Page 24 of Covert Mission

Spitfire. Like a damned thorn under a bulletproof vest.

She turns my words on me. “You’re dead wrong if you think I’m?—”

I clamp my eyes closed and shake my head. “Woman, you’re gonna be the death of me.”

“Maybe. Now get out of my way. I’ve got work to do. So do you.”

When she swings past me, I grab her arm.

Her bones are delicate, but her muscles are honed. The urge to drag her to the bed is nearly my undoing.

Her hazel eyes widen and meet mine. “Why did you stop me?”

“To tell you to be careful.”

She looks at my body pointedly. “You’re guarding me, what could go wrong?”

“It’s me you’ve got to be careful around.”

Her pretty little tongue dances across her lips. “Don’t you know angry women are dangerous, Beast?”

“Apparently.”

The tension gets so thick in the room I wonder if we might set the place on fire.

I’m going to kiss her.

A crackle in my coms gear makes me jolt. “Beast, this is Storm, do you copy me? Over.”

Evan is looking for me.

Dammit.Damn. It.

My voice comes out thick and husky. “Copy. Go ahead, over.”

Camile blinks and watches my expressions intently, curious.

“We have a couple of developments. Over.”

My gut starts to crawl. Never a good sign. “What kind of developments?”

“First, Scout thinks he found someone that saw MZ in Santa Rosa the day before yesterday. Unconfirmed. He’s working on that. But the other issue is that someone set one of the FamFind trucks on fire. That’s fucked. The upside is the rebels are gone for the moment. Over.”

My gut was right. I process this info.

Camile can’t hear Evan’s voice. It’s inside my head, using bone induction technology from a microphone clipped on my tooth.

A fire.

I’m not sure if this makes me happy as hell or pissed on her behalf. Maybe this will convince her team to pull out. “Can you handle it? Over.”

Evan’s reply is quick. “We’re working on it. Over.”

“You got this under control for another fifteen minutes? Over.”

“Affirmative. Over.”

I drop my hand to Camile’s lower back and urge her back toward the bed. “In fifteen minutes, I’ll take you back to meet the others.”