Page 84 of Dangerous Devotion

Low laughter projected from behind the stall door. Henner threw out his hearing, listening for any footsteps coming toward the restroom. He heard nothing, not even May’s voice as she spoke to Simpson.

“I’m going to walk out of here and head straight to the hangar,” he told Chase.

“I’ll catch up with you in a minute.” He heard the rolling noise of the toilet paper dispenser and inwardly groaned.

He turned away from the urinal and walked out of the restroom. As he exited, he cast a glance at the training area. From this angle, he couldn’t see the rows of seating, but May’s back was to him.

Her spine was straight but not stiffened with tension. She was okay. He needed to make this quick.

He rushed outside in purposeful strides, headed straight for the crate that had the tracker. When he walked in, he swung his head right and left, ensuring that the place was empty.

Pulling out his phone, he used the map to lead him directly to the location of the crate.

Only once he reached the space, nothing was there. In fact, there wasn’t any cargo at all in the vicinity.

Mason and Cobra appeared out of thin air. “What do you got?” Cobra asked.

“Nothing. It’s not here. Spread out. Look for a wood crate with markings on the side.” He named the approximate dimensions.

“A crate that big can’t be hidden easily. Where the hell could it be?” Cobra was on high alert, and Mason was locked in, with his full focus on the op at hand.

They combed the hangar. When they came up empty-handed, Henner returned to the spot where the tracker showed on his map.

“It has to be—” He cut off. His heart shot into a wild beat. He bent down and swiped the tracker off the floor, close to the wall…exactly where the tracker app showed it to be.

“Fuck! This is bad.” He held up the tag.

Dread struck him square in the chest with a blow that threatened to rock him. He steeled his thighs. “May.”

Cobra and Mason stared back at him. Henner didn’t wait around to get their take on what might be going on. He took offin a dead run back to the hangar where he left May and the major general.

His pulse roared in his ears.

No bomb.

No Major General Simpson.

No May. They were gone.

EIGHTEEN

The soaring ceiling of the hanger seemed to echo back the awkward silence that suddenly crashed down between May and Simpson. Slicing a sideways look at the major general’s face, she shifted from foot to foot.

“I wonder what could be keeping the trainees so long.” She hated the nervous edge in her voice and cleared her throat for cover.

Simpson checked his watch, and she pulled out her phone to glance at the time too. It was seven minutes past the time she was to start.

“I apologize for their tardiness. One of the drills must have run overtime. I told them to be here at 1100.”

She didn’t like the way Simpson didn’t meet her eye when he said that. Even during their conversation at the restaurant, when Simpson had every reason to be edgy about purchasing them a very expensive bottle of wine, he wasn’t shifty.

Over her career of dealing with explosives, she’d trained herself to recognize the smallest shifts in people, to pick up the most imperceptible of tells.

May was starting to get the feeling that Simpson, a man who her family had called a friend for years and years, was lying to her. She didn’t even find him suspicious until now.

Way too late in the game.

And she’d been stupid enough to ignore the signs and blinded by family ties. She managed to convince AJ that everything would be fine, that this training posed no risk.

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