Page 4 of Skull

He gave her a fast, tight smile and gruffly said, “That wasn’t—fuck it, never mind.”

He stayed silent until they reached the small airport. When they got out of the car, she noticed two men acting shady around a small plane. Her instincts kicked in, and she made a beeline toward them. They were antsy, and when they pulled out their sidearms and fired at her, she had to take cover to the side of the hangar.

Skull swore, then swore again when she pulled her weapon and fired back. “What the fuck are you doing?”

“Those guys know something. Don’t just stand there.”

“I’m not bulletproof, little birdy,” he growled, then scanned the area before darting behind some crates. They started shooting at him, so when she came from behind the hangar and tagged both, she was grateful for his distraction. He was fast as hell, and his seething anger looked out of control. He ran toward them, kicking the guns away from their bodies, but only one of them was alive.

Skull crouched down and pressed on the bullet graze on the downed man’s arm. The cartel thug gritted his teeth in pain. “Where are Archer Booth and Leigh Waterford?” Skull demanded, his voice edged with threat.

The thug spat at him, and Skull increased the pressure. He cried out, then, agony threading his words, said raggedly, “You’ll never get to them in time. They’re dead if you don’t cooperate.”

Security was already on its way—cops had probably been called. They needed to get out of there.

“Skull, we’ll get the information we need out of him. We have some fast talking to do,” she said.

Skull ignored her and kept pressuring the man for answers. Frustration surged through her as she rose to handle the two men in guard uniforms who walked toward her, both armed. She held up her fake FBI badge, soothing them into cooperation without a care for protocol.

This guy was coming with her, and they were going to have a private conversation.

“Can it,” Walker said, shouldering Skull away from the man and swiftly zip-tying his hands behind his back. The two airport rent-a-guards exchanged a glance at his wound. “He’ll live, and we need the information he’s withholding. This is a time-sensitive federal case,” she said, patting the side of the kidnapper’s face…Hazard and Leigh’s kidnapper. “Don’t worry. We’ll get him the minor medical attention he needs.”

If he didn’t give her the answers she wanted, he was going to, at the very least, need a hospital or, at the very worst, a deep hole in the ground when she was done with him.

2

Geezus,she was already off the rails, and he’d only been with her for five fucking minutes. She’d been nothing but trouble since the second they met, even if they hadn’t spent much time together. But she had bagged a real, solid lead, and he couldn’t fault her for it. In his head, he kept swearing one cold-edged curse after another, and he wished he could get that guy alone and beat the answers out of him.

But that wasn’t how SEALs operated in the Navy, and part of him knew he had to do what it took to find the intel they needed. Still, he was bound by rules, including the Geneva Convention.

“Could you watch this guy for one moment?” Skull asked the guards. “I need a private moment with my partner.” His words didn’t faze her in the slightest. God, she was a piece of work, and not in the way she thought. She stared back at him, and a frisson of something, something that hit places he was trained to ignore raced through him. He was going to stay professional if it killed him. He took charge for a living, and he was damn good at it. Steeling himself, he cleared his throat.

Hummingbird looked at him with a cold, impassive expression. Only her blue eyes betrayed anything, hard and frosty like a frozen winter lake. No five-foot-and-next-to-nothing blonde was going to intimidate him. He grabbed her arm and set off, taking long, sure strides so that she had to double-time it to keep up. Once they were out of earshot of the guards and the man who was still gasping in pain, a real lightweight, he bent down close to her face, his voice low and urgent.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing? First off, this guy isn’t going to fit in my car. I only have two seats. And secondly, you’re not allowed to work on US soil. Did you not get that memo? Call your people and get them out here to transport him?—”

She chuckled and scoffed. “I’m not exactly a memo-reading gal. I’m more like a cross between a dominatrix—the boots are to die for—and an executioner without a cool mask. I kick ass and get information, and that’s exactly what I’m going to do.”

“What about his rights?” he demanded. As a professional warrior, a steward of the American flag, he and his brothers operated under strict guidelines. They had rigid rules of engagement, and without a clear weapon in hand, he couldn’t engage. If he hurt an unarmed hostage or killed him in custody, it would be assault or murder, a violation of the UCMJ that could lead to court-martial.

“He doesn’t have rights here. He’s not an American citizen, and he just admitted to kidnapping two of our own. One of them is a fed, one of them is your brother. Do I have to sugarcoat this for you?”

“I’m a hardened veteran, and I don’t need sugar coating. As much as I’d love to get answers out of him, he’s protected by law, regardless of his status.”

“You have to play by those rules. I don’t. I live and work in the dark realm, and the people who lurk there don’t play nice. I strive to be the most dangerous badass I can be. Nobody fucks with people like that. I always let an asset know I’m their best friend unless they fuck with me, then I become worse than their worst nightmare. All over the globe there are places with no moral absolutes. You know that, don’t you? That’s all they understand, and like you and your team, I don’t go on missions to fail.”

“And if you get caught, how is that going to help Hazard and Leigh?” he pressed.

She chuckled again. “Get caught?” she said as if those words didn’t compute. “You really don’t know who we are, do you?”

“What does that mean?”

“Cooper, we’re ghosts, elusive and invisible like shadows in the night. It’s where we engage our enemies, and all our actions are our business. The agency has given us carte blanche, complete anonymity, and free rein. If I want to disappear this guy, no one will bat an eye, and I’ll sleep just fine at night.”

“What exactly are you going to do with him?”

“You don’t need to worry your pretty head about that. Not you, not Anna, not Iceman, and definitely not your team.” Her voice dropped to a soft, cold tone that brooked no argument. “You have your rules of engagement. I understand you’re Navy, military, bound by orders and rules. That was hammered into you through brutal, intense training. That’s where we differ.”

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