV over in the training building.”
Mac was about to tell Gage to take his time and that she’d go watch the morning news when she got a whiff of his sweat-soaked body. The scent immediately transported her back to the lusty state she’d been in last night when he’d left her alone and unsatisfied at her front door. She’d never found men particularly sexy after a workout, but Gage was a completely different story. He smelled so scrumptious she thought she might drool.
“Thanks,” she finally managed to spit out. “I’ll probably walk around some, then head over and look at the news.”
“Okay. I’ll be quick,” he said, then turned and jogged toward the admin building.
Mac didn’t realize she was following him until she was halfway to the admin building. She stopped short, swearing under her breath. What the hell was she going to do in there, watch him shower and ask if he needed help getting all that sand off his back?
She shook her head. She needed to get a grip on herself, and fast.
She turned to head toward the training building, but stopped again. She’d wanted to get a look at the filing cabinets she’d seen yesterday. What better time to do it than while the entire SWAT team was showering?
She stepped into the building all prepared to give Gage some story about needing to use a computer, but he was already upstairs with the other men. Of course, this would be a waste of time if the file cabinets were locked. But they weren’t. She wasn’t sure if that was good or bad. Sure, she’d be able to rifle through them, but if there was something incriminating in them, would they leave them open? Only one way to find out.
The first drawer she looked in held personnel records. She skimmed through a few, including Gage’s, but there was nothing in there she didn’t already know. It wasn’t as if they were going to maintain a list of drugs they might be taking. She closed that drawer and opened the next.
This one held more personnel records, but these were specifically related to training and weapons qualification information. Other than the fact that all the files were thick as heck—SWAT guys trained a lot—they were otherwise pretty dull.
She moved to the next cabinet and opened the top drawer. It was full of what looked like incident records for each call the team had responded to, complete with officer statements, photographs, diagrams, and procedure review documents.
Now this had potential.
She picked a folder at random and started flipping through it when she heard the sounds of laughter coming from upstairs. That was when it hit her—there were sixteen attractive, muscular, naked, and probably soap-covered men in the showers not more than a few feet above her head. The thought was almost enough to make her say the hell with these old files and sneak upstairs for a peek.
But she had a job to do—and secrets to uncover.
Mac checked the door, listening for footsteps coming down the stairs. She didn’t have a lot of time to snoop around.
She tried to focus on reading between the lines of the reports, looking for any details they might have glossed over, or even left out completely. But it was hard not getting caught up in what she read.
The first report chronicled a hostage situation involving a rape victim and her brutal attacker. The next was a father who’d killed two of his own children before Gage and his men had gotten there just in time to save the mother and a newborn baby.
Murderers barricaded in their homes, thugs who’d robbed convenience stores, everyday people who’d snapped and started shooting everyone they came across, depressed people who wanted a way out and thought pointing a gun at a bunch of people might get them what they were looking for.
Mac was stunned by how many of the incidents ended with the suspects getting arrested instead of shot by SWAT. She’d always assumed SWAT only got involved when someone needed shooting.