Page 84 of Assassin's Game
Nix —
We congregated in the basement to gather equipment and kit ourselves out. I could see the tension in Eli, the way his mind was divided, half on his brothers and half on here. By the time we piled into the Humvee, though, his focus had settled. We hit the mansion gates and headed for the complex a few minutes behind Levi and Sullivan.
“Levi’s beacon was in place?” Rhys asked from the back.
“It is,” Eli answered, not taking his eyes from the road. “We should be able to pick up the signal once we’re close to or inside the building, depending on how far underground X ends up being. The jammer I set excludes that radio signal and the one for our comms.”
I tugged at the earbud in my ear, far too aware of how essential communication was on an op.
Rhys grunted an agreement. The man had been a bear since Maris had walked out the front door of the mansion, and quite frankly, I was enjoying the sight after what he’d said to me last night. Monty and Titus, however—it had only taken one threat to shove their boot down his throat, simultaneously or consecutively, to get him to curb his shit. At least he was finally talking in full sentences again. “He’s wearing a camera too?”
Eli’s grin was wolfish, a predator on the hunt for his prey. “Recording every minute,” he confirmed. “If we don’t succeed in taking X out or the man somehow manages to escape, we’ll have something in our back pocket. Whether it’s worth much or not depends on who X is and how much power he has, but it never hurts to build your pile of bargaining chips.”
Monty pulled out a mini computer Eli had packed among the equipment, and the guys started discussing its features and capabilities, their usual joshing taking over. I let it flow over me, let the rocking of the vehicle lull me into a blind calm. Walking into an op with emotion spilling all over the fucking place was like carrying a live bomb—you never knew when it would detonate. The fewer feelings, the less distraction.
Luckily Eli had done a damn good job of relaxing me last night and this morning. And the satisfied ache in my thighs and core agreed.
“What’s that grin for?”
I turned wide eyes on Eli, realizing he was right. “I guess I was grinning, huh?”
Eli reached for the dashboard, then flipped a switch I hadn’t noticed before. Shot me a wink. “Gives us a little privacy,” he said.
I glanced through the window separating us from the rear area of the vehicle, the same one Eli had used to escort us to his house that first day. Titus and Monty were talking back and forth, Rhys frowning down at something on the handheld computer on his lap, but I couldn’t hear a single sound, from movement or voices. Assuming the phenomenon was mutual…
“Is there a reason we needed privacy?”
Eli snorted. “Are you trying to ask if I’m starting some freaky stuff with you, Mikaela? Because if you want me to…”
I crossed my legs though my heart felt light. “Keep that thing away from me. Some of us need recovery time.”
His grin really should be a jailable offense; he could probably fell fifty women—or men, for that matter—in one go with the damn thing. As it was, I had guns and knives all over me and a bulletproof vest strapping my breasts down flat, and what was my body doing? Flooding my panties with cream in a way that was a disgrace to the battlefield. In this moment I was a soldier, not a woman. I shouldn’t be—
Oh shit, maybe Rhys had been right.
“What?” Eli asked.
“What what?” I responded automatically. I wasn’t sure what he was reading in my face, but I knew for damn sure I didn’t want to talk about it.
Eli didn’t respond, his stare on the road, his grip tight on the steering wheel. I could see the emotion pulsing through him no matter how hard he might be trying to lock it down—he could never be an emotionless soldier, reacting on automatic. The kind of soldier I’d been trained to be since I was a child. I’d always believed I had to fulfill that role perfectly, be the ultimate soldier, to be valued. Anything less was a failure.
But Eli… Was he a failure? When I first met him, I might have answered that question with a yes. Tonight? I took in his features in the green glow of the dashboard. Somehow, despite being so different from me, I thought Eli was exactly who he needed to be. And exactly whoIneeded him to be.
I closed my mind to the questions that awaited us on the other side of this mission, to all theshouldsandhave tosandmuststhat had ruled my life thus far, and there, as we sped toward danger, I let myself just be. With Eli. Nothing else.
A half hour later the squeeze of Eli’s hand on my thigh woke me from a light doze. “Time to wake up, Sleeping Beauty.”
“You wouldn’t say that if you’d seen her drool,” Titus joked from the rear, proving Eli had turned the sound back on at some point.
“At least I’m not the personal expert at Dutch ovens,” I shot back, taking a sharp look around. Woods, woods, and more woods. That’s all there was to see.
Eli nosed the Humvee off the one-lane road we’d ended up on and turned the engine off. He turned to me, leaned close, and before I could protest, gave me a hard, quick kiss that nonetheless included tongue. “Let’s light this fucker up, Beautiful.”
He slid out the door, leaving me still sputtering.
At the back of the Humvee Eli was strapping on the mini computer the men had been investigating earlier. Monty had a duplicate on his wrist. The men climbed out settled night-vision goggles on their heads. We would hike in a couple of miles before reaching the area where the suspected entrance should be. I pulled on my own goggles, and the world turned green instantly. My eyes slowly adjusted as I put in my earpiece, and we tested our communications before heading into the woods.
The Agozis had been adamant about not using deadly force until we reached X. With this complex being a government facility, we couldn’t know who was involved, if X was the only player on the grounds, if any innocents or civilian staff were present. My team was used to hitting enemy camps with known murderers, but Eli had told me they researched their targets thoroughly before agreeing to take them out. Here, with the various personnel, that hadn’t been an option. Each of us wore dart guns with a supply of ketamine darts, but non-lethal takedowns were also authorized—and would likely be much faster. We would only take out someone permanently of that were directly and obviously in league with X.
