Page 94 of Always Been Mine

“Thanks, man.” Gabe exited the Escalade and broke into a sprint. There were some curious onlookers at the entrance. He shouldered past them and yanked the door open. He spotted Beatrice talking to a uniform.

Their eyes met across the room, her luminous green ones flooding with relief, probably mirroring his own. His relief quickly turned to outrage when he noticed the cut right under her right jaw.

Beatrice abandoned the police officer and walked briskly toward him. He opened his arms and quickly engulfed her in a crushing embrace. If given a choice, she would never leave his arms.

“Babe, you scared the shit out of me,” Gabe murmured into her hair.

“I’m sorry. You’re right again,” she mumbled, pulling away to look up at him. “I shouldn’t have left the office.”

Gabe exhaled deeply. “Yeah. But it’s done. Next time listen to your security, okay?”

“I know. I keep on preaching it, but I had Ed with me, so I felt safe enough.”

“You didn’t know Jamison was dirty.” He hugged her tightly to him again before he asked as calmly as he could muster, “What happened to your neck?”

Beatrice stiffened in his arms.

“Babe?”

“He tried to cut me.”

Gabe closed his eyes at the thought; the close call was killing him.

“Ouch, Gabe. Ease up. You’re squeezing the air out of me.”

“How . . . you blocked it?”

“Yes.”

“That’s my girl.”

“Um, excuse me, Ms. Porter, but I need more information from you.” A police officer was standing beside them, assessing Gabe warily.

Gabe forced himself to let Beatrice go. He kissed the crown of her head and nodded to the uniform to proceed. He hovered nearby though, spotting Travis talking to Ed. He wanted to join that huddle, but leaving Beatrice’s side was not an option right now. He didn’t know who to trust in this coffee shop and the crowd outside didn’t exactly give him the warm fuzzies as he scanned the spectators for suspicious elements.

His awareness was heightened; all his senses were engaged as he called upon all his training to protect the woman he loved. Right now, the only way someone was going to hurt a hair on her head was through his cold, lifeless body.

Zach Jamison gotinto a white-colored van a few blocks away from the coffee shop. He needed to go to ground and fast. That had been too fucking close. He turned to the driver of the van, Domingo Ventura, the leader of the Fuego gang.

“How the fuck did Sullivan find out about Volkov?” Zach demanded.

Ventura had no idea the Russian they had been dealing with was actually former U.S. Special Forces Steve Ryker.

“I have no idea. But one of myhermanossaw him drag Johnny from the dry cleaners. We should have whacked thatpendejowhen we had the chance.”

Now that BSI had outed him, it would only be a matter of time before they establish his connection to Philip Crowe. Too bad he had not finished off Beatrice Porter. He relished wreaking psychological agony more than physical damage. Maybe he could still play with her. She was right when she called him a sadistic bastard.

Frank Wilkes would be one unhappy boss, but Zach still had information he needed. Unless someone figured out what information he’d been siphoning from their office, Zach was still indispensable.

It was Benjamin Porter he wanted dead. Zach had nothing against Sullivan. That had been all Ryker. However, Sullivan being in the way of his revenge against Porter made him Zach’s enemy as well.

So be it.

It wasobvious now that “safe house” was a misnomer, and the place was intended to be a command center for Porter’s agenda. Right now, the house was like a fucking party. Okay, maybe Gabe was exaggerating. With Caitlin around, food was a necessity, especially since she was almost four months pregnant. She had hacked into the Metropolitan Police Department database because they were officially the ones investigating the assault on Beatrice in Georgetown. They had lifted a partial fingerprint of Zach Jamison from the coffee cup.

Caitlin was using those prints to do a search of her own against a larger, more classified database with a couple of modified input parameters to widen the search to individuals other than Zach Jamison in case the name was an alias.Travis’s wife had been shoveling food in her mouth as they waited, much to Porter’s annoyance. Clearly, the admiral was old school and didn’t want anyone eating in the command center.

Gabe stuck his head out of the command room to briefly check on Beatrice. She just received a call from Senator Mendoza who received a visit from the MPD detectives. Judging from Beatrice’s face, she was trying to make the senator feel better for unleashing Zach Jamison on her. Neither the MPD nor the senator knew of her torture at the hands of the motherfucker. The truth would open a whole line of questioning that could compromise what the admiral was working on. Until Porter and his covert team could shut down Redrook, they had to keep their intel under wraps. All the senator and the MPD knew was Zach Jamison had snapped and attacked Beatrice. Tough sell to the senator since Zach had apparently worked for a former friend of his and came highly recommended.

---