Page 31 of Dangerous Devotion

Her breath came in quick pants. Perspiration broke out on her brow and under her arms.

It had been a long time since she felt something like this, but she had to admit the truth to herself: she was freaking out.

She clenched the steering wheel harder. Her knuckles whitened, glinting through her pale skin. Then they began to ache with the strain.

It shook her, the way he disappeared. All his cocky, muscled bravado had been there one minute and was gone during the fraction of time it took for her to glance at the car next to her.

She hated this. Hated him for ducking out of sight and leaving her sitting here, helpless and on edge.

She wasn’t really helpless, though. She was trained for ops exactly like this. But her partner never disappeared before.

With her heart hammering a frantic rhythm, she stared at the truck, hoping to catch some hint of him. For what felt like an eternity, she divided her time between glancing at the vehicle and the exit of the restaurant, praying that the kids didn’t get their food and eat too fast.

Dammit, AJ.

She wanted a glimpse of his warm chestnut brown hair, of those broad, muscled shoulders. In case he came running and they needed a quick getaway, she started the car.

Across the parking lot, the area around the truck was silent with nothing to indicate that the reckless, too-hunky SEAL was trying to break into it.

This wasnotthe plan.

Okay, there was no plan. Nothing had been settled. Since she arrived at the Blackout base, nothing seemed to be going right or in the way she was accustomed to ops going.

When she was called in to that meeting, she should have put her foot down—reallyput it downhard,and demanded any other partner.

Her hand hovered over her phone. Con was only a call away.

What would she say to him? That his special operative was going by his own rules, playing a dangerous game with a bomb involved?

Con was deep in another mission across the country after that plane crash. He wouldn’t appreciate a call from her. Besides, she didn’t really have any reason to call Con. Not yet. Not unless AJ didn’t return.

If I don’t come back,he’d said.

“If you don’t come back, I’ll kill you myself.”

Her voice was overly loud to her own ears. An undercurrent of fury shook at the center of the words. For the second time in her career, she was rattled.

“Where the hell are you?” she whispered.

Suddenly, a loudbangvibrated the car windows. She let out a small shriek and jumped out, prepared to see the bomb had detonated, and the entire truck was blown to smithereens…

With AJ inside.

But the truck was still sitting there. Intact.

Another low banging noise sounded down the road, where a car engine backfired a second time.

She melted against the side of the car and then slid back into the seat, gripping the wheel while her heart thumped even faster than before.

Another wave of panic rose in her chest like a tide rising up the sharp face of a cliff. Why did everything about her partner make her think of dangerous seas? It had to be the color of his eyes. No, not only the color. The turmoil in the depths too.

She stared at the ground around the truck tires. What if he was lying there hurt…or worse?

She couldn’t rush in to see for herself. A frantic woman running across a parking lot wasn’t exactly subtle. The kids already knew they were in the area. She couldn’t let them catch on that they were following them as well.

Biting down hard on her lip, she felt a tiny sting as the skin separated. Several minutes crawled by, a heavy weight dragging over her nerves. Agonizing seconds counted the moments since she last set eyes on AJ.

She’d heard tales of partners going missing. Some never found.

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